Drift Reality

After about a month, I’ve finally managed to move all my writing from the old Drift Reality over to Wordpress.  I’m a little concerned that my new content going through Wordpress won’t be as visible in the search engines, and this will negatively impact my ability to trash restaurants, bars, and clubs that give me crap, but I think the tradeoff will be more frequent articles and a more consistent audience. 

On another note, Johnny Shades from Cafe 227, will be leaving the U-street area in DC for the much more posh upper west-side of Manhattan.  Johnny boy, it will be sad to see you go.

This is piggy-backing off of my last posting (sort of).  Basically, I get tons of junk mail each and every day. Unlike all the spam I receive in my various inboxes and on my blog, the junk mail really annoys me because of the sheer quantity of natural resources that are wasted. At the end of any given week, my trashcans are basically full of junk mail and I can’t help but think of all the trees that are being destroyed so that SallieMae can try to sell me better insurance policies.

At any rate, I have come up with an idea that is going to fix both the environmental issues associated with direct mail as well as the pitifully low conversion rates associated with this form of advertising.

I call it ‘toilet paper direct mail’ or ‘TPDM’:

Another brilliant idea from Drift Reality

The basic gist of TPDM is that we are providing customers with a form of marketing that is:

1. Environmentally-friendly: Instead of sending out millions of ads that are instantly thrown in the trash and wasted, we are distributing ads that are going to provide consumers with something that they actually end up using. In the process we are going to cut back on consumption of natural resources.

2. Consumer-friendly: Instead of inundating consumers with annoying mail that causes them to silently curse the company that sent it to them, we are providing them with a service that they are going to actually use and be happy with.

3. Highly Retentive: By putting the ad onto toilet paper, we are going to be moving the message out of the mailbox-to-trashcan cycle and into the place where consumers are most likely to actually read the advertisement - the bathroom. Just the other day, I found myself sitting on the toilet, silently contemplating the Redskins starting lineup for ‘07 when I found myself wishing I had something - anything - to read. Well, if I had ads on toilet paper I would probably have been reading those.

Here is the best part: if you like the ad, you keep it and put it aside. If you don’t like the ad, you literally wipe your ass with it. Think about the metaphorical beauty of the act!

It’s a no-brainer.

As with all ideas posted to Drift Reality, if anyone patents this idea I demand partial ownership as well as royalties on all revenue generated through the idea.

The other day I received the following letter in the mail:

The letter was accompanied by a very life-like check for $3,850 made out to me.  My first thought was “sweet, my luck is finally changing.  I have 4 grand  in my pocket and a half-a-million dollars on the way.  Brazil, here we come…”

I then realized how stupid I was (it took at least 2 seconds) and looked more carefully at the letter.  I saw that they were prompting me to call a phone number with a United Kingdom area code to talk to “Greg Johnson,” despite the fact that the alleged company behind the award, Autohaus on Edens Inc., was apparently headquartered in Northbrook, IL (as indicated in the header of the letter). 

I decided to scan this one in and share it with the public.  Greg Johnson, wherever you are, why don’t you go f%#k yourself.

By the way, some people may be turned off by all the expletives in this blog.  I only have one thing to say - if the president and vice-president of our country can cuss on television for all the world to see, then I can cuss on my blog.

 

I never knew what it was like to get kicked in the balls by someone with the leg strength of a professional soccer player until I decided to go into the DMV about a month ago to register my car in DC.

Click to view my blood pressure rising

First off let me warn all those who are considering this act to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T REGISTER YOUR CAR IN DC.

Basically, if you buy your car out of state and then register your car in DC, there is something they call ‘Title Excise Tax.’  I call this ’sodomy with a nine-iron.’  I was charged $796.25 to register my car in DC.

Breath that in for one second.

You have to pay an absolutely ridiculous amount of money to the DC government just so you can have the luxury of driving your car on their torn-up roads, get a constant barrage of parking tickets, and have to deal with absolute neanderthals each and every time you need to interact with anyone who works at the DMV. 

Basically, there are some clever ways around the DC excise tax (PDF) that I urge you to familiarize yourself with before you even think about registering your car in DC, although I would recommend you to think about simply keeping the car registered wherever you got it and paying for a parking garage because it will honestly be cheaper. 

I am generally a pretty easygoing guy and I don’t hold a lot of hate in my heart.  I get upset with people sometimes but I always let them know and I try to get over it.  If I find that someone is bringing more negativity into my life than positivity, then I basically remove them from my life because I don’t like a lot of drama.

That being said, if there is one group I honestly can say I hate and wish would fall off the face of the earth: it is everyone affiliated with the DMV in Washington, DC.  From the meter bitches who constantly leave tickets on my car; to the cops who are basically 10 IQ points away from wearing a helmet to work; to the people who work at the DMV offices who were recruited out of the Ninth Circle of Hell. 

I wish someone would come in a big black truck and take all of them away to a special camp somewhere, where they would be routinely flogged and have lye poured into their eyes on a daily basis.

Why do they suck so bad?

1. If volume of parking tickets was an indicator of the safety of a city, then DC would be the Garden of Eden.  Unfortunately, it is not.  While all sorts of crimes are going on in other parts of DC, I have gotten two parking tickets in residential neighborhoods, each for $50, for not having a front license plate on my Landrover Freelander.  I am planning to dispute both.  Basically, I have heard that the DMV peons show up to court on an infrequent basis so you have a good shot at getting out of your ticket if you just show up.  I’m going to spend the next several days figuring out how to get out of these tickets and then share my knowledge with the world, and search-engine optimize it so that anyone in DC who ever Googles “get out of parking ticket” will find my page and automatically know how to get out of paying their fine to the DMV.  Cops - why don’t you go stop a crime or something instead of waddling your fat ass through suburban DC looking for cars to ticket.  It makes me think that there is some sort of raffle for most parking tickets given out with first prize being a lifetime supply of hot dogs and slurpies from 7-11.
2. DC Excise Tax is a euphemism for rape - I have had to go through the car registration process these past few monthsand was forced to pay about $800 in DC Excise Tax, which I am going to blog about in a separate post because I want to make sure that my words on that are search engine optimized as well. 
3. The final straw was this AM, when I was driving by a cop who had already pulled two people over for no reason in particular, and as I pulled by, asked me to stop.  The idiot then looked at me and said “You need to stop before the crosswalk!!!” I proceeded to look down at the street and see that my car was literally one foot into the crosswalk.  I just stared at him with disdain and hatred and he let me go because he had to ticket the other two cars he had already pulled over.  I wish pestilence upon him.

To be honest, I think it was a brilliant ending.  When I watched it last night I knew that it was going to be immediately thrashed by critics and fans for being anti-climactic but I think it was perfect.

Everyone assumed that Tony was going to die in the final episode, to the point at which the majority of the debate was over how he was going to die and who was going to kill him.  No one ever imagined that he would make it through okay.

The final scene was also a thing of beauty.  The moment he put the Journey song on the jukebox you began to imagine that this was going to be the soundtrack to his demise.  Then, his family began walking into the restaurant and as he shared moments with his family members, you imagined that he would go out a happy man.  Then, Meadow had trouble parking and you thought to yourself that she would somehow be the lone Soprano to make it through alive.  Finally, a mobster-ish guy walks into the restaurant and begins eyeing Tony Soprano and you imagine that this will be the his executioner.

Then, Meadow walks into the restaurant and nothing and everything happens at the same time.

Here is the thing though: during those final few minutes you experienced what it must be like to step into Tony’s shoes and experience all these seemingly mundane activities that you or I take for granted, while in the back of your mind realizing that any moment could be your last.  It is that lingering sense of doom that accompanies everything he does and the gift that is bequeathed in the final episode is that you really empathize with Tony Soprano.

I think it is brilliant - and I think the way they built up the audience expectations through subtle innuendo only to play upon that expectation in the final scene - is also a masterful stroke.

I’m probably alone in saying this but I absolutely loved the way the Sopranos ended.

When we were all living in Cleveland, my Khaleh sent two of her sons, Kia and Kaz, to live with us. There was about two years separating the two of them, with Kia being the elder. From what I can remember, and what has been told to me by my Mother, I could not have asked for more from my two older cousins. The two of them read to me and played with me constantly.  Combined with the attention I received from my parents and Dorothy, a family friend who lived down the street, I was constantly surrounded by love and attention. 

Many of the stories of my childhood occurred in the company of my extended family.  Dorothy, for instance, one day decided to take me to the natural history museum where they had a feature exhibit on dinosaurs.  My Mother tells me that at one point Dot motioned towards a dinosaur and explained, “Jiyan, that is a stegosaurus.”She was shocked when my response was, “No Dot, that’s a triceratops.”

I was a strange young child to say the least. 

I was about three years old in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis.  One night I was sitting with my parents watching the news when the coverage turned to an Islamic student rally in Tehran.  The students were pumping their firsts in front of a flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran and chanting, “Khomeini, Khomeini.”  Something about the passion with which the students were chanting stuck in my mind. 

Several days later, Kia and Kaz were taking me to K-Mart to pick up some toiletries for the house.  As we were walking through the crowded parking lot something caught my eye and I stopped in my tracks. 

My cousins kept walking and it was several moments before they relized that I was no longer beside them.  They turned to see me standing in the middle of the parking lot, looking up towards the store, absolutely transfixed.  Tracing my line of vision they realized that it was the K-Mart flag I was staring at.

As they watched me in confusion my arm slowly raised into the air, my hands curling into a fist.  I began pumping my arm in the air, slowly at first, but steadily gaining in fervence.  Their amusement turned to horror when I began chanting “Khomeini, Khomeini” at the top of my lungs, while staring at the K-Mart flag in the crowded parking lot.

As people began turning to gawk at me, my cousins rushed over and Kia quickly picked me before they began hastily walking back towards the car.

I made sure to maintain eye contact with the K-Mart flag while being carried away, continuing to chant until we reached the car.