While in Boston, I was hoping to be abused by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

The Smoking Gun has a hilarious series on these surly tolltakers, including the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. But if you're really brave, try the New Jersey Turnpike.

Amazing!

Our town recently voted to allow liquor sales. Texas is weird in that there are no uniform laws regarding liquor sales. Some counties are "dry", and some cities in "wet" counties are "dry". I can email you a diagram if you are confused.

So, when the people of our town voted to join the twenty-first century and allow beer and wine sales (and therefore drastically reduce the traffic on roads leading to neighboring Plano and The Colony at 8:30 p.m.), some of the local establishments were anxious to jump on the revenue bandwagon.

Our local Albertson's cleared out the pet aisle shelves about a week ago to make room for wine and beer aplenty from around the world. I don't know that anyone is aware of the sign which remains suspended from the ceiling and the paw print decals on the floor, which, judging from the size, were made by a large bear.

So I'm a marketing guy, and generally speaking, I love a good marketing gimmick--heck, I'll call myself a sucker and shell out the extra bucks for something if it has a good enough slogan/message/pitch.  But one thing that never ceases to amaze me, and annoy me, is all the "extreme" crap they throw my way.

I suppose it all started with the X-Games, kinda like the Olympics for skateboarders (funny, I thought the Special Olympics covered most of that crowd).  As far as I can tell, the only reason anyone watches that schlock is pretty much the same reason people watch bullriding--you really want to see the morons that participate get hurt, badly.

But then the "extreme" label spilled over onto seemingly normal consumer goods.  Simple things like carbonated beverages and Corn Nuts have gone "extreme" these days...heck, last time I tried to purchase Gatorade, I found something like 5 varieties of orange gatorade--Original, Extreme, Fierce, Riptide...can't remember the fifth one, I'm sure it was something else "extreme," like Serial Killer Orange or something.

Now hopefully you've stuck with me this long--after all, this is my first ever post to a blog, and I'm several Grey Gooses into the evening--but I saw something recently that totally took the cake as far as "extreme" marketing goes.  There it was, right in front of me at Costco--Xtreme Citrus.  Now, as you look at this picture, you may try to figure out what's so freakin' extreme about these oranges.  Well, I was there in person, and I couldn't figure it out either.  I mean, they weren't extremely orange--just regular old orange.  They weren't extremely large, small, shiny, hard, soft...as far as I could tell, these were just plain old oranges.  But somehow, they were "Xtreme."

I wonder, back in my days of youth soccer, what would have happened if we'd have had Xtreme Citrus orange wedges to eat at halftime, rather than just those plain old orange wedges we ate.  Would we have come out of the half full of crazy animal fury and just decimated our opponents?  Or would we all be in rehab today as we near our 30th birthdays...

Me, I take great pride in knowing that I have never, and will never, purchase anything Extreme.  I will, however, thanks to a fantastic bargain at the Fiesta market, continue to live the High Life....