41; massage chairs

There is either optimism or naivete at work here. I mean, how often can you actually sell one of those? Oh, sure, everyone comes in and looks at them, and tries them out, but do they ever buy?

Of course if it was your job to sell them, you'd only need to move about one a week, I figure, to still be doing well. I wonder if they're bought that quickly.

I am pondering Brookstone massage chairs. Sure, they have their own brands and labels, but really they're just the massage chairs that you go and sit in when you're tired out at the mall. Or wherever there is a Brookstone near you.

Just the other day in the mall some poor salesman was assaulting a fellow in one of the chairs for a hard sale. And when you're in the chair you really can't get out of them easily, the guy's legs were up in the air, and he was rippling like a jelly mold. He just had to sit there and get his mooch massage ruined by this sales kid's schpiel. He took a card, and when the massage was over went back for round two of shopping. I doubt Jeremy the sales kid will get a call.

You know what else is hard to sell? Steam calliopes.

When I was a kid I read a copy of a Donald Duck comic where he had to sell steam calliopes in Indian (native American) territory. Of course, being Donald Duck, he prevailed in his task and sold the calliopes to the natives. Not before a lot of pidgin English dialogue was exchanged, though.

This debate seems to come up frequently: Donald or Daffy Duck. The best scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was the piano duel between the two speech-impedimented ducks. (Impedimented? Note to self: Invent less cumbersome word to replace 'impedimented'. Perhaps 'impeded'?) Frankly, of the Disney canon, Donald is superior, not counting Scrooge. But in cartoondom in general the award goes to Daffy. Daffy is as selfish and egotistical as we wish we could get away with. No scheme is too low, and unlike Bugs' smart alecky-ness he rarely has to rely on cross-dressing to get his point across. My two favorite cartoons star Daffy.

Then again in the papers my favorite cartoons star the egomaniacs Bucky, Rat and Duke. So perhaps I'm just swayed by cartoon selfishness. After all no matter how many times Daffy's beak is blown off for smart-aleckyness he can pick it up, dust it off, and put it back on again.

So yeah. Donald and Daffy. That's what I've got. And massage chairs. Don't have, but wish I did. And man, oh man, how funny would it be to have Donald Duck try and sell you one of those chairs? I'd buy one.