Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Quick Thoughts

The last couple of posts on this diatribe have been a bit heavy so I thought I'd post something a little lighter. A few random thoguhts follow below:

Peanut Butter

A short consumer note, Laura Lynn Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread is yucky. Now I'm not sure if it's yucky like Mr. Yuck sticker yucky but if the taste is any indication I would be inclined to think so. I've had better tasting sawdust. (I know what you're thinking, "You mean you go around eating sawdust? What are you, some sort of half-man, half-termite hybrid created to combat cellulose-based space aliens when they invade to liberate their tree brethern?" While I can't comment on that particular subject, I can say that my sawdust tasting experience comes from the fact that it seems that my role in increasing the entropy of the universe is confined to turning big pieces of ugly wood into smooth pieces of not ugly wood and lots of really small pieces of wood.) As someone I spoke with about this said, "Never venture far from Jif." You can call this a shocking bit of product endorsement but short of something homemade, Jif (especially the Creamy) just tastes better. It tasted better when I was a kid, it tasted better when I was a dirt poor undergrad and didn't have the money to afford it and it tastes better now. Top the Laura Lynn off with some rather nasty Great Value strawberry preserves from Wally World and you have one rotten PB&J sandwich. There are times when generic might be cheaper, but it certainly isn't worth the cost.

Product Endorsements

I got an email from Active.com today asking if I was interrested in joining one of their sponsored athlete teams. Hmmm, I thought. Sounds intriguing. All I have to do is wear/use/promote-in-a-sort-of-passive-way the stuff at six sporting events I will participate in and I'll be set. There's swag involved, maybe even some cash. I'm a thirty-something amateur athlete with a reasonable amount of disposable income and a drive to compete and win. I'm a good time-trialist with some real podium potential (at least in Cat V road cycling). On the heals of Lance's newest endorsement deal with Subaru, it sounded like a pretty good deal. I mean, maybe I'd promote Power Bar whose slogan is "Be Great" or I'd get a shoe or a sunglasses brand. Hmmmm, sounds even more interesting. But then I wondered, what if I don't like the product. I mean, I think Power Bars are great and all for athletic performance but I think they taste like slimy carboard (I sure hope you're not eating lunch while reading this). What if my product is Gatorade when I like to drink Cytomax. What if it's too personal...somethink like promoting a particular brand of underwear for actively minded adults? Come to think of it, I'm a pretty brand loyal kind of guy. I ride Specialized bikes and use Specialized products whenever I can. I like Mavic wheels, Ritchey components (for the most part) and Shimano drivetrains. I drink nothing but Cytomax or water, my computing choice is Apple, my electronics choice runs toward JVC and I always wash with Cheer. I'm the guy the marketing people keeping try to say doesn't exist anymore, a consumer neanderthal. One the other hand, getting a hand to pay for this expensive hobby would be nice. Hmmmm.....

Small Town Life

I love living in a small town. Last night the lovely wife and I went for our evening fair weather walk when we ventured across a small crowd of people. Some of the folks have lawn chairs and cool, refresshing beverages; others are standing in groups talking wise talk. What was the event? The tree guys were cutting down an enormous old tree that had started to rot out and was threatening to fall on the house that had probably been built before the tree was planted in the front yard. In some towns, this sort of thing is greeted with derision but I'm glad that things are peaceful enough around my home that the day's big event is trying to predict which branch the guy up in the ropes was going to cut next.

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