Crack Knuckles Then Vent

The Pre-Venting

This isn't the venting. Oh, the venting will come. Once I am quite ready. Then I will vent the entire spleen. My subject is LOOKING FOR A NEW PLACE TO LIVE. I'm sure it's a source of tension, even when it goes right. Mine did not go right. All's well that ends well, one might say--if you were not me. It did end fine. I love my new place. But the road getting here was very amusing. In retrospect. To everyone who isn't me.

But this isn't about that. This is about everything else on the bitch list that can't be wove into that story. Let's call it a sort of a consumer product hall of mirrors. As with anyone who has moved into a new place after having spent time in an old place (where your access to having actual possessions was limited) I have recently parted with a whole lot of cash. All of this expenditure was on things I now needed. Or thought I did. Since quite a few of these things have turned out to be burn jobs, I thought I would make them all INTERNET FAMOUS. It's what I do.

Top of the list is the ever strange CD One Price Cleaners, a dry cleaning franchise. Have you ever wondered why there aren't franchises in some fields? Or why entire segments of the retail strata--such as home furnishings--have no national chain stores? It's because certain things have no economies of scale.

When it comes to dry cleaning--often the new emigre's ideal of a business to go into--the entire population would have to be forced into using dry cleaning for there to be any economies of scale. Owning two dry cleaning places is twice the work of owning one. There's no savings in having more machines, other than to increase capacity. There is no savings in the work units nor inputs. It's cleaning people's clothing by hand using steam and gasoline, folks. It's a service that's worth something because you really can't do it at home. And it sucks to do it.

Moreover, there's no real way to differentiate the service. It's either done right or it is botched. (Ok, there's claiming to clean things that you can't on site and extra starch and such, but for the most part a dry cleaner is a dry cleaner.) There is certainly nothing you can do to make some rather public domain processes and equipment seem in any way special. Except for selling the proprietor on a system of short cuts.

Which is what CD One Price Cleaners seems to have done.

The experience is actually quite different from any dry cleaner I have ever been to. And by different, I don't mean unique, as in good, but different as in strange and creepy. Now all dry cleaners are a slave labor affair, usually family affairs somehow also always involving a small white dog scampering about here or there. CD One Price is no different, except that these do not seem to be family run. What you have instead are teenagers on speed.

Beyond this, you are greeted to sign after sign touting how the establishment is run in accordance with some sort of national approved code of methods. It's unclear if these signs are here as a warning or as advertisement. All of the signs have some sort of unfulfilled disclaimer, such as "Any Garment Piece $2.50. If we do it here." And if you don't do it here where do you do it? And if you do it wherever there is, what is the price? Mystery abounds.

As you approach the counter, one of the slave drivers (I sear the help was blinking SAVE ME in Morse code) will introduce you to CD One Price's curious custom: Cash up front. They take cash or check, right now or no deal. That's a first.

I guess since we have all now been trained to bag our own groceries, what's another indignity? And it's sooo cheap, right? (The one I ventured to was about $1.50 per suit coat cheaper than normal.)

The agent did ask when I wanted it. He did not smile. He did not make eye contact. He did not say thank you. He handed me a slip of paper. It also did not say thank you. Instead, it said:



If you think that whole Federal Trade Commission jazz was some deodorization for some half assed dry cleaning, you would be right. I saved a massive six dollars. Mind you, I handed them about two grand worth of clothing. It was pressed incorrectly--indifferently, at least. Very little starch was used. Most importantly, it did not look as if it had just been dry cleaned. In short, total failure. They at least partially admitted it, leaving me this memo. I'm not sure on which suit since it fell off in the bag.



Serves me right for cheaping out. And I know better. The cost of cutting corners is the cost of the job not being done at all. As for CD One Price, shame on them. Pass it by and go to a place where the slave laborers resemble each other. It's the American Way!

Bitch Item Two: Honeywell Quiet Set Fan.

It doesn't look like a fan, but it is. If you trust the box illustration, the unit is so darned powerful that it will cool an entire large room all by itself. Just for extra special effect, it looks like a giant air purifier or air heating or spot cooling unit. But it's not, because those cost a couple of hundred dollars. This costs only $75.00 because it's just a fan. It's so slim, though. So designer nifty. Look at that box illustration. You can put all of those unsightly box fans away forever.

And I trust the box illustrations since when? I don't know? I am a veteran TV dinner eater and know better than to trust those box illustrations. Why trust the freaking fan's illustrations? Why spend $75.00 on a slim fan when the average box fan cost $15? I don't know. I have no idea what came over me.

It's a weak fan. A very weak fan. It's also very cheaply built. Yes, it's quiet--because it doesn't do a damn thing. I am a moron. Buy a box fan. Box fans rule. They network. They're scalable!

Bitch Point Three: Suave "MEN" Body Wash Clean & Fresh Invigorating Scent

Before I start, I would like to help the trademark paralegals at Suave by letting them know that the office is not going to allow them to TM the word "Men" no matter how they style it. Putting the little circle r next to it is cute, but not kosher.

Like many a man, I am hard to convince of the usefulness of certain products. And like many a man, I have been convinced primarily by a woman demonstrating the manifest advantages of a given innovation. I am there with body wash. Body wash is so much better than soap. Soap is disgusting. Soap bars do nothing but attract crud and hair and get in the way. It is much better that the soap you use in the shower disappear down the drain with the crud it has washed off. Or at the least I am cool with another shampoo like product hanging around.

And when it comes to shampoo like things, there is no name I trust more than Suave. Why Suave? Because it's dirt cheap. You can have multiples and not feel like a spendthrift. Conditioner? Sure! Frizzy Control Shampoo? I'm not sure what a frizzy is, but for a buck, why chance it? So when I saw the words Suave and Men (tm) and Body Wash on the same bottle, how could I go wrong?

May I state emphatically that I have no objection to the action of this product. It seems to knock crud off and melt away fine. (Or at least I have had no complaints.) My complaint is single fold. WHAT THE DEVIL IS THIS SUPPOSED TO SMELL LIKE? The stuff you put dental instruments in? Mentholated formaldehyde? What are you going for?

Whatever it is, you have missed it. And that I notice the scent at all is very bad news for you. Trust me here.

Last Bitch Point: The Sharp CDDH950P "Radio CD Thing"

(The picture doesn't quite to it justice. It has a light up display that would shame Disneyland.)

I moved all of one thing during my move. Everything else was done by quite nice professionals. I moved ONE THING. And it broke. It was an El Cheapo CD player. I hadn't had the thing long, so it should not have broken. But broke it did.

So I replaced it with a new version of the Sony Dream Machine, which works nice. But now that I am living in several rooms as opposed to one, I figured I would buy another sound system for the other room. I should have just bought another Dream Machine.

Did I mention that the Radio CD Thing was on sale? Yep, close out at Best Buy. And it was an "opened item", which probably should have clued me in. In short, I did no research. (Had I done so I would have discovered that all of the real people who have bought one have either (1) taken theirs back and/or (2) got just as crappy of one in exchange after being told theirs was broken.) Instead, I channeled my inner 17 year old and looked at the neato display lights and did a quick calculation (about how much more this was than a Dream Machine) and wound up doing the foolish thing.

I don't know what demographic this thing is designed for. It has a tape player and an Ipod thing and a 5 Disk changer. Kids nowadays aren't all that impressed with stereo size or blinking lights. Not like I am, Not like anyone who ever owned one of those "Throw in a Fro" Panasonic jam boxes of the 1970s was. Those things were great. Mine was nearly indestructible.

The instructions were the usual gibberish, but it came together fine. It has a few problems, the first of which is a BASE or "BASS" setting that causes the walls to shake at any volume, no matter what you play. I was shaking the walls with America. Sister Golden Hair should not shake the walls. Thankfully, you can turn this feature off, but the unit does most distinctly have loudness and wall shaking on the brain. Good for some folks, Not exactly my thing.

It has no FM reception. None. It seems to actually need the aerial that didn't come with it. Other reports on this unit have indicated that it has limited AM reception. My AM worked fine. It seems there is a quality issue with the tuner, thus making this the first radio I have ever purchased wherein the radio function is besides the point. In any case I will get the one dollar aerial and let you know.

The five CD Changer does not, in point of fact, have any real purpose. Other than laziness. Or perhaps a desire to play disc jockey to your fellow shut ins. With a lot of hitting of multiple function buttons, you can cause the Radio CD Thing to play cuts from one CD and mix them in with cuts from any of the other CDs you have loaded. Kind of nifty, if you have that sort of time on your hands.

It will also play cuts at random, but only from one CD. It says it will play cuts at random from all five CDs, but what it really does is mix up the cuts on one CD and then--having played all of those cuts--it will move onto the next cd in line. In short, it has the logic to count how many cuts it has played and can remember the cuts already done, but will not skip to other CDs unless ordered to via program.

That obviously cannot be right. But that is the answer I got from SharpUSA yesterday. That this makes the random function utterly idiotic did not seem to dawn on the dear woman I was speaking with. Of course, she was no expert at all, being equipped only with a PDF version of the same manual I was reading from. When I insinuated that this might not be the right answer, she turned to the guy sitting in the cube next to her. After his cold reading of the manual was over, she became convinced that she was right and I was wrong.

I will figure this out on my own time and then get back to you all.



Coda:

As it turns out, CD One Price is a franchising scheme. It did smell like one. Not all franchising schemes are scams, but quite a few scams are franchising schemes. The idea that anything can be franchised only makes sense to people who don't have an original thought in their heads because they don't want them. In CD One Price's case, I don't think it's a scam as much as it is a bad idea.

Monday I discovered that the person I say hello to every morning and good night to every evening at work (and natter at most of the day) was killed in a boating accident over the weekend. It's been a bit of a shock. My problems are humorous and small.

Next post I will catch up on other items that have been in my mailbox. Aloha.