With Phil out of town dealing with some family crap this weekend, I spent Friday night visiting friends, a gay couple I see often enough that we don’t feel it necessary to have an Event when we get together. It’s enough just to hang out. Which in this case meant sitting around in front of the boob tube watching Shark Tank. I’ve caught the show a few times in the past and have to admit that if you like to start your weekend off being reminded why so many start-up businesses never get past the start-up point, it ain’t a bad way to go. If you haven’t seen Shark Tank, it’s about a panel of gazillionaire rich guys and one Angry Lesbian who give either a thumbs up or thumbs down to contestants who think they’ve come up with a better mouse trap. And it’s usually the latter.

There are a lot of basic rules of business, but Rule #1 if you want to be successful is Know Your Customer. Most of those appearing on the show have not yet learned that. The sharks, as the panel of aforementioned gazillionaire rich guys and one Angry Lesbian are affectionately known, come up with a lot of reasons why they don’t want to have anything to do with the business ideas presented to them. But it always boils down to the gazillionaire wannabe’s idea having more to do with how pleased they are with themselves and their idea than how that idea or product will play out in the marketplace. So most go home none the richer. Unless you consider being ridiculed on national TV as a rich, rewarding experience.

So on Friday night’s episode, one of the gazillionaire wannabes was a guy whose better mouse trap was an on-line floral business. ‘Cuz that’s never been done before. He talked a good talk – if you ignore how impressed he was that his flowers were all Grown On A Volcano! – until the sharks went into a feeding frenzy and showed his wasn’t a better mousetrap but rather the same old same old repackaged with new buzzwords. Kinda like how the Republican Party is trying to sell their same old message of hate by ‘learning’ how to talk to women, Latinos, gays, and all of the other minorities they think should not be part of the country except on election day when they need their vote. The gazillionaire wannabe didn’t get the seed money for his flower business that he wanted. But did get a few well-deserved bitch slaps. No problemo. It was obvious he was meant to be a used car salesman anyway.

One of the thorny issues preventing his business idea from blossoming was that it took six days to deliver an order. And as one of the sharks pointed out, men only remember flower giving occasions the day of the holiday, not a week in advance. Which while being a totally sexist thought, is nonetheless true. For example, it wasn’t until I got back home this morning that I realized today is Cinco De Mayo. Or May 5th as we Caucasian call it. I’d also missed that yesterday was Star Wars Day. But that’s not the point. Not that either is a big flower-giving day anyway.

The point is that today is one of the biggest holidays in the Latino community – at least in the U.S. It commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. Although most just assume it’s an excuse to get blitzed on tequila. I, on the other hand, view it as an excuse to post some pix of a Mexican hottie. As a member of the not a Latino community, you can go the tequila route to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. Or as a member of the gay not a Latino community you can celebrate the holiday by doing a member of the Latino community. Which I did. Not that I knew it was Cinco De Mayo (or Do A Latino Day as I’m sure we’ll all agree the holiday should be known as). And, no, I didn’t remember to send him flowers either.

Just a few days ago I used Uno De Mayo – or Lei Day as it is known in Hawaii – as an excuse to post some pix of some Polynesian hotties and to whine about Bill Gates’ lack of building a better mousetrap with Windows 8. In that post I also mentioned the salesguy at my local computer store who too ignored the #1 rule of Know Your Customer, but managed to land the sale anyway because he was cute and willing to give me his phone number. I’m still not pleased with my new computer thanks to Windows 8 not being able to run my cherished word processing and graphics editing programs, but the phone number thingy worked out well. Which is why I ended up celebrating Cinco De Mayo by doing a Latino. Even if technically it was doing a Latino on Cinco De Mayo eve.

I’d originally considered buying the latest version of my cherished word processing and graphics editing programs – that would run on Windows 8 – rather than being forced to use a separate computer for composing my blog posts and pix and my new one for posting them. But they run about $800 each and I couldn’t really justify that expenditure even if I could justify the outlay as a tax deductible expense. Kinda sorta. Plus that woulda meant a return visit to the computer store. And I already had the cute Latino salesguy’s phone number. So I found two free programs on-line instead, both of which seem to have a low learning curve and do what I need them to. Which is probably not of as much interest to you as is my Cinco De Mayo hunk, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Jarte (which sounds vaguely Latino) is a good word processing program – not a lot of bells and whistles, and a spell-checker that’s a bit hinky, but ya can’t beat the price. And Photo Pad works well for re-sizing and touching up pix. It ain’t PhotoShop, but does have more editing features than most of the free graphics editing software out there. If they end up working out as well as the cute Latino salesguy did, I’ll be a happy camper.

So Happy Cinco De Mayo. And yes, today’s post was really about me trying out my new computer and software but then since it includes penis too I’m sure y’all will forgive me. If not, tomorrow is National Tourist Appreciation Day and maybe your favorite bar boy will remember to send you flowers.

Related Posts You Might Enjoy:
Eye Candy: Cuba Caliente	Happy Lei Day!	Happy Papi Day