Whiter Teeth for All

 The right use of leisure is no doubt a harder problem than the right use of our working hours. The soul is dyed the color of its leisure thoughts. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.


 -  William Ralph (Dean) Inge

One's soul may be dyed by one's thoughts, but the color of one's teeth is another story.

I recently had an amazing marketing inspiration for an innovative new sure-fire consumer product destined to make money for an adventurous investor. However, being a) lazy; b) capable of shame; and c) not interested in pursuing a career in the lucrative and rewarding field of lying to consumers to manufacture needs, I here generously share my product invention to pay it forward to  some other enthusiastic budding entrepreneur seeking the American dream of striking it rich without having to sell a kidney.

The product:  tooth-whitening dots. Not gel in trays, not whitening strips. Just tooth-sized adhesive dots coated with tooth-whitening chemicals.

The target market:  consumers who lack basic dental hygiene skills, those without premium dental insurance benefits; those who live in remote swamps without access to a dentist but with basic cable TV. My exhaustive imaginary in depth market research shows that a substantial subset of this demographic (mostly those who have yet to develop type II diabetes and/or those who have lost their prison dentures) have some semblance of self-esteem, and seek to preserve what remains of their looks by whitening their remaining tooth/teeth, but who are cost-conscious enough that they don’t want to spend the money for a product like a strip that would have to bridge gaps left by missing or hopelessly misaligned teeth, thus wasting a substantial portion of expensively bleach-impregnated product.

Marketing strategy: Simply advertise on a carefully chosen subset of reality TV shows. Most people who play recurring roles on reality programs that showcase the worst examples of American behavior  - from repossessing cars, to fishing with your fist, to celebrating the excesses of the hillbilly trailer trash lifestyle, have fewer than the typical 28-32 adult teeth the rest of us evolved with. Not only is the demographic who watches these shows ideally self-selected for the product, the badly behaved starring "celebrities" with missing teeth could endorse the product thus giving it even more cachet. By positioning this product in the market to whom these increasingly shameless reality shows pander - such as, the Real Housewives of Shady Cove Mobile Estates, or Championship Bum Fighters, or My Big Fat Jersey Swamp Redneck Shotgun Wedding - this idea can’t miss.

You can thank me later. 

So That Happened

“Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.”

Chuck Palahniuk

I've been feeling like crap lately.

If life is indeed a carnival, then currently I’m behind the tent where you throw ping-pong balls into goldfish bowls barfing up the cotton candy and chocolate covered bacon I ate earlier.