In case you needed further proof that the human race is doomed, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods:
*On a Flea collar box: It is a violation of Federal Law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.
* On Sears hair dryer: Do not use while sleeping
* On a bag of Fritos: You could be a winner! No purchase necessary Details inside
* On a bar of Dial soap: Directions: Use like regular soap
* Some Swanson frozen dinners: Serving suggestion: Defrost
* On a hotel-provided shower cap in a box: Fits one head
* On Tesco's Tiramisu desert: Do not turn upside down (Printed on the bottom of the box)
* On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: Product will be hot after heating
* On packaging for a Rowenta Iron: Do not iron clothes on body
* On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine: Do not drive car or operate machinery
* On Nytol (a sleep aid): Warning: may cause drowsiness
* On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning keep out of children
* On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights: For indoor or outdoor use only
* On a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use
* On Sainsbury's Peanuts: Warning: contains nuts
* On an American Airlines packet of nuts: Instructions: open packet, eat nuts
* On a Swedish chain saw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands
A few words from the visionary Steven Wright/Bumper Stickers (I combined them):
All those who believe in telekinesis raise my hand.
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.
Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they.
24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case ...coincidence?
When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.
Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
Change is inevitable....except from vending machines.
A fool and his money are soon partying.
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.
Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.
I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
Borrow money from pessimists-they don't expect it back.
Half the people you know are below average.
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
A day without sunshine is like, night.
I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted,
then used against you.
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
Pardon my driving; I'm reloading.
Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good
I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of
The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
The hardness of the butter is directly proportional to the softness of the
bread.
Don't sweat the petty things....or pet the sweaty things.
If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.
Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
1998 DARWIN AWARDS
They have finally been released! For those not familiar with the Darwin Award -
It's an annual honor given to the person who provided the universal human gene
pool the biggest service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way.
As always, competition this year has been keen again. Some candidates appear
to have trained their whole lives for this event.
DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES
1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in
two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide
sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally
zoned" when he ran, according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a
200-foot-high cliff on his daily run.
3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he
had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach goers said Daniel
Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had
been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it
collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on
the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to
Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took
rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while
about 200 people looked on.. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.
4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he
fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burgling. Death
was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep
his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena,
20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman,
23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest
Berrena was wearing.
6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr , 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del , as
he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded
with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont , Daniel Kolta, 27,
and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in
the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.
8. In September, a 17-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near
Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the
spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990.
DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS
1) In Guthrie, Okla , in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with
a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a rock near
the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull.
2) In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out
cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane
torch and caused a fire thatburned the first and second floors of his
house.
3) Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in
September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of
dynamite that blew up in their car . While driving around at 2AM, the
bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see
what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window
was closed.
Oh to ye olde english language...
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in
pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet or breads, are
meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that
quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2
geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy
that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of
history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid
of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your
tongue?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for
the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a
recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that
smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways? How can a slim chance and
a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How
can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are
alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?
Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or
experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was
combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?
And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would
ACTUALLY hurt a fly? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by
filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of
the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars
are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why,
when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.
This transcript of an actual radio conversion is another reason the end of civilization is near. The conversation is between a US Navy ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland. It was released by Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.
AMERICANS: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
CANADIANS: We recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
AMERICANS: This is the Captain of this US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.
CANADIANS: No, I say again, divert YOUR course.
AMERICANS: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ALANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTERMEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
CANADIANS: We are a lighthouse. Your call.
