LMNOP

This is the new Pepsi can:

However, I believe the design is more like:

1. One of those grocery store bouncy balls that smell like a hospital (particularly the one pictured in the bottom right of the set below)

2. The Obama logo ("Yes, we Pepsi Can"

3. The logo of a cheaper, generic cola

Big, masculine electronic stores can be scary.  Wood paneling can help.

At least, that appears to be the theory behind the design and marketing of Colorado's newest Best Buy store, which opened earlier this month in Aurora and was designed to attract more female customers.  According to this article, here are some of the features of the new store:

Finally, a Best Buy that caters to women!  I am so tired of all the masculine Best Buys in my area, with their cold, impersonal displays and male-centered design.  I mean, it's ridiculous!  Recently, it has gotten to the point where if I want to go pick up the latest Celine Dion album, Hello Kitty camera, or pink iPod, I have to navigate through rows of scary, confusing metal shelves and treacherous gray carpets to do so.  I am thrilled that Best Buy has finally addressed this problem.

What I don't understand is, why did the Aurora Best Buy stop at just these small changes?  I think they missed a big opportunity to be even more female-friendly.  Take this "private room for new mothers."  I've never had a kid myself, but my guess is that new moms are pretty busy and might not have time to go shopping for electronics--that is, unless they can give birth INSIDE Best Buy!  A Best Buy Birthing Suite--think of the possibilities!  "Walk in with a placenta, leave with a plasma," promotion, anyone?

Best Buy also needs to step up the training they are giving their employees.  "More eye contact" is just a tiny start; in addition, I think Best Buy they should learn to do all sorts of female-friendly things, like hand out tissues to ladies who might get teary-eyed when they catch a glimpse of the DVD box for Stepmom, or offer us Tic-Tacs if we do smart things like understand what the computer salesman is telling us.

In short, Best Buy, I think you're off to a good start, but you could do much more to make women like your store.  Feel free to steal a couple of my ideas.

Iiiiiiiit's liiiiink time!

• Up for debate: 10 Uniquely '80s Foods.  I don't know how something (e.g. Gushers, which I still buy all the time) can be uniquely '80s if it's still available today, but the list is worth a look anyway.  It's where I found that rad Capri Sun ad.
• Entire blog of sad finance faces.  (Thanks, Matt)
• The Tyson's Corner Mall Santa has been replaced.
• Sad shark.
• Incredible surfing rats!
• Life is hard when you get out of rehab--even if you're an elephant.
• Totally sweet group costume idea!

If you could be anyone from this vintage Capri Sun ad, who would you be and why?

Age: 9 mos.

Cuteness level: Heightened

Om: nom nom nom

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Well, that was a week.  Links:

• Really cool pictures of the sun
• Good God: "A new father has secretly named his baby girl Sarah McCain Palin after the Republican ticket for president and vice president.  Mark Ciptak of Elizabethton put that name on the documents for the girl's birth certificate, ignoring the name Ava Grace, which he and his wife had picked earlier . . . Ciptak, a blood bank employee for the American Red Cross, said he named his third child after John McCain and Sarah Palin to "to get the word out" about the campaign."  Seriously, dude?  To get the word out?  Get a freaking bumper sticker.
• Also from the Department of Ridiculous Name Changes: "The former Jennifer Thornburg — whose driver's license now reads Dissection.com, Cutout — wanted to do something to protest animal dissections in schools."  Again: bumper. sticker.
• See how good you are at eyeballing things.  I got a 6.36.
• Well, that's something I wouldn't have guessed: "Space smells like fried steak and hot metal according to astronauts so NASA has paid a chemist to recreate the odours on Earth."  Gross.

Enjoy the weekend, and don't change your name to anything stupid.

Hot tip: the language section of Snopes.com is sorta sweet.  I was alerted to this fact when a friend e-mailed me with the startling information that the phrase many of us wrongly understand to be "just desserts" is actually "just deserts."  Read the Snopes explanation here.

Further perusal of the site reveals more linguistic fun; for example, have you ever heard of the (non-) word "dord?"  And did you know that nobody really knows how the Crips got their name?