First, we put on the digital music channel, Sounds of the Season, so we can listen to Christmas music while we work. Then I start unwinding the lights. They've been in these RubberMaid tubs all year and apparently were formed into one gi-normous knot not even the Boy Scouts could untangle. After that mess is handled, Steph takes the lead and starts twirling the lights around separate branches moving around the tree in a clockwise motion. I continue de-tangling the herculean knot and passing her the strand of lights. We continue around the tree for what feels like an hour. All the while Steph is telling me to hand her lights faster, then slower, then I'm slacking and I need to start moving faster. Man, how long is this #$&@ strand of lights? And didn't the music channel JUST play Feliz Navidad, or is it just me? The Festival of the Tree has begun...
When the first strand is finally done, we plug in the lights to see if we missed any spots. Funny, the tree barely looks lit, WTF?! Maybe it's because half the strand is not lighting up. GREAT, we just got these lights. So we gotta unwind the flippin' lights and start again. FYI, if you value your marriage, plug in each strand before you string it. A Christmas tip from me to you.
So, we start again. Oh yes, people, I checked the strand this time. Daddy ain't no fool. So, things are going good, for what feels like an hour and a half. WTF?! There is no way this strand is longer than the last strand. They are from the same box. Maybe doing the tree was a huge mistake today. Is that Feliz Navidad...AGAIN?! Does this digital music channel only have like 3 songs on its playlist?! COME ON!! Finally, the end of the strand. We plug it in to see the fruits of our labor. Crap in a hat. There's a huge unlighted hole in the middle of the tree where Steph missed. I. WANT. TO. DIE. Maybe a glass of wine would help? Or a shotgun in my mouth?So we unwind then begin again. By this point, Steph and I don't even consider us to be married to each other. We are two strangers who hate each other decorating the same tree, that we also hate. Idle chit-chat is at a low point, which sucks because the digital music channel is playing Feliz Navidad for the 30th time. And this strand is taking longer than the last three strands combined. I'm dying inside, our cat Presley is in the corner weeping and we still haven't finished stringing lights, much less putting on ornaments. We plug in the newest strand once it's finally on and the tree is only lit like half way. WTF?! We've been at this for what feels like days and the tree is only half done?! That's it, I'm prepared to call off Christmas and start celebrating Easter.
We are finally getting to the bottom and I keep thinking we are done. I tell Steph, "...one more strand" like twenty times. We keep putting on lights and the bottom never gets any closer. It's like the tree is a giant optical illusion. We are going to keep stringing up lights until we either run out of lights or we die, whichever comes first, and I'm betting on the latter. We finally finish the tree with a grand total of like 7 strands of lights. Seven strands of lights. SEVEN. We bought this tree like 3 or 4 years ago. It's fake. We don't water it, it doesn't grow. Explain to me why the number of strands it takes to light this ^&%$# tree goes up every year. The first year we had the tree I swear it only took 3 strands of lights. I've bought boxes of lights every year to put on the tree. Where do the lights go?! Is there some kind of Phantom Zone in our tree? Another dimension that sucks up lights, never to be seen again? Maybe this dimension is nothing but Christmas lights and orphaned socks from our washing machine. Who knows, but the tree is finally lit and we get to start putting on the ornaments...queue Feliz Navidad...
Technorati Tags - christmas tree humor christmas holiday personal
Holy crap, what the hell is this guy compensating for? Either this is Paul Bunyon's sweet ride or the owner has the tiniest genitalia on the planet. And he parked it BACKWARDS. For a guy with such small genitalia, he's got some ego.
I was at the Big Lots by my office during lunch and right next door was this Chinese grocery (pictured left). I love fun and different types of supermarkets and groceries so I thought I'd drop in. Maybe I'd find some cool Chinese energy drinks or sodas. I thought it would be fun. I was wrong. As soon as I stepped into the place, I knew I was wrong. First of all, the smell. It was unearthly. At first, it smelled like some old guy's ass (not that I actually know what that smells like, but I can guess). The smell changed and morphed the longer I stayed in this unholy place. The smell was so bad, my entire olfactory system shut down. It was like Cherynobyl in my brain, a complete meltdown. My eyes were burning, I couldn't breathe, and I wanted to cry. I walked around very quickly trying to catch my breath and I noticed I was the only "westerner" in there. Everyone else is Chinese, and old. Not just old, but ANCIENT. We are talking hieroglyphics old. So, now I'm scared. I'm afraid the Akuza (they are Japanese, I know) are going to jump out and turn me into Today's Special. So I hightail it out of there. Walking out I noticed there was like one register open and the chick was doing her nails. So strange...yet wonderful. I will never set foot in this place again, but I will speak of it often.
Hogly Wogly?! Come on, dude. You can't do any better than Hogly Wogly? How about Cowsy Wowsy? Birdsy Wirdsy? Piggly Wiggly....wait.
This is a public service announcement. If you are going to mix absinthe and lemonade, be prepared for the very real possibility of a cross dressing transvestite waking you up in the middle of the French Quarter without your pants on. 
DEAD. SEXY. You know it, and I know it.
In seventh grade I started my first big collection; comic books. From seventh grade through twelfth grade my friend Steve and I collected comics 
After the fallout from New Coke’s disastrous introduction, Coke had a big problem. How do they market two Cokes? Coke Classic didn’t need any marketing as the brand now sold itself, but what about New Coke? It could no longer use the slogan “The Best Just Got Better”, so, what to do? Coke decided to market New Coke to their lowest performing demographic, kids and teens. Ads for Coke included Max Headroom in fast talking commercials berating Pepsi for lack of originality. These ads did fairly well and were well recognized, but sales of New Coke couldn’t recover from the beating the drink got over the summer. The writing was on the wall for New Coke. 
In 1992, New Coke was re-branded Coke II in hopes that it might refresh interest. It didn’t and by 2002, the drink was pretty much eliminated from all but the smallest markets. Supposedly, Coke II can still be found in stores and vending machines in smaller markets like Micronesia and American Samoa. Though New Coke is considered near dead, it will never truly die. CEO Goizueta still preferred New Coke so he continued to have it produced for his own consumption until right before his death. You only have to mention New Coke to somebody and they immediately know what you are talking about. It’s not just a drink anymore, New Coke refers to a mistake so disastrous, one may never recover. It’s part of the pop culture lexicon.
Welcome to Part II of The Saga of New Coke. If you missed Part I, then just 
That New Coke was a complete failure from day one is the common misconception. By and large, people really liked the new formulation and continued buying Coke in their usual amounts. Where the discourse began was in the Southeast, where Coke was originally formulated and sold back in the late 1800s. People were reacting to the fact that Coke was changed, not to the bad taste of New Coke. Most of the protestors didn’t even drink soda, much less Coke; they just didn’t like the idea of Coke changing something that apparently meant something to them. The interesting thing is, if Coke, before the change, would have meant enough to these people to buy it, then the company wouldn’t have changed the formula in the first place. It’s your classic Catch-22. Due to the extremely vocal minority, it became “chic” to bash New Coke. Protestors were so vocal about not liking New Coke that anyone who did like the new formula would be scared to say so. These “coke crazies” as I call them, formed a group called Old Cola Drinkers of America which lobbied The Coca Cola Company to reintroduce the original formula. They even tried to levy a class action lawsuit against Coke (wha-huh?!) but the case was thrown out by a judge (sometimes the legal system works). People continued to be so outraged at the new formula that they were trying to obtain cases of original Coca-Cola from overseas as New Coke had not been introduced over there yet. The Coca-Cola Company was at a loss for the huge debacle they had created for themselves.
Despite the chaos in the Southeast, sales of New Coke everywhere else were doing very well...at first. After July, however, the sales starting leveling off. Coke executives were scared that peer pressure against New Coke was affecting the sales numbers. What to do? Well, naturally, they panicked and hastily set out to re-introduce the original formula of Coca-Cola. On July 10th, Peter Jennings broke into normal television to inform the world that Coke was bringing back the original flavor of Coke, now dubbed Coca-Cola Classic. The founders of Old Cola Drinkers of America were given the first cases. 
I love soda. I mean, I REALLY love soda. It’s almost an unnatural love…..a forbidden love, if you will. Due to this, I’ve been fascinated for years by the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi. My formative years were right in the middle of the ‘80s; the Vietnam of the cola wars. During the 1980s, Coke and Pepsi threw out more gimmicks than a used car salesman trying to hawk his wares during a “Sales Event”. It was a soda lovers’ nirvana (and I don’t mean the alternative rock band). One of the more infamous ploys of this period was the introduction of New Coke. Never has a company’s promotion and decision making been so thoroughly bitch-slapped by the American public. It was embarrassing, and, in my opinion, a complete over-reaction. In this three part article, we will look at the saga of New Coke, from inception all the way to the bloody aftermath and what Coke gained or lost by their gamble. I’ll even ponder if New Coke might actually still be on the shelves…but under a different name, and at the end of each article (including this one) I'll provide links to classic Coke and Pepsi commercials. So punch 1983 into the flux capacitor and let’s get this bitch up to 88 miles an hour because our story starts, not with New Coke…………but Diet Coke.
In 1980 Roberto Goizueta (seen right) took over as CEO of the Coca-Cola Company. He let it be known that all traditions are “out the window” and it was time for Coke to “shake things up”. Seeing the success of Diet Pepsi and the relative obscurity of TaB, Goizueta used the market research mentioned earlier and decided to reformulate TaB using similar artificial sweeteners (i.e. aspartame) found in Diet Pepsi. Thus, the end product was formulated to be very similar to Diet Pepsi, and not really a diet version of Coca-Cola. Against company tradition the resulting product was branded as Diet Coca-Cola and released in 1983. Over the next few years, Diet Coke would outsell all of Coke’s other products by a wide margin. Not helping things, Pepsi’s enormously popular 
With Diet Coke siphoning sales from other Coke products and the Pepsi Challenge causing the buying public to lose faith in the Coke brand, CEO Roberto Goizueta thought it was time for more drastic measures. Having quietly tweaked Coke’s formula before in foreign markets to help drive up sales, Roberto had little qualms about altering the secret formula for Coca-Cola Proper here in the States. He believed the flavor change should be done with a huge marketing campaign and not kept secret from the public. So preparations were made to re-formulate Coca-Cola’s flavor to be more like Diet Coke and completely eliminate the current Coke product. After extensive formula research and market testing Coke finally stumbled on a concoction that tested through the roof with focus groups. The newer formula even bested Pepsi and Diet Pepsi in taste trials. It looked as though Coke had a winner. Goizueta had his marketing department work in absolute secrecy on a campaign, even going so far as having them work in another building after hours so nothing would leak to the press. The Coca-Cola Company planned on unveiling the new formula during their centennial year, 1985.
I have been in a very Halloweeny mood lately (haha...I said weeny!). Part of it started by reading X-Entertainment's 
