Epic!

We’d only been out two times before, but I already had Shelby pretty well figured out. 

And although what I’d figured out left a lot to be desired, what I’d figured out was more than offset by the desirability of her figure.

Shelby was superficial. Her conversation was full of sales at Nordstrom’s, the latest fashion trends, and clothing she’d bought that was Epic! My attempt to discuss cinema, books, and art fell as flat as her chest was not.

But I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

So for our third date I decided to employ a clever ploy.

“Hi, Shelby.  Say …um … is that a new blouse?”

 “Yes, I just got it at Nordstrom’s, marked down from $75 to $37.50! Isn’t it Epic?

“Just as Epic as ‘Gladiator.’”

“What are we going to do tonight, Perry?”

“I thought maybe we’d take an evening and go to Nordstrom’s and check out the new sales.”

“I’d love that! 

Score No. One toward a night of fun!

As we entered Nordstrom’s, I turned on the “Shop till you Drop” charm.

“It’s so great here, Shelby!  Nothing better than being in a crowded department store on a Friday night instead of sipping Chablis at a café downtown.

“I’m headed over the Point of View Department,” said Shelby. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Buy something that’s Epic!” I called to her. “While you shop, I’m headed to the Men's Department to look for a nice Hawaiian shirt with an alligator on it.”

Score No. Two for the 67 year old Jew!

I milled around the Men’s Department pretending to look at stuff while reading the news on my phone. Shelby eventually returned with a bag big enough to pack lunch for Governor Christie.

“You didn’t buy anything, Perry?”

“I left my credit card in my other pants, darn it! I wanted to buy some loafers, Ban-Lon shirts, and Dockers with humongous pleats.”

Score Three for the soon to Get Lucky Me!

We returned to Shelby’s place where I felt sure we’d soon be modeling fashions, minus the fashions, long into the night.

“Perry,” she said bluntly, “I think we should call it quits.”

“What?!”

‘‘We don’t have anything in common.’’

“But we do. I love clothes! I love discounts! I love buying stuff that’s

Epic!”

“That’s just it.”

“What’s just it?”

“I thought you dressed the way you do because you weren’t into clothes and shopping, but now that I know you are...”

“Yes?”

Your bad taste is Epic! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shopping Cart Confidential (FF)

FF- Friday Fictioneers

Copyright - Janet Webb

"Boy, is he one cute shopping cart!"

"Go ahead.  Talk to him."

 "If only I had a few drinks in me first ..."

"You silly, we're shopping carts.  We don't eat or drink."
  
"Oh yeah, you're right. Okay, I'll try."

"You can do it!"

"OMG, wait a minute!"

"Why are you stopping?"

"Because we're Kosher carriages." 

"So?"

"He can't be Jewish.  Look at the size of his basket!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I knew those shopping carts could talk. Imagine what they say about us when we don't return them to the cart return area when it's raining hard!

The other Friday Fictioneers may not write about shopping carts talking, may have them drinking and eating, or may even have them standing indignantly at the Kosher Meat Section complaining to the fellow in the yarmulke there "Mr. Rosenblatt, these rib steaks were terrible!" Click here to find out.

I'm sorry that of late I've had so little time to read the stories of the other Fictioneers, but life circumstances intervene.  I hope to get back to it soon. In the meantime, my shopping carts and I love what you're writing, Kosher or not.

Fine Female Voices

If there's one thing we're not in short supply of in the information age, it's  fine female voices. Sweet and pleasant voices of the non-masculine persuasion are programmed into almost every electronic medium short of your toaster these days, and it's not difficult to see why.

Most of us straight guys --- whether married, single, or of "it's complicated" status  --- don't get to hear an alluring non-judgmental woman's voice anywhere near enough or for many of us, anywhere near at all. "You left the toilet seat up, you don't do anything to help me around here, and you better stop having sex with the neighbor" are much more often the auditory fare that greets the typical male ear in his daily existence.

Fortunately there are electronic women of no shape, size, or description other than oscillating sound waves to provide the solace and companionship most of us lack.

The most obvious of these women is Siri, the automatic assistant on Apple phones and tablets. Siri will pleasantly answer any question you can conceive, and I can conceive of quite a number of them just to hear her charming if robotic voice:

"Hey, Siri!"

"Hello, Perry."

She knows my name!  And says it so nicely. How many women anymore say my name without the word "Yuch!" following immediately thereafter?

"Siri, what won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1953?"

"That would be From Here to Eternity, Perry," she electronically coos. "Would you like me to read you a little bit about the movie including the names of the actors and inside dope on which ones hated each other?"

Isn't that wonderful?  Siri wants to do even more than I asked her to do. She wants to earn extra credit. Where do I meet a Siri in real life? 

I don't imagine there's any guy in the free world other than those who are psychologically normal who hasn't asked Siri at one time or other "Siri, are you hot?" 

Unfortunately her response is a clipped "I can't answer that."  Is it too damn much to expect Apple to program her to say "Yes, I am very hot and I want you to fuck me, Perry?!" 

Microsoft, take note.

At the supermarket, we encounter another fine female voice, the one who helps us check out our own groceries.

"Welcome to Kropotkin Markets!  We're so happy to see you here, press start, then begin scanning your items ...  ahh, plums, nice choice, juicy and good."

Gee, she's so pleasant! Maybe we could one day share a plum together. But then I start fumbling.  

"No, no, no, scan that one again, it didn't register! Please bag all your items promptly; you missed one there!  No, moron, you weigh that one, you don't scan it! Ohhhh, don't do anything else, wait for the attendant!"

I guess even the finest female voice in the supermarket has her limit when it comes to male shopper ineptitude.  But the longest term use of fine female voices has no doubt been on business phone answering systems. 

"Good morning,  this is the Rogers Company.  Although I am automated, I am very pretty."

That's a good start. 

"Press 1 for a menu of options, press 2 for a directory of company personnel, press 3 for a history of the company recited by Morgan Freeman, press 4 for a bunch of weird sounds made by tickling livestock .... press 26 for readings from the Torah, and press 27 for a history of linoleum. There is no way to reach a real person ever. Goodbye."

Fine female voices --- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Help! I'm Being Stalked By Joseph R. Blank

Online Advertising?  I wonder what that's all about.

Hey, nice suit!

It was plain as the nose on my face, which by all accounts is way more than exceedingly plain. My navy blue sport coat which I'd owned for many years had developed a moth hole in the left shoulder of such magnitude it seemed as if the moth had seized upon the sport coat first thing following sundown on Yom Kippur.

Yep, my sports jacket needed replacement, and so I looked online to the site of a well-known and respected men's clothing store in my area known as Joseph R. Blank.  And indeed, Joseph R. Blank was having a sale on sport coats, with selected jackets as low as $50 as long as you also bought a matching pair of suspenders with special design resembling emojis having sex. 

I went to Joseph R. Blank that very day and did secure a nice blue sport coat which fit me well and even complimented the nose on my face. Mission one and done.  I thought.

Later that day I went on Facebook, and there in the right hand column was an ad for Joseph R. Blank.  "What a coincidence,” I thought.  

"NECKTIE SALE AT JOSEPH R. BLANK!  Three neckties for $10 provided one is striped, one has a stain, and the third frankly doesn't suit you!" 

Amazing!  Oh, well, I wanted to check something on Wikipedia, and so I clicked out of Facebook and over to the America's favorite free encyclopedia.

"And so, Hitler marched into the Sudetenland and there he found ...."

"70% OFF SALE AT JOSEPH R. BLANK!   Suits, Sport Coats, Pants, Shirts, Any Other Article of Clothing that Might Yet be Invented!"  

What the ....?!! 

I clicked over to a site called "Who Unfollowed Me On Twitter," which shows you what crass & unfeeling tweeps have cut you loose lately.  There I discovered that, unlike the twitterers listed on the site, apparently following me for life was .... 

"JOSEPH R. BLANK! SALE ON SUITS!  Buy one men's suit for regular price, get another for only one pint of blood!"  

In the days and weeks that followed, Joseph R. Blank followed me like Mary's Little Lamb.  It was no coincidence:  I was being targeted, stalked. Who was this Joseph R. Blank?  What did he really know about me?

"Dear Overage Balding Boomer," the email began." While there's only so much that clothing can do for the likes of you, THERE'S A SALE ON SOCKS AT JOSEPH R. BLANK!" 

Now the Joseph R. Blank ads appeared anywhere and everywhere.  On YouTube, on my desktop, on my screensaver, in pornography, in the sky above, in my breakfast cereal, on the faces of people on the street, in my fitful tortured dreams!

“WAKE UP, PERRY! JOSEPH R. BLANK is having a sale on polo shirts! Buy three polo shirts and get a free polo pony!

The internet has majorly changed marketing as we know it. It used to be we could turn off television commercials and/or decline to read the ads in newspapers and magazines, but now advertising tracks us down like Colombo. The only hope is that this strategy will ultimately backfire, advertisers will get the message, and finally we'll get some relief.

I hope you're listening, Joseph R. Blank! 

Or better yet I'll tell you in person at your store this afternoon.  Those sexy emoji suspender ads are really starting to appeal to me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(The name of the actual establishment referenced in the piece above has been slightly changed to protect the guilty.) 

And I'd like to welcome four new followers to the blog: Eve Gaal @EveGaal, Kate Konigisor @KateKonigisor, Deb Stewart @DeborahStewart, and Ilil Arbell @ILILARBEL. Thank You, Guys! The usual riches and emoluments to follow.

Supermarket Sweep

Wanna speed through the supermarket?  
Follow these free and easy tips! 

I've never been the sort of person who likes to go shopping, whether it's shopping for clothes, home furnishings, or electronic power tools, were I ever to actually shop for electronic power tools. But there's one kind of shopping that I actually sort of like.

That one kind of shopping? Food shopping, of course.

Why? Because I like to eat!  And you can't eat a necktie, sleeper sofa, or band saw, were I ever to actually shop for electronic power tools and purchase a band saw.

I have even scoped out some of the secrets of successful food shopping over the years which I'm pleased to share with you now:   

1) The Cardinal Rule: Never go food shopping when you're hungry unless you want to come home with enough fruits and vegetables to feed the Philadelphia Zoo for a week and/or a package of Mallomars in the economical and convenient Entire Neighborhood Size. 

2) To avoid this,  I generally purchase a bagel before I begin shopping  and eat it while I am going through the store. Frequently store personnel think I have stolen the bagel, and I am often savagely beaten behind the meat counter by a bunch of guys wearing name tags which say "Hi!  My name is Chuck." Aside from the occasional broken rib, however, I do save a buck or two on eats. 

3) Selecting the proper shopping cart can be high art.  Make sure you don't choose one with rickety or wobbly wheels or by the time you reach the checkout counter you'll be vibrating like the tiny membranes posited to exist in string theory. Also don't pick a shopping cart with the kiddie car in front unless you actually plan on riding in it. 

4) When in doubt about anything, ask a friendly member of the supermarket staff. They can always be found almost anywhere ... that's funny, I saw one  of them a second ago.   I'll bet someone's in nearby aisle 4  ... no, not here.  I'll try Aisle 14.

5) A word on milk:  I remember the days when there was only one kind of milk - fresh whole milk.  Now there is whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, skim milk, lactose-free milk, milk mustache-free milk, and milk with tiny colored pieces of construction paper. Which should you buy? The only one that has ever been important - chocolate milk!

6) Many products are labeled "Better if used before January 13."  Were you to eat Cheerios on January 14, you would say to yourself " y'know, this isn't bad ... but yesterday it was better."

7) Some products are labeled  "Must Sell by January 13!"  Were you to eat a sirloin steak on January 14, you would say to yourself "y'know, this isn't bad ... but yesterday I was alive."

8) A word on bananas:  unless your house is immediately adjacent to Customer Service, a banana will fully ripen, become spotted and squishy, and be primed for the garbage disposal just as you arrive home.  Only buy bananas that are so incredibly green that if you were shopping with Superman, they would kill him.

9) This is odd. I saw two or three store employees right here in Aisle 14 a minute ago. Where could they be?  Okay, lemme try frozen foods....

10) Buying the store brand can save you money and often the quality is just as good as that of the name brand. You're paying for packaging and advertising when you buy the name brand and in some rare instances, the guarantee that nobody has spit in it.

11) Supermarkets have a tendency to put more popular products at eye level and less popular products on upper shelves. They don't expect many people to want to purchase the products on the higher shelves anyway.  The other day I was looking to purchase a heart-lung machine, and just my luck, nobody tall was around!  

12) Beware of cross-selling strategies. Take a stroll down the Mexican food aisle, and just beyond you find Nexium, Tums, and enough heartburn meds to turn your esophagus into a quivering street junkie. What do we find at the end of the ice cream aisle?  Diet aides. End of the Kosher food aisle? Greeting cards worded "Sorry I haven't written," "Sorry I missed your son's Bar Mitzvah," and "Sorry I swindled you out of our mutual business."  Yep. Selling Guilt.

13) Then there's the ages old controversy:  Should you feel free to look through Us Magazine and the National Enquirer while waiting in the check out line without ultimately purchasing them?  I dunno, but why on earth are you looking through Us Magazine and the National Enquire?  You know what?  I hope the cashier does yell at you! 

14) Hello, hello is anybody here?!!  I need help selecting pimentos, for God's sake!! Where is everybody?! Damn!!! That's supermarket clerks for you; they're just like cops.  

Never around when you need one.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Note:  I don't really feel that way. Most supermarket employees are great! Especially the ones I'm going to need desperately when I'm food shopping later today.