Friday, March 30, 2007

Butterfly's Marketing Pt 1

If you’re a marketing student struggling to grapple the essentials of marketing, your best bet for a distinction is, cheating. Or, you can flag down a cab to the club, get drunk and realize the best marketing lecture should be held at a disco. Champagnes and high heels included.

For a start, marketing is imperative when it comes to scoring on free booze. Everyone does it. Shamelessly or sub-consciously, I leave it for you to tease your conscience, but EVERYONE subscribes to it.

I’ll break it down for your digestion.

1. You’re decently hot. On good days when your pimples decide to behave, you have people taking second glimpses at you. You hang out with friends who are ugly and it’s a wonder why their parents haven’t tried to poison their milk yet. You instantly stand out because you’re the hottest piece of ass in that 5 metre radius.

That’s Prime Location.

2. You meet someone you like. You try to appear every where with a good guise of subtlety in hope of catching their attention. Occasionally, you get your friends to call out your full name and IC no. within earshot of them.

You may even drop your name card.

That’s Product Placement.

3. You’re hot and you know it. The problem is, the Plastics are in town and you have to contend to distracted gazes from potential admirers. What do you do to get attention? You get up on the podium to sweat it out.

That’s Advertising

4. While its not uncommon to find one girl amidst a sea of mediocrity, people of generally the same measure of ‘hotness’ tend to herd together.

Simply put, hot people hang out with hot people and whales with whales (yes, together they beat anorexia). Call it herd mentality, social brackets or what you may.

But that’s Branding.

5. In a situation where there is one ugly ass hanging with the hot people, you can be sure that Ugly ass will be a potential cock blocker, since no one with enough sanity and decency is going to entertain her.

For ugly ass, planting herself with hot friends will ensure that she gets a share of the attention. It’s a tested strategy. Seasoned fishermen all know that the wingman is created solely to take the cock blockers out of the game. You want to know the hot girl, you have to take the ugly one along.

And this, is Stock Clearing.

6. You’re trying to hit on that hot chick by the bar. You’re buying her and her friends endless rounds of martinis and throwing her words like “my car”, “condominium” and “banker”. You’re prepared to flash a copy of your bank statements to her.

She’s not baiting but you’re heeding your parents advise on persistence and you’re flexing your arms to show her how well you can flip pancakes for breakfast.

She says no, but you think she’s playing hard to get and you say stupid things like ‘I love challenges’ to your friends.

You may be a moron, but that’s Hard Selling.

7. You’re hot. You have at least 2 guys hitting on you simultaneously and covering your club tabs. You’re a capitalist and smart enough to know that competition progresses everything. You start your conversations with desires like ‘I’m thirsty’ and you escalate it till one of them calls for a Dom Perignon.

You’re measuring biceps and eyeing bulges in pants. For guys, you’re counting calories and sizing up the cleavages. You sneakily peak at the credit cards and home address. You finally sell your smile to the best of the litter.

That’s Auctioning.

8. You’re a whale, ugly and obviously blind because you think you’re hot. You walk with a cocky swagger (possibly due to the constant self wedgies) and the only reason people turn to stare is because you’re knocking into everyone.

You stand by the bar trying to look pretty and people are looking because you’re taking up ideal drinking spots. You think you’re Ai Tominaga strutting down the catwalk and you engage conversations with arrogance and think every guy saying ‘excuse me’ is trying to hit on you.

And when someone, voluntarily or wagered (hands up if this is you. I have my hands up.) chats you up, you hint for drinks.

That’s Overpricing. Keep that up and you will have an ashtray coming for your head.

9. You’re on the prowl. You engage the first eligible person like insurance agents on pensioners. You commit and you spend the night in their company. You snigger at other fishermen on their dormancy. 15 mins later, the crowd picks up and you realize you’re babysitting the basement bargains.

That’s Impulsive Buying.

10. You know your strengths well. If you have two left feet and struggle at clapping to beats, stay by the bar and brush up on your conversational proficiency.

You’re ugly, but you dance well. You wear a cap to keep your face half covered and you dance away from direct spotlight but visible enough for people to spot you.

That’s SWOT Analysis.

11. You get hit on by someone and he’s persistent about you going back to his table for more drinks. There, you get introduced to everyone and the only name you remember is “Hi..”

His friends starts taking turns to talk to you and your drink is constantly kept breaching the brink. You find yourself entertaining suggestions on potential dates with them and you’re too passive to say you want to leave.

Now that’s Time Sharing.

12. The night is fucked, the music is bad and the patrons are regulars at the Sizzler buffet. The crowd starts exchanging their “I beat anorexia” t-shirts for “Frodo is my homeboy” jackets. From time to time, someone will offer you his “only cool people club at Happy” baby tee.

You evaluate. Staying will incur beer money without the possibility of a decent hook up. You decide to go back to watch transsexual midget porn instead.

That’s Cost Cutting.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Butterfly Does Driving

If there was anything I’ve desired more in the last year, it has to be driving again (legally), even if playing dumb and engaging road bends with humility is a staple for the next month or so.

Yes, finally and I stress, FINALLY, I’m at my practicals. In simple math, that’s over a year of public transport or 15 months of ignorance to the discounts at Caltex. There is only one problem…

I don’t know if I’ve signed up for driving lessons or stupidity classes. I swore the air-con was blowing idiocy right at me. Despite telling him that I have a 6yr driving experience, I had to sit through 1 hour of basic driving education, which included,

1. Learning how to shift the gear.

For nearly 10mins, I was toggling between moving the gears sequentially from 1 to 5 to reverse and when I managed to impressed him with enough fluidity, he made me reverse the movements from 5 to 1.

If I had my hands any longer on the gear stick, I'm pretty sure I was going to ejaculate it just so that I can bukkake myself with redundancy.

2. Move forwards and backwards. Repeatedly.

If you see depression marks on the ground, that would be me.

The instructor had me do a routine road tarring. It had to be so, how else can you justify making an EXPERIENCED driver inch forward and backwards repeatedly over 10 mins. I only needed the car to be fitted with a suction infront to qualify as a litter remover.

3. Explaining the interior of the car.

This included having me try out the wipers, the horn, hazard lights and handbrakes. I briefly flicked the wipers through the various speeds and he made me do it again. Apparently, he wanted me to actually wait for the wipers to do one cycle. If you saw me nodding and smiling, you’d have given me an award for ‘Greatest threshold of bullshit’.

Wow, learning the wipers. Now THAT’S going to be a life-saver.

He quickly followed this up with a ground breaking progression of pace by explaining to me the speedo and tachometer and closed with a quiz on the fuel guage.

Instructor: "If the needle points to 'F' it means...?"
Me: "Full?"
Instructor: "And if it points to 'E' it means...?"
Me: "Empty?"
Instructor: "Correct."

I don't know if I should shout for joy or for a cab. Do people even get stuff like this wrong to begin with?!

I was well prepared for this. I knew I had to start from scratch, but this? No one said anything about starting with half a brain. When they said I had to learn all over again, I didn’t realize they actually meant learning EVERYTHING.

I always imagined that they’ll honour previous driving experiences, cut the bullshit, have me do a lap of the estate at 100km/h and we’ll even do the mandatory girl whistling at traffic lights. Guess not.

Only idiots need refresher courses.

1 hour later, I stalled the car whilst trying to move off in 3rd gear. Twice.

The only thing that stood between me and a certain effrontery of an accelerated license, was habit. Bad habits, if we’re being precise and I’ve already made a credible effort of not turning up for sessions inebriated.

The resolution of a matter is always rigid between conflicting perspectives. I think it’s perfectly ok to drink and drive but I’ve been faulted on that. They say stop lines have to be observed, but I think it’s road hogging.

Having an experienced driver retake driving practicals is far more than an ego bruise of sporadic critiques; it’s a blatant setup to tell you that you’ve been driving wrong all your life. Putting a driving instructor and I together, is like having champagne with high heels. Someone has to suffer.

1. I dropped the clutch once.

Instructor: “Wow, Jay Chou are you!?”

2. Stop lines.

Everyone with a license knows that stop lines are for pussies. If you stop before the line with no car in sight, you will be horned at. Mandatory spitting at, if you did that abruptly. The correct way to engage a stop line is to ignore all traffic and remember that you always have the right of way.

Apparently, the instructor didn’t seem to share my sentiments.

3. One handed drive.

It’s a habit to drive with one hand (hands up if this is you). One free hand is ALWAYS essential just in case you need to pick your nose or grab boobs. If you have to choose between gear changing and any of the pre mentioned, you should know that all good drivers are smart drivers. We go for carnal pleasantries, gears can wait.

I’m constantly reminded to keep both hands on the wheels and I’m not allowed to drive even with my hand rested on the gear knob. I’ve obviously been getting a lot of bad pointers from cabbies.

4. Never brake in neutral.

I’d be perfectly honest. Only sissies use engine brake. Real men just fly through windscreens or put airbags to the test. Look, if you buy a car, you’d at least want to test your airbags once. People who invented engine braking obviously never tried braking in neutral. It’s so much less tedious to execute.

5. No waving ‘thanks’ to motorist

I waved thanks to this guy in a BMW for giving way to me and I got corrected on it.

Instructor: “I’d do the waving, YEW just drive.”

And we complain all the time about absence of road propriety when the very institution we’re being educated from isn’t inseminating the right etiquette. Rather than sit back and be catechized with their brand of proper driving, I’d educate you on this,

Always give way to expensive cars. While its good to be hit by one, it’s not good to hit one. And, if a QQ tries to cut you, throw a coke bottle at it. It probably costs more anyway.

6. Fiddling with the air-con

Apparently, air-con adjustment is not part of the pre-drive check and I have a proclivity of regular adjustments. As my instructor simplifies, I spend more time adjusting my air-con than I do for the mirrors.

It’s pretty obvious. Why bother about the mirrors when you have someone next to you that will constantly warn you of danger. What’s paramount, is not perspiring. If you perspire while driving, you’re better off going public.

Now I ust need to bribe the testers...

Friday, March 09, 2007

Butterfly's Dictionary

They complain all the time on having to open up the online dictionary every time I wade into a verbose discourse and throw out words you read over hoping to be a spelling error. I'll save you the pop up window and fill you in on the more important daily breads of my blog.

But-ter-fly [adj]:

1. Short attention span. Sustained and collapsed by any one of the following; cleavage, short skirts and pretty faces.
2. Drinks and makes a fool of oneself.
3. Incapable of love and periodically emotionally void.
4. Kicks people in the nose in retaliation to being tickled.

Bra-s [noun]:

1. Horrible invention made to kill erections and warps our perception of actual cup sizes. Nasty. Should be made with velcro.
2. Largely used for cleavage amplification and free drinks.

My aptitude for removing them is somewhere between 24 secs and damaged goods. Yes, some people just have no talent for garment removal. If you see me fiddling with your backstrap, a courtesy tap on the head to tell me that the hook is in-front will be appreciated.

Mind-fuck-ed [adj]:

1. Distraction from attaining set goals
2. Lost of appetite, also seen as a good way to diet.
3. Could be situationally induced by sleeping with possible post ops and mis-timed withdrawals.

Me: “I hope I didn’t miscue.”
She: “You kidding right?!”
Me: “I hope you have your kid’s name all thought out.”
She: “Tell me you’re kidding!”
Me: “Well, you always have the morning after pill…”
She: “But it’s detrimental to health!
Me:And so is pregnancy…..”

Gi-rl-fri-end-s [adj]:

1. Alcohol moderators. Present at clubs to watch you liver and lighten your wallet.
2. Obnoxious creatures who believe they deserve priority in your life.
3. Prevents you from watching REAL sports programs like wrestling.
4. Refuses to pay up mahjong loses.
5. Determined people who believe in changing your lifestyle to suit theirs. They also double up to do your mother’s portion of the nagging.
6. Cannot pee further than men

Boy-fri-end-s [adj]:

1. Stupid men who have surrendered their lifestyle for regular sex.
2. Generally poorer than single men. I wonder why.
3. Tends to lie more than the average single man.

Wh-ale-s [adj]:

1. People who are excessively overweight and prone to constant self-wedgies from walking.
2. Usually synonymous with gluttony, body odour and cellulite.
3. Most probable suspect for stolen brownies and fudge cake.
4. Perfectly alright to throw random sucker punches at them. Add flying kicks only when absolutely necessary.

I’m sure most of you are perfectly well acquitted with this term. I’ve moderately eased up on my derogatory literature, but my stand remains the same. If you are a whale, you should be paying twice the club cover and double the buffet entry.

Remember, bulimia is your best-friend.

Ja-pan-ese [adj]:

1. Born with blow-job starter kits.

It’s no secret that Japanese are born with superior blowjob genes. I believe this is biologically attributed to the extra tongue tissues, but I love them for two reason; Sony and porn. The only cultural revolution in my dictionary, is internet proliferation of pornography.

If you are a record company mogul, you may want to consider a soundtrack of the best moans. All you need are Japanese. Two word.

Grammy.Worthy.

Jui-ce-s [noun]:

1. Collective term for all alcoholic beverages.
2. The only means ugly whales will ever get laid.
3. If correctly concocted and consume, they are a bulimic’s best friend.

The Dating Dictionary

Do-ll-s [adj]:

These are my favourites within their ethnic brackets, the ones that made me smile even with my pants on. I will dub them as my doll only and ONLY if they’ve made a significant imprint in my life. No, shoulder bite marks and cigarette burns do not count.

The headcount now stops at 2. My Japanese doll and MissSeptember.

Man-ne-quin [adj]:

1. Aesthetically pleasing companion who sustains conversations solely through the exploitation of cleavage, accidental slips or rhinoplasty.
2. Occasionally prone to mispronouncing ‘calories’.

And I have no idea what 'verbs' are.