funny

Wanna feel your jaw drop to the floor? Check out this label that came in the wrapping of two pair of cooking tongs purchased at Target:

Got that? In case any of us is vision-impaired, let’s try that again, bf/cc/clc:

WARNING: Handling of the plastic used in this product may expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after use.

Now you’ve got it, right? We’re talking about cooking tongs, the gadgets you use to flip chicken in the frying pan, to flip steak on the barbecue, to toss salad at the table. The only plastic on the things is a coating smeared all over the handles.

Even though this little caveat is in plain sight, I didn’t notice it while I was inside the Target store shopping for old-fashioned hinged tongs. It’s tucked away on the back side of the packaging, and of course one is careful to display the merchandise with the front of the packaging showing. I just grabbed it off the rack and ran. The “plastic” mentioned here is a kind of tacky surface, white on one pair and black on the other, applied to the handles of these tongs, presumably to make it easier to manipulate them. The old tongs we used to get in the grocery store had no plastic goop on them — they were just plain stainless steel. They worked just fine. No one needed or asked to have the handles dipped in a vat of lead-laced plastic. But apparently if it ain’t broke, we have to fix it.

Now I’ll have to take these things back. Like I had nothing to do but traipse to Target. Over and over and over again…

It’s beginning to look a lot like they don’t make plain boring scissors-style stainless tongs anymore. They all have some degree of coating on them, though to what extent its nature may be poisonous is unknown — at least, so it goes at Amazon. That means eventually I’ll be reduced to having to get used to the now ubiquitous tweezer-type tongs, which I hate but which at least can still be had sans stupid coatings. Aggravating.

Can you imagine? A freaking cooking utensil, coated with a toxic substance. In an American store that one would presume would come up to American safety standards. Get used to it, indeed: in the brave new world of globalization, if the Chinese, denizens of one of the most polluted countries on earth, will put up with it, you get to put up with it.

Another aggravation: English Lemon Oil for furniture has disappeared from the market. The only oil-type rub-0n furniture polishes still available are Old English and, in a very few places, Weiman’s. Old English lemon oil, my preference, is still available at Amazon, for 16-ounce prices ranging from $3.49 to $8.47. This once commonplace item no longer appears on retailers’ shelves. Period. I’ve been to Target, Safeway, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walgreen’s, and Ace. Lo! no more Old English lemon oil, screw you very much. So now, having wasted a great deal of gas in the search, I’ll have to dork around with ordering it online.

Ridiculouser and ridiculouser.

Spent half the morning compiling a round-up, interrupted about every thirty minutes by one or the other…interruption. Hit “publish” and…FOOP! Disappeared the damn thing.

Apparently I hit “Move to Trash.” And there’s no “Trash” link anywhere to be found in the dashboard. Jesse the Wonder-Guru is going to try to resurrect the thing. Later.

All of which makes me exceptionally crabby.

In brief, the one thing I really need to get online today: Many thanks to Miss Thrifty for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and kindly including Funny’s squib on the art and business of panhandling. Love the Dr. Faustus theme!

Meanwhile…If you’d asked me I would’ve told you:

• The new J. Jill collection is weirdly reminiscent of the Sears clothing I knew and loathed during my misspent childhood: everything looks like your mother made it from Simplicity or Vogue patterns.

• We’re a day late and a dollar short in figuring out that the pending demand for long-term care is about to take this country on a skateboard ride to Hell.

• I love our cops. But I sure do hate cop helicopters buzzing our houses and being routed back and forth over residential neighborhoods all the time.

• Man is the noisiest animal.

• Being lured into buying stuff from some retailer is not the same as loyalty.

• Our brave new world gets creepier and creepier by the day. Make that “by the minute.”

• News about movie actors and rock stars bores me witless.

• Every time I hear another story about the Great Desert University I’m sooooo glad I don’t work there anymore!

• People who let their dogs run loose in public parks — especially when the dogs are chihuahuas and the parks are home to coyotes and rattlesnakes — are dumber than posts.

• There’s a special place in Hell for parents who give their kids weird names. Demons will torment them by forcing them, into eternity,  to spell their children’s bizarrely mispronounced monikers.

• Styrofoam is the world’s most annoying substance with which to make cups and plates. I’m pretty suspicious of it as insulation, too.

• Houses covered with stucco look like they’re deliberately engineered to look shabby in 10 or 12 years.

• The word “multiple” makes users sound like they’re speaking with their mouths full. And using the word to mean “two” or “a few” is just plain affected.

• Elected leaders who think it’s their government’s place to tell citizens how much soda pop they can drink lead me to wonder who on earth elected them in the first place.

• Chocolate is good for your health.

• Wine is good for your health.

• Working is bad for your health.