ONE of the dubious joys of the Internet is how it speeds up the pace of life. Just two hours after we first heard of the decks of 55 playing cards handed out to US and British troops occupying the country to help them identify former Iraqi leaders, we got our first spam email offering one for sale.
The spammer, who insists the cards are made by the same company that supplied the US Army, bills them as “the one true collector’s item from Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
Actually, we thought that what American forces really wanted to collect was Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, not just their pictures on a deck of playing cards, but that’s another matter.
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What’s next? We’re waiting with bated breath for the first request for assistance from a relative of a former Iraqi official who needs to launder a little bit of surplus cash that he happens to have stashed in an awkward place.
LIKE many other journalists, one of our colleagues keeps her phone number ex-directory to avoid crank calls. About to move house, she called her phone company, BT, to arrange to take over the line at the new house. BT explained it would take a while to confirm what the new number would be but gave her a reference number to use when she called to find out.
A few days later she made the call, duly quoted the reference number she had been given, and asked what her new phone number was going to be.
“I see you are ex-directory,” said the BT customer service adviser.
“Yes,” said our colleague.
“Well in that case I’m afraid I can’t tell you what your number will be.”
MORE health spam. “What would you do if you found something, quite by accident,” reader John Lonergan was asked not so long ago, “that had the potential for helping countless people improve their health?” Shout it to the rooftops and verily proclaim it to a million email addresses? You bet.
And what is this something? It’s natural, of course. “Our bodies, naturally convert the water we drink from H2O into a specific type of buffered water, H3O.OH, but this conversion diminishes as we age and because of our ever increasing toxic environment.”
No mention of price. But somehow, embittered cynics that we are, we predict that this amazing and entirely natural substance will cost a tad more than the boring old dihydrogen monoxide that falls for free (and ready-buffered) from the sky.
IF buffered water isn’t your cup of tea, maybe you’d like this alternative that is “compact, lightweight, easy to store, and perfect to take wherever you go. It’s free of toxins, chemicals, lead, minerals, and almost every other dangerous substance you can think of.” Yes, visit and order some dehydrated water now!
This might, just possibly, be a spoof on all the other water spams and scams. But we would be interested to hear how many payments they have received for their Special 2 For 1 Offer: “Purchase 50 gallons of our specially formulated dehydrated water for just $9.95, and we’ll double your order for FREE!”
DURACELL has found that 1 in 5 people who try to buy a battery are so confused that they leave the shop without buying and come back later with a used battery to be sure of getting the right one.
So, on the advice of a “top psychologist”, Duracell will now start colour-coding its batteries: green for one size, red for another, and so on. It sounds like a simple and ingenious idea, unless, of course, you happen to be colour-blind.
Business director George Allan also tells us that “consumers don’t understand chemistry” and Duracell wants to get away from technical terms like alkaline and zinc carbon. Feedback wholeheartedly agrees, but wonders if the memo failed to go out to the advertising people. Duracell’s latest TV ad ends with the message that Duracell batteries last longer “than ordinary zinc carbon cells”.
OUR piece about contrived acronyms (1 March) prompted a colleague to recall his favourite from a 1996 NASA press release. “A NASA technology that could make everything from speakers to heart pumps smaller and more efficient has been recognised as one of the 100 most significant technological advancements of the past year,” it asserted. “Dubbed THUNDER, for Thin-Layer Composite-Unimorph Piezoelectric Driver and Sensor…”
Er, right, so that’s actually TLCUPDS, not THUNDER. It seems slightly disappointing that despite giving the technology such an ungainly full name, they still didn’t get anywhere near their intended acronym.
FINALLY, reader Valerie Moyses tells us that she overheard an elderly gentleman in the local hospital emergency department telling his relatives: “I’ve been so much better since they removed that cafetière.” Ouch. That has got to be painful.
The box of Raid Ant Bait bought by reader Ray Downing reassuringly told him that it “Kills Bugs Dead”, but disappointingly added that it only “Kills Ants for 3 months”