(Untitled)
Over 15 years ago I have a dream where I am starting a business endeavor with none other than Kim Kardashian. I have never seen more than 2 minutes of any KardashCo production, never watched an interview even, and everything I learn about that family I learn against my will. I have a baffling history of famous women on the bleeding edge of my periphery making it into dreams*, and I bring it up to my Jungian Therapist only to be met with shrugs and a sage “sometimes dreams are weird.”
Our business is a line of geodes that are also mugs, or mugs made out of geodes (the word made here is perhaps a bit strong — you hold the geode like a cup, the ol' "simple-as-possible-but-no-simpler" — Shaker principles, really). Otherwise light on details, dream logic being what it is, the image of a cocktail straw extending from what is, again, just half-a-geode clutched in Kim’s hand, stays with me. Dream Kim pronounces lapis lazuli as lashpish lazhuli. I tell all my friends at the time, and now we all pronounce it lashpish lazuli so yes, even in my wildest dreams Kim is ✨influencing✨.
Couple notes here:
1. To my knowledge lapis lazuli does not form in geodes, perhaps we can sub in sodalite?
2. In general, many crystals are surprisingly soluble, and prone to leeching their constituent minerals at varying degrees of toxicity into whatever they’re dissolving in and
3. I should talk to Kim to talk to Gwen and see if that can be repositioned into a benefit statement, what did they do with that yoni egg business? Can we consult with Mehmet?
Being more of a punch-up, final mile guy, I’m confident this was her idea, and indeed feels aligned with that uniquely Kardashian flavor of sheisty. Drinking out of a geode probably adds nothing (slowly dissolving volatiles notwithstanding) more than drinking out of, say, a Stanley. Presumably quality control would vary wildly from geode to geode, crystal to crystal. Candidly, this whole enterprise feels tailor-made for the cash-wrap impulse shelf at Urban Outfitters or Anthropologie.
Today this is absolutely primed for TikTok shop hay making, a dozen gen-z hopefuls tapping a geode shell with their acrylics for the ASMR benefits, their “creator earns commission” badge winking in the corner.
Gobsmacked therefore to read this morning that there is an actual, IRL, geode drinking vessel scandal brewing on the actual Tiktok shop, where some scammer, presumably not Kim(?), has been hawking geode mugs with imagery generated by AI that apparently fails to be sufficiently representational of the actual product, and the girlies are pissed. Kim may be influencing, but I am manifesting.
This disappoints me greatly as: 1. another million dollar opportunity missed by my failure to act; 2. the end products are indeed ghastly and incredibly dissimilar to the site image; 3. my geode drinking vessels were much, much more elegant - again I cannot stress how much they were simply actual geodes with a bev sloshed in; and finally 4. I could have done much better even at just the AI generated image bit, consider exhibit b & c, your honor:
* 24 years ago I have a dream where my mother, while going through my sock drawer, finds not pornography, but a letter I’ve written to Jennifer Garner, then starring on Alias, formally rejecting her offer of marriage, on the grounds that we live in very different worlds. I do not, at that time, even know her name, and the letter is actually addressed to Alias. Had I just not sent the letter yet? Why was it in my drawer? Is she still waiting for my reply? Ms.Garner–Affleck-Garner–Garner, I politely decline!