The Next Brilliant Marketing Idea: Official Dirt

While on a recent Southwest flight, I set down my latest read (The Coldest War, by David Halberstam) in favor of Southwest's entertaining in-flight magazine. In an article about St. Patrick's Day I read about a new product available for Irish people who miss the Old Country: Official Irish Dirt.


You can check out their web site at http://www.officialirishdirt.com/, and there for $20 purchase four small bags of official Irish dirt, shamrock seeds, and get free shipping.

The concept of Official Irish Dirt got me thinking about other official dirt-selling opportunities, which I have listed below:

• Official West Bank Dirt: For the Palestinian in All of Us


• Official Afghanistan Dirt: When You Miss Your Taliban Roots


• Official Iraq Dirt: Nothing grows in it, but under it you may find WMD


• Official D.C. Dirt: (So many directions to take with this one--it's just too easy)


• Official New Orleans Dirt: Comes with official sea water, so you can submerge it


• Official French Dirt: Start Your Own Vineyard


• Official Ukraine Dirt: Invade it, Rebuild It, Contaminate It


• Official Green Bay Dirt: Maybe Brett Favre Will Come Back, After All


• Official North Korea Dirt: No Matter What You Do, Nothing Grows in It


• Official German Dirt: Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles in der Welt
• Official Saudi Arabia Dirt: Dig Deeply Enough and You May Strike Oil

In so many ways, official Dirt is a brilliant product for the sole reason that even as our attachments to each other become more electronic, we remain nostalgic for physical places--to have a sense of place. With Official Dirt we can take that place with us wherever we go.

I think I am going to buy some DC Dirt right now: Maybe I can get some from near the Mayflower Hotel and see what pops up.

It's No Coincidence That His Name is Spelled AhMADinejab

If you want proof there is a God and that He appreciates irony, embrace the fact that He put the world's most valuable resource in the hands of the world's most unstable people.
In a hotbed of instability, the King of the Unstable Rulers is Iran's Mahmoud AhMADinejab. Were it not so frighteningly appropriate, the irony would be delicious.
Today, Reuters reports AhMADinejab as declaring victory in his increasingly bellicose war of words with Washington--indeed, with the Western world. On Sunday, AhMADinejab said the publication of a U.S. intelligence report declaring Iran had halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003 amounted to a "declaration of surrender" by Washington in its argument with Tehran.
AhMADinejad, who often rails against the West, told a rally earlier this month that the December 3 publication of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate was a "victory" for Iran.
Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and designed to make electricity. It says it has never had a nuclear weapons program.
We've heard this tired rhetoric before, in 1980, from Iran's unstable neighbor (and former enemy) Iraq. Saddam said it before the Israelis bombed his Osirak Nuclear Power Plant. We've heard it more recently from Syria before the Israelis bombed a suspect facility deep inside that unstable country.
Sensing a pattern here? These unstable Middle Eastern countries have nuclear aspirations. Soon they're going to have nuclear weapons--despite our best attempts to keep from their hands the most destructive weapons ever invented by man.
You'd have to be MAD not to be afraid.