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Metal Jewelry Piercings Hazardous in Cold Weather

Slovenian Media has recommended to the German Meteorological Institute they should warn those with jewelry body piercings that the metal can freeze and cause them harm in this extreme and unusually cold European winter.   The metal rings can freeze, causing harm to the body parts they are adorning.   So I guess the bottom line is don’t go out with your nipple rings.   Or some such thing.

Upon reading this article, or warning, I am reminded of the proverbial kid who in freezing weather just had to stick his tongue on the metal flagpole.   LIke Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, his tongue would stick to the freezing steel, until either the fire department or an alert school teacher could free him from the imprisonment.   Of course, having heard about it, or having read it somewhere, our mothers would admonish us against testing out our own tongues against any frozen piece of metal.
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Now with so many people partaking in piercings, it is small wonder that such a warning was necessary.  You have the previously mentioned nipple rings, the earrings, nose rings, tongue studs and studs down a littel further in the anatomy.   I have to wonder what does the hapless soul do for groceries when he or she has had implants, that is either ball bearings, studs or whatever pieces of metal implanted under the skin.  Usually these pieces are planted in some sensitive regions, be it the penis, scrotum, clitoris, or in a lovely encirclement of the vagina.   I guess the tattoo and piercing artist never advised them about implants and cold weather.

I would think if you freeze up there, you may be truly frozen in your sex life for quite some time to come.  There is frostbite and then again there is this kind of frostbite.   I suppose it is the price we pay for our personal vanities.   Whatever form it takes.

Pitfalls of a Branded Economic Culture

Brand names have always been important.   For years, a good brand can mean everything from quality and reliability to status and social cache.   But in the last twenty five years or so brand names have evolved into “branding” as a cultural and marketing phenomenon.   Without proper branding, products and services can either fall by the wayside or play second fiddle to those that have been served up to consumers and businesses with the proper branding identification.

We have become dependent upon branding.   Without it, it would appear, few consumers could judge the quality of a product on its own merits.   Without branding we lack the know how to determine how one product may differ from another in the way it is made, crafted,  or serviced.  We can’t really ascertain how it performs, whether in the laundry cycle or on the road.   Despite the Internet and all the information sources we have available, there are relatively few places the average consumer can educate himself on the true character and craftsmanship of any given product.   We know little about the skill it takes to make something just so, the materials used and how they are superior from the knock off varieties.

So we brand products and services and generate enough marketing that consumers believe either the truth or the hype, depending on the goods.   The branding culture has had a tremendous effect on consumer habits and they way they shop.   Our economy is based largely on consumerism, and the perception of someone’s wealth and position in society is what drives much of our economy.    The lines of demarcation is such that without wearing, using or somehow adhering to the socially approved brands, you are considered a lesser person with no taste, no wealth and hardly any social distinction.  Some people really don’t care about all that, but most do.

This kind of mindset certainly has its conveniences.  You really don’t have to think much about what you are buying in order to cater to your own self-perceptions.   You don’t have to know much about the product itself, but just the product elevates you to a certain social category.  No matter that the product is actual quality in terms of construction ad design, the fact that it is perceived as such is all most consumers really need to make their shopping day.

To build their client bases, retail outlets especially rely on stocking branded products.   You must cater to your targeted clientele.   If you stock this product you are considered a lower level, big box type of retailer.  If you stock that brand, then you are the mid-line, department store type of retailer.   And at the upper echelon, you must stock the brands that cause shoppers to perceive you as exclusive.   Coupled with the design of your venue and its geographic location, shoppers know you are ready to service their kind of folk.

But with the economic downturn, branding may have backfired.  With reports of store closings, maybe 70 odd thousand retail outlets across the country, it is becoming abundantly clear that no one really needs all these venues.   Surely, the economic dowturn is the largest factor, but perhaps this financial crisis has shed light on a problem that has existed for quite some time.   Simply put, no matter where you go, you are finding the same merchandise in every place you shop.   One store has no distinction from another.   It is all the same stuff.
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You can go to any city on the planet and, largely, it is all the same stuff.  It may vary from one venue to the other, but each venue offers the same merchandise on its social and economic level as the one you found the the last city you visited.   In fact, you might be shopping in the same chain, buying the same stuff.  Only the city you shop in is different.

So if everyone has the same offerings, small wonder retailers are going out of business, left and right.   Small wonder consumers are reluctant to buy anything.  Not only are they short of cash and credit, but they already have a half dozen of whatever it is being offered in any outlet at any given time.   I hear friends tell me, “who needs it?   I already have plenty of those.”

In a nation that prides itself in originality, there are few places carrying original goods.  Perhaps it is time to see more retail outlets offering smaller batches of merchandise from original designers and suppliers.  I realize there are economies of scale, but with staples there are alternate solutions to overcoming the challenges of economy of scale.   It would be nice for a change to not see everyone wearing the same thing or finding in a house the same layout as the last house.   With some merchandise, pots and pans, for example, sure it will be the same.   But furniture?

Perhaps we need a more educated consumer.  Pundits claim we are educated through the Internet, but do we really know the difference in woods in furniture, the types of finish, the distinctions in quality?   Having watched shoppers in furniture stories, I would think not.   In fact, the level of ignorance about the goods we are laying out money for is fairly astounding.

Maybe one way to stimulate this economy is to be a little more original.   To understand quality and craftsmanship and realize the best things are built to last.  Use them, wear them and allow them to take on the vintage textures of an original creation.   Don’t buy junk, because it has a label you can recognize.

Of course the original designers in time may become popular.  Once they do they will scale up production as people rush to buy their goods.   They will buy blindly, with great faith it will boost their status in the eyes of others.   And then these original products will become so popular we will have…branding.  Oh, well.

Real Experts and Phony Experts. In the Media, It’s Hard to Tell

There is an old saying about people believing what they read in print.   With so many people blogging on the Internet and selling self-published books and periodicals, there is a surfeit of information.  But the fact that there is a lot of information doesn’t make most of it particularly accurate or authentic.   Websites like Snopes.com is forever confirming of invalidating alleged articles, facts, studies, whatever.   Nevertheless, specious information still gets out there, and people take it as truth.

For instance, Martin Eisenstadt, a self-proclaimed senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy declared that former Vice Presidential Candidate and current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, did not know Africa was a continent.   People believed it.  News outlets carried the story.   It came from an authority, after all, an expert source.   The only problem was there is no actual Martin Eisenstadt, and the Harding Institute only exists as a website domain.  In short, it was a hoax.   But people still believe that Sarah Palin does not know that Alaska is a continent.

Now Sarah Palin may believe a lot of things we may view with concern.   Believingshe has valid foreign policy expertise because she can see Russia from her window or wherever, does not make for credibility.  And her alleged adherence to the theory that humans co-existted with dinosaurs some 6,500 years ago, makes here more of a candidate for Alley Oop than a Vice President of the United States.

But she is not the only spurious story.   There is the Obama missive about his being raised a Muslim.   There is the story that Bill Gates is giving away money for passing along a chain letter.   There is no end to the nonsense people will buy.   There is no end to the rumors people will spread.

In a democracy everyone is entitlted to their opinion.  What becomes quesitonable is the steadfast belief in far too many that every opinion should carry equal weight.   This I’m afraid is more of a product of a dumbed down culture than it is a model of democracy.   It is far better that those who have actual background experience, knowledge of the subject, be accorded greater credibility than those who don’t.   Even then there is a chance the experts will get it wrong, but they will be less apt to float out some crackpot theory on the Internet in hopes that by virtue of spreading it will carry some authenticity.

Inexpensive, http://www.jealt.mx/construccion.html levitra 10 mg drug can be bought from any internet or local pharmacy at discounted prices. But about 400 men in every 100,000 suffer from the most common viagra online mastercard sexual disease known as erectile dysfunction. So don’t waste any more time and cheap brand levitra start to work faster than Kamagra tablets would. One important thing is don’t use this medicine more than once per day. buy cialis canadian can help you have an erection when there is a foreplay. The fact is we have so diluted our pool of experts we can’t tell the real ones from the phonies.   Worse, perhaps, we can’t distinguish the real experts from the pundits who parrot a lot of garbage under the guise their mediocre thinking has substance.    In all, there is so much information, the chronically uninformed do not become informed.   Instead they become confused as they are unable to discern truth from fiction, or at least intelligent conjecture from abject idiocy.

If you are looking for proof, look to the news media.   Every now and then you get someone who actually knows what he is talking about.   The rest of the time we get pundits who are posing as experts in order to make a living.     Most of the time they will write a book, which is really a few paragraphs expanded into a volume.   This is called expertise.  And you wonder why the literacy rate is somewhere near a third world country.   You wonder why the economy has been run into the ground.   Well, surely, there are legions on the media who will wax considrably as to why it all happened.   But they will never get to the point.

For one thing they are incapable of getting to the point.   Reference points are limited and insight is myopic.  It is like finding the cure for a disease rather than developing drugs that will just pay for the maintenance of a disease.  Once you get to the point you really have nothing more to say.   Your story is over.  You can no longer milk it.   You have killed the proverbial goose that is laying those golden eggs.

So rather than reach a conclusion or make a solid point, we manufacture new experts.   We don’t manufacture much anymore in this country, but we produce our experts by the dozen.   And what do they have to say?   Too often they have as much to say as the mythical Martin Eisenstadt.   Eisenstadt at least knew he was a joke.   Can’t say the same for the majority.

Between the rumors, the legends, the emails and the expert insights we find on the media, we can surmise that there is not that much to learn from them.   At the end of the day it is up to you to educate yourself and go by your gut.   Bear in mind that educated gut is a lot more rewarding in its results than just gut without education.

It is a tough economy in a hard world.   To be armed is to keep learning.  Learning means reading source material as well as the opinions.   It is difficult to find the time.   But spending this life and all eternity in confusion is not an attractive alternative.   Unless you don’t care where your information comes from and how accurate it is.   Just keep your chain mail to yourself.

Christmas Shopping from Santee Alley to Beverly Hills

As I do every holiday season, I make the rounds and watch people do their Christmas shopping.  I not only find it interesting, I believe it is among the best barometers to tell what is really going on in the economy and in society in general.   It is not only a matter of how much people buy, but what they buy that can tell you quite a bit about the general state of things.  With frivolous items, times are good.   Foods and times are bad.   Stuff like that.

Every year we stroll down Rodeo Drive which boasts of twenty-odd Baccarat Crystal Chandeliers, all suspended above the street in double lantern frames.  Each chandelier is unique and they certainly cast a rich and classic glow over the street famous for the most upscale designer brands in the world.   But things weren’t the same as the previous years.   Where shoppers were seen in past years parading around with five, six, seven shopping bags, this year I would see more shoppers with just one bag or in many cases no shopping bags at all.   There was, however, a lot of looking and drooling, remembering no doubt the good old days when people had money.

Despite the pricey stores and the upscale clientele, you could see the anxiety on the faces of shopkeepers and store clerks.   Business was off and time was consumed being nice to those who strolled into the shops to look around.  Hope springs eternal, and in this case there was hope that shoppers would change their minds and buy something on impulse.

Down at the opposite end of the spectrum, Los Angeles has Santee Alley.  Santee Alley is just that, a bustling narrow street in and about the failing garment district where goods can be bought from open air stores.  Cheap.  You can find anything from toys and clothing, to pet Iguanas and Parrots in Santee Alley.   People visit there from all walks of life from all parts of the city.   Shoppers are largely Hispanic, as are many of the shopkeepers,  and it does help a little with the bargaining if you can speak Spanish.
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But it is money that does the most talking in Santee Alley.  If you have some cash you can bargain.   You can buy knock off designer brands from the different stalls or Callejones, as they are known in Spanish.   You know, counterfeit Louis Vuitton or Prada Bags, counterfeit designer jeans, even fake Sony electronics.  Ed Hardy Fashion has been the big counterfeit opportunity for the past few years. Some are on display, but with most cases you just have to ask.  If the shopkeeper determines you are not a cop, he will pull out from the back storage area a large canvas or plastic bag filled with bogus designer handbags.   Some are made better and look more authentic than others.   Quality control in the counterfeit industry is pretty much free form or nonexistent.

So while business was quieter than most years, it was still pretty brisk in Santee Alley.  People were buying colorful outfits, toys for their kids and the proverbial smuggled Iguanas and Parrots.   And then the police came.  Forty-five of our city’s finest raided Santee Alley, as they have done for a number of years in a row.  Like other things, the police raids in Santee Alley have become a holiday tradition.  Dozens of cops swooped down on the shopkeepers and confiscated whatever counterfeit merchandise they could find.   Twenty eight people were arrested and an estimated haul of close to $3 Million in merchandise is now in police custody.

So much for looking upscale on the cheap.   Bogus or not, there are always plenty of buyers for the counterfeit merchandise.   Perhaps a live Iguana will have to do for Aunty Jospehina.  But then there is a bright spot.  After this dismal holiday shopping season maybe the real stuff will be reduced and affordable.   Just to get rid of it, authentic designer merchandise will be given away at firesale prices.   Who knows?   For the designers who don’t wish to besmirch their brands, some of their own merchandise may make the trip from Beverly Hills to Santee Alley.   That would be something.

Sex and the Christmas Season

Nobody likes to be alone.   At least most people don’t like being alone.   Especially over the Holiday Season.   Even more especially during over the Holiday Season during a rotten economy.   Because there is nothing like the Holiday Season to make your being alone feel really, truly lonely.

It’s shopping alone for gifts for friends and family but not for a special lover or significant other.  It’s tough knowing that families are coming together, lovers coming together, and  you are either going alone to Holiday OParties, seeing the family, or watching TV with a quart of seasonal egg nog that you can only share with your cat.

Small wonder that during the holiday season sex becomes a major factor.   Reports and studies will tell you so.   Single folk have the wandering eye.  People feel romantic, want to be intimate.  With someone.  Even, at times, if it is wrong.   The alcohol ingested during the holiday seaon only serves to fan those flames.   Normal restraint can go by the wayside.   If nothing else, hot sex on a cold night is one of the better ways to pass the time.

I wrote some years back about how I noticed women in particular look at you differently during the holiday season.  There is that certain glint in their eyes.   They flirt both subtly and overtly.   You are a prospect, and the holiday season can be overwhelming.   All that sentiment, so much nostalgia floating about, it is small wonder people are looking for a date, someone to do something with.

And then I suppose there is the consideration of family life.   Most of us are around families, sometimes more than we care to be.   But we are there nevertheless.   In an economic downturn it is, for better or for worse, one of the constants, the sense of intimacy and understanding, coupled of course with the usual neuroses and jealousies.   We start think about perpetuating that famiily life.   Which means having kids of our own.  Which means having sex.   What better way to have sex than for a worthy cause, the perpetuationof life as we know it.
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So here we are in the midst of another holiday season.  A good many of us don’t have the bucks to go anywhere, so we are stuck in our very own version of reality.   We are up to here in snow in a particularly cold season.  Even the west coast is experiencing a chill.   That is a chill for the west coast.   So there isn’t much of an escape.   Even our shopping this year is probably limited.  Gifts?  don’t expect many.  Still, we must do what we must.

Well, not all that long ago in this country, most people didn’t visit St. Bart’s for holiday vacation.   They didn’t go much of anywhere.   They stayed where they were, hung out with friends and family.   Went to parties.   They had a few drinks, and they had sex.

Well here we are back to go in some ways.  We are a different country, but we are facing economic restrictions.   We can be drinking at parties, but we are a much more sober country.   So much for having a field day on our credit cards or home equity loans.

But we can still get together.  We can still couple.  We can still have sex.  It’s free.  Well, most of the time.