Thursday Thirteen #385

13 products Millennials don't buy. I spent more than 40 years in marketing so reading consumer research surveys is a hard habit to break. I've been fascinated by the studies that reveal adults born between 1981 and 1996 are just not that into things that have long been a way of life for old farts like me. 

Some, like calculators and alarm clocks, they consider redundant because they have always had smartphones to perform those functions. Others perplex me. There is no app that can replace beer.

Anyway, here's my by no means exhaustive or scientific list of goods and services that have not captured the hearts of millennials.

1. Alarm clocks.

2. Bar soap. 

 

3. Beer. 

4. Breakfast cereal.

5. Bulk warehouse memberships.

 

6. Cable TV.

7. Calculators.

 

8. Cruises.

 

9. Designer clothes. 

10. Fabric softener sheets.

 

11. Golf.

 

12. Paper napkins. 

 

13. Postcards.

Please join us for THURSDAY THIRTEEN. Click here to play along, and to see other interesting compilations of 13 things.

 

November Challenge: Day 6

Find the challenge here

November Challenge: Your views on mainstream music.

For the most part, I like it. I enjoy today's superstars -- Beyonce and Taylor Swift, and if I may go back a little, Katy Perry and Pink. I think it's great that young girls have such successful role models.  Of course, I'm old. I turn 67 this month. Every generation has their own music and their own self expression, and this generation's is not mine, nor should it be. (The last "new" singer that felt personally relevant to me was Amy Winehouse, and she's been dead more than a decade.)

One thing about mainstream music has always annoyed me: some feel it's fashionable to diss whoever is popular because they are popular. I find that with today with Beyonce and Taylor Swift. I know when I was a little girl in the 1960s right on through the late 80s, it was somehow cool to shit on the Beatles. I bet it was the same with Elvis and Sinatra.

There's also the "I've never even heard [Beyonce/Taylor Swift]" school. People have commented on Saturday 9 that way as though it was something to be proud of. First of all, you copied the link to this week's song, you wretched nitwit. It's on your own blog (or the post you're commenting on), and you are so lazy or think you're so above it that you can't even click on it. I hope I never become that intellectually incurious.

 

 

 Photo by Andreas Rasmussen on Unsplash.

The Morning After

John F. Kennedy, 1961

After the shock wore off, I was offended. The thought of Donald Trump sitting in the same office as Lincoln, FDR and JFK gave me a visceral shudder.

I have to believe that those giants of inclusion and eloquence still inhabit the Oval Office. I hope they can deftly influence my new President to behave like the great man the office demands.

I pray the better angels of our nature alight and land on Donald Trump.

 I originally posted this 8 years ago. I meant it then and I mean it now. I doubt President Trump would believe me, but I do pray for him ... and our country.