Thursday, July 05, 2012

Jonesing for a fix...

It's good to be reminded that the ability of the media and bureaucrats to get trolled by the simplest of things is a global phenomenon and not limited to your local area.

For example, the Media-Government Complex in Dubai went into a full-scale Code Brown alert over internet pictures of Nutella spread loaded into syringes. If anybody involved had stopped to think about the dynamics of this* for a moment, they would have realized that you'd either need a 2-ton hydraulic press to operate the plunger or a needle like an angle-cut piece of galvanized fence post to make such a thing even plausible, but why let common sense get in the way of a fit of shrieking pearl-clutchery?

Watch out for cell phone guns! (This email warning still circulates the web like a digital Marie Céleste and occasionally finds its way to the filler pages of a local newspaper or a police station bulletin board, despite nobody having seen a cell phone that looks like that in the wild since The X-Files was still on the air.)


*...and if you turn any newspaper office or radio or television studio upside down and shake it, you'll be ankle-deep in people with personal experience with syringes.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The comments on the stories from (presumably) locals is interesting as well. Pleas for - you guessed it - state intervention.

Jay G said...

"...digital Marie Céleste" - that's p-p-poetry right there, folks...

Bob said...

Personally I think that the po-po's feed the "cell phone gun" stories into the media so that they can use that as a pretext to confiscate cell phone cameras when they've been caught misbehaving.

perlhaqr said...

Everytime I see one of those cell-phone-gun warning, I wanna strapping tape my G20 to my Android and take a picture of it to send back.

RL said...

Pretty nutty, but at least they haven't had to suffer the horde of bath salt cannibals.

B...B...Bath salts!

lelnet said...

Are there really people out there so stupid they'd think those Nutella syringes were meant to be used intravenously? Or that they even COULD be? (Seriously...LOOK AT THE PICTURE! Just IMAGINE trying to get that dispenser through your skin!) They're a novelty item. A joke. Also, potentially, a tool for decorating confections with fancy patterns of Nutella, the way some haute-cuisine chefs use squeeze-bottles designed for ketchup to make pretty designs on plates out of sauces. Right now every hipster cupcake-artist in America is planning how to reproduce them, and good for them.

Uh...yeah, I guess there are people that stupid. And looking at the current population of our government, it seems they vote. *sigh* :(

RKN said...

I could see a Taser app being useful in some circumstances.

Anonymous said...

If you took one of those ink refill syringes and loaded it with Nutella, you could you probably, with a little patience, use it to fill the center of a Microwave Cake In A Coffee Mug.

I take the opportunity here to thank you for the Microwave Coffee Cup Cake recipe.

Mike James

Ed Foster said...

I do remember.22 short single shots back in Brooklyn when my old man was stationed at Floyd Bennett field. You pointed the top at something you didn't like, squeezed the top lever-thingy to get it clear of the barrel, then thumbed back the bottom and let it snap forward against the rim of the cartridge.

Definately a single shot. To reload, you had to unscrew the bottom piece and poke the fired case out, then reassemble in reverse order.

Of course, nowadays Mayor Mike would throw you in the hoosegow for carrying a real cigarette lighter, so there probably wouldn't be all that much difference. Sad.

I remembah when NuYawkuhs had some bawls.

Ed Foster said...

That's .22 short ZIPPOS, sorry.

Anonymous said...

Okay, I cop to the "personal experience with syringes"; back when I did drugs, I was serious. If you're going to get high, don't screw around.
Still, WTF is this? Nutella? Maybe it's a good idea--if they somehow get it to flow, it'll turn all the vegans' blood vessels to concrete, & a lot of our problems are solved!
--Tennessee Budd

John B said...

Since the days of our former President, Bill -the thrill- Clinton, making a statement that cellphones are more effective than guns in fighting crime, It's been a running joke at my favorite gun shop. "Y'all want them cell phone batteries in .45, or 9mm?"

Six said...

Where the hell are my Cheez Whiz syringes!?