New, Really
New ©
By
Michael Casey
In game
shows you can Take the Money or Open the Box, Michael Miles and Monika Rose may
spring to mind if you are even older than me. If you Google you’ll discover sad
facts about them, so the memory I’ve had for over 50 years has a cloud over it
now. But I won’t dwell on it, nobody should dwell on sad things, that’s why we
all like New things.
In
advertising New is the buzz word, and game shows and sagas were introduced to
sell Soap, washing powders in USA. The Soaps sponsored shows. You can Google away
with that for yourself. You may even have a degree in the subject, Marketing as
it is called nowadays. If money is involved everybody wants the biggest share
of the market after all. Which brings me to, New, what is New? Brand New, is
better than just New, how about New and Improved, and with added Value for Money.
Is it real, or just some idiot with a half a dictionary?
Marketing
folks are trying to grab our attention, so words are showered on products, especially
stuff you use in the shower. We all want to look nice and smell nice, well
girls do anyway. Hence the shower of buzz words to promote use of products used
in the bathroom. This will leave your hair soft and shiny and with added
bounce. We all believe it and try the product, though personally I use carbolic
soap on my head and lower down my body, and I still have great soft thick
silvery hair. Don’t you hate me girls? It’s all in the carbolics after all, or
genes if you did biology.
And on it
goes in an effort to gain a bit more market share, it is a billion pound industry
after all. That’s why I’m on posters everywhere, advertising my carbolics, or
rather carbolic soaps. So, YOU too can have such really great hair. Advertising
is a very deal, it used to be on hoardings, I once applied for a job to do with
hoardings, checking that posters were up in the right place at the right time.
Yes really. See what a many splendored life I’ve had, or nearly had, as I didn’t
get that job. Nowadays there are niche adverts, as you wouldn’t sell ham to Muslims
or Jews, so you target what a specific audience might want, so you decide who
might want what you have to sell and spend your budget appropriately. The
student market drinks more, has more sex and uses more technology, or so they
think. So, adverts on posters near universities are for STD clinics and bars,
and flash new phones. And if you weren’t using flash photography while drunk
making that “advertising” video with your girlfriends then you wouldn’t need
the STD clinic, but at least there is a map on the poster.
When you
graduate, or rather when you discover just how much that piece of paper called
a Degree cost you, then you may decide it was a waste of your time and money.
Especially as everything was Online, and you could have stayed home with your
nagging mom and dad, but cut your debt in half, for the same piece of paper.
But you really wanted to live it up in squalid housing with dodgy people and
their new diseases, at the other end of the country, just to prove how independent
you really are. Besides you are a grown up now and can comb your own hair, and wipe your own bottom, with
cheap toilet paper that your finger always goes through.
Which
means you need a new suit, so you flick through the mags in the barbers, as you
need a new haircut for your first interview. The barber asks what kind of cut
you want, you say you have an interview. So, he gives you a short back and
sides, or the same haircut Michael Casey has been having for 50 years. You look
at the barber with a mixture or hate, you’d punch him, but he’s even fatter
than Michael Casey, so you smile a pained smile and say “thanks”. The barber
looks at his palm, you didn’t tip him, though you did want to leave him at a
tip, him and his clippers.
You have
torn a page from his magazine, the picture of the suit that’ll be perfect for
you is displayed, worn by a male model, with a decent haircut. Accidentally on purpose
slamming the door, that’s taped as the glass in it is already cracked, you
leave, with “mind the door” ringing in your ears. Up the road is Steers the old
suit shop, only they don’t have the suit in the stolen picture from the barbers.
Though the assistant does have the same haircut and he says “nice haircut” as you
arrive. Time is short, it’s a Saturday afternoon and the interview is first thing
on Monday, you are cornered, so you take whatever fits, or almost fits. But the
price is right, so come on down. And the trousers do, as they are both too long
and too big, but the assistant has a nice brand new fake leather belt. So you
have to buy a belt, and reject the offer of braces as you just detest braces.
So
scalped, and wearing a clown’s trousers you arrive at the Estate Agents for
your interview. At least your marketing degree will be useful there, and there
is a ubiquitous large chested girl working on reception, she might get lucky,
as you preen your scalped head. Only nothing is as it seems. You are invited
into a small back office, a man in a track suit is there, with a fat girl also
in a track suit besides him, and yes she is wearing braces, and any kind of
haircut would be better than her hair is right now. A 2nd man
arrives, all suited and booted, he IS an estate agent, you look hopefully at
him. It’s ok, Don and Debbie will be interviewing you, I’m just doing them a
favour, the use of an office.
Don owns
7 chip shops and 6 pizza parlours and 4 nail bars, nail bars were Debbie’s idea
for diversification. Obviously with a growing property portfolio, NEW NEW
Estate agents were happy to lend an office. So, the job is all about food and
nails, never mix them together joked Debbie. You’ll get food for life from any eatery
we own, and we are expanding all the time, and I’ll sort out all your beauty
needs said Debbie looking with disgust at your bitten nails. Never bite your
nails, it’s the very first thing people spot, when they shake hands. And there
will be company transport provided too. The pay’s alright, but you do well and
we all do well. And if you strike gold, you can marry Debbie, jokes Don. You almost
faint, the room spins around, but you do notice Debbie’s eye’s look down for a
second, there is sadness there.
You take
the job and start the very next day, Debbie has tidied her hair and put red lipstick
on, but she still is wearing a fat loose track suit, and the dreaded braces.
Well you job is marketing and we’ll be working closely together, but first allow
me. With that she grabs your hand and applies DO NOT BITE on all your fingers,
it’s disgusting, you will never bite your nails ever again. Her grip is very strong,
yet her hands are ever so soft. Then she grabs your other hand and does that
one too. Now, that’s better, let’s find the company transport. It turns out to
be a Tandem, a retired one from the Olympics, state of the art, they bought it
on Ebay.
How do you
think we deliver the leaflets? So you are to cycle behind a fat creature and deliver leaflets. It’s better than
jogging everywhere, but you have a degree in Marketing. You’ll be sat around
her fat arse all day. You close your eyes, and she begins to strip off. She is
wearing a fat suit under the track suit, it’s a NEW way of toning and losing
weight, underneath she is a very pretty woman, beyond lust. And she says her braces are coming off next
week. So now you have to endure her sat on the front seat of a tandem, you cannot
avert your eyes, just her wonder thighs and more. It’s a relief to jump off and
sprint up and down streets delivering, buy one get one half price pizza, with a
coupon for 10% off the nail bar for your own adorable fat, pizza fat
girlfriends.
And that
is how you met your future wife, Don wasn’t joking, he wanted her to be happy
as his veins clogged from all the fast food. Debbie wasn’t stupid, and her own
chest was even bigger than the girl from the estate agent’s, she was all curves,
and she has not one but two degrees. She was tempted to do a Phd, then she’s be
a Doctor of Chips Pizza and Nails. You found all this out as you cycled behind
her, well watching her behind.
It wasn’t
easy, she made you learn all about nails too, she even made you take a nail technicians
course. Then you had to learn how to make fish and chips and pizza too. She was
a very hard task master, you had to be as good as her dad , and as good as her
too, and only then were you good enough. By which time your leg muscles were rock solid from all the
tandem riding.
Now what
has this all got to do with new? Well nothing really, sometimes as good as new
is good enough. Or with a new hair cut you are as good as new, even while
wearing a clown suit. The thing that you need to improve the most is yourself,
once you do that anything is possible. And Debbie insisted on the impossible, you
had to have your nails done in every room of every shop of her dad’s empire in the
space of one month. And by having your nails done, Debbie didn’t mean have your
nails done, she meant have your nails done. Or perhaps you need 2 degrees and
her newly won PhD, to explain it, as she paints your nails.
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