If this sounds familiar it is. I’ve asked this question before and nobody could supply a good answer so I’m putting it out there again.
What insanity has infested the minds of the people who name men’s toiletries and bath products?
This is important stuff! Forget pandemics, forget riots in the streets, turn all that social media energy aware from climate change and dictator of the week discussions. Arguing the merits of masks and vaccines mean nothing until somebody can adequately describe exactly what “hydrate” smells like!
All this politically correct talk about gender neutrality and sexlessness and inclusivity hasn’t reached the men’s fragrance department. Women soaps, deodorants, shampoos, and other whatnots applied behind closed bathroom doors still make sense. Who doesn’t know, or at least can reasonable imagine, what honeysuckle smells like? Women get rose oil, jasmine, green apple, and if you’re feeling a little adventurous, cucumber. Along with the aforementioned “hydrate,” men get “fresh,” ‘hi-def,” and “balance.” Women can relax under “waterfall mist” while men get stuck with “anarchy.” Not kidding.
There is a men’s deodorant fragrance “Strength.” My first thought is a bunch of sweaty guys in a gym lifting weights. And this is what I want to walk around all day smelling like? No thanks! There’s also a men’s deodorant called “Clean.” A little more to my liking, but as with its close cousin “Fresh,” aren’t those things that shouldn’t have a smell. I mean if it’s clean it doesn’t need a scent, right?
Whatever happened to the dye and fragrance free fad. Can’t we just have soap. Does everything have to enhance, isn’t it enough to just make ourselves clean and fresh without have to apply “clean” or “fresh” after washing?
Anarchy. Wow. Now there’s something I bet you won’t see a scratch and sniff sample of.
Press or say 5 to change add or change your policy or increase your policy limits and pay your bill
Have you ever tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit? Let me rephrase that, have you never tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit? I think that’s required in “Things to do in your first adult kitchen 101.” I tried and sort of even succeeded. Sort of. For a while I had an actual tree. It stood about 5 feet tall but was only as big around as a school pencil. Unfortunately, not quite as sturdy. My latest experiment was “let’s grow a pineapple plant from the crown of one.” (The things we did while locked in.) A year later I have not just one, but two. I wonder if this is how Dole got started.
Are there any grandfather clock aficionado out there? I have a contemporary long case that has travelled with me now through three homes and resided in multiple places at each. The years have been kinder to the case than the movement. It is still in great shape, shapewise, but it runs late. Not slow. Late. It keeps a 60 minute hour today as good as the day it was uncrated but little by little it has developed its unique peculiarity of chiming the hour late. We’re now up to 5 minutes late. It’s not unusual for a guest when hearing the chime to comment, “Oh it’s x o’clock, no wait, I have 5 after. Your clock is slow,” and I respond, “No, it’s not slow, it’s late.” It has taken 20 years for the chime to be out of sync by 5 minutes. (Out of synch?) An optimist would note that in another 220 years, it will work its way around and be right on time.
“Service” is defined as the action of helping or doing work for someone. Merriam Webster goes a step further and adds “a helpful act.” We would argue that in none of the above examples was help or work done. Others may say work was done. It just wasn’t especially helpful, and the definition does not specify the act of helping and doing, merely helping or doing. If I was running a motivational speaking service and presenting this as an argument for how to tell the truth and nothing but the truth yet far from the whole truth, I would cleverly label that as qualified honesty.
I thought of all this last week when my daughter asked me if I’d like a stand to hold my herb pots in the kitchen, she found one on the curb. My first thought was “damn I’m glad that apple didn’t fall far from its tree.” My second thought was to run right over there and get it.
Is it just the email clients I use, and there are 4 of them (the laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone all use different applications to access my email), or does everybody have multiple junk and spam folders to hold undesirable dispatches? Mine has Junk, Junk, Spam, sometimes Spambox, and sometimes Junk Mail, and always at least three of them. How do they decide? And who are they anyway?
But do you want to know what really annoys me about all this? Spam. It’s rendered SPAM as an undesirable. SPAM as in Special Processed American Meat by the Hormel Corporation. Since 1937, SPAM has had its haters too but more lovers for sure. By the way, SPAM does not stand for Special Processed American Meat. That was a sobriquet given it during WWII by non-American troops treated to the canned delicacy. SPAM is actually a portmanteau of Spiced Ham although it is available in a variety of flavors, even (ugh) pumpkin spice.
It’s a good thing there aren’t any filters in the canned meat section of the supermarket. If there were, we’d be reduced to eating . . .
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