Does this piss you off as much as it does me? Plus a great joke

I’ll explain what the picture’s about in a minute. First though, a moan and a warning.

Dodgy sales people for years used a technique called bait and switch.

They would offer you something free or very cheap to lure you in, then sell you something expensive.

The best known example when I was first a creative director back in the ’60’s was John Bloom who used this technique to sell washing machines, fridges, dishwashers and even holidays in Bulgaria. (I rather suspect a holiday in communist Bulgaria was no holiday – I visited Varna for a day in 1980. Great wine and that was about it.)

Eventually Bloom went broke and moved to Los Angeles, opening a very successful medieval theme restaurant called 1520 AD. I think he runs a piano bar in Mallorca now.

People on the internet use this bait and switch technique it every day, especially the phoney “gurus”. But the people who really annoy me are such as Norton and File Cure who offer you free help, then say there are hosts of nasty bugs in your machine, nearly all if not all of which are quite harmless, before selling you their programmes.

As an aside, Dr. Harlan Kilstein wrote this the other day about the people who promise to make you rich “automatically”:

“Have you ever noticed that the gurus are out with a new program so often.

I was once in a guru meeting where someone explained it:

We launch a product.

We make a few hundred thousand.

We party for a few months and blow all the money.

We start all over again”.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Anyhow, here’s the joke that goes with the picture.

The wife and I were sitting around the breakfast table one lazy Sunday morning.

I said to her, “If I were to die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all my stuff.”

“Now why would you want me to do something like that?” she asked.

“I figure that you would eventually remarry and I don’t want some other wanker using my stuff.”

She looked at me and said: “What makes you think I’d marry another wanker?”

P. S. If you signed up for EADIM by sending Bingo to me and you weren’t just tire-kicking you need to pay the first installment by the end of tomorrow, or if you have a problem or question, please write to Chloe@draytonbird.com now.