I'm Going To Be Rich

What's Playing in my Head: "Message In A Bottle", by The Police

Quote of the Day: "Health nuts are gonna feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." - Redd Foxx

Occasionally, now that I'm living in the Greater Cowtown Area (TM), I'll meet my girlfriend for lunch in town. Today, we happened to go to the Italian place over in Barracks Road, Casella's. Which has pretty good food, and most importantly, no waiting in line. It received thumbs-up from both of us.

On the way out of the joint, we stopped in to Bath and Body Works, as she wanted to get some $10 body wash that smells like sugar or ice cream or newborn puppies or whatever. So I tagged along, being that I had time on my lunch hour to kill, and I know what's good for me.

Being a guy in Bath & Body Works is like being a bull in a china shop, or maybe a gay guy in a Republican convention. Either way, you're horribly out of place, and every eye in the joint is on you. I actually am quite amazed that there isn't a breathalyzer at the door that checks your estrogen level before actually allowing you to enter the place. Too much testosterone, and you have to wear a scarlet letter or maybe a radio collar so that the dressed-up sales chicks will know that you're a prime target for their new $35 celery-kumquat-passionfruit elixir facial scrub gel mask. (And did you know that if you buy three, you get one free?)

I would hate shopping on my own in Bath & Body Works, which is why I don't. Two reasons for this. One is that guys are simple. Soap is S-O-A-P. It is cheap and plentiful. It does not require a special soap store from which all soap must be purchased at exceedingly high prices. The soap store for guys is called CVS, or Target, or maybe Harris Teeter. They do sell soap there. I've seen them do it.

The second is that even if you could convince me to pay $10 for soap, Bath & Body Works seems to change their actual product lines every five minutes. You walk in there, try to get a bottle of lavender honey milk body wash for your girlfriend, and they're all "Yeeaah...We don't make that anymore. But try our new geisha fresh silk body wash with oolong tea extract...Whoa, too late. How about..."

This one big upside of this trip into $10 Soapland was that I have finally figured out The Greatest Business Idea In The History Of Western Capitalism. This resulted from the following exchange between me and my girlfriend, The Dazzling Brunette:

DB: You disappeared while I was at the register.
ME: They had pumpkin-scented body scrub in there. I was looking at it.
DB: Did you like it?
ME: No. I don't want to smell like pumpkins. I want to smell like a guy.
DB: What's a guy supposed to smell like?
ME: I don't know. Barbecue? Ribs?
DB: Ewwww.
ME: I could bottle it, like cologne - Real Man Scents (TM). Now that'd be worth ten bucks. Or fifty.
DB: I don't want to smell you smelling like barbecue.
ME: What about popcorn?
DB: That's disgusting.
ME: Okay, chocolate. Chocolate! You can't get enough of that.
DB: ...

Like the title says.