So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

Is it the same in the US, actually??
In Germany, we got a flood of the old-fashioned classic boxershorts with button-fly, this year. Everywhere you look, they offer them. In classic white, black, blue and so on. But that doesn't make any sense to me, because they could never become a serious competition to boxerbriefs, which Germany loves so much.
I'm a "suck it and see."-boy, so I bought a nice white and a black one. They are not as bad as I thought, very fine and cozy Jersey! But the classic problem of boxershorts is still there.

So, what's the marketing-boys idea??

 

[tonyb]

I’m reminded of a one-panel New Yorker cartoon from several years back.
The scene is a formal dining room. At one end of a long table sits a man, at the other end a woman. Halfway down one side sits a girl, eight years old or so. In the distance we see a woman in a maid’s uniform, headed toward the kitchen.
The caption reads: “Of course Mommy and Daddy love you. Didn’t Maria tell you?”

 

[GHT]

My only reservation about criticism of some of the more extreme salaries at the top end is this: the vast majority of equivalent private sector businesses pay much more, and put much less back into the community. Demonising the charity sector is often a deliberate distraction (not least from the fact that the news outlets which most commonly indulge in this are often disparaging charities filling in where public services have failed for want of funds..... while being themselves registered abroad any paying nothing into the UK).

That is a very accurate observation and there is a simple way of dealing with companies that are registered abroad who dodge their corporation tax, take a leaf out of Ireland's book.

When Richard Tompkins saw the Sperry & Hutchinson Green Stamps, (trading stamps,) on a trip to the US, he came home and founded the Green Shield Trading Stamp Company. It works like a loyalty card, the trader pays the stamp company two and a half percent of their turnover, the trader then gives the customer one stamp for every sixpence (two and a half pence post decimal,) the customer saves the stamps in a collection book and then redeems that, and other filled books, at Green Shield stores. Green Shield later morphed into Argos.

In Ireland, trading stamp companies never got a foothold because a turnover tax was introduced: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1963-10-30/53/
To say that it wasn't popular is an understatement, however, a lesson can be learned. If the directors of a business try to dodge their corporation tax by registering abroad, hit them with a turnover tax.

 

[Trenchfriend]

We had a pink sports bra in the lost and found the same time the thong was there, but nobody ever owned up to them. Who would wear pink and leopard-skin together anyway? Wicked tacky.

And were ever men's tangas among the lost stuff?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is Suede in the US much more expensive than ten years ago, too?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Sauerkraut...

 

[Bamaboots]

Is Suede in the US much more expensive than ten years ago, too?

TF, I can't respond to this in regards to cost, only my perceived popularity of it in the area where I live and shop. Most of the clothing stores I visit are western stores where an assortment of denim wear, cowboy boots, leather jackets and vests, work wear and such. During the holidays I may visit some of the larger dept. stores. I don't often see suede, usually in footwear and occasionally, jackets. I'm not in the market for suede so my observations are casual but I haven't seen any significant price differences in a suede product as opposed to a similar item in smooth leather. I just don't see it being worn and sold a lot, here. I don't think it has to do with cost after all, suede is a split leather with characteristics that make it unsuitable for many occasions.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
That’s about the size of it. I like the look of suede, just as I like the look of eel skin boots, but the nature of the materials render them decidedly less than practical for everyday wear, leastwise for those of us who actually get wet when it rains and occasionally can’t avoid puddles.

I once had a suede jacket I wore on a daily basis for a month or so, until the signs of that wear became so conspicuous as to leave that garment looking shabby.

 

[Bamaboots]

I once had a suede jacket I wore on a daily basis for a month or so, until the signs of that wear became so conspicuous as to leave that garment looking shabby.

Same reason I will no longer have suede or nubuck boots.

 

[Fading Fast]

Same reason I will no longer have suede or nubuck boots.

I don't think I've ever owned anything suede except for bucks and desert* boots. To your point, they show wear quickly, but - at least for bucks and desert boots - being a bit battered is part of the look. IMHO, it's the same for wrinkled linen - it's an acceptable inherent vice.


*H/T Vitanola

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Bamaboots
@Fading Fast
@tonyb

Just for fun:

Suuuuuuuuede...

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Boys will find a way to insert their greasy little manipulations into every product you buy. Not satisfied with having fully perpetuated the fiction of expiration dates on packaged foods, they're now turning their attention to the other end of the process.

Yesterday I needed to pick up a roll of toilet paper. All my life I've used Scottissue -- it's cheap, it's wrapped without a lot of extraneous layers, it has no cutesy mascots, and I like the texture. But this last roll I've bought -- and I only ever buy one roll at a time -- bears something new on the wrapper: the prominent legend ONE ROLL LASTS ONE WEEK.

I laughed out loud when I see this. One roll, a standard 1000-sheet roll, lasts me close to a month, even with my several-visits-to-the-facility-a-day habit and my generous per-visit allotment of the product. Now, next to the legend in very tiny type, is an obligatory disclaimer: "Based on average family size and usage." But the type is very tiny indeed, and in fact I didn't notice it at all when I first bought the roll. How many shoppers, who don't think about such things, are going to see the ONE ROLL LASTS ONE WEEK statement and figure, "Well, gee, I'm going to be a Smart Shoppa, and I'm going to buy several rolls! Wouldn't want to run short!" The Boys, in their infinite deviousness, are counting on this, just as I'm counting on the day, someday, that Golden Day, when the Boys get all that is coming to them.

 

[vitanola]

I don't think I've ever owned anything suede except for bucks and dessert boots. To your point, they show wear quickly, but - at least for bucks and dessert boots - being a bit battered is part of the look. IMHO, it's the same for wrinkled linen - it's an acceptable inherent vice.

"Dessert Boots"?

I'd prefer Charloette Russe myself, but each to his own taste.

 

[GHT]

Yesterday I needed to pick up a roll of toilet paper. All my life I've used Scottissue -- it's cheap, it's wrapped without a lot of extraneous layers, it has no cutesy mascots, and I like the texture. But this last roll I've bought -- and I only ever buy one roll at a time -- bears something new on the wrapper: the prominent legend ONE ROLL LASTS ONE WEEK.

A week? Is there an epidemic or what?


Did you ever have that course toilet sandpaper made by Izal? I refuse to call it toilet tissue, I remember it back in the 50's, it was probably one up from squares of old newspapers, but not by much. It was in every public lavatory in the land, and it was amusingly stamped, on every single sheet, "Government Property." Why that sticks in my memory is because I remember some witty graffiti where some wag had written: "Do you want it handed back after use?"

Something in today's newspaper caught my eye. I remember your suggestion about Maine seceding The Union and becoming a Province of Canada. Given the catch phrase of the present incumbent at The White House, it seems that you are not alone.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

One roll, a standard 1000-sheet roll, lasts me close to a month,

It will last even longer if you use both sides.

 

[MisterCairo]

Same reason I will no longer have suede or nubuck boots.

I have not owned a suede jacket since the first one I got as an 18 year old was ruined, when someone not me left a pen on the sleeve and the ink leaked. Tried to patch over it but it looked a mess.

 

[MisterCairo]

"Something in today's newspaper caught my eye. I remember your suggestion about Maine seceding The Union and becoming a Province of Canada. Given the catch phrase of the present incumbent at The White House, it seems that you are not alone. "

Hope this isn't political, but the British took Maine in the War of 1812 but gave it back as part of the Treaty of Ghent, but I for one would vote to let you back in!

 

[LizzieMaine]

And baseball will soon be back in Montreal. I'm up for a referendum on "CanEnter"

 

[Fading Fast]

And baseball will soon be back in Montreal. I'm up for a referendum on "CanEnter"

Kinda a kooky thing, but as the Rays draw so poorly in Tampa (and that stadium is such a horror show), it could be fun. What do you think?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd prefer they have a full time team, and I'd rather have it in the National League, but if it takes a weird back-door deal to get a team back up there, I'm all for it. I have very fond memories of the Expos. "John Boc-ca-BELL-a!"