A Campaign Against False Advertising: Day One

Thesis: In my opinion, if Life Savers are branded as such, they should actually perform some life-saving function.

I’m not talking about having bad breath and you pop in a Life Savers mint, and say, ‘Whew! That saved my life. I would have been so embarrassed having bad breath all day.’

Or better yet, giving one of the hard candies to a friend who is an incessant chatterer so they’ll stop talking. (By the way, that doesn’t work. The most dedicated of chatterers have an uncanny ability to talk and eat simultaneously.)

No. People’s lives survive bad breath and Chatty-Kathies. Maybe their hearing or self-esteem doesn't, but if that’s really what’s being saved, then maybe the mints should be called ‘Esteem Savers’ instead.

What I want is for Life Savers to protect me from a long and painful, or even sudden and unexpected death. If I jumped off a cliff (or am pushed), I want to be able to whip one out of my pocket, pop it into my mouth, and magically and inexplicably survive when I smash into the rocky valley two miles below. If I go sky-diving and my chute doesn’t open and the emergency latch is jammed, I can suck on a Life Saver and I am only a little shaken when I crash face first into the ocean.

It’s possible that you will confuse this with a Staples Easy Button. That is simply not true. Easy Buttons, if you will forgive me, are for slackers. ‘I don’t want to walk three feet to grab a stapler, so I’ll press this red button that doesn’t actually go to anything, and a stapler will appear right in front of me!’ The notion is ridiculous.

No, all I ask for is a little sweet treat that will save me from an untimely demise. Now, that would be a marketing dream for any Life Savers employee.

It would also go over better with the consumer instead of continuing to falsely advertise the candy, no matter how delicious.

Fleeting Disappointment

Last week I cleaned out the staff office in my residence hall. It was so cluttered and messy... there were piles of stuff here and stacks of things there. It was nonsense. For example, one of the stacks engulfed about half of the office, and it had nothing in it but outdated phonebooks.

Since I am somewhat environmentally conscious, I decided to recycle all of the phonebooks instead of throwing them in the trash.

So, I loaded 70-odd phonebooks into a barrow thingy and wheeled them onto the elevator and down to the end of the hallway on First East. I ran out the door and down some steps to the recycling dumpster. I propped the lid open on the top so that I could just stand at the door and chuck the books into the bin without going down the steps every time.

Next, I made several trips from the barrow inside, down a flight of stairs and out the door, where I lofted as many phonebooks as I could manage through the air into the dumpster.

Now, I'm sad that all of them are gone because I just saw this YouTube video on how to rip a phonebook, but I have nothing left to practice on.

Fact of the Day...

So I was sitting on my LoveSac (if you don't know what that is, I'm very sorry), and I was stretching my legs out, and my foot touched something super-nasty. It was wet and cold and completely undesirable to have anywhere near my appendages. Can you guess what it was?

An apple.

That's right- about two hours ago I ate an apple before sitting down to do work on a paper. I didn't feel like moving four feet to the trash, so I just set the core on the ground.

Surprise! Eaten apples cores are mildly disgusting.