Business Model

I was stuck in Newark for over an hour this afternoon, waiting for the train to come home, and... well, I don't know about you but I tend to get a bit uppity sitting in that shithole train station with nothing to do. Finally the train pulls in and I pick a seat and — by the way, I never, ever do this unless I'm trying to look cool — I selfishly stretched my legs across the row of seats, like they were my own personal sofa. Never mind the big, unmissable flashing signs on the train Please keep your / Feet off the seats.

Screw it, I thought. I look cool like this, even if the seats aren't wide enough for me to fully extend my legs so I'm sort of in a fetal position with the hard plastic armrest digging into my spine. But what'll I do if the Man, the big bad "any ticket purchases on this train will be assessed a five dollar surcharge" conductor comes by and tries to kill my buzz, makin me put my feets down like he be teachin me Sunday school. (Did that make any sense?)

Here's what I'd do: I wouldn't even look up at him and I'd just mutter under my breath, "Bite me."

No, what I'd actually do is put my feet down sheepishly, and then feel like a wuss. But at least I'd put them back on the seat once the conductor left.

So what I was thinking is that I need a way to say bite me to the world without actually having to say bite me. And out of that was born my brilliant marketing idea: t-shirts with messages that tell everybody looking at you where they can shove it. We already have bite me, but how about here's a finger for you and i'm looking at you but i'm seeing crap and short and to the point fuck everyone. The target market would be jaded post-graduates who haven't outgrown their teen angst yet.

I figure this way, instead of physically telling the conductor to bite me and opening myself up for a witty retort, I could just point to the shirt. If the line really took off, we might even extend it to, say, hats with the inspirational message read the shirt. Then I could point to the hat when getting hassled by authority figures.

I'm seeing a whole new trend of Goth kids coming to school with black nail polish, black eyeliner, their wardrobes a convoluted diagram of pithy insults, rants, and disaffected poetry about death and how fake everyone is. Man, that would really show the establishment.