Malbela.com

Dear AXE Deodorant,

I have used your products for quite a while. I greatly dislike traditional stick deodorants and was pleased when I first discovered your body sprays.

My personal favorite scent has long been Kilo, though my introduction to it involved the can going off in my hand at the grocery store. My eyes were suddenly bloodshot since I had basically maced myself on Aisle 6 of the Food Lion. I immediately made matters worse by saying “God, I got Kilo up my nose.” The police officer who happened to walk down the aisle at that time was not amused.

The hair triggers on those old cans were a bad thing. I greatly appreciated it when you redesigned the can with a safety. The need to slide the button up in order to engage it kept me from wasting cans of AXE in the bottom of my gym bag.

Recently you redesigned your cans again. Now, instead of pressing a button or sliding the button up and then pressing it, I must slide down a large plastic ring and then press the button. Sadly the button can be pressed while the ring is in the up position, returning me to the original problem I had with your product: wasted product due to the button being pressed accidently.

That is not to say the new package is bad. It does have some entertainment value as it takes an unfamiliar person a few moments to discover how to access the product. The fact is, I tend to use your product first thing in the morning, when I’m not generally in the mood to solve puzzles. Will the next package redesign involve a Rubik’s Cube or perhaps some sort of incendiary device?

I have purchased three bottles of AXE Kilo bodyspray since the new package design. It is not that I use a lot of your deodorant, I’m not an extremely odorus or sweaty person. The problem is that each of the cans I have purchased has been defective. The nozzle of each of the three bottles is partially blocked by the housing it is in. This results in the spray being blocked and going everywhere.

Since I have tried your new package design, I find that I get far more of the product on my hand than I do my armpit. I notice your new package states that AXE is an all-over bodyspray. Is this a sly reference to the fact that I have absolutely no control of when and where your product will end up?

I recently learned that your product was developed in South Africa. I am sure, much like Apartheid, that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Best of luck in the future,
Robert Mungo

The new IT building doesn’t face the rest of campus. That’s just one thing you notice when you walk up to it. It’s facing away from the main part of campus, toward the still unfinished bookstore. I sat in the computer lab this morning, editing an ad for the paper and watched the rain slide down the walls and into the vacant windows of the building.

The IT building is nice. There is lots of light colored wood, chrome, and polished steel. Every computer in the building is black with large monitors. The floors are all either tiled or nice neutral carpets. There are lots of windows.

The whole place has the feeling of a major call center that hasn’t installed the phones yet. Sort of a ‘Sweden Meets Bangalore’ type of feeling.

But there’s a lot of things wrong with this new building, as there are with many new buildings. The bricks on the outside weren’t up to snuff and large sections have had to be repeatedly ripped out and redone. There stairwell seems to hide, most people can’t even find it, stuck in one back corner. There is still scaffolding around the outside of building, blocking the view. The roof leaks in every classroom on the 5th floor. Perfect for the multimedia lab.

Then there are the bathrooms.

The bathrooms are something special. There are five stalls in the men’s rooms. FIVE. Women won’t understand this, but men are going “Five? Why so many!?”. Men’s rooms usually get a couple of stalls, one of them handicap. A couple of urinals. That’s it. 5 stalls and several urinals is strange to men. We’re used to getting the… (sorry, I’ve got to)… shitty end of that stick.

What’s even more amazing about these restrooms is that everything is done with electronic sensors. There’s no need to dirty your hands touching faucets or handles. The toilets and urinals flush when the sensor is unblocked, the faucets turn on when you put your hands underneath. Seems like it’d be a nice clean restroom… right?

This morning I walked into this nice new bathroom & pushed open the first stall door. Wrapped in plastic like a christmas present. This is the sanitation staff’s sign for “Will react like Old Faithful if flushed”.

I pull the door closed again.

Next stall.

Someone has urinated all over the seat, the wall, the toilet paper holder, the floor. And they didn’t flush.

Wait… they didn’t flush? How…

I don’t question it. Next Stall.

… Oh.
… My.
… God.

What happened? This is disgusting! Even thinking about it hours later makes me a little ill. But how did they get away without flushing?

There are some sort of Gastronomic Gymnastics going on in there. The Swedish Judge must be involved somehow. That’s the only way I can figure out they were able to use the facilities and not flush. I normally have a problem keeping the thing from flushing while I’m using it. Breathe a little and suddenly you’re on a bidet.

Well, however it works out… I hope we won the gold medal.

Oh, and consider more fiber.

Is it just me or does Pat Tillman look a little too much like Jesus in this picture?

And yes, I know he was apparently an atheist.

Is it just me or does the new Iraqi™ flag look like it was designed with the color swatches from a Donald Duck character study?

$&*(&#@^?

N’est-il pas plein d’humour que le pr

Well, since so many of you have demanded that I write about the presidential visit, I’ve finally decided to break down and write it.

The day was long. I mean, it seemed to drag on for at least a week. Waiting in line was fun though, because everyone was basically heckling the president.

<Robert>: Doors open at 7:45, arrive by 9… I wonder who the opening act is?
<Brian>: GWAR!
<Robert>: And on the second stage?
<Rachel>: Rage Against the Machine, duh.

We finally get in, but not before I get the wand twice. I think that woman with the wand liked me, because she got awfully fresh with that thing. Of course Rachel had helped me out by loading me down with her cigarette case & lighter in line, so they probably thought I was trying to use second hand smoke to give the President cancer.

Before we even get into his speech, I’ll go ahead and get his mispronounced/misused words out of the way. Some of them may have simply been his accent. And for the record, I pronounce nuclear the exact way he does.

Desirest/Desirist

Could possibly be a person who desires or a phrase used to describe the state of being most desirable. (Actually appears from the transcript to be the words ‘desires’ and ‘to’ drawled together)

gooderer

The state of being even gooder than gooder. see also ‘bestest’ (more than likely was ‘good, er, er’ as he tried to remember his next line)

entourage

different pronunciation, same word. George, it’s not ‘on-tour-ugh’… I can’t help you with this one.

Of course I know that I shouldn’t pick on him about the way he speaks, since I speak quite less than perfectly myself… but it’s so much fun!

I sat in the seventh row, with a direct line of sight with the president. It was kind of amazing to be that close to the man who’s running the country. He had some interesting points, but of course I didn’t agree with most of them. In fact many of the people in the crowd, most of whom were Republician seemed to be heckling Bush before, during, and after his speech. I don’t personally like the man, but I feel sorry for him that he’s become so universally disliked, especially when it’s obvious that he’s little more than the spokesman for a giant political machine.

And he didn’t help himself much at our school when he started calling us by another school’s name. We’re wondering how long it’ll be before Dr. Zeiss changes our name to PCC, after all, we have Presidential backing for the change now.

(And for you web designers out there… Why is the White House website not valid HTML (no doctype or encoding set either) or even Section 508 valid?)

Maybe this is the best way to handle the ‘Gay Marriage’ situation.

I personally feel that if marriage is going to be defined as a religious term, that it has no place within the law. Make everyone have a Civil Union as the actual contract between two persons of any sex and allow those who want a marriage to have it performed in the religious ceremony of their choice or not.

Of course, this won’t please anyone in the religious right who also swear that our Founding Fathers were good Christians. They weren’t in the modern sense, they were deists. And if you’d really like to piss the right off, mention the fact that we’ve more than likely already had one gay president.

But am I really supposed to believe marriage is sacred?