Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 


You know, sometimes my store’s Head Office frightens me. This doesn’t happen often. Oh sure, they aggravate me a lot, and they infuriate me on an almost weekly basis, but frighten…well, those are special moments that leave me curled up in the corner of my bed wishing that I could instead be worrying about the clown eating me should I fall asleep.

Consider this past Friday: an Email came in from Head Office, asking us to remove this extra tag that could be found dangling off a bunch of cosmetic/train cases. Now these cosmetic cases are scary enough, and like 50% of most our stock left me asking what sort of groovy drugs our Buying Department’s on, because…damn. Generic colours are fine by me, but honestly--zebra print with neon pink or green trim? Or a black background with kissy-lips plastered all over it?

But I digress. So there was an extra tag hanging off these cases, and Head Office kindly requested we remove them. Now up to this point I hadn’t really taken a closer look at any of these tags; as far as I was aware, they just featured the “JGarden” label and a brief but tedious description about the product. Nothing stated there to earn their subsequent removal, in my opinion, but Head Office doesn’t do this sort of thing without a reason.

I checked the offending tag. And I kid you not, here’s what was written on the lower half of it:




First things first, of course: it seems oddly contradictory to say it complies with safety standards but could still warp you and/or your progeny’s genetics, but I guess it’s the same principle for the warnings on cigarette cartons.

And second: what in the fucking nine levels of hell?!

I don’t know about you, but that sort of warning doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me to sell these things to random customers.

Okay, so now I understand why Head Office wanted us to cut those tags off (and I can only imagine the sort of panicked calls they got from customers who bought these cases when the warnings were still affixed), but it’s not exactly like I can un-see that warning. If someone asks about the quality of one such case, how do I respond? “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. It’s a perfectly normal cosmetics case and does not potentially give you cancer or scary little mutant babies. Honestly! Would I lie?”

The rationalist in me does try and calm me down by pointing out that warnings like these are pretty much the rigeur du jour in the US. Plus, without any further studies or information to back it up, the warning itself is quite vague and almost caters to fearmongering. And yet…birth defects, people! I know that everything gives you cancer these days, but birth defects aren’t usually something you expect to see on a list of potential, malevolent side-affects.

I’ve got a stack of these in the back, so does this mean I have to worry about shriveling testicles from handling them?


Anyhoo, to help cleanse my little bit of nowhere’s palate (and to help you brainbleach away the mental image of malformed testicles), here’s a little something I picked up off from Comixed, an affiliate website of “I Can Has Cheezburger”:







I laugh because I can absolutely hear Statler & Waldorf performing this bit.

I cry because I know the punchline is also true.

Labels: This tab contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects or seeing the dead or spontaneous outbursts of lines from Avenue Q at inappropriate times

posted by Phillip at 7:02 AM