Necessity is the mother of invention, niche marketing is the mother of greeting cards

...And today is Mother's Day. I know this because I, like most red blooded American heterosexual males, spent a portion of Mother's Day Eve at the mall picking out the gift and card combo. Now the gift was easy, I'd like to say she hinted around at what she wanted but it was more or less a point blank demand. Fine, gift's in the bag. The time consumer, without fail, is the card. I challenge anyone that proclaims Shakespeare as a great writer to point to any greeting cards he ever came up with, because based on the literary defacation out there (that means word poo, try to work it into conversation), it strikes me as a thing that must be very hard to do.

Seriously, it's not an art where you can get stoned and listen to Phish for inspiration. You basically have to be the most effusive person in your group of friends, then work out every way imaginable to say "Happy Birthday" to them one hundred times a year. And variety they have. Once again, very little of it is good, but there's a variety in the types of crap they offer. Now there's French, German, and (my favorite) Braille cards. Now, it might sound a bit jaded, or callous, but I have to ask why they went to the effort of putting a lot of visuals on the BRAILLE card. It could pretty much be plain white, or even composed of scraps of recycled other cards, as long as the bumps work out who would ever know? It's like putting a nice sound system in the car of a deaf guy, sure it gets him street cred, but he doesn't know if he's bumpin' 50 Cent or Wang Chung.

The next thing I came upon in the ever increasingly fragmented greeting card section was the aunt-half-step-daughter-grand-neice Mother's Day cards. Seriously, who is that for? You spend a pant load of money on developing these things, hit .05% of the population, and waste time doing it to seem like a comprehensive company, when all you really need to do is take the MadLibs approach. "Here's wishing you a happy __________(holiday or occasion) my dearest ________(kin related pronoun)". Bam, done, you've officially created the most flexible card ever.

And finally, I walked upon a section of cards that clearly weren't for me. It took me a minute to realize but all the characters on the cards were African American cartoons. It seemed strange at first, but I quickly realized that it was desperately needed. Who wants to give a card with some cheeky cracka on it, unless you yourself are a cheeky cracka? Nobody that's who. Except maybe as the occasional joke to the guy who can't dance. The concept was fine, the name of the cards however, I take issue with. They're the Hallmark Mahogany Series. That's right, Mahogany. Why is it that we always describe African American targeted media like darkly colored wood? Seriously. What's the deal? I know for damn sure I don't want to go in Hallmark and pick out some White Oak greeting cards. But it's alright for black people to have to put up with this? "Hey Ebony magazine is doing well, it's clear that black people want a wood they can identify with." "Great idea, while we're at it let's hit the Native American crowd too, I have a card line in mind called Redwood Greetings, now if I could only reference buffalo hunting somehow... hmm, I'll get back to you on that one Chaz." What. The. Hell. Can we please just integrate the cards before we get to the point of having "Brown Sugar" Newspapers, and "Vanilla" Lisa Frank stickers?

One last thing, you may have noticed my "Top Five / Bottom Five" list off to the right. I figured I would jump on the ranking people bandwagon that Rob so bravely pioneered. Except unlike Rob and his "I-trade-love-for-comments" stance, I intend to be completely arbitrary and often contradict myself. I think I'll have fun with it, but if it becomes too much of a hassel I'll just delete it like so much StrongBad email.

- Scott