Don't Just Read Labels; Read Books.

There's a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in my fridge that is labeled as having no preservatives.  This is profoundly amazing to me seeing as how the tomatoes are packed in oil.  I wonder what that does?  In the store the other day, I saw a bottle of vegetable oil that is marked as having no cholesterol...  hmm...  vegetable oil that has no cholesterol.  I wonder how that can be?  Well, I have fat-free ice cubes in my freezer, so I guess I've done some amazing stuff, too.

There's a certain thing about the stuff that's printed on the labels of the boxes and jars.  By law, no one is allowed to print something that isn't true, and this is fairly heavily regulated.  So in that sense, everything they say on the bottle is pretty trustworthy, right?  Ummm...  sure.  Of course, true doesn't necessarily mean that something is not misleading or somewhat incomplete.  I could tell you that I have ladies' clothing and undergarments in my home.  This is technically true, which may give people the impression that I apparently engage in cross-dressing.  But it only seems that way when I exclude the crucial detail that I happen to be married, and the aforementioned ladies' clothing is, without exception, worn by my wife.

Remember that when the law says that people are required to be truthful in their advertised claims on the labels, it's also the law that defines just what "truthful" really means.  It's not enough to read -- it's kind of important to have an idea what they're talking about and be careful when you read.

Order Now! Pseudoscientists Are Standing By!

Yesterday, I saw a rather interesting claim in a mattress commercial.  We've all seen the ads for things like memory foam pads and how it "relieves" pressure points that inner spring mattresses cause.  This one had a far more interesting claim.  This one happened to be some mattress that apparently had a gel top-layer, apparently to act a little bit like a waterbed without having to be as expensive or heavy.  So, like every exotic mattress material, though, you'd expect the advertisers claim that it adjusts to your body...  Not this one!  No.  It automatically bio-adjusts to your body!

It...  bio-adjusts?  Bio?  The mattress is alive?  Will it become self-aware?  And here I thought bedbugs might have been an issue, but the beds themselves could be coming to get us.

Oh, but that's just the least of it.  There was another ad I saw on the sidebar of another blog about a waterbed.  And that one distinguishes itself from normal beds by pointing out the value of waterbed mattresses.  The distinction?  "Nothing is more natural than water!"  Wait...  what?  What does that even mean?  We had varying degrees of "natural-ness"?  I guess that means that there's a lot of stuff out there we can't consider quite so natural like trees and air.  Maybe we should also consider things that aren't really substances.  Radiation, for instance...  how much more or less artificial is it than say, electricity?

Maybe instead of a waterbed, we should have a bed filled with all-natural homeopathic medicine...  Oh, wait...

I Can Fix You...

Do you suffer from horrifying arthritis pain?  I've got a fix for that.  Are you overweight and out of shape?  I've got just the thing.  The stress of work and paying the bills got you down?  I can fix that!  Not enough time to cook a healthy dinner?  Well, now, there's a cure!  All you have to do is send me money!

There's always a product or service out there to help you with every ill.  Sometimes, when I fly, I take a nice load of amusement reading some of the absurd products in the SkyMall catalogs.  The best one I saw was actually labeled as a "Wireless Umbrella."  I had to wonder...  I can't recall the last time I ever had to plug my umbrella in.  I like dogs and cats as much as the next person, but seriously...  dog nail-polish?  A walker cart for your goldfish?  There exist minor products to solve the most inane problems, like a neck lanyard to hold a wine glass level while leaving both hands free.  Who the devil buys these things?!?!

Well, as it so happens, there's a plentiful array of buyers.  This is America -- where nobody does things to deal with their problems, but rather, they just figure there has to be a product or service to fix anything.  In fact...  let me rephrase that -- we NEED to buy a product or service to fix whatever we have.

I will go vomit now.