Did you know that you don't have to spend a fortune on perfume? Your local Dollar Emporium has many fine scents available at the low, low price of One Dollar. Let me present them to you.
Perhaps you want to remember your Youth. Those days when Mother loomed large in your life. When her advice and admonitions helped you remember what it took to grow up to be The Kind Of Woman Who Would Make Her Proud. For you, may I suggest:
Some women want to project a pleasant, nonthreatening demeanor. They don't want to be a sexy siren; they merely want to convey a kind femininity. Yes, they want to say, I'm a woman, and I'm easy to get along with and somebody's mom. I have extra Kleenex in my purse, and I volunteer at the school twice a week. If you need me to stop and pick up an extra bag of ice on my way to your party, just ask! No worries! This, then, is the perfume gift for her:
Let's say that your mother sent you to Fat Camp where you lost fifty-three pounds and found your breasts and a waist. Now that you're tanned and slimmer, and all those days of swimming have bleached out your hair into a shimmery blond, the boys back at Verizon Co. High School, Inc. are taking notice. You are getting the big rush, and how! Before the twerking starts, you might want to dab a little of this on your neck and wrists:
Gentlemen, consider your needs met as well at your local Dollar Superstore. Allow me, if you will, to showcase just a few.
Men, what is it that you want--and I mean REALLY WANT--from your deodorant body spray? Do you want an odor-killing formulation? Do you want a lady-killing scent? Well then, do I have something just for you:
Dude! Are you, like, totally over all the phony smelling GMO colognes out there? Like, do the American sensibilities offend you with their constant homage to chemicals and forgetting the earth and our environment? If you could, would you totally smell like...oh, I don't know, the earth, and herbs, and nature? Right on. Dude! I feel you, and so does this cologne, which is French for like black tarragon, which is like decomposing herbs. I know, right?
Hey, guys. R u tired of hearing everyone get on you about ur speling? If everyone noes what you mean, then whats the big deal? If ur not gunna be a english teacher then who cares? They'res more important things too worry about then this. Besides which their's even a colone that proves its no big deal. Hear it is:
You know, Dearest Readers, I do these things so that you don't have to.
Oh, thank you, Nance! You made my day with this one! Clearly I have been wasting my time and money shopping for Gloria Vanderbilt perfumes! Who knew?!!!
ReplyDeleteOne of my New Year's resolutions is to sit up straighter - I need to run right out & get that Posture perfume as a reminder. Now if I could just find a perfume to remind me to check my calendar :)
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ReplyDeleteNance,
About twenty five years ago my daughter,Carol, and I were walking down the boardwalk at Ocean City, NJ and we saw a new store.
It was a whole new concept. EVERTHING in the store was One Dollar.
We couldn't get over it and went in to see how it worked. They had everything under the Sun and it REALLY was only one dollar. Wow!
We each spent about $20.00 in there. You know how hard it is to spend Twenty Bucks in a Dollar store? We came out loaded down with scrubbies,hair brushes,scissors,writing paper,etc.
We were thrilled and couldn't stop patting ourselves on the back for being so clever and finding this wonderful store.
As we trudged up the boards toward home,carrying our heavy bags of loot, the first thing we saw in another variety store window was the hair brush we had just paid $1.00 for marked at 59 cents. "Oh, well, we rationalized, you can't win them all." and we continued to trudge
toward home.
Next store, there were the scrubbies and the scissors. Scrubbies..49 cents. Scissors..79cents. "Oh, well, we said, "we are still ahead on the writing paper." Not so fast! In the corner of the window was a stack of writing paper for 69 cents.
Well, we continued home but our step was not as lively and our spirits not as bright.
The bags felt heavy but not as "fun filled" as before.
We reached home and began unpacking our stuff and the only thing to save the day was to laugh as each and every bargain came out of our bags. We were in stitches and both agreed that the really good belly laughs that we got from our shopping fiasco were worth Twenty Bucks!
I haven't been in a Dollar Store since.
@Nancy: Thank you for that delightful and informative story about dollar stores. I always figured they were never quite the bargain they advertised, but mainly because of the shoddy and/or dubious nature of what was sold so cheaply. As it was "only a dollar," it never entered my mind that their products could actually be cheaper elsewhere, lol!
ReplyDeleteAs for these avant-garde fragrances: I have heard of "film noir" but never gotten as far as "Tarragon Noir." What could that possibly smell like? I suppose your suggestion of decomposing herbs is about as close as we will get. But if you want to get an extra chuckle out of this, here's a link to a guy who bought it and actually made a YouTube video of it, lol: http://tinyurl.com/k7f7fn5
If you can believe him, it actually smells nice. It is worth watching just to hear this guy (who sounds like he is stoned) and the squeaky door closing at the end. Very apropos in every respect.
Ortizzle--I love how you can always find something else interesting about whatever it is that I write about here. I will go and watch the video soon.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Dollar Store items not being a bargain, that can be the case. You have to be careful as to what you are shopping for. I go and get my Awesome cleaning product (I referenced that in a previous post), wrapping paper or gift bags, and these double-walled plastic glasses with a screw-on lid and straw that I keep full of iced water all day. Anyplace else, that glass is three bucks. Once in a while, I'll run into some kind of buyout (I got a pair of Betty Crocker kitchen shears), but Nancy is right. A lot of it is cheap, shoddy crap that, as my dad would have said, "they" make in China for a nickel and sell it here at inflated prices.
Nancy--Time spent laughing with your daughter is well worth twenty bucks. Maybe it's not the same around your area, but around here, it seems like Dollar Stores by various names are springing up like weeds. I don't get it. As you said, there are plenty of other stores that carry cheap stuff pretty regularly, and some stores like Target have dollar spots in them--an area with a row or two of things all for a dollar. Now, a huge DELUXE Dollar Store is going in not too far from where I live, and it will even have fresh groceries--fruits, veg, etc. Puzzling, isn't it?
Bug--You have an iPhone don't you? It has an alert feature that you can set so that it rings/buzzes every day at the same time. Set it, and you can look at your calendar every day.
As soon as I get an appointment, I put it in my Calendar and add two alerts: one for two days before, and one for two hours before. I am shamefully dependent upon my Calendar.
Oh, and, YOUNG LADY, SIT UP STRAIGHT! Hee hee.
Karen S--Just think, for the price of your GV, you could buy all of these and send a different message every day! (And still have some money left over for other things, like Bloody Marys with a friend!)
ReplyDeleteNance:
Fruits and veggies for $1.00 is not unusual around the City of Philadelphia.
The very clever Asian immigrants position themselves on the island in the middle of the street at traffic lights and sell all sorts of fruits and veggies to drivers.
Their business is very brisk because they figure out exactly how many grapes to sell for $1.00.Or bananas $1.00 or lettuce $1.00.
They package their products at home and measure exactly how many to sell for $1.00.
So you drive up, miss the light, hand the seller $1.00 and say grapes or lettuce and he or she throws you a bag with the stuff in it and you drive away in less than 10 seconds.
Everybody in town knows that the price is $1.00 and no change or bickering is necessary.
It works!
I am heading out the door to work, but just had to include one comment before I leave: O'Scent...hahahahahahahahaha
ReplyDeleteMsCaroline--I know! What on earth!?
ReplyDeleteNancy--I have seen that in various places as I travel, usually with flowers and seafood and of course in NYC with pretzels. Around here, nothing like that at all. We have a ton of farmstands everywhere, several on the honor system, with a box for the money. One clever man has a slot cut into his barn so that no one can "make change."
My concern is that, at a dollar store, what would the quality of the produce be? I hope it is decent so that the people who need to grocery shop there can get fresh food.
Ortizzle--That video is MINDBENDINGLY BORING. The guy talks about some stupid stuff, and says he made the video "to commemorate the date 11-12-13." I'd feel bad for him, but four minutes about a dollar store cologne only made me want to hurt him. Why did you do this to me?
ReplyDeleteLOL. Sorry!! I guess I was thinking more about the incredible coincidence that one of these obscure colognes actually had a YouTube video. Forgot about the mind-bending boringness of it and the fact that it went on for 4 minutes!
ReplyDeleteBTW: Funny you have brought up the topic of Dollar Stores. Don't know if you saw it, but Bill Maher's end-of-show rant last Friday focused on the shrinking middle class in America and the consequent: 1.) Death of stores such as Sears, J.C. Penny, etc., 2.) Unprecedented growth of dollar stores! All of this to make the point that Congress should not be dragging its feet on raising the minimum wage, especially considering that college tuition has increased 600% over the inflation rate since 1980. I can believe it. I was able to put myself through school working at Jack-in-the-Box. It was tough, but still do-able. Nowadays... not so much.
Ortizzle--Bill Maher has made a point that makes me feel stupid. I was constantly lamenting the proliferation of Dollar Stores,and I assumed that it was just in our Cleveland metro area. Often, I think things are confined to NEO simply because the economic recovery is lagging here due to our heavy industry, with its emphasis on cars, steel, and the like. I never connected the dots, i.e. JC Penney. He's absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of college and its bankrupting of America's twenty-somethings I do rail against, and often. Kids are exhorted continually to go to college, to get the degree. Everyone is told that they are college material. The reality is that not everyone belongs in college, and not everyone can afford it. When I went to community college a hundred years ago (1977-1979), it was TEN DOLLARS PER CREDIT HOUR. Now it is one hundred fifty per credit hour. That's just junior college. You can live at home and work part time, like I did, at the bank from 1-5 every day, plus 9-12 on Saturday, and every single break.
Now, forget it. College is so ridiculously expensive that Ohio's governor passed a law that said they have to guarantee some degrees are achieved in four years only. And that some are achievable in less than four years. Colleges love to keep you there, so a lot of them were offering courses only one semester, etc. But, they have also seen their funding cut radically by this same governor.
Anyway. Between Dollar Stores and tattoo parlors, I don't know which are popping up more frequently lately. Did Bill Maher say anything about the latter? LOL.
These products are for real? Oy vey. Like the world needs more stinky people in it!
ReplyDeleteNo mention of tattoo parlors, but I just saw a fancy place in uptown D. that closed down recently. In spite of the rising popularity of tats. Of course, this just means that people are getting cheap tats. Have you seen the new program called "America's Worst Tattoos"?
ReplyDeleteOrtizzle--I am blissfully unaware as to the cost of tattoos in general although Jared, Sam, and Kait all have them, much to my chagrin. I have not seen that program. As to the popularity of tattoos, I remain mystified. It's painful, it's permanent...see what I mean? Of course you do.
ReplyDeleteAlly B--To be fair, I did not sniff any of these, and some might actually be pleasant, if fleeting. I just thought the names were hilarious.
I think tattoos can be quite pricey, depending on the size, color, and skill of the tattoo artist. I have often asked myself if I would have succumbed to the fad if I had been born in this generation. I caved on getting my ears pierced in college. But the consequences of that are hardly comparable. I can't help thinking about how these people with exaggerated body-wide tattoos will look when they are old and pruny, lol.
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