Manatees in T-Shirts and Other Notes

I used to carry a notebook to jot down the random thoughts I’m prone to in case one turned out to be the inspiration for a best-selling book. Or any kind of book, really. This method didn’t work well because the notebook, no matter how small, would always get in the way of the keys, the wallet, the phone or whatever I was looking for in my bag. If I did have a random thought, followed by the thought that I should write it down, there was a good possibility that I didn’t have a pen. If I had a pen the thought of digging around in my cavernous bag trying to locate it was usually too much work. Once in awhile, the stars aligned and I wrote something in my notebook. Six months later I would throw the notebook out because it had gotten ratty looking, which works okay for blue jeans and rock concert t-shirts but not notebooks. I’d rip out the 2 or 3 pages of notes, put them somewhere, and never think about them again. Eventually, I’d spot a cute notebook in CVS or Borders and begin the cycle all over again.

In 2014, I discovered the “Notes” app on my cell phone. It changed my life. Every random thought, passwords, business ideas, dreams…you name it, it gets recorded in the notes app. Every once in awhile, I scroll through to see what’s there. Once in awhile, there’s a coherent thought. More often than not, there’s a few words strung together that don’t make much sense. I’ve pulled out some gems from the past for discussion today.

5/27/15: I’m like a faded tiki hut. Sad and festive all at the same time. 

In my opinion,faded tiki huts become quite festive when you add twinkle lights and tropical drinks in pineapples. The same is true of me.

1/21/16: Dream: Living with very poor family in tight quarters and there is a pet tarantula.

I’m not sure what this is about because I would never live with a pet tarantula, even in my dreams. In fact, I would never live with people who think having a pet tarantula is okay. It’s not okay.

2/7/16: Running with the wolves and other parenting mistakes

Now see? This is what the “Notes” app was meant for. This is an intriguing idea for a blog post. Maybe this will be my next blog post. Or yours. Maybe we should all write about feminism and parenting.

2/7/16: Gender neutral dressing is just male-oriented dressing. If you dress a girl as a boy or a boy as a boy, you call it gender neutral. If you dress a boy in a pink skirt, he’s trans. 

I was obviously having a gender crisis of some kind on 2/7/16.

6/27/2016: Commercials where families dance together

I like dissecting commercials for marketing effectiveness. So what do we think about commercials where families dance together? Do we like them? Do we not like them? I tend to like them. However, I tend to not ever remember what is being marketed in these commercials. I’m all about the dancing. I give them an A for entertainment and a C for effectiveness. It would be an F, but I suspect these commercials have some kind of subliminal marketing effectiveness. If you play these commercials backwards, they probably say, “Buy Life Insurance” or “Eat cereal”.

4/26/17:  I’m calling bullshit  on that commercial for cotton where a girl, hanging out with friends, dressed in a cute white cotton outfit, impulsively jumps into a mud pit at some kind of festival. I don’t know. Maybe there are mud pits at festivals these days. I kind of doubt it, but I haven’t been to a festival in years. What I don’t doubt at all is that any  girl dressed to the nines all in white cotton, is not gong to jump into a pit of mud unless she’s psychotic, in which case she’s going to look disheveled and crazy and nobody is going to make a commercial about her unless it’s for a pharmaceutical solution.

This one scored an F on Chicken’s Marketing Effectiveness Scale. There’s nothing effective about it. Even if you are, say, intrigued by the girl in white cotton throwing caution to the wind, you are still left wondering what she’s going to do for clothes the rest of the day. You find yourself looking for a back pack that might hold a change of clothes. No, there’s no back pack. It occurs to me that this girl might just have changed the whole trajectory of her life in one dumb move. She jumps in the mud. Her clothes are a wet, brown mess, there’s mud on her face and in her hair. She has no extra clothes. It’s 90 degrees out. She starts to smell bad. Her friends are embarrassed to be seen with her so they wander off. Everyone else gives a wide berth because they assume she’s crazy. She begins to feel isolated and paranoid. She passes a mud pit. She’s so hot, she decides to jump in. It’s like Groundhog Day, the movie. You know, that commercial is far more complex than I gave it credit for. There’s a whole short film in there. It still get’s an F, though.

9/27/17: Helping Hand. I’ll hold my own hand. It’s the least I can do after what I’ve put myself through. I’ll hold your hand, too. I couldn’t have done it without you.

This is intriguing. I have no idea whether I wrote it or heard it somewhere and made a note of it. I googled it but nothing came up except warnings about the perils of being too self-aware. That’s never been my problem. I suspect this is a song lyric that some other way too self-aware person wrote.

11/30/17:  My coat practices selective zipping

This one actually did become a Fashion is a Two-Faced Bitch post. See? See how it works?

3/7/28:  Are the manatees in that commercial really wearing novelty tees? If so, how did they get them on? I picture a marketing intern somewhere being told to “dress the manatees” and the intern thinking to himself, “This is so not what I signed up for”. 

This one gets an A because who doesn’t love a manatee in a t-shirt? I don’t even care what that commercial is about (it’s about Geico). I think one of the novelty t-shirts on the manatees should say, “Time to Dress the Manatees”

Chicken out