Effective Real Estate Marketing.

You know me.  I’m always ready to lend a helping hand.  That’s why I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how to effectively market your real estate listing. 

What better way to teach you than by illustrating with pictures?  (Okay, there’s a lot of better ways, but you say to-may-toe, I say hush.)

Exhibit A comes from the lovely Lake of the Ozarks area.  Thank you to alert reader My Dad for sending the picture in.

There’s no need to hire a realtor with his thousand dollar words like “picturesque,” “financially attainable,” or “charming” when “steep and cheap” says it all!

Exhibit B comes from the building across from my office.  That looks normal enough.  But wait!  What is that?!  Why, I declare, I believe it’s another super-effective marketing strategy staring me in the face!

I know you can’t read that sign, so I was nice enough to get a close up for you.

I have to admit, the sign was much more inspirational before I got my new contacts and I thought “TRAINS” would be a good potential use for the building.  Traing just doesn’t seem nearly as exciting. 

And, THAT, is how to successfully advertise your real estate.

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If Only All Dogs Expunged Play-Doh.

Do you ever ask yourself, “Self, I really want to get my kid the worst gift in the world; what could it be?”

If not, then I can’t help you.  But if that’s the burning question you have, then I’m here for you, my friend.  And if you answered “Snuggie,” then you would be wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

When I first saw this, I thought it was one of those SNL skit commercials.  It’s not.  No, sadly for all humanity, it’s not.

When I first heard the description of “Doggie Doo Game”, the focus was on picking up the “doggie doo.”  I thought, “That’s disgusting.”  But then the description continued.  (NO, I am not making this up!)

Apparently, during play, the children feed some sort of dough to the dog.  The “winner” (admittedly, I’m taking liberties with the word “winner”) is the one who finally makes the dog poop.  He or she gets the dubious bragging rights as well as the poop shovel.

This is an actual excerpt from the actual website (still not making this up) www.doggiedooogame.com:

Around 15 years ago, toy inventors at Lund and Company Invention created a pooping dog game that made loud farting sounds as you squeezed the dog’s leash! Since most kids on the face of the earth find humor in all bodily functions, Lund was sure this pooping dog would be the next craze of the late 90’s. All they needed was to find the dog a master — a “toy industry expert” to adopt the concept and turn the dog into the next mega hit game!

Time after time, day after day, the game was reviewed and passed over by those so called experts who believed that it just wasn’t a “proper” fit for their company. After years of trying to find a taker, the pooping dog game was left in the dog house.

Seriously.  What kind of honky-ass-non-thinking-marshmallow-brain-so-called-experts would turn down this awesome concept?!  It was a crime, I tell you.  Luckily, Goliath came in and saved the day.  Thank you, Goliath.  And by “thank you,” I mean, “What the hell, Goliath?”

So if you want to be the one who ruins Christmas, then I highly suggest you rush right out and purchase the Doggie Doo Game.  Seriously, do it.

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How to Terrify Children This Christmas.

Are you looking for that last minute Christmas gift to terrify the children in your life?  Then have I got the game for you!  Well, I don’t, per se.  But Target, Wal-Mart and/or Toys R Us probably do.  DOCTOR DRILL ‘N FILL!

Now your children can have hours of fun pretending to drill cavities out of a bodyless man.  Then, once they’ve had their fill of that, they can yank all his teeth out!

“Darling, if you don’t brush your teeth, the Baby Jesus will cry and a kitten won’t get her wings.  Oh yeah, then we’ll fill your head with putty and let the dentist drill your teeth like so much cheap sheetrock!”

That should scare them straight.

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Weird Evangelism.

I found this book in the coat closet at church.  Which, in itself, is a little weird since I can’t imagine a single one of my fellow United Methodist congregants passing out religious tracts …

I was struck by the cover.  I mean the homeless guy is obviously losing hope in the young boy’s Jesus-Tract-Passer-Outer skills.

So I flipped it open and the first page I came to was this …

Which is actually an excellent suggestion.  If the question is, “How can I get my ass arrested by Homeland Security?”

(No, this wasn’t published in 1954.  It was published in 1986, for your information.)

Considering the dog problem in my neighborhood, I thought this one was particularly fitting …

I would actually hang a hundred booklets from the dog’s collar if I thought it would make people quit letting their dogs run loose.  And quit barking.  “Oh look, honey!  Rover brought us a tract!  It must be a sign from above to quit letting him bark day and night for hours on end every single day!  I have seen the error of my ways!  Hallelujah!”

I’m almost certain that it would not occur to the dog to scratch it out and eat it because, if there’s one thing I know about dogs, it’s that they would never ever eat a foreign object!

And the next one answers the age-old question of, “How can I passive aggressively share the love of Jesus while still condoning theft?”

That’s right.  If your fingers don’t touch it, then you technically didn’t distribute it.  You just pointed it out.  Am I right?

This one is actually an excellent idea.  Especially since my child can’t even ride the 3 minutes it takes to get across town without asking me 12 times if we’re there yet.  Tracts as baby-sitters!

And my all-time favorite … drum roll please …

Let’s “bait” the trash collector like he’s a hungry rabid squirrel!  Because, obviously, he has time to stop and read every piece of paper he picks up along the way!

Illustrations that get honorable mention … Or 2 answers to the question, “What is the easiest way to get arrested for littering?”

The book is great for one thing besides being a how-to on getting arrested …

The pictures would make whimsical Christmas cards to send from the clink!

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Who is the patron saint of yard art, anyway?

I love yard art.  It’s probably definitely my favorite form of art.

But to have a successful yard of art, one must have a certain touch.  I mean you wouldn’t mix a pink flamingo and a giant bear statue.  It is just not done in polite society.

Here is a very good example of what does not work in yard art.

You could maybe make the case for the saint and the goose.  But the cat just screams overkill.

Or it would if the tableau were not flanked by these two signs…

One could make an argument for the angel and the Communion and even the goose, perhaps.  But what’s with the gourmet meal now?  Did the decorator see a squirrel and forget what he was doing?

Did I mention this was a church?

In conclusion, I think we have all learned a very important lesson here today.  And that is that cats are delicious.

Oh wait.  I mean the important lesson is never let the drunk guy decorate your church.  And never ever ever abuse yard art.

 

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File Under: You Might Be A Redneck.

You might be a redneck if you are the inspiration for this sign. 

 

This picture has not been altered.  It is an actual sign at the entrance to the cemetery where my brother in law is buried.

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How many quarts are in a quartet?

Well, apparently, if you live in Texas, there are 7 quarts in a quartet.  You know, because everything is bigger in Texas; even quartets.

It reminds me of the old childhood riddle: What happens when you put a quartet on steroids?

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Deep Mysteries of the Unknown. Mostly Toilets.

I haven’t been feeling well – I’m trying to convince myself it’s allergies – so I stayed home from work today.  I thought I would use this time to do some productive work.  Namely, researching ideas for my next blog post.

My extensive research usually involves Googling phrases such as “mystery toilet.”  Why “mystery toilet”?  Because I’m reading Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up and there was an article in there about a guy in Texas whose toilet kept producing pens.  And, since Dave Barry was not making that up, I thought maybe the original article could be found on Google.

I don’t know if it’s there or not.  I got sidetracked by all the toilet forums out there.

I am completely shocked by the number of people who are mystified by their toilets.  I thought I was the only one.  In order to weed out the mundane, I changed my search to “mysterious toilet phenomenon.”

There are a surprisingly large number of people in this country (and also in Canada) who believe ghosts flush their toilets.  There are also several who think that others are flushing their toilets telekinetically by their friends.  (Quick!  Everyone who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand!)  I wish I had friends who could flush my toilet telekinetically.

Actually, I wish I could flush my friends’ toilets telekinetically.  Then I would tell them it was ghosts.

Or maybe aliens.

Yes, it’s true, I have worked very dilligently for you, my faithful readers, this morning.  It was all worth it though because I found this Porta-Potty Piggy Bank.

You can buy your very own here:  http://www.imprintitems.com/toys/banks-piggy-savings/8164-little-john.  You can even have your name printed on the door!

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For the Love of PEEPS.

It’s that time of year again.  The time when we celebrate the most sacred of Christian holidays by covering bird shaped marshmallows with yellow sugar.  (No, I do not count any other holiday theme, color, shape, etc. as a real Peep.)

Did you know that Peeps have their own website?  They do.  It’s www.marshmallowpeeps.com.

And, as I was infinitely curious about what could be said about this delectable manna from Heaven, I decided to visit that website.

They have recipes.

Lots and lots of recipes.

I was drooling over all the Peeps recipes.  Like this one:

Isn’t that the cutest thing you ever saw?  It’s called Blue Raspberry Sparkle.  Really, there could be nothing better than Peeps and Jello.  In fact, my motto has always been, “There’s nothing that can’t be improved upon by adding Peeps and/or Jello.”  True story.

But then I found this little gem.

It’s called Peeps Yum Yum Platter.  Or as I like to call it … Attack of the Homicidal Bunnies.

Now I suppose it is meant to resemble Sushi.  But you know what immediately sprang to my mind?  The old Bugs Bunny cartoons where one of them gets tied to the railroad tracks as the train is coming.  I just keep waiting for a train whistle.

I mean sushi is bad enough.  But there’s something completely wrong about homicidal bunny marshmallows.  It would be like if Santa Claus showed up to your house with a machete.

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Sometimes My To Do List Mystifies Me.

This may surprise you, but I’m a thinker.  Okay, maybe that statement was playing fast and loose with the word “thinker.”  But I do often have several thoughts clanking around inside my head at any given time.  The problem is that I’m very susceptible to losing a thought if another thought pops into my head.  Or if a possum happens by.

That’s why I developed a habit of writing notes to myself.  I used to send emails but I got freaked out by that one day when I checked my email and noticed that I had not only sent myself an email, but I had also replied to myself.

Twelve times.

I also keep an ongoing To Do List on my computer.  Except I call it “Today’s Goals” because that sounds much more positive and upbeat.  I used to call it “Crap I Should Probably Do” but decided that was not very positive or upbeat.

On my “Today’s Goals” page, I also have several text boxes with random thoughts.  One of them must be ideas for a blog post because this is what it says (verbatim, I am not making this up; in fact, I don’t think I could make this up):

lots of Jello/aspic
wine monkey gift wrap
what can I use glitter for
can we colorate the pasta
how to make hot dogs curl
how to make assless chaps
several variations on “tacky” something or other
       -Jesus
         -blanket
       -glitter

Judging by the seemingly incoherent list, I would say it’s a list of google searches that have recently brought people to my blog.  But, really, whose mind doesn’t jump from tacky glitter Jesus blankets to aspic on a regular basis?

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