Miscellany

It's finally Friday of a very long week that went by at lightning speed... if that makes any sense. A very tired Wahoo. Anyhoot, in preparation for your weekend soirees, here's a bunch of cool/interesting stuff to spend 5 minutes on so that you can be sure you're the most fascinating belle (or beau) at the ball.

- As a follow up to the post I wrote a while ago about Coke's line extension run amok, Coca-Cola is now stating that Coke Zero has failed to live up to expectations. "The soda, which was supposed to be appealing to a masculine audience by way of the black and white color scheme and lack of the word "diet", accounts for less than one percent of the market to date." Of course, to all this ballyhoo, I say "duh!" If you choose to ignore the research that says that men really aren't that afraid of the word "diet" anymore and then hope some not-so-original-and-rather-drab color scheme will sell your stuff, then you might as well hire trained monkeys to hock your product on street corners. Actually, I think if I saw a monkey selling anything on a street corner I'd probably buy it. Hmmm...

- Virgin Atlantic is so over the whole metrosexual thing and knows that retrosexual is on the way out... so what do they do??? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Jetrosexual. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Actually, if you fit the following conditions, go to www.jetrosexual.com and enter their contest to win something or other. (Thanks Sam!)

- Daniel Akst writes a really good article with the rather obvious title "Looks Do Matter." Worth a thorough read. If you prefer your articles with pictures, email me and I'll add some pics for you just to get you to read the whole article.

- Men spend an average of 571 minutes per month on their cell phone while women only chat it up for an average of 424 minutes. So much for stereotypes. (Source: International Communications Research)

- On a related note, the number of US mobile subscribers has surpassed the number of US landline subscribers. Yes, Mom & Dad, you are dinosaurs for wanting to keep the landline. (Source: Rhapsody.com)

- Finally, Nike is teaming up with Run London for a campaign called "I Will Run A Year." Interesting concept. "In addition to weekly training runs in nine locations around [London] and the Nike 10K events, Nike has organized a series of timed 5K runs to help people keep running for a whole twelve months. The theme of this yearÂ’s campaign is... based on the idea that people are more likely to run if they not only set themselves a goal but, more importantly, they tell someone else about it; they make a pledge." I just think it's a neat pledge to make to yourself.