Saturday, September 26, 2009

Anime Girls - Unfaithful

The lyrics tell a powerful story, and the anime is superb. One of these days I will have to write the reasons for such a pleasure with anime, but for now you have a video behind another story which will leave you thinking.  Thinking is one thing, acting is another, a measured event avoids the inevitable, but causes resentment and jealousy.

Friday, September 25, 2009

OzModius - September 2008 - The Mantle Piece

September is one of the months that either has two important events, the winding down of the summer wedding season or the kids going back to school. Some couples like the September wedding because kids can't attend if the wedding has mostly 99.9% adults and one or two children. And so you now have one of the reasons for the September wedding, but also the best reason has to be price, especially if your have four seasons like the East Coast. The West Coast can pretty much have weddings year round with some months not good for beach weddings; Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Arizona really seams to have two or three climates hot, hotter, and tornado depending on the geographical area and if your facing the gulf. But no matter where you live there still is the struggle that you have finding the perfect wedding gift.

You get the invitation to the wedding and carefully open the invitation and get the usual, which is the invitation and the stores the couple has registered for the gifts. I don't know about you, but both buying and registering for gifts are just as arduous, each event costs me 20 hours of hunting, which does not seem bad if your single, but if your married you have to practice time management. In which case; when you receive the wedding invitation; your hoping its for next month and not two months away, with two months everyone just procrastinates and then as a coordinated mafia hit, waits for that special weekend, and proceeds to purchase the same gift. Its like trying to book a business trip in the middle of "Spring Break".

Fortunately I have had the experience of the September wedding and this is how it went. Received the invitation to the wedding, but no bridal registry, so I asked my friend what he wanted, he just said "...just get me whatever, you always come up with something good, and do you have a date?", I told him "Yes, I'll have to see if my mistress (form of address) is available for the wedding." I asked Mila if she was available for the wedding, saying, "what should I wear..." soon after both questions were answered I was out buying and evening dress and a wedding gift. One of my friends offered a nice cocktail dress, which fit Mila perfectly. I never told her it was my friends prom dress, but the less she new the better. I spent close to forty hours with the dress and finding the present.

I hunted and hunted and always came up short, but then I remember my friend mentioned having a fire place and his soon to be wife joking about how a NFL boble head figurine is not a mantle piece, the first item as far as a mantle piece was an elephant and cub, but then that didn't bode to well since non of them elephants brought then any luck, so I went searching more and found something that look like sea world encarnate, but then that did not do, I even saw a tiny Budha but somethign wasn't right, so I started over again at another store and then I found it. A crystal ornament with a hole set for a a time piece, yet no time piece when I checked the package, ran back to the store, returned the clock and asked the clerk if they had something simular with a clock. "Yes, we have something simulare, but its a little smaller than what your looking for...", I asked her to show me, and told her it what I was looking for.

The next day the wedding and me rushing from CT to NY to pick up Mila, and the three hour tour like Gilligans Island, thankfully I had Mila to talk my head off driving to the wedding. All went well getting to the wedding on time, but the weather turned and so the whole thing was moved indoors, imagine snow flurrys during indian summer, but the party had good music, booze, and dancing. Towards the end of the night I had to drive Mila home, I said my good-byes to everyone, the bride asked me to one side and said, "I opened your present, how did you know...", I put my finger to my lips and said, "there are stranger things that happen in this universe everyday, just be happy I can't give a gift without putting my heart and soul into it...". With that she gave me a bear hug and a kiss and we said our farwells, On the way out my friend shook my hand and said the same thing as his wife, I just looked at him and said, "asked your wife what she just told me and I'll speak to you tomorrow.


Thursday, September 24, 2009

Busy weeks in preparation for holidays...

I love the holidays because the shopping deals are like no other time of the year. In a conversation with one of my marketing guys he was stating that people were scared last year to buy anything in fear of the new president, but he is expecting this christmas season to prosper with last minute shopping. I thought about this hard, overwhelmed with the idea that a web store needs to keep its web page static for at least six months to become popular and let the word out. I am hoping to offer my customers these unique products before everyone starts to go into a short production haul. What is a short production haul? A term used in retail related to the "black friday" estimates, but most retailers have a friends and family shopping nights a week or two before Thanksgiving as an experiment.  The products you see during the month of October in the stores is the merchandise you will see for Christmas; and for the month of December; after the completion of "black Friday" figures; you will see door stoppers.  Door stoppers are another term for a product that makes you stop and say "wow!!!" and you end up buying it, when you don't really need it, but what the heck it only costs $20.00 dollars.  Its the famous Billy Mays pitch, i.e. buy this mascara and get the free cosmetic bag, and if your lucky you'll get the bag in the store, or end up with a coupon which you'll most likely redeem or not.
In  a commitment to circumstances I have done plenty of work on DorothysAttic.com to bring the Holidays early, offer great deals from the beggining and pour over lots of html, marketing persons and doing analytical data of my competitors that sell similar items, and finding no one is doing anything like this at the moment, but things can change and prices could go up or down according to the outlook of pre-beta black fridays.  The fortunate thing is that my inventory dynamically updates every month and I am able to follow the updates so that you don't end up scrambling for a gift at the last moment.  Now if you get stuck, just bye yourself a "door stopper" for yourself, do the lego block fascination thing with your friends, gloat and wallow in your victory and make a general list of a toy you would like your family and friends to have, because at deep down inside your still a Child inside and gift giving shouldn't be reserved for the holidays.