It’s not just embarrassing when business writing is confusing, boring and infuriating. Poor written material also wastes valuable time, sends inaccurate messages and projects a negative impression of both the writer and the organisation. Clear, succinct and compelling reports and letters are essential for effective communication, and being able to create them is a vital business skill. Fortunately, effective writing is not a gift that is granted to the elite few who happen to find it easy, but a competence that can be learned like any other. Five tips for effective business writing Here are five basic principles that will help to communicate your message and create a strong and positive image for your organisation. 1. Create a strong beginning The most important part of any document is the beginning. If this is well written, your readers will be more likely to engage with your document straight away. But if the beginning is dull or hard to get through, the reader may decide to leave it until later - which often means that it may never get read at all. 2. Use clear, crisp, lively verbs A verb indicates doing, having or being. It does valu5able work in a sentence because it is the motor that drives our ideas. English is rich in verbs, and good writers use them to give their documents energy and momentum. Learn to choose appropriate action verbs to express what you want to say. Here are some examples of the many verbs that are available to you in English: • Adjust • Assemble • Agree • Behave • Bind • Cause • Carry out • Convert • Define • Differentiate • Discuss • Describe • Explain • Extract • Find • Follow • Hold • Identify • Illustrate • Locate • Make Obtain • Operate • Perform • Prepare • Prove • Recognise • Remove • Select • Specify • Take • Test 3. Use paragraphs and headings Paragraphs are an important part of structure. They contribute to the readability of any piece of writing by: • Breaking a large piece of text down into manageable proportions • Grouping together a number of sentences that are related to the same topic • Making the page less cluttered because they introduce some white space • Giving the reader a break • Making it clear that you are moving on from the last topic. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence. All the content in the paragraph should support that topic - answering the questions why? what? how? etc. If the paragraph contains material that doesn’t support the topic, either remove it or start a new paragraph. In any document that consists of more than a few paragraphs, headings are essential for guiding readers through the text. They make it easier to refer to particular sections and will help to ensure that your readers do not lose track of the message you are trying to communicate. It is important that your headings are consistent: • Each heading level should always look the same • Subheadings should be less prominent than main headings • Subheadings follow a clear pattern. Word and other word processing applications contain built-in styles for the various levels of headings. Using these will give you access to useful features such as automatically generated tables of contents and document outlining. 4. Make your writing flow Start new sentences and paragraphs with a link to previous text by showing the connection between the old and the new thoughts. These links move the text along briskly and keep the reader engaged. You can repeat words from the end of the previous sentence, point back to the earlier thought by restating (this; that; these; those), or start the sentence with a signal word or phrase. For example: • First • For example • In addition • But • However • Because • By contrast • Moreover • Nevertheless • Given that • Similarly • On the other hand • Likewise • Furthermore • In the first place • Secondly • As a result • By comparison • Alternatively • Therefore 5. Talk to your reader Readers will be more interested in what you have to say if you talk directly to them. It is possible to call your readers ‘you’ without being over-familiar - and the resulting tone will be warm and sincere, rather than rather cold and impersonal. Don’t say ‘Once this decision is made’; try instead ‘Once you have made this decision’. Similarly, ‘The point that must be borne in mind is this …’, is better expressed as ‘You should remember that …’. Saying ‘you’ makes readers feel that you are thinking of them as human beings. At the same time, it is a good idea to show that both you and your organisation are human too. You can do this by using the personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘we’ and ‘us’ where they are appropriate. Write, for example: • ‘I received your letter’ instead of ‘Your letter was received’ • ‘We will make a decision next week’ instead of ‘A decision will be made next week’. Finally, remember that you are writing for your reader, not for yourself. It’s all too easy - but a fatal error - to assume your audience has the same understanding of the subject, the same objectives and the same interests or priorities as you. You need to: • Recognise what readers already know (so that you are not wasting their time) • Use terms they are familiar with (so that you are not using jargon or abbreviations that they will not understand) • Pitch the style of the language you use at a level that they will find neither patronising nor overly complex. Jane Smith, Word Smiths • Do you spend a long time composing and rewriting your business messages? • Are you concerned about the accuracy and quality of what you write? • Does your team leader or manager often edit what you write? • Do readers sometimes have difficulty understanding what you are trying to say? Whether you answer yes or no to most of these questions, our one-day Effective Writing courses will make your business communications easy to read, easy to understand - and hard to ignore. Check our website for more details - .word-smiths.co.uk

What is the fastest, smartest and most reliable way between your wildest dreams and your tangible reality? …Your Intention… Never underestimate the power of your Intention. It represents the most powerful tool in your life manifestation box. Why…because that…my friend… is pure Energy! It is the divine creative Force behind all cosmic, universal and human designs. Let’s consider the two parameters its efficiency relies on… The first one is: establishing a purpose, which I call “the doing” and the second one is the intensity, which I call the “being” element. The doing is necessary for it gives the direction. It affects the trajectory of the creative Energy. The practical question is: what do you wish to achieve? The more precise your answer is going to be and the greater the path will unfold in front of you. Each stone that will be placed ahead will be part of a meaningful trail that will match your expectations. You will attract the perfect fitted piece to your journey. The second element, not the least, is the intensity. This is the focus you actually can drawn into your thoughts. The greater concentration, passion and amount of energy you will be able to surround to your intention and the greater and faster the result will appear. Coincidences won’t be coincidences but messages and divine signs that will automatically make sense. The practical question is: How much do you want this dream to come true? To be part of your reality? To be fully experienced?.… You need to engage your entire being into this process. The understanding of who you are is the key. Be aware of your thoughts, your choices, your decisions, your beliefs and more so your power… Remember that your reality always matches the way you perceive the world outside. And remember that the way you perceive the world outside always matches the way you perceive your…Self. So, now…who are you?…

Firestorm of Dragons, Michelle Acker and Kirk Dougal (ed.), 2008, ISBN 9781896944807 Here is a group of stories all about that mainstay of fantasy literature, the dragon. Welcome to the new extreme sport of dragonscaling. The object is to climb a sleeping dragon, using ropes and pitons hammered right into the dragon’s hide, and gather as many fresh scales as possible (they are a pharmacological treasure house). Naturally, the climber has to finish and get off the dragon before it wakes up, and turns the climber into lunch. Have you ever thought of a dragon as a hard-boiled 1940s detective? A woman from a world of magic is on Earth working for a veterinarian taking care of dragons. A pair of humans are captured by a dragon, but manage to escape. The young dragon wanted to keep them as pets, but, after their escape, he gets frustrated, and complains to his mother. Think of Little Red Riding Hood facing a dragon instead of a wolf. A pair of young lovers enter a cave where a great treasure is kept. They plan to take enough of the treasure to convince her father that he really isn’t after the family money. The dragon in the cave demands a high price for not eating them. The book ends with a couple of very poignant stories about the Last Days of Dragons. This is a very good bunch of stories, but the reader has to really like dragons. At least they are not the usual type of dragon tales. Fantasy readers will enjoy this one. Paul Lappen is a freelance book reviewer whose website, Dead Trees Review has over 600 reviews on all subjects, with an emphasis on small press books.

6 VITAL TIPS FOR CREATING A SUPERIOR RESUME Copyright 2000-2006 by Rita Fisher, CPRW .ResumeWritingForPros.com 1, Keep It Short Considering that initially HR personnel only spend approximately 10-20 seconds on a resume, the shorter your resume, the most desirable it is. Aim for one page. Of course, it is sometimes impossible to create such a short resume. You might have to include a second page because you have way too much information regarding your work experience, accomplishments, etc. In this case, make sure that you list the most relevant information within the upper half of the first page because that is the section that gets looked at first. This way, these important insights will surely be noticed. 2, Spelling, Spelling, Spelling It is not enough to run the word processor’s spell checker on your document. Proofread your resume at least 3 times, once backward (sometimes that is how you notice mistakes.) Remember, a sloppy presentation is almost a guarantee that your resume will end up in the circular file even if you have all the qualifications in the world. 3, Start Your Resume With A “Power Statement” Many resume writers suggest starting a resume with an objective. I object to that (no pun intended). Objectives are useless because they are self-centered. Here is a typical objective: “Challenging position in social services.” My suggestion is that you start your resume with a power statement such as: “Experienced Social Worker with 10 years of proven client counseling and support background along with enthusiasm for working with children and their families.” Whereas the objective tells the employer only what you want to do, the power statement goes further in highlighting not only the job you are seeking but also your major achievements. The power statement showcases what you can do for the company. 4, Use Action Verbs Begin your sentences with action verbs for added punch and to express a sense of accomplishment. For a FREE list of action verb, please e-mail Rita Fisher at RitaFisher33comcast.net with “Action Verbs” in the subject line. 5, Use Specifics Use specifics such as numbers, percentages, figures and facts. Example: “Exceeded sales quotas by 50% for 4 consecutive years.” Numbers stand out and communicate clearly and openly about not only the results you produced by also about what you can do for the company (can’t repeat that enough.) 6, Answer The “What’s In It For Me?” Question What every employer wants to know when reading your resume is what’s in it for them. Employers are looking for people who will solve their problems. You have to present your case accordingly. How? By answering these questions and including the answers in your resume: What kind of problems did you solve on the job? How did the company benefit from your performance? How did you do the job differently and better than the person before you did? Did you introduce a new program or system? If yes, what were the results of it? (Be specific regarding the results.) What were you most proud of in your job? What would your supervisor and your co-workers say they would miss most about you when you leave? How did you make a difference in your job? How did you affect the company’s bottom line? Did you save money for the company? How much? Did you earn money for the company? How much? Good luck to you! Go get them! Rita Fisher, an award-winning Certified Professional Resume Writer and Owner of .ResumeWritingForPros.com offers a free Job Hunt eBook ($28 value) at her site. Her work with job seekers has been mentioned in a book on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She develops powerful resumes and offers a 100% money-back guarantee on all of her resume services.

Ghost writing is a process through which the thoughts and ideas of a client is converted into his desirable words. Some people have interest in certain subjects rather than his profession, for example some doctors will be an expert in mechanical systems. The main fact is that every one should not be expert in every issue, but some people have wonderful skill and talent in some subjects rather than their profession. A ghost writer should be a person having perfect skill in all subjects, issues and proficiency in every topic. These all factors are very much essential for becoming an all round expert and a professional in ghost writing. A ghost writer should meet all the requirements of a client without the expectation of any credit on his side. Ghost writing is an activity very much similar to the selling of a patent made of hard work to another person without getting any credit to the actual creator. Ghost writers create contents or articles for other customers and the ghost writer will not put his name in the content, therefore the entire credit of the article will goes to the client. Most of the business men will depend on ghost writer in the writing of articles and contents and very few will write in their own measures. Before hiring the service of a ghost writer you should keep certain things in your mind and get some information about how the ghost writer works, the time required for him to finish a work and mainly check about the quality of his work. The better thing is to take some sample work of the ghost writer check whether his style of work matches with your requirement. Ghost writer should be capable of satisfying your requirements and if you are unhappy with their work they will have to re-write the work. Usually celebrities and public figures will use the service of ghost writers to write their memories and biographies as ghost writers will write the content and give all the rights of his writing to the client. Ghost writer are very much popular in political venues as the political leaders are busy about various things and they will not have time to respond to the letters they receive. The political readers will hire the service of a ghost writer for writing reply letters for the letter they receive. Ghost writing is an interesting field for those people full of knowledge, experience and wisdom and like to communicate their creative thoughts and ideas to the world. The only problem for such persons is unavailability of time this will leads to misplaced or absent punctuation, grammatical mistakes etc as their writings are done in hurry. Those writers who produce articles, contents, press release or other writings on behalf of other people is called a ghost writer and they will handle all the rights of his writings to the buyer. Since ghost writing is essential for constant promotion and marketing business men and large companies will obtain the services of a ghost writer. Resource box Isabel Paull offers professional services in Ghost Writing. You can check out his website at .seocontentwriters.com

As I discussed last time, nearly any author or publisher can promote a book to bestseller status. All it takes is a little patience, a good plan, and a whole lot of following up on the details. Since every book is different, and there are many market niches, it is impossible to use a “one size fits all” approach to book promotion. However, there are some strategies that work for most authors, most of the time. We’ve already talked about focusing on one market, looking like you are in the business, and sharing your story. So, here are the other two ways we’ve used again and again to promote books. 1. Use direct marketing Mark Victor Hansen said “In book marketing, 95% of the work comes after the book is printed. Mark recommends that you build an information empire by treating the book as a product that needs to be marketed. Every book should have a web site, and every author should have a mailing list. On the web site, make sure that you offer bonus information or extra materials to everyone that signs up for your newsletter. Selling a book may or may not make you rich. Building a mailing list of people interested in your topic, can create ongoing wealth. We have authors who break even on book sales, they are using the book as a lead generator, getting more people on their mailing lists, because the list is so profitable on the back end. Once you understand that your book is a product, you realize you are open to whatever works to sell a product, a “bounce back” coupons, premiums, direct mail or even yellow page advertising. Build a list, and you’re building an empire. 2. Use Endorsements and Testimonials A reader should expect to get value from your book, but with all the hype in today’s market they’ll have trouble believing you and your book cover description. That’s why endorsements and testimonials are so powerful. Hopefully, you have a foreword, along with endorsements for your book. Put them on the inside and outside of your book. These can be repeated on your web site, and in your other direct marketing. But don’t stop there. Approach others to get endorsements, reviews and testimonials. Encourage them to post a testimonial on Amazon, or another online service and give you permission to reprint them. You’ll find that most people are happy to recommend or write favorably about your book. And once do, they tend to be more open to other things, like an announcement to their own mailing list or joint venture. Using all five tips discussed in both articles will certainly create more buzz, increase sales and build your reputation. Apply the five, repeat them often, and make sure you keep each going.. adding more marketing as you go. When you do, you will see results.

If you are using articles to promote your business then I don’t need to tell you that including the URL to your website in the resource box at the end of your articles represents payment for the hard work involved in writing and submitting those articles. But, if you’re including just one URL, instead of the two allowed my many article announcement sites, then your reward could come in the form or orange juice instead of champagne. One of the first rules of marketing, which applies whether you’re writing sales copy or an article to promote your business, is to give your reader one simple message and, having delivered that message, to clearly ask that reader to take one single action. For this reason, people often believe that your article resource box should contain just one single call to action and, accordingly, just one single URL link. And I would agree wholeheartedly, if it were not for one simple thing - the search engines. Yes, article marketing is indeed about getting your message out to as wide an audience as possible so that they can read it and, hopefully, click through to visit your website. But it is also very much about getting your article posted on websites across the internet and building links to please the search engines - particularly Google and Yahoo. Now the subject of building links to please the search engines is a little beyond the scope of this short article, but I’d like to give you just one example of why I believe that you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t add a second link to your resource box. Suppose your article is posted on a website and that the page containing your article has a PR (Google Page Ranking) of say 4, which is derived from a points score given to the page by Google. For a PR4 page this scores could fall anywhere within a fairly broad range, but might for the sake of illustration be 3000 points. This page, through your resource box link back to your website will pass some of that PR to your own website page. Exactly how much will depend on a number of factors, including the total number of links on the page that contains your article. But, If there are a total of 10 links, then your resource box link could pass somewhere in the region of 250 points back to your website page. Enough to give that page a PR3 ranking from this one link alone. But suppose that instead of having just a single link in your resource box you have two. The page containing your article will now have a total of 11 links and each will pass a slightly lower score, of perhaps 230 points, but this is still enough to give not one but now two pages on your site a PR3 ranking. Now take this small illustration and imagine your article being posted on hundreds of websites, many with little or no PR, but others adding your article to PR4, PR5 or even PR6 pages. If you think that getting your article on a PR5 or PR6 page is dreaming believe me it isn’t. I know from experience that this article will appear on several PR5 and PR6 pages within 24 to 48 hours of my submitting it. Now, take this illustration one step further and image submitting not one article, but hundreds of articles. While article writing is still very much about getting your message out to a wide audience of readers, it is also increasingly about building link popularity with the search engines and gaining PR to raise your profile in the search engine listings. Love or hate the search engines they play an increasingly important role in promoting your business and your article resource box can play a vital role in ensuring that you get those champagne top listings, rather than those orange juice second page spots About the Author For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- .effective-contents.com .articlemarketing.reprintarticlesite.com

Examinations are a regular part of the school, college and university environment, which is considered to be a flexible form of learning and teaching process that aims at investigation of a student’s knowledge of a particular subject. However, nothing makes students gloomier than the prospect of exams. Even the word examination itself makes students shudder. There are no doubts that for the majority of students examinations are something like death, which has the unpleasant inevitability to be faced sooner or later. Exam inevitability often creates a great deal of tension, and can become a cause of procrastination, work block, anxiety, and panic attacks, especially, when students feel overloaded by the amount of work they are required to accomplish. To say nothing of countless hours of sitting for examinations that is accompanied by cramming, sleepless nights, and very often turns out to be very distressing and debilitating. Indeed, different people deal with exams in different ways. Some people may seem to be able to handle with the pressure; others get agitated, anxious, bad-tempered, and can even become seriously ill and depressed. However, despite all this, one thing holds really true: examination period is challengeable, but it is not the end of the world. Remember that you should be responsible for your own learning. Hence, your examination success is in your hands, and in many respects it depends on your ability to focus on active learning, to schedule your time sensibly, and to organize your working place properly. So don’t take exams lightly, putting off revision on the very last day, and entrusting your examination grades to your lucky chance, after all exams is not an appropriate case to check how lucky you are. Whilst you don’t want to be caught off guard and confused on the spur of the moment, as leaving revision too late is an excellent recipe for stress and anxiety. Be sure to stick to these simple and effective examination techniques, which will help you pass your examinations with flying colours. Remember that with careful planning and preparation exams can become nothing more than a question and answer session. • Elaborate your revision program in good time before your exams Organize your time wisely. Be sure to allocate time for revision, relaxing and enjoying yourself sensibly. Be realistic about time that you can spend revising. Bear in mind that you need a balance between your revision time and the rest of your life. You need rest, and variety. So try to break your workload down into manageable chunks, combining working periods with rest. And what is the most important begin studying early, with an hour or two per day, increasing this time as exams approach. • Plan how you will use your time during your revision period Your plan should include what, when and how you are going to prepare for your examination. Try to produce a day-by-day revision timetable. List all the topics you’re going to cover during your revision process, make up your mind what order to learn them in, and how much time you can manage on each topic. Be realistic about your time, and always remember about your deadlines. A good revision strategy is to set priorities. Evaluate the importance of each block of information that you’re going to revise, think it over what topics are compulsory for you to revise, and what subjects you already know. • Involve in active learning Reading is a passive way of learning, while writing is an active studying technique, which is considered to be highly productive. Plunge into the text you’re reading, and ask yourself: “What is the most important to remember from this section?” Make notes while you read and underline the key concepts in the text. Mix easy and difficult topics, interesting and dull while you revise. Try to work in a comfortable environment, to remove any distractions, and to find out where you work best. Don’t forget to interrupt your study time with planned study breaks. • Make your revision process effective Don’t learn parrot fashion. Researches have shown that a person recalls meaningful information better and easier. That’s why you should: 1) Associate newly learnt concepts with what you already know. As you are reading try to link what you are studying with what you already know, with something that is meaningful to you. 2) Elaborate upon new information with your own examples. 3) Revise material in small chunks; don’t try to cover all the information in one sitting. 4) Information is memorized better when it is represented in an organized framework. Group information into categories; write an outline or a summary. 5) Use as many visual aids as possible; make a practical use of drawings, tables, graphs extensively in your revision process. 6) People are more likely to remember things that go in some certain sequence, so that one thing triggers another element. • Organize your working place sensibly Many students are fully versed in importance of time management in the process of preparation for their exams; however, quite a few is acquainted with the importance of organising their working places wisely. Be sure to divide your room into two areas: your working space that can be near your desk or table with papers, books, photocopies on it, all in all, everything you need for studying, and a place for relaxation, where you can look aside from studying, taking a nap, watching TV, or listening to music. Get used to indulge in work only in your working area, and to switch off in your relaxation zone. Physical separation of your working place from your relaxation area will make it easer for you to do it mentally. Bear in mind that doing well in exams not only depends on your knowledge, but also on how good you are at revising and handling the actual exam. One can say that the exam is a lottery, where a large proportion of success depends on your lucky chance. Though, luck can let us down in the most unsuitable moment. So, I don’t offer you to count on it. The most reliable way to pass an exam is a thorough and profound preparation. Remember that an exam is a kind of a contest between you and your examiner, where you have to come out a winner. About the Author: Linda Correli is a staff writer of .CustomResearchPapers.us/ and an author of the popular online tutorial for students “What Teachers Want: Master the Art of Essay Writing in 10 Days”, available at .Go2Essay.com/

Article URL: WorkatHomeSupertips.com/Article/cust_shoes.html?az Article Autoresponder: mailto:cust_shoesWorkatHomeSupertips.com?az Examining customer buying habits is as old as selling itself. In pre-historic times, Mr. Slate could have watched Fred Flintstone’s buying habits, invested in Bronto Burgers, and made a killing off Fred alone. All he needed to do was make them more accessible to Fred. We have pretty much the same scenario today, both online and off. Here’s an example that’s a little more up to date, and although it too is fictional, it’s based on something that happens every day in the marketplace. When you go to the store, be it a grocery, hardware, or what- have- you store, do you ever pay any attention to where things are located, or how they’re displayed? Probably not. If you’re like most of us, you go to the store with a list, you find what you’re looking for, and you either head to the checkout, or you browse a little. While you’re browsing you happen to see something that you weren’t really looking for, but when you spot it you think to yourself, “Self, I could use that,” or you think, “That’s a neat idea. I’ll get a couple of those, ” or even, “Mmmm, pistachio ice cream. Great idea!” Right? When you get to the checkout there are all sorts of items that the store management places there to tempt you into adding just one more item to your total: Juicy Fruit gum, juicy scandal magazines, juicy what Oprah did last week, etc.. Along the way, no one is standing over your shoulder selling you on features and benefits. You just see it, grab it, and pay for it. There’s no pressure to buy… Or is there? Unless you’re extremely well disciplined, or you only take what you’re willing to part with, you’ve fallen for the highly successful “silent-salesman.” There’s an entire industry behind that sort of scientific retailing. Nowadays they can track receipts from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, and even project what they should make off that item today (as opposed to what they made off of it a year ago). In tracking it short term, they may decide to move or copy a display item to some other area in the store to see if any significant changes in purchases occur. Let’s use a simple can opener as an example. The store has a display in their kitchen utensils section, and they decide to copy the display to the canned goods section. (I realize they probably already have one there, but this is just an example.) They look at their receipts the next day and, Whammo! The numbers have jumped! In this example it’s easy to figure out why thier numbers went up. It’s a simple matter of looking at the primary product (in this case, canned goods), and placing yourself in your customer’s shoes, ask yourself what else they might need. What else will they need, start to finish, to be able to enjoy their meal? They’re obviously going to have to open that can, and if you don’t want them to have to search for an opener, provide it. Instant add on! There’s the key! There’s revenue inside your customers shoes, but you have to wear them once in awhile in order to find it. Let’s take it one step further. Let’s say you decide to place two can-openers next to the canned goods. One with green handles, and one with white. Which one sells better? Why does it sell better? The answer to “which” can be found by looking at your daily receipts and comparing them to your previous purchase history . Of course it will take a little more than that. If it was on a Tuesday, you’ll at least want to take a look back to the previous Tuesday to see if any other factors were involved causing the numbers to jump. Did either Tuesday fall just after a holiday where folks had Monday off? Your testing should be done during typical traffic periods so that your numbers aren’t skewed. This will help you to determine which one is actually earning, and which one is taking up valuable retail space and inventory dollars. If it’s not selling, either get rid of it, put it somewhere else that it will, or make a better sign. Elementary, my dearest Watson;-) As to “why” it sells better, that cracks open a completely different area of marketing that deals with the psychology of why people buy. Though fascinating, as well as revealing, it would take up more space than I’ve allotted myself here. To bring this idea of purchasing habits and product placement full circle, internet customers also have trackable and predictable habits for how, where, why, and when they buy. Product placement is on an electronic page, and positioning can make a tremendous difference. Certain colors are proven to be better attention-getters and mood setters than others. The day of the week, and even the time of day can be studied and made predictable. There are many varieties of software available that allow you to dissect your web site statistics. From manual coding and web stats studying, to those that do it all for you. With a little study you’ll find that many of the buying traits of your online customers coincide with the buying habits of those out in the “real” world, which shouldn’t surprise us too much. After all, they are the same people. Now, if Mr. Slate would have put himself in Fred’s shoes, he’d have placed a Bronto Burger cart right outside the gates of the quarry, and sold such delicacies as the Boulder Burger, or Stone Fried Steaks with Gravel Gravy, he would have been able to capitalize on Fred’s purchasing habits. Still! All he had to do was watch a couple episodes of the Flintstones, and he’d have seen exactly what sort of discipline Fred had when it came to impulse items… none! You’ve got it a lot easier than Mr. Slate. You see, unlike Fred, your customers probably *wear* shoes;-) If you’ll just remember to slip into them periodically, and do what you can to make buying from you as easy as possible, you won’t be leaving anything in those shoes that could be going into your register. Now. Could you tell me what aisle the Pterodactyl sauce is on? ================================================== For more articles by Dave Franzwa, father of 3, mother to none, subscribe to Wordwrangler Press at: .workathomesupertips.com/announceform.html?az Article is excerpted from Dave’s upcoming release of: The Cat-A-List ~ Eye of the Storm ~

A Keen Sense of the Inappropriate .toowindytowalkthecat.com When people whom I’ve known for a fairly short time hear that I have a funny cartoon book, they generally ask, “What kind of cartoons are they?” I’ve always been stumped by this question. I usually say, “Stupid and Terrible, “ and they get a weird look on their face. Lately I’ve found that “Inappropriate” seems to be the best way to describe my sense of humor, though that still requires some explanation. So here’s an example: You’re at a wedding reception, and you’re asked to make the toast. Let’s say you don’t know the bride very well, and there’s a lot of older aunts and a grandmother or two present. What’s the worst thing you could say? How about, “A Toast May Bob’s leprous penis never fall off inside Betty’s butt ” Now that’s a real show-stopper Just imagine the uncomfortable silence that would come over the room. Mind you, I would never actually do this, and it really wouldn’t be that funny if I did - but it’s sure funny to think about At least for me. And thus, a new cartoon is born. Another example: You’re at a funeral (yes, this is going to be even worse). You’re consoling a good friend whose girlfriend has just died, and you say, “Well, at least dead girlfriends rarely object to anal sex ” I use this cartoon as a “Learn Your Ultimate Fate Test” on my web site, toowindytowalkthecat.com: if you laugh at this you are Going to Hell. (I have a feeling that a lot you reading this will be shopping for pitchforks, not harps.) Again, actually doing it - not funny at all; imagining it being done - pretty funny At least for those us of us who are going to Hell. Usually my terrible thoughts, which really are quite involuntary, spawn cartoons. But I’ve also been inspired to created some bumper stickers. I would never put them on my car, but the idea of seeing them on someone else’s car . . . well, it’s funny. Example: are you tired of seeing the “My Kid is . . .” and the “My kid can beat up your ____ kid” bumper stickers? Here’s my version: “My Gay Kid can Suck your Kid’s Dick ”