(Politicians can get pretty creative when they describe the state-of-the-glass, but that’s why they take get the big bucks.)

But for me today is a really good day. I am proclaiming my “glass at least half full”. In fact it’s exactly 85% full,  and I have the numbers to prove it.

Let’s take a look at Gatorade’s Low Calorie sport drink, my current hydration choice while I work out.

Their new and improved product is the sexy, tall red bottle on the right. Meanwhile, the frumpy short, squat blue bottle on the left is what it replaced. After we overcome our excitement regarding the new package, and read the label, we discover that the new bottle’s 16.9 fl oz contents are 15% less than the old bottles 20 fl oz.

Supporting the assertion that my glass is exactly 85% full.

But rather than bitch about naked corporate greed and deception, I’d rather focus on the brilliant package re-design.

You can never be too tall, or too thin.

Somewhere in the bowels (sic) of Gatorade’s product design group is a brilliant engineer, who, when given the task of shrinking the package volume by 15%, didn’t just open Photoshop and resize the image to 85% while keeping the same aspect ratio. Which is exactly what the know-nothing, conniving-fu*k, cheap-suit executive who ordered the resize, aka price increase, would have done.

Instead the (probably young) design engineer re-imagined the product to come up with a taller, thinner, aspirational version. A drop-dead simple change, in a simple product, with brilliant results.

And at the same time increasing my cost and PepsiCo’s profit margin by 15%. I almost don’t mind.

What the packaged goods makers lack in pricing power, they can make up with sizing power.

Filed under: Luxury, Rant ]]> http://notamystery.com/2012/05/24/thinner/feed/ 0 Bob Gelber Click to Hydrate http://notamystery.com/2012/05/11/jpmorgan/ http://notamystery.com/2012/05/11/jpmorgan/#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 00:06:07 +0000 Bob Gelber http://notamystery.com/?p=9267 Continue reading »]]> As tempting as it is, I’m not going to pile on JP Morgan for their $4 Billion write-off.

Really.

I have to give Jamie Dimon credit (sic) for his candid review of the situation:

The bank’s strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored, Mr. Dimon said … He called the mistake egregious, [and] self-inflicted  …

The $4 Billion That Got Away

Back in the day when I worked for a living, and things didn’t go particularly well, the question was always whether it was FUBAR‘d because of a good strategy with crap implementation, or crap strategy with good implementation.

Once in that debate everyone involved could point fingers and run from responsibility.

So I have to admire Mr. Dimon for leaving no doubt that this particular exercise was crap from beginning to end.

Really.

As Julia Roberts said to Rufus (The Thief) in “Notting Hill” when he asked for a date,

Tempting, but no.

Since I had recently experienced AT&T’s “Troubleshoot and Resolve” up close and personal, I know first-hand that I get better answers from Siri when she ‘can’t connect’ to her server.

I finally did make AT&T trouble-free by cancelling their “service”. It felt good, and I never even thought to tell them that it was my fault we were breaking up.

Now if I could just get them to stop filling up my (real) mailbox with offers for U-Verse I’d really be one happy camper.

By the way, Rufus was played by Dylan Moran. You can instant stream his BBC series “Black Books“, on Netflix. Not to be missed, we give it 5 Stars.

This leaves out all current member of Congress; any retired members of Congress who served more than 6 years, which includes all retired Senators; and any retired member of the House who served 3 terms.  And keep in mind, ‘retired‘ just means they have quit or been voted out.

That’s because these folks enjoy their excellent Federal Employee Health Benefits, even after they leave the Congress. Unlike the rest of the Federal workforce, or those of us from the private sector who will go a lot longer than 1 to 3 terms for ‘full vesting’.

It really is a shame that we can’t all vote for our own self-interest so directly. We have to vote for those members of Congress and then wait to see what they deliver. Which, if you vote for Republicans, is not going to provide you the same safety net they give themselves.

Actually there was a glimmer of hope for a while, because when Congress drafted the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare) they did model the insurance exchanges after their own Health Insurance Plan which utilizes an exchange.

An exchange provides actual visibility into the policies offered by private insurers by ’forcing’ all companies to lay out, in a simple, common format, the details of their policy.  Then customers can actually compare the policies and prices.

As it is now, Big Insurance consider the details of the policy you purchase their proprietary information, and have successfully lobbied Republicans to back their current practices.

I know I said you couldn't make me eat my broccoli,
but you didn't tell me I'd have to substitute.

So Republicans support Big Insurance who obfuscate the cost of care, while opposing Obamacare’s exchanges that would provide transparency. Then these same Republicans go on in the next breath to blame consumers for the escalating cost of health care because we don’t make ‘more intelligent’ choices in the marketplace.

It’s comforting to know that there’s always someone smarter than the consumer.

This time it’s the Republican Party and Big Insurance.

So where’s my reach-around?

The fellow ahead of me, who I’ll call Randy, felt called upon to deliver a lecture on Obamacare and how the President is directing the government to take over our lives.  It was quite a rant, and Randy clearly seemed to think the rest of us gave a sh*t about his opinion.

C'mon Randy! Do You Really Think That
The Government Wants Into This?

Unfortunately there are a lot of folks like Randy. I won’t say they are un-informed, because they must be spending some time listening to Rush Limbaugh, or someone like him, deliver a stream of lies squeezed in between  commercials for impotence remedies and weight loss products. Instead I think that Randy is just mis-informed.

What Randy is too stupid (sorry) to get is that Republicans have done a head fake and set up proxy arguments that appeal to voters just like him, scoring political points instead of solving the problem. So we wind up in an echo chamber filled with mindless slogans, like the Tea Partiers parading in front of the Supreme Court holding up signs saying “Don’t Tread On Me”.

Give me a break, 60% of these people don’t think that Medicare is a Government Program.

The media have played the part of enablers, because the truth is very complicated (as in boring), and they don’t want to lose their audience.

So here are the simple facts:

• The health care system in the USA is broken. Everyone agrees with that, the debate comes down to how we fix it.
• Conservatives want to get the government completely out, running it like a free market letting supply meet demand.
• Liberals want a single-payer system, with everyone guaranteed access to quality care.

For lots of reasons the Affordable Health Care Act, aka ‘Obamacare’ has given neither side what they want.

Conservatives lost the legislative battle in the Congress two years ago, but now they have chosen to challenge the law by attacking the ‘mandate’ that everyone purchase health insurance. They picked that part of the legislation to attack, because they felt that would get them the greatest chance of success at the Supreme Court. They have expanded the argument in the media ad nauseum, claiming that for Obama this is only the beginning of a government takeover.

What really gets to me is the staggering hypocracy of the Republican attack on the insurance ‘mandate’.  In fact the ‘mandate’ was created by those very same Conservatives years ago in their attempts to reform the system. Its stated goal was to force everyone to purchase health insurance and stop the ‘freeloaders’ from making the rest of us pay for their medical expenses.

And folks like Randy buy into this crap, because it’s spoon-fed to them every day and they just don’t know any better. Which wouldn’t be so bad, if they would just keep their mis-informed opinions to themselves.

Especially when I’m waiting to get my hair cut, and can’t escape.

Among my personal favorites is Sturm, Ruger & Company (NYSE: RGR) who, unlike Apple, manufacture their product in the USA. In fact they manufacture so much of it, they have stopped taking orders for the next few months so they can catch up with production.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Better yet, to my way of thinking, in this case President Obama can take credit for the health of their business.

America is arming itself to the teeth.  Ruger has had to suspend new orders after taking orders of over 1 million guns in the first three months of 2012 alone.  People are buying guns and ammo by quite literally by the truck load in anticipation of an election year that many individuals fear to tread on their Second Amendment rights.  Gun enthusiasts fear that President Obama is heading for a reelection, after which could mean tighter restriction regarding ownership and possession of a firearm.  The same fear was prevalent in 2008-2009 after Obama initially won the presidency.

- Motley Fool  3/23/12

All is not lost for Apple.

When we put out the rumor that Obama is  going to take away all of our iPads when he gets re-elected, the sky is the limit.

You try to write a blog post about it.

But you quickly discover that your description is pathetic. The post keeps slipping through your fingers and you feel like an illiterate fool.

So this is not that blog post.

I’ll call this a note to self.

“Going Home” is the first song on Leonard Cohen’s new album “Old Ideas”. Cohen sings about the part of himself that he shows to the world. Paradoxically (or not), in the process of describing his public persona he reveals much about his inner self.

Who is the master and who is the slave emerges as a disturbing unknown, it strikes very close to home.

Here is the opening of their conversation.

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit.

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn’t have the freedom to refuse.

Not only are the words haunting, but Cohen’s delivery is mesmerizing.

After wrestling with this post and losing consistently, I have accepted that I can’t write crap about art. So instead, I decided to add some value by doing a bit of research on the back-story to the lazy bastard who plays such a prominent role in the song.  Here’s what I discovered.

In “I’m Your Man“ there’s a short section of one interview with Cohen in which he talks about his father, who was a haberdasher, and how Cohen himself got into the habit of wearing suits instead of jeans when he performs. I’ve created this little clip for your viewing pleasure.

In point of fact though, what I like even more than Cohen’s suits are his hats. Here’s just one example.

Come for the suit, and go home with the hat.

Thanks to “Going Home” I’m spending some time now trying to figure out how I would describe my own lazy bastard self. This is going to take some real courage, and that’s for sure.

This from my inbox, where I am being Congratufuckinglated for having the IRS Accept my return.

But let’s be careful to not shoot the messenger. During the Tax Season TurboTax is my God. It stands beside me against the steaming pile of excrement that is the US Tax Code. It is my Wingman, my Band of Brothers, my Joan of Arc, my John Galt.

Why are we beside ourselves with pride that we have persevered against the IRS and gotten them to accept our return? It’s because their computers have all the ‘correct’ answers to the quiz, and it’s our job to match our numbers with theirs. Which is not simple. So when we succeed, congratulations really are in order.

I am totally chuffed.

Instead of depositing my savings in their institutions (for which I get essentially zero interest), they are steering me towards the bank’s common stock, promising several percentage points of yield and price appreciation.

And they can do this because a few days ago the Federal Reserve published the results of their latest Stress Tests and we learned that

… lenders set almost $24 billion in common stock buybacks and $3.9 billion in annualized dividend increases after passing Federal Reserve stress tests…

They could have used the Fed’s regulatory relief to increase the interest they pay on savings accounts, but instead want us to get in bed with them as investors.

Something to consider, if I was sure they would throw in a reach-around.

Why would a recluse turn out to be a better citizen than your typical politician?

Aside from what’s obvious about politicians, the answer is in the Dunbar Number.

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships … It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150.

Once you fill up your relationship quota, everyone else becomes sort of like an object. No empathy for strangers.

Our typical recluse will have lots of room for new friends. Not so the politician, who has already gone over quota in the pursuit of donors.

Take it from me...

Who do you suppose will bullsh*t you more, a recluse or a politician?