Odd Products

Dog shoes: because paws weren't made to run on the ground

 Probably spinning in his grave at this juxtaposition



Those poor socks

Misdirected?

Yesterday I got the weirdest e-mail.

As a subscriber to change.org, the online public lobbying site, I received notification about a new petition. In this e-mail, a mother described how loopholes in Food & Drug Administration guidelines allow manufacturers to use poisonous chemicals called phthalates to make lunchboxes, even though they are not permitted in toys. She was apparently so "horrified to learn that lunchboxes emblazoned with Cinderella and Spiderman could actually make her kids sick" that she decided to start an online petition.

Did she call for an FDA amendment to include lunchboxes in the phthalates ban? No. Did she call for an outright ban on the use of phthalates? No.

She wants Disney to "stop allowing its characters to be printed on toxic lunchboxes".

Odd Products

 

 Who, mi?


As drunk by Lawrence of Arabica


It's win or get eaten, I guess

Signs

(Cherchez l'erreur)

Duped

Two days ago, I went to CVS, a nationwide chain of chemists (aka "pharmacies"), to get a very specific brand of cream: Aveeno. When I got there, I found what looked like two different types of Aveeno on the shelves, so I compared them and finally decided on one. Back home, my wife asked me, "Why did you decide to get the CVS-brand cream instead?"

I hadn't.

Returning to CVS to get the cream I had really wanted, I realised why I had bought the wrong one: I had fallen prey to the kind of consumer switcheroo that retail chains love to provoke. However, rather than the typical tactic of merely placing store-brand products in more prominent positions than third-party ones, CVS has taken a far more insidious approach: it systematically mimics the colour scheme and packaging of the most popular name-brand goods and then places its own products directly next to these.

As a result, the tube of CVS cream was in a white tube exactly the same size and with exactly the same shade of green writing as my Aveeno. Further along the shelf was a larger bottle of Aveeno with a dark green lid. The CVS-brand bottle of the identical size also had a dark green lid - and stood adjacent to the Aveeno bottle. Looking down, I noticed a different brand of moisturising cream with a blue-and-gold logo and a distinctive gold pump-dispenser. The CVS-brand cream right next to it was also blue-and-gold with a gold pump-dispenser.

Amazed at my discovery, I took a step back, and as I scanned along the entire aisle, I noticed that all the products on sale were deliberately arranged in pairs - each one a "real" product and its corresponding CVS "fake", like those blatantly forged Chinese "Nicke" T-shirts and "Adidash" trainers. And whatever packaging the brand-name products came in, whether bottle, tube or jar, CVS had created and stocked a virtually identical equivalent.

Look at the picture below, which I felt forced to take in order to document my flabbergastedness:


As you can see, the only visual difference between the brand-name products and the CVS ones is that the latter have a circular CVS logo - although this is always in the relevant colour scheme of the imitated brand-name product.

Americans justifiably always pride themselves in having a choice. This is not about choice, but a deliberate attempt to fool customers. Shame on you, CVS!

Odd Products

Rice: a "food alternative"

Fight For Your Rights

As I discovered this morning thanks to that tremendous invention, the Internet, the source of a wondrous array of facts, half-truths and the merely fanciful (not necessarily in that order of magnitude), America is one of only 14 countries worldwide in which it is illegal to buy and consume alcohol under the age of 21. Whatever the pros and cons of this, the law is the law, and deserves to be upheld.

Without revealing too much about myself, it is fair to say that I am in my mid-40s, and although I like to think I don't look my age, I have had independent confirmation from several third parties – Mrs Newbie included – that I could not pass for 20.

I have therefore been irked (yes, irked, no less) for some considerable time that I am required to prove my age whenever I shop at my local Kroger supermarket. A sticker by the cash register, which some similarly senescent person has clearly tried to peel off in their annoyance, declares "If you are under 40, we must ask for ID". Cashiers even have to enter your date of birth in their till in order to authorise any attempted purchases of alcohol.

Time after time, I resolved to resist this blatant overcautiousness on Kroger's part, and time after time I meekly pulled out my driver's licence, only to kick myself afterwards (metaphorically, I hasten to add) for my repeated temerity.

So annoyed was I by this flagrant injustice that I hatched a cunning plan: on a day when my children had wound me up to near breaking point and Mrs Newbie had failed to see my side of the story, I would charge into Kroger, grab some beer and defend my Congress-given right. I would make a fuss, demand to see the manager and win elderly people across America back the prerogative to go into a store armed only with some crumpled dollar bills and declare, "I wish to procure sundry libations" (or whatever the local equivalent thereof may be).

Although all is well in the house of Newbie and the Newblets have for the most part been their darling selves, I resolved this week that the time had finally come. So together with the kids (brought along for defensive purposes only), I drove over to Kroger, picked up a six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade, filled up a shopping cart with suitable alibi groceries to cast aside angrily should my demands remain unmet, and headed for the meanest-looking cashier in the store.

Trembling with anticipation and pumped with adrenaline, I thought, "This is my date with Destiny. Today is the day that will change America. Henceforth, baby boomers throughout this great nation will no longer live in fear, but be able to purchase alcoholic beverages unchallenged once more".

With my heart thumping in my throat, I unpacked my cart, brazenly placing the Mike's at the very front, and looked the cashier straight in the eye.

"Do you have a Kroger card?" he asked. And that was it.

A new sticker by the till read: "If you are under 27, please be prepared to show your ID".

-----------------

Postscript

Less than a week after writing this - on the first day in living memory when, through a chain of coincidences, I did not have my driver's licence on me - I was "carded " at Kroger in spite of the new sticker, which I pointed to (to no avail). Duly summoned, the store manager said, "I'm sure that'll be OK." And it was.

Preparedness

They sometimes sell the weirdest things at Costco, a wholesale shopping club open - for a small annual fee - to all.

One of this month's special offers is a one-year supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food, the sort of nuclear-winter preparedness pack favoured by end-of-the-world religious extremists and gun-totting, commies-in-our-backyard nuts.

Even taking into account the Costco discount of $200, it still costs $800, which is a heck of a lot of money in my book. And given that Costco only ever buys things in huge quantities, it seems rather an absurd gamble to stock something this outlandish.

Well, it appears Costco has once again perfectly gauged its target audience's consumer preferences, because its Web site bears the following note: "Due to overwhelming demand, any orders placed after 09/30/09 will not ship until 10/28/09".

But this begs the question: what is it that people in America are so scared about that it causes them to flock out and buy emergency rations?

Tear-off Slips

Never would I have imagined that something as mundane as paying a household bill could be so different on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But strangely enough, one aspect is exactly the opposite over here - with peculiar and perhaps unforeseen repercussions.

The standard the (western?) world over for invoices seems to be that they start with the corporate logo of the provider/seller in the top left- or right-hand corner, followed by information (address, telephone number, reference numbers, etc.) about the sender and recipient, and finally details of the service or product purchased and billed.

In an effort to make payment and processing easier, many firms integrate a tear-off slip into their invoice that can, as the name suggests, be torn off - ideally along a perforated line - and returned with payment. That way the party issuing the bill can easily associate the payment with the invoice and therefore the customer.

In Europe, the tear-off slip is at the bottom of the page, but here in the States it is invariably at the top.

I expect this is probably so that the provider/seller immediately has the customer's address etc., which are printed at the top of the invoice for mailing purposes. Unfortunately, as the paying customer you are left with this:

a bill albeit bearing a helpful reminder to "retain this lower portion for your records" but neither the name, address nor the logo of the company you've paid! So unless you remember to write the provider's name on your payment record, you have absolutely no idea who sent you the bill!

And have you ever tried filing an anonymous bill?!

Luckily, this bill contains two subtle hints - "water" & "sewer" - as to its origins, but given that all the company names are new to me, I often am more-or-less completely at a loss to know what I've paid whom for.

This isn't an isolated example either. I've received top-of-page tear-off slips from the electricity company, the gas company, the local authority (e.g. the above bill), the phone company and even my credit-card provider (and they're just the ones I can think of straight away). In fact, I can't think of a single provider that has supplied a slip at the more consumer-friendly end of the page. I've even had electricity bills running (don't ask me why) into several pages, the top of each of which contained a perforated tear-off slip, even though only the first was intended for return with payment.

Worst of all, being a concerned citizen keen to improve the world around me, I have no idea who to suggest my revolutionary end-of-page tear-off slip idea to. Although this being America, there's probably an American Association of Tear-Off Slip Manufacturers with an army of highly-paid lobbyists in Washington working hard to prevent such socialist* ideas from being implemented in the US of A.

Perhaps I'll have to patent my idea then. So for now, keep it to yourselves, OK?

__________________

* Anything people don't like, from tax reform and state-sponsored healthcare to investing in rail networks (I'm serious!), is eventually damned as "socialist" by its opponents and/or Fox News**. Ironically, if said "socialist" idea is in danger of being adopted, the nay-sayers move to the next stage: likening the proponent(s) of the scheme to Hitler. The obvious impossibility of this position aside, the level of historical knowledge over here doesn't suggest this is because he was a National Socialist.

** It's actually got so far that politicians try to completely avoid using the terms "social" and "socialised" because people - especially the right-wing media - automatically associate them with socialism, à la socialised medicine today, the Gulag tomorrow!

American Girl Dolls

Move over Barbie: there's a new, more anatomically correct* kid on the block - at least on the middle-class** one.

American Girl dolls are the latest attempt to win pre-pubescent girls' hearts and separate their parents from their disposable income. A very successful attempt too, it appears, for some 16 million American Girl dolls have been sold in the 20-odd years since the company was founded.

They don't come cheap either: a standard Just Like You doll with the same hair colour, eye colour and skin tone as your daughter plus a (non-working) mobile phone for their "mini-me" costs a stately $110 (plus tax). And for a trifling $60 more, girls can get matching clothes for themselves and their plastic alter egos.

But that's just the beginning.

We visited the American Girl shop in Chicago, a sprawling multi-level store selling not only the classic American Girl dolls but also so-called "historical" figures like Felicity in her tea lesson (sic!) gown, Josefina in her fiesta dress, and Kaya in her "dance dress of today" (?). Step upstairs and you can even throw a party for your doll(s) and/or those of your friends, or take her to the Doll Hospital to re-fasten the limbs your brother's Action Man ruthlessly amputated.

But the crème-de-la-crème for me was the hairdresser's salon, where you could get your doll's hair done in the style of your choosing or the style-of-the-week, all for $20-25.

_____________

* It has been calculated that a life-size Barbie would have a 39-18-33 figure and be 7'6" tall.
** Technically this should be "upper middle-class" since everyone in America considers themselves middle class and no-one working class.

Energy Efficiency

I recently heard some interesting statistics that you may or may not be aware of: the United States has 2% of the world's natural resources and 5% of the global population, yet consumes 25% of everything and is responsible for 25% of the total CO2 output.

Having lived in the States for almost a year now, I realise that a great deal of this consumption is not even necessary. It starts with the fact that everything is done by car, including collecting children from the school bus (which drops them off 50-100 yards from the house), and daft things like leaving car engines running while getting cigarettes at a petrol station. But it goes much, much further.

As someone pointed out, and which immediately struck a chord, when you go to a hotel in the US, all the lights in the room and often enough the TV are generally on. Although the TV has a remote control, there is no central light switch, so when you go for a meal, you theoretically have to turn every single light and bedside lamp off individually, which is easier said than done given some of the bizarre light fittings we've had to wrestle with. So people just leave them on when they go out.

There are other small, but telling examples of this wasteful use of energy: our fridge and washing machines are twice the size that our European ones were, though I doubt we or anybody else use them to full capacity. And despite having the heating element below the base (an extremely inefficient way to boil water, incidentally), our kettle has a minimum level of just under a litre. So even if I only want to make myself a cup of coffee, I have to heat up almost a litre of water.

Finally, and most well known, American cars are hugely gas-guzzling. Even though we have two Japanese-brand cars and deliberately went for fuel economy, my wife's sleek saloon car can get at best 29 miles to the gallon (8.4l/100km), while my 3.7-litre SUV manages an average of just 18mpg (12.9l/100km) with "normal" suburban use or 21mpg if I stick to motorways - that's twice as much fuel as our un-aerodynamic people-carrier consumed in France.

Perhaps instead of worrying about dwindling oil reserves and finding new sources of energy, America should start thinking about increasing energy efficiency - or making electricity and petrol so expensive that it forces people to think about consuming more responsibly.

Call Me "Reverend"

Ian Paisley allegedly has*. So have all four of the Beatles, Virgin boss Richard Branson, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, writer Hunter S. Thompson, John Wayne Bobitt (he of the "missing" penis), Alanis Morisette, Paul Newman, Robbie Williams and Sharon Stone.

Two days ago, when I couldn't go running because it was raining, I joined this illustrious group of people by becoming an "insta-priest".

The idea had come to me the evening before. Would it be possible in the self-proclaimed Land of Opportunity - or, as the Germans put it, the Land of Unlimited Possibilities - for a non-religious non-believer to be ordained a priest? I never dreamt it would be so easy. A mere ten-second search on the Internet provided the answer: not only could I become legitimately ordained without any training or profession/proof of belief, but I could do so instantly, online and free of charge.

Barely five minutes later, I was a reverend of the Universal Life Church authorised to perform marriages and baptisms and enjoying "all the privileges and courtesies normally offered to members of the clergy" (apparently the ULC has won several court cases upholding these rights). 

But the fun doesn't end there. Had I been less humble - and willing to toss $11.99 into the ULC collection box - I could have officially bestowed myself a grander religious title from a long list including (but not limited to):

• Abbot
• Angel
• Archbishop
• Ascetic Gnostic
• Bishop
• Child of the Universe
• Colonel
• Dervish
• Druid
• Flying Missionary
• High Priest
• Martyr
• Messenger
• Monk
• Patriarch
• Pope
• Prince
• Prophet
• Rabbi
• Saint
• Saintly Healer
• Seer
• Shaman
• Spiritual Warrior
• Swami
• Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality
• Wizard, and my personal favourite
• Reverend of Rock 'n' Roll.

For just $7.95 plus postage, I could even have ordered a gold-embossed certificate - again from the ULC - confirming that I was a Jedi knight, though I'll probably stick to my iPhone light-sabre app for the time being.

This being the 21st century, the Universal Life Church also offers its followers an opportunity to confess online. You simply write your sin in the appropriate box (or "if you don't want to write about your sins, you may enter an 'X' to signify that you have thought about your sins and wish to turn from them"), click the checkbox labelled "Have you forgiven yourself for your sins? (yes/no)" or "Have you forgiven others who have harmed you? (yes/no)", and then press the button marked "Submit Confession". Hey presto, instant absolution.

I wonder what I'll go for next. Although I could have bought myself various doctorates (including the wonderful "Doctor of Immortality") from the ULC, I think I'm going to try to get a free PhD from an American university. And when I get that, I'm going for the ultimate prize: an M.D.

____________

* Although it is the subject of debate whether or not the Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley bought his priesthood, it is certain that his doctorate was acquired from the outlawed American Pioneer Theological Seminary and later quasi-legitimised by an honorary Doctor of Divinity bestowed upon him by an unacredited fundamentalist Christian college.