inkbluesky

the mysterious world of pipe mating

I’m not sure if they are career pipes or if they produce nuts or washers when they mate and I don’t care.

Secrets Of The Male Shopper  

Now Madison Ave has turned on the metrosexual. Why? Because he’s half the man he was cracked up to be. Not only is this archetype too feminine for most men, he’s also pretty rare — maybe one- fifth of the U.S. male population, according to a recent study by Leo Burnett Worldwide Inc. As for the retrosexual, star of the sophomoric beer ad, he’s not that common either. Put all the metros and retros together, and they probably add up to fewer than two in every five men, says Leo Burnett.

So who is the elusive man in the middle of the two extremes? Truth is, marketers are only beginning to understand the secrets of the male shopper. It stands to reason that just as women break down into subsectors, so do men. By targeting just the metro and the retro, Mad Ave has been ignoring half the male population. Largely forgotten are the millions of boomer dads, who shop a lot more than their fathers or grandfathers ever did. Also often overlooked is the army of men in their 20s and 30s who care about their appearance but still like to drink beer and watch sports. The male teen is another big shopper, a sophisticated consumer with the Web research skills to give him an outsize say in family purchases. We don’t hear a lot about him, either. (Our guide to these forgotten guys and their metro and retro brethren is above.)

The challenge will be reaching these men and moving beyond the heavy focus on the extremes. “Men are portrayed in a buffoonish, sophomoric way or as sensitive, feminized men,” says Erv Frederick, who heads the Miller Lite brand. “The bulk are somewhere in the middle, and those are men who haven’t been spoken to.” No lie. According to Leo Burnett, 79% of American men say they can barely recognize themselves in advertisements.

I ignored the metrosexual meme just like I’m going to ignore the bashing career women meme. My own theory about these made-up cultural artifacts is that the magazines/web sites have to have some content to push between the ads and the writers need to write so they can make a living. No harm done as long as everyone is smart enough not to take it seriously. Some of those mags and writers actually get around to writing some good stuff once in a while so its just a matter of having a little patience. So anyway I think I’m part of that 79%. I’m not immune to changing fashion, its just that as new waves of taste or style come down the pike I pick out what boils down to a modern reinvention of something classic, like a button-down shirt in a new shade of blue and I’ll let the metro guys wear the half buttoned ruffled front shirt accented with gold chains. At the end of every year I don’t want to buy a whole new wardrobe to keep up with something shallow I do not want to be a victim of ; that’s just part of not buying into the disposable culture created by business that preys on people’s insecurities.

Photos of libraries, It’s like porn for book nerds.

I especially liked the Paris library. I’m not especially a Francophile, they just happen to have a beautiful library.

While surfing the net today I came across this, BULLOCK’S HUSBAND IN BUSH RANT 

Hollywood star SANDRA BULLOCK’s husband JESSE JAMES has launched a scathing verbal attack on US President GEORGE W BUSH, calling the leader “a d**khead”. The motorcycle maker visited American soldiers outside Baghdad, Iraq - and is convinced the majority of the US military agree with him. James says, “Everyone in Iraq knows Bush is a d**khead. He’s the boss’ kid.

I like Jesse and I’m glad he went to Iraq on a good-will tour, but frankly that he and about two thirds of the country have come to the conclusion that Bush would make a better brush clearer then a president isn’t news. I did get a few laughs from the few remaining clueless Bush supporters in the comments,

Jesse James is the person I would go to for political views! What an
idiot….don’t know how he got such a sweetheart for a wife. Must be all that
beautiful art he has all over his fata$$. Go work on a motor yoa grease-monkey!

shbabb Click for more info (2)    posted on 25/08/2006 09:04
comments:    Who gives a rat’s a** what this idiot thinks! He’s only being heard because
he’s the husband of Sandra Bullock (notice the article title). He should stick
to making comments on what he knows most about - mainly nothing. Shut your
mouth you greasy, ink-backed, buffoon. Sheeesh! I’ve had enough of these
left-wing, west coast, 23 chromosone, idiots!

wcrty Click for more info ( 1)    posted on 25/08/2006 09:12
comments:    It’s a shame that this di*khead husband of one of my favorite stars had to run
off at the mouth and damage the career of a talented actress. If she supports
the comments of Jesse James she will probably lose half her fans. If she
doesn’t, she will get richer.

screen name:    RAKER Click for more info (3)    posted on 25/08/2006 09:12
comments:    O.K. Jesse James, We know you’re extremely intelligent and I’m sure, not
effected by your wifes leanings towards the left, but come on, take the pants
back from her get your nads working again…

dbassman Click for more info ( 1)    posted on 25/08/2006 11:09
comments:    When I was in the pen Jessie James was my main bitch

pokenhorn Click for more info ( 1)    posted on 25/08/2006 11:11
comments:    Hey Jesse, it’s guys like you who have strung this war out. Each terrorist
knows that sleaze like you will be undermining, nibbling and gnawing at our war
effort. The time for your kind of talk was before we went to war. Not now. We
have to end this thing successfully. You and your favorite politicians
…Kennedy, Murtha, McDermott, Pelosi, ad. nauseum, make it needlessly
difficult, if not impossible. May the next big attack strike in your
neighborhood. You deserve it.

A quick summary. To call someone that designs and crafts things with his hands a grease monkey seems more then a little elitist and the guy that made that remark we’re to assume is a foreign policy guru. Jesse is a guy with tattoos so he has lost his right to free speech is a primate though not a homosapien? Then a childish and witless ad hominem attack that assumes Jesse and Sandra do not have the same political leanings( M’s Bullock is an active Democrat and has been for years). To say the Jesse James was your “bitch” implies that the poster had homosexual sex with Mr. James, so is dbassman bragging or what. The last one says multitudes about many Bush supporters, if you dare disagree with that civil servant in the Whitehouse you deserve to die; pokenhorn was apparently was raised by demons and brought up in the gutter of political discourse.