БƗƗҚ.21 // Five more banned Amazon reviews
A lightbulb, some garden twine, underpants, a paper shredder, and another extension cord.
Hi all,
I was very touched by everyone who reached out after my last post to share their thoughts on extension cords and express their outrage that my reviews were banned. So here’s five more reviews!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
— Grif / Alexi Scoville
This product exists, which is what I hoped for.
I need to get something out there straight right away and that is that I had no idea they made lightbulbs like this. It's not so much that I actively ever engaged with a thumb-width glass tube surrounded by two pointy tips that resembled archery arrow points and said aloud "they certainly don't make lightbulbs like this” because I often but not always know better than to speak definitively about things that I am ignorant of, it's more that my lived experience—I'm realizing now—has crafted a very narrow understanding of the lightbulb shape landscape. You've got your classic bulb, your helixed LED that looks like a small DQ choc/vanilla swirl cone, of course you’ve got your long florescent tubes, the outdoor cone-shaped ones, and I guess the ones that look like fake candles. As a straight-and-narrow Consumer you can pretty much get by in life without needing to know much more.
But here I was last week finally getting around to changing out the rear cabin light in my car that burned out when I left my trunk open in Maine for three glorious days September 2020. I consulted my manual and my screwdriver to uncover this abomination of a bulb that has been free riding in my car for the better part of the pandemic and I set forth to find a replacement. After going 0/3 at stores, I turned to the internet which of course had HELLA DE3175TB Standard-10W Standard Miniature 3175 Bulbs, 12V, 10W, 2 Pack in stock.
One more thing about my limited experience with fringe bulb shapes: I think it was moving into the post-socket world that took me by surprise. The twisting of the bulb always felt part of it to me, you know, like in an integral sort of way. So the idea that I could produce light with a quarter-turn, a press-and-snap, or even a AA-battery-style-insert felt new to me. But who can we blame for this? Well the education system surely, but that seems too obvious, especially given everything else that they are facing right now.
Is it unreasonable to suggest that municipalities should erect billboards that outline for their residents all the possible types of lightbulbs? And how about another billboard with useful knots? Common wood defects? Roof shingling patterns? 18th century masonry techniques? Popular approaches towards assassinating monarchs (2500 BCE - 1500 AD)? I for one would benefit from such an ontological approach towards public service announcements, and I think that it might do us all a little good to be able to gather around the local billboard together and point to our children and say "Look, look there. On that sign are all the different lightbulb types there are. The municipality put that sign there just for you, so that you won't be surprised one day when you find yourself performing minor car repairs".
This product is being asked to do work that it didn't sign up for.
There is enough suffering in the world that it's not worth spending time feeling bad for an inanimate object, particularly something so lowly as KINGLAKE 66 Feet Black Sturdy Plastic Coated Garden Wire 2mm Plant Twist Tie. And yet here I am shaking my head at how I treat it, wishing for it a life better than I'm able to provide.
The thing is this. I have a house now. And something about this house that distinguishes it from the houses that surround it is an arched bougainvillea out front. This arched bougainvillea is important to me. A therapist might say too important. But the joys of desert life are amplified, and the sorrows halved, when I return home to a bright pink bush that never could have grown where I grew. The problem is that if you were to squint at this bougainvillea (it's actually two separate plants, but I don’t like to use the word “bougainvilleas”), the dominant color you would see between your lids has slowly transitioned over the course of my custodianship from what Crayola calls "Fuchsia" to what I imagine Crayola would call "Worst Brown".
The plant had some Pre-Existing Conditions that were beyond my control (if you are not from the US, a pre-existing condition is a fake concept made up by insurance companies to not take responsibility for your wellbeing but still take your money), but I've adjusted watering, read up on seasonal variation, engaged in some light chit chat with the neighbors, and purchased a local remedy that was described to me on the phone by a man named Brandon as "like a big cup of coffee for your root system". One other improvement that was desperately needed was a re-envisioning of the wires that guided the shape of the bougainvillea, which for those who are losing the relevance of this review will be happy to hear is how I came across KINGLAKE 66 Feet Black Sturdy Plastic Coated Garden Wire 2mm Plant Twist Tie.
The product works fine. It's a little thinner than I expected (even after accounting for other reviewers who said it was thinner than they expected), but it's durable and it can be manipulated into a wide variety of knots. It is the color it says it is. But somedays I just stand in my yard holding it, disappointed that it can't on its own make the flowers turn pink again, that it can of course make a contribution to the Nature/Nurture debate but only when guided by my hand, that it has no keen insights into macro trends of the U.S. housing market. Somedays I am simply disappointed that when all is said and done, it's just 66 Feet of Black Sturdy Plastic Coated Garden Wire 2mm Plant Twist Tie, which is all it ever said it was.
This product haunts my dreams.
This is less a review of ExOfficio Men's Give-n-go Briefs and more a review of the image that accompanies it which includes neither leg nor torso but does feature a generous curve to denote certain frontal elements of the male form. I purchased these in a store, where I was only subjected to a neatly folded pair of underpants that did not assume any form other than Flat. For some time I felt like I had found a pair of hiking underpants that I simply forgot about when wearing them (which is generally the goal of underpants I think, to not think about them), but now that I have come to Amazon to leave a review I find that I am always thinking about then. Whether I hike up or down or side to side I feel like I am being followed by a headless, limbless, torsoless man who nevertheless is endowed in a manner that fills ExOfficio Men's Give-n-go Briefs from back to front. I am not interested in what this man has to say and I wish he would leave me alone.
And for anyone who suggests that if he is haunting my dreams does that not make it a nightmare I can assure you that there is a difference.
This product has got me thinking about extension cords At Large.
I was extraordinarily pleased to have the opportunity to purchase this specific extension cord for a specific purpose. I hadn't considered this point much before, but until recently extension cords had sort of just appeared in my life. I have never felt myself to be deficient in the extension cord category (nor would I consider myself to be any sort of Fat Cat or Connoisseur of the Extension Cord Scene); it has just tended to be the case that any gap between wall and appliance could be mitigated with materials on hand. Sometimes that meant an outdoor cord would be used indoors, other times that a few short cords would be strung together, other times I'd opt for the battery-powered alternative, and often I would simply convince myself that the lamp would have to go somewhere else, or that the bread would have to be toasted Over There.
I'm not really sure where the all extension cords in my life came from up til now. Some certainly came from my parents house, a few more were likely inherited from forgetful bandmates, I believe I acquired more than one from departing roommates who "offered" to leave behind some "useful stuff", and then I guess I married into a few of them. I really don't think I had ever purchased an extension cord of any sort in my entire life before this year and I'm sorry but I'm really just having a moment with myself right now as I write this down and realize all of this. 12,663 days on this planet and here we are in 2022 AD purchasing our first extension cords.
What was particularly rewarding about this purchase was that I actually got out a yardstick to confirm the exact distance of the power gap that I was hoping to bridge. Can you believe that? I went from never having purchased an extension cord to using a yardstick to ensure I purchased the perfect cord. A f$%&ing yardstick! Talk about a one hundred and eighty degree turn vis-à-vis extension cord procurement practices.
So even if C2G Power Cord, Short Extension Cord, Power Extension Cord, 18 AWG, Black, 3 Feet (0.91 Meters), Cables to Go 03114 hadn't worked out for my intended project, it still would have been a major victory for me, having proved in the process that my extension cord purchase a few weeks back wasn’t a one time fluke. But it did work, it worked something fantastic. And now the power is going where it needs to go and I'm hooked. And I'm realizing that people are selling vintage extension cords on Etsy and those are pretty sweet. And over on Youtube the DIYers are telling me that I can make my own extension cords of nearly any length that I can dream up. And at Google they’re telling me I can communicate with my power cords via voice or app. And now Shinola is charging $195 plus tax for a 5 port + 2 USB extension cord and look at me already adopting the terminology of "port" to describe certain features of an extension cord, as I learn that "socket" "outlet" "port" and "receptacle" each have unique (if sometimes overlapping) meanings. Jiminy Cricket I think it's going to be a good year for me and power. Five stars.
This product has an erroneous space in its description following the word “Basket”.
Upon receipt of Aurora AU800SD Professional Strip Cut Paper Shredder/CD/Credit Card Shredder Without Wastebasket, 8-Sheet Strip-Cut No Basket , Black you may feel like you've finally Made It. After years of putting yourself out there, hustling and rat racing in service of the narcissistic self-promotion that's required of us in this neoliberal twilight of a rotten empire, you can finally sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy some privacy. I purchased this product because, on the balance, I no longer want the details of my inner life known to Any Old Joe who happens to find himself knee deep in my paper waste. While this Any Old Joe could be a talent scout or bigwig agent who stumbles across my handwriting, phone number, and address and decides to pay me a visit and offer me my Big Break, chances are that his intentions are less bedazzled.
And by purchasing Aurora AU800SD Professional Strip Cut Paper Shredder/CD/Credit Card Shredder Without Wastebasket, 8-Sheet Strip-Cut No Basket , Black you are saying aloud that you no longer want to take that chance. You are saying that whether Joe's intentions are bedazzled or not is no longer of any consequence to you because if he goes through your trash all he's going to find is shreds of confetti that will be far too intricate and complex for him to piece back together with his dumb little hands. And moreover it's not that you are merely saying that you are no longer interested in bedazzlement as a facet of Joe's intentions, you are saying that you are no longer interested in the very nature of Joe's intentions. Joe ceases to exist as a knowable entity to you. And that is really saying something.
You may notice that this product comes without a bin, and I think that's just swell because I'm not shredding paper waste at a rate that requires a dedicated bin separate from the non-shredded waste that I'm generating on a daily basis and depositing into a perfectly functional bin. I don't mind mixing my shredded and unshredded waste, and the City doesn't seem to mind collecting it this way. Maybe one day I'll need a dedicated bin for my shredder, maybe one day I'll need an entire factory dedicated to pulverizing and all the paper waste that I generate so that it is completely beyond recognition for all the Any Old Joe's lurking about. But by then maybe Joe's gotten a promotion. Maybe he's not just Any Old Joe any more. Maybe he took a job up north for a few years and the cooler air did wonders for his temper. Maybe his head’s on straight, maybe he got right with God, and maybe he came back to town with a brand new title. Maybe that title is something like "Waste Quantity Manager - Southwest Quadrant" and maybe it's the year 2036 and the New Government only allows us to generate so much waste each billing cycle and maybe I’m still sitting here shredding my paper waste 6-8 pieces at a time realizing that I can shred all I want but it won’t change the mass of my waste, which is the metric by which the New Government monitors waste output, and maybe I’ll start pasting my paper waste onto the interior walls of my house for fear of otherwise tripping the garbage bin weight sensors, and by then perhaps Joe is a city counselor and my house just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller as I paste more and more paper waste onto the walls until eventually it’s just me and my shredder completely surrounded by pasted paper waste while Joe reigns free outside making a bid for Provincial Magistrate. Now that would really be something!