Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

We Meant To Do It This Way From The Start

As I pointed out in the post on the White Coke can (DW), there was a news report that the can would be coming out with a red background. And just before Christmas, we ended up getting a 24-pack with the new style.



Frankly the polar bear graphic looks a lot better with the higher contrast of the red can versus the white on silver. And they said, like New Coke/Classic Coke, that this was part of the plan? Puh-lease.

There Was A Lot Of That in 2011

In the weak but not dying economy, there seemed to be a lot of missteps and recalculations. Bank of America wanted to impose this $5 fee and next thing you know they got spanked by their customers and changed their mind. Of course they'll probably try it again in a different way in 2012, but for the moment, no fee. Verizon tried to pull something similar by adding a charge for using a credit card to make single payments. Now legitimately, credit cards do cost them, but the argument that they wanted access to people's checking accounts and have automatic payments engaged? Not a bloody chance.

Back in the spring they said that we'd have four dollar plus gas all summer (DW). Worse were the pundits which talked of five dollar gasoline, which usually means that carte blanche has been issued to the oil companies and So It Is Written, So It Shall Be Made So. But actually gas prices spent most of the rest of the year bouncing from high to mid to low three dollars -- not four. Somewhere around Mother's Day or maybe it was the Memorial Day price jump that didn't happen the madness subsided. In fact, some gas prices dropped right around the major summer driving holidays, which put people on the road in greater numbers, much to the relief of the tourist and travel industries. Not sure why the drop, but I just read where the average price for gas in all of 2011 was higher than in 2010, so we really did fork over more of our treasure to get to the same destinations.

The other year the airlines were all about the small 50-seat regional jets, and service expanded to many small cities. This year? Regional jets cost too much so they're being cut and routes are being cuts and sections of the country may lose all their service.

And an awful lot of politicians found themselves saying that they didn't mean that or reversing themselves. Or facing recall efforts, some of which are still going on. Or ballot proposals to negate some stupid-headed power grab that had nothing to do with any "crisis".

I'm still waiting for LiveJournal to rollback Release 88 (DW), but they don't yet seem to have gotten the memo -- or read the thousands and thousands of angry complaints.

I don't think this is going to end in 2012...

Dr. Phil

Alas Poor Catalog, I Knew Ye Well...

NPR reported this morning that J.C. Penney was ending their mail order catalog business. Interesting that they said they started it only in the 1960s (1963), unlike the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs which were much older.

When we lived in the U.P for 7½ years in the late 80s and early 90s -- in a time before the commercialization of the Internet, if you can remember such dark times -- we ended up doing quite a lot of mail order catalog sales. When we moved down to West Michigan, there were major Penney stores anchoring the local malls.

Of course the Internet has changed sales and I'm sure it was just a matter of time before the J.C. Penney catalog was going to become redundant or irrelevant. Not like there was a lot of choice -- Penney's is a business and has to make appropriate business decisions.

Those Pesky Local Connections

Of course one of the reasons why I'm bothering to post about this is the realization that the local Kentwood MI call center will close, eliminating 370 jobs. Many had worked there for decades. Not just the manufacturing jobs close in this economy -- something all those people touting service jobs and Internet call centers should keep in mind.

Dr. Phil

I Never Thought I'd Write About This A Third Time

But that damned Erica's friends buy her the Toyota Corolla of her dreams commercial really annoys me. And one commenter says that the Facebook site shows "out takes" including Erica delivering cupcakes -- unwrapped cupcakes -- from the basket of her bicycle. Oh yeah, she's a professional baker, er, pastry chef.

I Really Was Going To Let This Alone

But I had a thought the other night that made me question the motivations of Toyota and their ad agency. Previously I'd mocked them for thinking that just everyone has a bunch o' friends who can fork over three thousand each and buy you that new car you want. And that I thought this terribly out of touch with reality for most people. People buying you new cars, they're probably not buying you a Corolla anyway, at least according to the Lexus and Mercedes Christmas ads. (grin)

So here's the thing -- Erica isn't after the car she needs for her business, since we've already established that she could probably have saved something to get a useable used ride to delivery her confections. No, she's after the car she wants. Yes, that brand new Toyota Corolla she can't afford right now is what she wants, not needs.

But... Pause to sprinkle special fairy dust on our special snowflake... oh look! Here come your special snowflake friends to give you what you want. Now here's where maybe I was wrong and this is where it gets insidious and devious. What if they want you to think that because she just got what she wanted, now you are entitled to get what you wanted, too? You're entitled! Just sign here on the dotted line, because you don't need to cough up the money to pay for something you want -- at least not at the start. Because we're hurting here and not selling enough cars, so you gotta do your part to help us.

Magical Financial Thinking

We have a current financial meltdown we're riding out that has been brought about because financial institutions had been trying to get people to buy the crap out of stuff they want, not what they need or can afford. Guess what? That didn't work.

Recently I was poking around Amazon looking at the current crop of Nikon FX sensor digital SLRs. Having grown up with Nikon 35mm SLRs, I'd like to have some modern digital full-frame equivalent cameras and because I haven't bought any Nikons in a long time, I wanted to see what the current offerings (and prices) were up to. I'd like them. I want them. I don't need them. That's why I haven't spent the couple of thousand dollars on those, and instead am making do with a decent little Sony digital camera with a far more than decent Carl Zeiss lens.

Still, that hasn't stopped me from getting an email from Amazon pointing out that I could buy the Nikon FX sensor digital SLR of my dreams on credit through them. As opposed to buying it on credit with my credit card. Or waiting until I can afford it. (grin) You know, if I was a professional photographer, I'd consider getting a business loan or even a consumer loan to finance the cameras and lenses, if I thought I was going to make enough money. But this would be for me -- so... No.

We've Been Doing This To Ourselves For A Long Time

People forget about this, but way back in the mid-70s we started seeing these big three lens projection wide screen televisions. And they sold some to bars and other public venues -- one was installed in the student union at Northwestern -- but after a while that market was saturated. And yet newer units were coming out, as well as the ability to make much larger picture tubes. 36" and 44" picture tube color TVs were unheard of before this. Anyway, in trying to figure out how to market and sell these as consumer items, the electronics industry went to the banking industry -- and the concept of the home improvement loan was expanded into the home equity loan and home equity line of credit.

Can't afford that giant 60" big screen TV? No problem, pay for it through your home mortgage and it hardly costs anything a month... for a lot of months. Pretty soon we had people buying big TVs, Hawaiian vacations and even cars, and paying for them over 10-30 years. A car on a 30-year mortgage? Really? Car loans were still 36-48 months then, not 60 or more months. And cars had to get a lot more reliable to justify paying for them over five or more years. So unless you're buying a Rolls or some really well-built solid car that can last multiple decades, this doesn't make sense. You'll be on your third or fourth car before you've paid off the first one.

And people did this. You could even argue that a home theatre was actually a home improvement and not just a big fancy TV. And at least this form of magical financial thinking had consumer products and income to back up the payments, something that the absurd mortgages of late didn't have.

So I'm Worried

Is the Erica Toyota ad a new invitation for people to forget the economic times and just satisfy their lust for a new car? Maybe. At least, at the risk of it being a mean and cynical ploy, it makes more sense than an ad agency and a car company thinking that a bunch of friends can just pony up and buy someone with a marginal business, and not a lot of signs they have a good business plan, a new car. One is trying to instill a new round of magical financial thinking, the other is just fantasy.

In my humble old jaded and cynical view. (evil grin)

Dr. Phil

A Disaster With No End In SIght

The BP oil platform Deepwater Horizon disaster off the coast of Louisiana, which began with its explosion on 20 April 2010, is rapidly becoming one totally incompetent fuck up. Actually, calling it an "oil spill" is a little disingenuous -- a spill is a one-off and suggests remediation and cleanup will fix it. This is ongoing and gushing.

210,000 gallons of oil a day -- counting it in barrels makes the problem sound more manageable. But by Sunday it's some 1,600,000 gallons of oil and growing.

Don't Make Me Laugh

Some are already calling this President Obama's Katrina. Yeah, right. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster which was mishandled badly by the U.S., state and local governments. This was a manmade disaster mismanaged badly by BP. One where they assured the government they were on top of things, they had it under control and there was no threat of a wider spill. If the Obama administration is guilty of anything right now, it's allowing the beloved principle of self-policing to run its course until it was obvious that it wasn't working. Hell, BP didn't even know the magnitude of the problem.

As for the "delay" in Obama traveling to the area, what the hell was he going to see? Why people would just call it grandstanding. Now that oil is or is about to spoil the shoreline, NOW there's something to see.

Some of this isn't news to people who follow off-shore drilling. This article lists several issues including the lack of a switch which could allow BP to remotely shut off the well head some 5000 feet on the bottom of the ocean.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the well lacked a remote-control shut-off switch that is required by Brazil and Norway, two other major oil-producing nations. The switch, a back-up measure to shut off oil flow, would allow a crew to remotely shut off the well even if a rig was damaged or sunken. BP said it couldn't explain why its primary shut-off measures did not work.

U.S. regulators considered requiring the mechanism several years ago. They decided against the measure when drilling companies protested, saying the cost was too high, the device was only questionably effective, and that primary shut-off measures were enough to control an oil spill.

Self-policing and self-regulating industries. Yeah, works real good. Congress and Wall Street -- are you listening yet?

Expect gas prices to spike this summer. Shrimp prices, assuming you can get shrimp, will jump, too. Guess Wall Streeters will have to pull out extra hundred dollar bills to pay for those jumbo shrimp cocktails at dinner...

I Have Two Words For All This

THIS SUCKS.

Dr. Phil