Baby Carrots Are All Cheese-Puffed Up.

No telling how Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” advertising campaign will boost sales of baby carrots.

But according to the Associated Press, the goal is to double the current $1 billion baby-carrot market within two to three years.

That’s a lot of carrots.

You can bet your beta-carotene that in the business of brand makeovers, it all depends on what consumers identify as smoke and mirrors.

Let’s admit it: The American carrot has some ancestral baggage – as in canned peas and carrots, beef stew with mushy carrots, and the ever-popular carrot-and-raisin salad – a mainstay of cafeteria lines because it can be conveniently served with an ice-cream scoop.

But you gotta give it to CP+B, because the whole goal here is to convince students that when they reach for a bag of baby carrots from their high-school vending machines, they'll forget they’re reaching for a bag of cheese puffs and instead think they’re eating a nutritional vegetable while getting their “junk-food fix.”

At the risk of sounding like I have a salty chip on my shoulder, I submit that a carrot by any other name is still a carrot.

Still, Harlequin Cat thinks CP+B’s campaign has some serious crunch to it and will be watching. But in the mean time, I couldn’t resist inviting you to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vly7hDDHMsM

Some of us just love eating carrots naturally.

What I Didn't Do This Summer.

Did you read B.C.'s comic strip yesterday? Teacher Ant asks her class to write a “detailed essay” describing what they did this summer. Student Ant walks up with his response: “In the interest of our mutual convenience, please refer to my Facebook page.”

Harlequin Cat doesn’t have a Facebook page but doesn’t want to write an essay, either. So, a photo and a few words about my summer:

Abs, not apps.

Chirps, not Tweets.

Sea foam, not smart phone.

Surfers, not surfing.

Egg rolls, not blog rolls.

Sails, not sales.

Seed pods, not podcasts.

My space, not MySpace.