Tonight, my wife received two boxes of candles from a popular mail-order company to be used as gifts this season. On the side of the boxes was this warning. I am typing this verbatim.
Damn. Has this society reached the depths of intellect that would require such a warning on candles? Anyone that would do some of this stuff with a burning candle would probably not read the fine print, lengthly instructions in the first place. After reading about all that could go wrong, I am now afraid to send these wax sticks of death to my family / friends.
What you mean I shouldn’t duct tape several candles to the family dog, and let him run around the room while being chased by the neighborhood children, as I go off to the mall?
Jeez, next you’ll be saying that I can’t carve a turkey with a chainsaw.
Well, I liked “Make sure candle is upright with no tilt, prior to ignition”. This may have saved my life ! I had planned to start burning all my candles tipped over on their sides.
Now what will I use to light that huge pile of newspaper in the garage, next to the full gas cans ?
Geezal. If one word could sum it up that would be it. And I thought it was getting bad when they started putting labels on Dr. Pepper bottles. The one where it says something along the lines of ATTENTION opening this bottle of carbonated perfection can cause the lid to blow off going through the ceiling injuring everyone in it’s path for miles (ok maybe not quite that bad)… I mean come on are people out there that slow? Okay well I know a few people that need the warning labels on things. For instance my brother. Hmm the genius decided to put about a good fluid ounce or so of near boiling melting wax on his hand. Thankfully there is a thing called genetic mutation. I just wonder which one of us got the mutation…
Warning Labels are no longer there to be read and heeded, they are only there so that they won’t be sued by idiots who do something blatantly moronic and try to blame the product manufacturer.
“I was chowin’ down on this here rubber cement, cos like it came in a tube jus’ like toothpaste, and I likes me some toothpaste - but then it started burnin’ me throat! I wants 2 million dollars in compensation, cos there weren’t no warnin’ label tellin’ me not to eat that stuff.”
It happens. And the poor manufacturers are guilty until proven innocent.
Iceland, my old home, imports a heck of a lot of fireworks every new years eve. It’s like a seriously impressive 4th of july in a big city. Most of these fireworks seem to come from China or Taiwain, but some were European.
A couple of years back I started inspecting the fireworks themselves for safety instructions, other than those enforced and printed by the government uppon import. I found out that while they seemes to contain extensive instructions in whatever language the fireworks came from, they had only chose to translate ONE line from the whole text!: “Do not eat.” That was this stunningly important piece of information that any wannabe rocketeer must know! NOTHING ELSE IS IMPORTANT!
I’ve lived in China for a while now and have yet to come across another reference to westerners appetites for deep fried explosives in a bun.
— G. R.
Nothing particiulaly special but I have always enjoyed the instructions on tooth picks and shampoo bottles, Lather rinse and repeat if necessary? please.
I currently have 3 favorites, two “duh” and one “huh?”
The first one is the way that every cereal or cracker box you ever saw has the same two “duh” instructions, or variations thereof: “Lift Here to Open” and “Tuck to Reclose”. Now, I am forty-something years old, and I have been opening and closing cereal and cracker boxes literally ALL my life, so let’s say it’s been at least 35 or 40 years that these things have been around. How long does it take for a Society to learn how to operate something? How long was it before they stopped putting “Push Here” buttons on TV sets? Or “Insert Key Here” labels on car ignitions? Answer: they never did. So, how much collective smarts do we need as a society to figure out how to operate a cracker box? Is it possible there are still some Seniors out there, who grew up in an era before packaged foods, who still don’t know how to get the Frosted Flakes open?
The second one is the way virtually every frozen food package or can of something will say, somewhere, “Refrigerate or discard any unused portion.” No kidding? You mean I shouldn’t just let it lay out on the counter all week until somebody feels like eating it?
The third one is the label of the Healthy Choice 99% Fat-Free Soups, which says, in part, “This meal is not a cure for heart disease…” Huh? Oh, shoot, and here I thought I was gonna clear up Grampa’s ticker trouble by feedin’ him the right kind of soup…
