Dirty Little Secrets
When I was in college, a friend ran the cable tv feed from outside the building through his window. We plugged it into a signal booster and piped it to our friends’ rooms through the foreign language tv network cabling, and ran cable above the ceiling tiles (so nobody would notice) to connect to our rooms. We enjoyed cable tv for a few years from that little endeavor. Nothing as scandalous as an illegitimate child, but a dirty little secret nonetheless.
There are, of course, much bigger dirty little secrets out there. They’re everywhere. Some are actually spelled out in footnotes somewhere. Others are discoverable if we’d only look hard enough. Many, I’m sure, are very carefully guarded and will never be known to anybody who is not connected to them in some way. Here are a few I can think of:
- The brand new Korean grocery store down my street offers super fresh produce at ludicrously low prices. Migrant farmers are California grocers’ dirty little secret.
- Southwest Airlines is the airline industry’s stock market darling. Their financial performance seems to do consistently well while other airlines are toppling like dominos. Are they so much more efficient at operations that they can make money while others lose it hand over fist? Southwest Airlines’ dirty little secret: They locked up fuel prices via long-term contracts a while back. In hindsight, this was a brilliant move that has contributed the most to sustaining their profitability of late, and will really impact them when the contracts expire.
- Remember Intel’s 386 chip? (yes, back before the Internet). They sold a less expensive version that did not feature a math coprocessor, called the 386SX (back then they tried to make their products SeXy. They’ve since given up). The dirty little secret: 386 and 386SX chips were actually the same- they were all manufactured with the math coprocessor function. Intel simply disabled the coprocessor on the ones they sold under the 386SX name so that they could have two pricing tiers.
- What do you picture when you think of San Diego, California? Blue skies and ocean breezes with sandy beaches warmed by the sun? Well, San Diego is frequently subject to a gloomy marine layer, which is a blanket of fog-drenched air that is several hundred feet thick and blots out the sun, leaving the area chilly and overcast.
- Ashlee Simpson is a bad singer. This was a well-known dirty little secret, and she was ultimately outed during an equipment malfunction while performing on Saturday Night Live. She joins Milli Vanili in the Lip-Synch Hall of Fame for Most Embarrassing Career-Ending Performance. Gee, between all the bad singers and fake backup bands that are there for looks and don’t really play the instruments, I guess most of pop music packaging is one big dirty secret.
- Buy a computer from Dell, then call them asking to return it for a refund. Chances are the operator will look at her computer screen and then offer you some sort of discount if you would be willing to keep the computer. Some MBA or McKinsey consultant told them that it would be cheaper to offer these rebates than to process the returns. My friend who told me about this likes to call this little secret the Dell Special Discount.
- A majority of people who have ski racks installed on their cars don’t actually use them. They are just there for show. I saw that in a survey somewhere. I guess that’s a lot of people’s dirty little secret.
That’s about all the dirty little secrets I can think of for now. Oh, and I don’t eat vegetables. Don’t tell that to anybody I know. Or to any migrant farmers.
tags :: jokes : humor : rants : secrets
19 Comments so far
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Great there go the secrets! They are secrets no longer.
thx for the comment on my blog. Welcome to waht you call the clique
By sj on 05.10.06 9:00 am
Here’s another one….the new Excedrin Migraine medicine? It’s the exact same formula as regular Excedrin.
By ABlondeBlogger on 05.10.06 12:32 pm
Did you have a de-scrambler on it too?
By jason evans on 05.10.06 5:40 pm
jack, don’t bad mouth my very talented gf ashlee man…. she’s a tough cookie, when they were booing her at the Orange Bowl, she just screamed louder…
man, i miss milli vanilli…
By dietchilicheesefries on 05.10.06 8:30 pm
lol! No longer secrets.
What am going to tell you, you wouldn’t believe. We have a neighbour who has two little boys (we know its them because of the two little boys). Now, they have a subscription to Canal+, a french cable service. We currently enjoy they’re cable at home for interference reasons i cannot comprehend. This is not the unbelievable part. This is: we switched to their the band which gives us their channel one and saw that they were watching “Little Stuart”. i love cartoons and me being the eldest, the others have to follow my choice! We sat and started watching Little Stuart then the screen freezes and there, on our TV appears “PAUSE”. We sat their staring at the TV unable to understand how in God’s name we could capture their DVD too!
Now we call them names when they switch the channel when we are enjoying something.
(We know its those neighbours because of the non-stop cartoons the two little boys enjoy watching!)
Fitèna
By Fitèna on 05.10.06 11:36 pm
3 . Sexy Intel chips? Now I’ve heard it all!!
6. That’s good to know; I’m in the market for a new laptop.
7. I guessed as much!
By ChickyBabe on 05.10.06 11:57 pm
good one:)…guess everyone has their dirty lil secrets..u knwo what u cud actually write a book…it will probably become more famous than freakonomics..”that dirty thing”
By sapna on 05.11.06 9:39 am
That sure does explain a lot! I wish I had some tidbits like that to share with humanity! But since I don’t, i’ll just tell the ones you just told and pretend they are my own
By annush on 05.11.06 2:25 pm
It’s true. They can be powerful little things.
Oh I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about SUCRETS.
By Janet on 05.11.06 5:48 pm
Apparently heroin was created by Bayer Aspirin as a cure for morphine dependency. That one really surprised me.
By Erin on 05.11.06 9:08 pm
Hi Jack ~~ Thanks for your visit. It does
seem that in India, they make a lot of
special days and celebrations. To each his own! Cheers, Merle.
By Merle on 05.11.06 11:52 pm
Dirty Little Secrets? Hmm…I have a weird one to contribute…well, we don’t have GAP stores here in Singapore, though they’d be opening a store here later in the year. I’ve noticed that some of the GAP stuff are made here right in Singapore (I know coz I patronise those factory rejects outlets that sell such similar stuff!)
So what I don’t get is: Stuff made in Singapore -> sold to an American apparel company -> sold to Singaporean consumers at American prices! And you know what? The Singaporean snob would gladly pay these prices…of course, if only she’d come down from her high horse, I would have gladly told her where to buy the same items but at a much cheaper price. :)But till that happens, the factory reject outlets is Ah Lin’s Dirty Little Secret. Ssssssh…
By Mei Lin on 05.12.06 12:11 am
Oh and Jack, have blogged ya too. Why? Well, because you are NICE. And it’s rare to find NICE people on earth anymore.
http://tanmeilin.blogspot.com/2006/05/thank-you-fans.html
By Mei Lin on 05.12.06 12:15 am
SJ: There are still many, many secrets out there. I can only uncover so many conspiracies myself.
ABB: It’s all about packaging these days. I love how we are in such a hurry in today’s society that marketing like that actually works. Or maybe we’re just naive.
JE: What could I possibly need a descrambler for?! Ohhh….I think I know what you’re thinking of. Let me guess…it starts with a “P”, ends with an “N”, and in the middle is “OR”.
DCCF: Brave but talentless is not necessarily a good combination. Someone update Paris Hilton on this also, please.
Fitèna: Wow…sounds like you are getting the feed directly off the back of their tv set, if you are seeing the channels actually change! Maybe you should surreptitiously recommend movies to them. Free movie night at your place every Friday!
CB: 3. Heard the expression “geek chic”? Yes, us nerds are everywhere. 6. Let’s hope it works in Australia like it does in the U.S. 7. No kidding. All for show. All for show.
Sapna: I’m afraid that if I wrote such a book, the sucky nature of the content would not be any sort of secret.
Annush: Feel free to repeat away! Just send the royalties in the form of a money order to my P.O. Box.
Janet: You are so funny. How’d you know I like puns?! Yep, me and math geeks. (I would be one too, except I suck at math).
Erin: So if Bayer in Germany invented it and the Afghans learned to mass produce it, does it make Afghanistan the Japanese of the heroin market?
Merle: Yes, thanks for your posts. They are really funny and I can always count on getting a laugh at your blog.
Mei Lin: Yes, don’t share that clothing secret with too many people- it’ll drive the prices up. That’s what happened at the outlets here. Much thanks for the blog salute! Mean people suck.
By Jackt on 05.12.06 1:06 am
haha i have a funny odd one.
my school (private) riggs the student leadership positions and votings. This is well known - students vote, then the teachers, headmistress and council discuss and develop the top positions.
the real secret? If you don’t attend the School Speech day(important) at the end of the year 10 - you can not get an exec position (in yr 11)
By Fatty… on 05.12.06 1:38 am
lol! I might do just that!
Fitèna
By Fitèna on 05.12.06 3:52 am
Fatty: School Speech Day! We have no such thing…in the U.S. we only have Don’t Bring Your Gun to School Day.
By Jackt on 05.12.06 7:28 am
Erm, Jack, if that’s the case, then all BOYS will have to be home-schooled.
By Mei Lin on 05.12.06 9:50 pm
Mei Lin: I think you are not seeing the forest from the trees. Guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.
By Jackt on 05.12.06 9:52 pm
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