To the driver of the fancy, smanchy little tuna can (yeah, I drive a SUV –what of it?) of a sports car in front of me this morning, I’d like to inform you that your car was meant to be driven faster than 40 mph. In fact, the speedometer on your teensy dashboard probably registers as high as 180 mph. Given the way you were handling your little high performance vehicle, (and by handling, I mean treating it as though it might break if you pushed the petal any further) I’d bet that you’ve never actually driven it faster than 80 mph. What a shame. Not only is your engine sorely underachieving, but you are pissing off those people that you block and delay as you cruise along hoping that everyone is admiring you.
Reality Check: we don’t care who you are, what kind of car you have, or how much money you want everyone to think you have. What we care about is that you move your wheels and stop slowing us all down. If you can’t drive it properly, then get off the road and out of the way ‘cause my big boat is coming through! Maybe you should limit your “cruising time” to Sunday afternoons when the roads are less congested and people are not in a rush to get to work.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
What Happened to the Signature Print?
Memo To the Design Department at Coach, Inc.
I received an email from your marketing department yesterday and the subject headline was “C The New Prints & Patterns". As a Coachie (or as my sister calls it, a Coach Hoar), I was excited to see the new prints and immediately opened the email. To my dismay, the headline of the email read: "We C You Love Prints. Our New Signature Could Be Yours" where the "new signature" was definitely the newer Optic Art C pattern. Can you tell I’m not a fan of the OpArt print? And why are they calling it the new signature print when the “signature print” has always meant the classic Cs print. This will definitely be confusing –especially to diehard Coachies like me who have been following Coach for many, many years. The newbies will be calling the OpArt pattern the signature print, while the oldies, err, diehards like me will be calling the classic C pattern the signature print. Either they didn’t think this one through, or they are going to phase out the classic C print completely. Nooooooooo!
I know Coach is trying to bring in the younger crowd with new styles and textures and colors and, and, and. That part I love –they are always coming out with new things and so often that I find myself browsing their website on a weekly basis to see what’s new. That’s truly effective marketing! Keep teasing me with new stuff so often that I have to keep checking in for new stuff and make me want it all. The part I don’t love is that they seem to be trading off their real signature print (the classic Cs that started it all) for the OpArt stuff they are pushing now. I admit that some of the OpArt is cute, but it’s not my favorite. The classic signature print is just that –classic. It’s fashionable for all age groups (whereas the OpArt is aimed at the younger crowd) and it has a strong presence.
Take a look around the Coach.com website and you will see what I mean. Out of the hundreds of styles of purses and other items they offer, only a fraction of them carry the classic signature print. This makes me sad. I visited a Coach boutique last month and was not only shocked at the very limited selection of items (for such a big store, shouldn’t there be more to choose from?) but also at the fact that I only saw three items with the classic C print. Only three. In the whole boutique!
The classic C print is the pattern that hooked me and the style and quality is what reeled me in. I love many of the new styles they have out now, but I hate the fact that they are only available in OpArt. The last purse I purchased was as a replacement for my Carly (which had to be shelved due to the fraying issue for which they are known) and since I’m very particular about the size, shape, and functionality of my purses, I chose the medium Leah in coated canvas. I love everything about the purse, except for the fact that it was only available with the OpArt print.
Oh, and to make it worse, it came in only three color choices: hot pink, lime green, and brown. Now what kind of adult woman over the age of 30 wants to own a hot pink purse? As odd as it sounds, I chose the green because it was more subdued than the pink and also the ugly brown. My purse is the perfect size, has the perfect shape, has enough pockets in all the right places for me, and is coated so that it’s waterproof, dirt proof, and is very durable. It’s just ugly as hell.
Now, there were a few Leah bags that came in the classic C signature print, but they were the big, huge purses and they were in the sateen fabric. I wanted the coated canvas for durability and I’m petite so I need a smaller bag. Which gets me to another point…
Why are purses so damned large now? A majority of all purses on the market now are big enough to carry an entire load of laundry plus the bottle of detergent! I see all these teenagers at the mall toting around purses as big as a garbage bag. It’s so out of proportion and I can only imagine how their back, neck, and shoulders feel after a day of slugging it around. I would love to see Coach offer a purse style in multiple sizes (large, medium, and small), colors, prints, and textures/fabric. Maybe they could offer a new feature to “make my custom purse”. I’d be all over that.
And while I’m at it, who thought it would be a good idea to design these big, open purses with only a few teeny pockets on the inside walls? Where are the dividers that split your purse into sections and allowed a bit of organization? I’m tired of rummaging through the endless pit of my purse to find my lip gloss or my keys.
So Coach, if you are listening –you may want to reevaluate your client base and start asking what we want –and listening to our answers. Lest we may get weary of all the games and venture over to Gucci, or Louis Vuitton, or Prada…
I received an email from your marketing department yesterday and the subject headline was “C The New Prints & Patterns". As a Coachie (or as my sister calls it, a Coach Hoar), I was excited to see the new prints and immediately opened the email. To my dismay, the headline of the email read: "We C You Love Prints. Our New Signature Could Be Yours" where the "new signature" was definitely the newer Optic Art C pattern. Can you tell I’m not a fan of the OpArt print? And why are they calling it the new signature print when the “signature print” has always meant the classic Cs print. This will definitely be confusing –especially to diehard Coachies like me who have been following Coach for many, many years. The newbies will be calling the OpArt pattern the signature print, while the oldies, err, diehards like me will be calling the classic C pattern the signature print. Either they didn’t think this one through, or they are going to phase out the classic C print completely. Nooooooooo!
I know Coach is trying to bring in the younger crowd with new styles and textures and colors and, and, and. That part I love –they are always coming out with new things and so often that I find myself browsing their website on a weekly basis to see what’s new. That’s truly effective marketing! Keep teasing me with new stuff so often that I have to keep checking in for new stuff and make me want it all. The part I don’t love is that they seem to be trading off their real signature print (the classic Cs that started it all) for the OpArt stuff they are pushing now. I admit that some of the OpArt is cute, but it’s not my favorite. The classic signature print is just that –classic. It’s fashionable for all age groups (whereas the OpArt is aimed at the younger crowd) and it has a strong presence.
Take a look around the Coach.com website and you will see what I mean. Out of the hundreds of styles of purses and other items they offer, only a fraction of them carry the classic signature print. This makes me sad. I visited a Coach boutique last month and was not only shocked at the very limited selection of items (for such a big store, shouldn’t there be more to choose from?) but also at the fact that I only saw three items with the classic C print. Only three. In the whole boutique!
The classic C print is the pattern that hooked me and the style and quality is what reeled me in. I love many of the new styles they have out now, but I hate the fact that they are only available in OpArt. The last purse I purchased was as a replacement for my Carly (which had to be shelved due to the fraying issue for which they are known) and since I’m very particular about the size, shape, and functionality of my purses, I chose the medium Leah in coated canvas. I love everything about the purse, except for the fact that it was only available with the OpArt print.
Oh, and to make it worse, it came in only three color choices: hot pink, lime green, and brown. Now what kind of adult woman over the age of 30 wants to own a hot pink purse? As odd as it sounds, I chose the green because it was more subdued than the pink and also the ugly brown. My purse is the perfect size, has the perfect shape, has enough pockets in all the right places for me, and is coated so that it’s waterproof, dirt proof, and is very durable. It’s just ugly as hell.
Now, there were a few Leah bags that came in the classic C signature print, but they were the big, huge purses and they were in the sateen fabric. I wanted the coated canvas for durability and I’m petite so I need a smaller bag. Which gets me to another point…
Why are purses so damned large now? A majority of all purses on the market now are big enough to carry an entire load of laundry plus the bottle of detergent! I see all these teenagers at the mall toting around purses as big as a garbage bag. It’s so out of proportion and I can only imagine how their back, neck, and shoulders feel after a day of slugging it around. I would love to see Coach offer a purse style in multiple sizes (large, medium, and small), colors, prints, and textures/fabric. Maybe they could offer a new feature to “make my custom purse”. I’d be all over that.
And while I’m at it, who thought it would be a good idea to design these big, open purses with only a few teeny pockets on the inside walls? Where are the dividers that split your purse into sections and allowed a bit of organization? I’m tired of rummaging through the endless pit of my purse to find my lip gloss or my keys.
So Coach, if you are listening –you may want to reevaluate your client base and start asking what we want –and listening to our answers. Lest we may get weary of all the games and venture over to Gucci, or Louis Vuitton, or Prada…
Friday, August 6, 2010
Can You Hear That?
Shhhh… Listen closely. That. Right there. Do you hear it? No? Nothing? Excellent! That’s the sound of silence. Quiet. Peace. Tranquility. It’s the sound of my neighbor’s dog not barking!
Yep, my neighbor’s dog has been silent all night and this morning with nary a peep out of it. (And before you even think it --no, I didn’t do anything to the poor animal. I’m bitchy, not hateful.) Shortly after I posted my blog last night, I noticed that I didn’t hear any more barking. Great! I expected it to start up again right about the time my head hit the pillow –but it didn’t. And I was enjoying the tranquility so much that the next thing I knew, it was morning and I had slept clear through the night. Woo Hoo! I feel great, and life is good. (Funny how a good night’s sleep can make everything better.)
So this morning I am wondering what caused the sudden change in animal behavior. Maybe another neighbor complained so they got rid of the dog. Or maybe they are more conscientious than I thought and have brought the dog inside the house so we can’t hear the barking. (Though I doubt this one because it rained all day yesterday and the dog would have been sloppy, wet, and muddy and in dire need of a bath.)
What I find most intriguing is that the barking stopped shortly after I posted the blog. Which leads my ever-suspicious mind to jump to conclusions. Maybe my neighbors have my house tapped. Or maybe, just maybe, they are tapping into my wireless internet and saw the blog themselves. This wild conclusion might seem a bit far fetched at first, but when you take into consideration the fact that my wireless internet has been acting funny ever since they moved in, then it’s not such a far fetched thought.
You see, whenever I’m working online, my internet connection gets broken and I have to reset my router. It’s always at random times and there are no predictable patterns for me to discern why it’s happening. I’ve been frustrated and bewildered by the happenings and have been wondering if hijacking is possible even though my password is so difficult it could not be guessed. Hell, it’s so many random numbers and letters with no significant meaning that I can’t even remember it and have to keep it on file. (OMG! Maybe they are digging through my files too!) I’ve researched possible problems with the router and settings that can be adjusted but nothing ever works and the problem continues. It might occur 20 minutes or two hours after I’ve connected and it’s totally at random. I’ve noticed that it happens more often on Weekend mornings than any other days or times. So I’ve long suspected that somehow, my wireless connection is being interrupted by others nearby using the internet at the same time. Now, I’m no IT professional so I really don’t know if this is all possible. But with all the things that hackers can do, I don’t doubt it. And to think of it, I don’t have a clue about what my neighbor does for a living. He might be an IT pro himself.
Well, just incase this may be true...
Hello my neighbor! Thank you for the quiet, bark-free evening. By the way, your flower garden looks beautiful.
Yep, my neighbor’s dog has been silent all night and this morning with nary a peep out of it. (And before you even think it --no, I didn’t do anything to the poor animal. I’m bitchy, not hateful.) Shortly after I posted my blog last night, I noticed that I didn’t hear any more barking. Great! I expected it to start up again right about the time my head hit the pillow –but it didn’t. And I was enjoying the tranquility so much that the next thing I knew, it was morning and I had slept clear through the night. Woo Hoo! I feel great, and life is good. (Funny how a good night’s sleep can make everything better.)
So this morning I am wondering what caused the sudden change in animal behavior. Maybe another neighbor complained so they got rid of the dog. Or maybe they are more conscientious than I thought and have brought the dog inside the house so we can’t hear the barking. (Though I doubt this one because it rained all day yesterday and the dog would have been sloppy, wet, and muddy and in dire need of a bath.)
What I find most intriguing is that the barking stopped shortly after I posted the blog. Which leads my ever-suspicious mind to jump to conclusions. Maybe my neighbors have my house tapped. Or maybe, just maybe, they are tapping into my wireless internet and saw the blog themselves. This wild conclusion might seem a bit far fetched at first, but when you take into consideration the fact that my wireless internet has been acting funny ever since they moved in, then it’s not such a far fetched thought.
You see, whenever I’m working online, my internet connection gets broken and I have to reset my router. It’s always at random times and there are no predictable patterns for me to discern why it’s happening. I’ve been frustrated and bewildered by the happenings and have been wondering if hijacking is possible even though my password is so difficult it could not be guessed. Hell, it’s so many random numbers and letters with no significant meaning that I can’t even remember it and have to keep it on file. (OMG! Maybe they are digging through my files too!) I’ve researched possible problems with the router and settings that can be adjusted but nothing ever works and the problem continues. It might occur 20 minutes or two hours after I’ve connected and it’s totally at random. I’ve noticed that it happens more often on Weekend mornings than any other days or times. So I’ve long suspected that somehow, my wireless connection is being interrupted by others nearby using the internet at the same time. Now, I’m no IT professional so I really don’t know if this is all possible. But with all the things that hackers can do, I don’t doubt it. And to think of it, I don’t have a clue about what my neighbor does for a living. He might be an IT pro himself.
Well, just incase this may be true...
Hello my neighbor! Thank you for the quiet, bark-free evening. By the way, your flower garden looks beautiful.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
A Letter To My Neighbor
Dear Neighbor:
This may come as a surprise to you, but there seems to be a problem with your new dog. You know, the one you keep in your backyard. Chained to the fence -the one that separates our houses and, technically, is my fence. Anyway, your dog has been barking incessantly during various hours and it's become a real problem. Apparently, it's just a problem for me and not for you, because I'm guessing you can't even hear the constant barking. I say this because I believe any normal, hearing human being would be as fed up as I am after just one day of barking. But it's been a week already and still the barking goes on. Night after night, morning after morning. [I'll interject here to say that I'm not home during business hours so I can't say whether or not the barking is happening during these hours. But I will be home this weekend, so time will tell.] Maybe that's it -you are deaf. Noooo, I've met you so I know that's not it. Maybe you are on an extended vacation and forgot to bring your dog to the doggie hotel. Naah, I can see that your cars in the driveway are moved around from day to day.
So what's a person to do when a neighbor is so blatantly ignorant to other people, so self-absorbed in their own lives that they don't even hear their own dog barking through the night? Well, after being woken time and time again, I have found myself lying in bed and plotting possible moves. I even logged onto the internet this evening and read up on suggestions as to what other people do. Let's just say, some of their suggestions were not very neighborly. (Though, neither are you and your noisy dog.)
From all the ideas I've come up with, there is one that causes me to giggle each time I think of it. [Bear with me while I giggle my way through typing out explanation.] First, I'll need some sort of sound-activated device and to it I would hook up another device that has the capability to launch things at your house each and every time the dog barks. (Okay, so I'm no mechanical engineer, but I'm sure I could figure out what to use and how to accomplish this.) So I load this device each night with things that will be launched at your house on cue. Imagine it: you are sleeping peacefully, soundly in bed. Then the dog starts barking (though you apparently can't hear it) and suddenly you are woken by the sound of things hitting and sliding down your roof. "BARK" and "FWAP" (sound effect of item hitting the roof) and "SSSSCCCRRRRAAAAAPPPPPEEEEE" (sound effect of the item as it slides down along the rough shingles until it falls to the ground).
The best part of all this is that once the barking starts, and the launching begins, your lovely dog will probably hear the racket on the roof and start barking even more. Typically, more barking would bother me, but for this particular event, I'll be sleeping soundly in a hotel across town.
After hearing this happen time and time again, you WILL be wondering what the hell that sound is and/or what is hitting and sliding all over your roof! And I imagine that even if you are brave enough to venture outside in the dark to figure out what the sound is, it will be too dark for you to see my launcher in effect (I'll make sure that it's hidden well). In the morning when you do go outside, you will probably be stunned to see all the stuff (whatever I launched) in your yard. Oh, the possibilities. I think old golf balls would work well. Of course, I'd have to flatten them a bit on the sides with a hammer so that they would slide rather than roll down the roof, thus ensuring more noise for longer. Heh, heh, heh. I could do this a few nights a week until you are as stir crazy as I am right now.
But that's just one of those crazy ideas I came up with while lying awake at 3:00 am listening to your dog bark. On second thought, maybe I'll have my brother & his wife (both mechanical engineers) over for dinner this weekend.
Not So Sincerely,
Your excessively tired, cranky, sleep-deprived, ready to open up a can of whip-ass on you, bitchy neighbor.
This may come as a surprise to you, but there seems to be a problem with your new dog. You know, the one you keep in your backyard. Chained to the fence -the one that separates our houses and, technically, is my fence. Anyway, your dog has been barking incessantly during various hours and it's become a real problem. Apparently, it's just a problem for me and not for you, because I'm guessing you can't even hear the constant barking. I say this because I believe any normal, hearing human being would be as fed up as I am after just one day of barking. But it's been a week already and still the barking goes on. Night after night, morning after morning. [I'll interject here to say that I'm not home during business hours so I can't say whether or not the barking is happening during these hours. But I will be home this weekend, so time will tell.] Maybe that's it -you are deaf. Noooo, I've met you so I know that's not it. Maybe you are on an extended vacation and forgot to bring your dog to the doggie hotel. Naah, I can see that your cars in the driveway are moved around from day to day.
So what's a person to do when a neighbor is so blatantly ignorant to other people, so self-absorbed in their own lives that they don't even hear their own dog barking through the night? Well, after being woken time and time again, I have found myself lying in bed and plotting possible moves. I even logged onto the internet this evening and read up on suggestions as to what other people do. Let's just say, some of their suggestions were not very neighborly. (Though, neither are you and your noisy dog.)
From all the ideas I've come up with, there is one that causes me to giggle each time I think of it. [Bear with me while I giggle my way through typing out explanation.] First, I'll need some sort of sound-activated device and to it I would hook up another device that has the capability to launch things at your house each and every time the dog barks. (Okay, so I'm no mechanical engineer, but I'm sure I could figure out what to use and how to accomplish this.) So I load this device each night with things that will be launched at your house on cue. Imagine it: you are sleeping peacefully, soundly in bed. Then the dog starts barking (though you apparently can't hear it) and suddenly you are woken by the sound of things hitting and sliding down your roof. "BARK" and "FWAP" (sound effect of item hitting the roof) and "SSSSCCCRRRRAAAAAPPPPPEEEEE" (sound effect of the item as it slides down along the rough shingles until it falls to the ground).
The best part of all this is that once the barking starts, and the launching begins, your lovely dog will probably hear the racket on the roof and start barking even more. Typically, more barking would bother me, but for this particular event, I'll be sleeping soundly in a hotel across town.
After hearing this happen time and time again, you WILL be wondering what the hell that sound is and/or what is hitting and sliding all over your roof! And I imagine that even if you are brave enough to venture outside in the dark to figure out what the sound is, it will be too dark for you to see my launcher in effect (I'll make sure that it's hidden well). In the morning when you do go outside, you will probably be stunned to see all the stuff (whatever I launched) in your yard. Oh, the possibilities. I think old golf balls would work well. Of course, I'd have to flatten them a bit on the sides with a hammer so that they would slide rather than roll down the roof, thus ensuring more noise for longer. Heh, heh, heh. I could do this a few nights a week until you are as stir crazy as I am right now.
But that's just one of those crazy ideas I came up with while lying awake at 3:00 am listening to your dog bark. On second thought, maybe I'll have my brother & his wife (both mechanical engineers) over for dinner this weekend.
Not So Sincerely,
Your excessively tired, cranky, sleep-deprived, ready to open up a can of whip-ass on you, bitchy neighbor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)