Flirtatious is layered with context.
My real moods are aroused, energized, enigmatic.
I suspect the Dorito's people are thinking, "how can we turn this to our advantage?"
I'm going to talk a lot about this over time, because I think we have to collectively take action to overturn what I think, in general, is one of the major blunders of the post industrial world. We've all been weak, and accepted this bourgeois imposition on our lives without adequate resistence, or in my thinking, out right radical protest. We need to be out in the streets, standing at the front gates of major industry, shouting our demands, calling on Thor and Zeus and Jimmy Carter to aide us in our war for relief. I don't believe in protest for protest sake. But if the cause is Universal, and the suffering Global, we really have little choice. If we don't take a stand now, this abuse of our sanity and the sanctity of our pantries will continue towards a total domination of our lives. By now you've guessed my concern. PACKAGING.
This is not a new concern. My wife Peggy still bemoans her desperate but unsucessful attempt to open a box a cracker jacks by pushing with her thumb where they tell her to push. That frustation, she tells me, started when she was 8 and continues to this day. She asks I not reveal the then to now time frame, but let's just say she is old enough to be married to me.
As sad as her plaintive cry, packaging today puts the Cracker Jack Crisis on the back burner.
We've spent decades blaming Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on computers. We've designed all kinds of supportive aids for those who must use repetitive motion on a keyboard. But how many of us slip on our braces before we think about opening the inside plastic wrap on a box of cereal. Focus next time and you can hear the tendons grinding and stretching as your thumbs and index fingers fight to seperate the bound plastic. I remember a time in my history when it was a major feat of strength to tear a major metropolitan phone book in half with one's bare hands. Well that's nothing compared to just seperating these super-glued transparent titanium sheets so you can free up some Raisin Bran. That's one problem. Here comes another.
We were out to breakfast this morning and I like to top my meal off with a piece of sourdough toast and a little Jelly or Jam on top. There was a day when that Jam or Jelly could be spooned out of a small jar and gently spread on your crispy grain. For some time now we've been innundated with these little rectangular plastic dosages of preserves piled on top of each other in a wire basket. They always make it look like you are going to have lots of choice. But that choice usually consists of one strawberry or grape on top and nothing but the one's nobody will ever eat underneath. I always seem to end up with a stack of apple butter, which I hate.
There seem to be two main suppliers across the country, Smuckers and Knott's Berry Farm. At first blush their products seem to have arrived from the same bourgeois industrialist. They come in little hard plastic cups with narrow lips around them. Then there are the micrometer thin sheets sealing in the goodies, and in some cases sealing them in for good. Only the brand names appears to distinguish them apart. Ah, but look closer. Some of them are peeled off by finding a spot on the short end of the rectangle where the harder plastic is cut out in a half moon shape. Now if you have a glove size of ONE, you might be able to then grab the thin top layer, peel it off, revealing your apple butter. It's not enough, however, to spend a good portion of your life developing that micro-skill, because the other producer had to be different. In the other case the hard plastic basin is scored. There is no half moon. If you are lucky enough to bend the scored section upward cleanly, you will neatly reveal your preserve. I've never been so lucky. I usually get a small piece of the scored area and yank. Then I'm only able to peel off about a third of the thin top layer, making it necessary to dig down into the apple butter with a spoon that won't fit. I typically get the stuff all over the place.
Have any of you figured out why the packaging people have brought us to this? It can't be cost effective? With jam and jelly all over place it can't be sanitary?
Come on people, this is no fun. We're the consumers. Consumers are supposed to rule. Maybe we can get the Hilton family to sit down together at the breakfast table in a reality show where they all ladle their preserves from a crystal goblet? It would be a start.
Later on I want to talk about the incredible packaging overkill when you order ink for your printer through the mail. Phew!
No comments:
Post a Comment