БƗƗҚ.22 // Little Progress on the Amazon Front
A Pen Set, Krazy Glue, Day Planner, Garlic Press, and Lightning Cables
Hi there,
Spring has sprung in Phoenix. We’ve had our first 80 degree day, and new growth has pushed the old leaves off of all the deciduous trees—we have an ash tree in our yard and the way the leaves dropped felt more like it was shedding a layer of skin than it was engaging in any genuine four-season-cycle. The bitter orange tree in my yard yielded a whopping 145 oranges this season, and I just pulled off the final batch to make room for the orange blossoms and bees that now hegemonize my senses whenever I go to the driveway.
The initial flurry of moving into a new home is over, and I’m settling into some routines and more maintenance related tasks, as reflected in my recent purchases. Unfortunately, I’m still getting banned over at Amazon. I uploaded my previous five reviews using a burner account, but they were all removed. In the meantime, Alexi Scoville’s account was unbanned! I quickly published the following five (currently under review), but my hopes are not very high that they’ll see the light of day. I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for reading,
— Grif
This product was not the worst deal I’ve encountered recently, but it was far from the best.
Every day we do things that we prefer not to do, we go with the flow even though we'd prefer to be swimming in an entirely different river or maybe not even swimming at all. Today was a day that planned obsolescence, proprietary data ports, corporate lobbying against the Right-to-Repair and plastic waste won. I simply needed a way to charge my phone and I was staring down the barrel of a years old Lightning Cord (TM) with a severed nubbin. No amount of huffing or puffing was going to help my situation, nor was I in the right state of mind to consider a major life change that would prevent this from happening again (going off grid, switching to Android, etc.) I could have probably been a little more gentle with the cord during our time together, I suppose that is true. Perhaps developing my soldering skills could help me not be in this situation again down the road though I’m not certain that’s the case. I would need to learn more about soldering to determine whether or not developing my soldering skills could help me not be in this situation again down the road. In any case I paid $19.99 for a 2-pack of 2m lightning cables, which feels like an okay price to me. It was certainly not the worst deal I've encountered recently, but it far from the best.
The best deal I've encountered recently has to have been a pound and a half of frozen Alaskan smelts for $1.98. At some point a bargain just becomes upsetting, especially when sentient organisms are involved. And that’s before you consider the fact that these fish didn't just martyr themselves to the grocery store. They had to be caught, you know, by a person, and processed somewhere, and flash frozen, and there's all the overhead that goes into an operation like that and we're not even yet talking about how the fish got from Alaska to Chicago, or at what point they were packaged into shrink-wrapped styrofoam, which had an entirely different origin story that began with oil extraction God knows where. But somewhere this packing material met up with these 40 dead fish, they worked their way through the Midwestern distribution network, everyone taking a cut along the way, before they got to the fish market where somebody had to weigh and price them. And they figured $1.98 was the right price. I really just don't know what to make of that. Some things just shouldn't be so inexpensive. That seems like maybe what a pound and a half of smelts should have cost in 1984. And I know it's privileged to be advocating for higher meat prices and higher oil prices because most of us in this country weren't raised to think like vegetarians and because public infrastructure is crumbling. Saying that smelts should cost $10 or fuel should be $8/gallon like it is over there in Europe is going to make it extremely hard for a lot of decent people to eat tonight and get to work tomorrow. Because you know that our hydrogen planes and suburban light rail and inter-city electric bus networks aren't coming anytime soon no siree they are not because the Media and the Billionaires are in cahoots trying to get us amped up about private spaceflight and narrow little Tesla tunnels when all we ever asked was that Chevron didn't have it's boot on the neck of the Justice Department and Raytheon wasn't writing op-eds about starting new wars. Maybe if corporations weren't treated like citizens and citizens weren't treated like afterthoughts and maybe if non-citizens were treated to anything at all, well maybe then gas and smelts would both be a little more expensive, but maybe that would be okay.
For now, Anker 6 ft Premium Double-Braided Nylon Lightning Cable [2-Pack], Apple MFi Certified for iPhone Chargers, iPhone X/8/8 Plus/7/7 Plus/6/6 Plus/5s, iPad, iPad Mini, and More (Black) works great. Five stars.
This product works well, though I wish they would tell me in the product description how far the pens write.
For those of us who are looking for pens in order to draw one straight, continuous line the included stats are insufficient. And it's not rocket science to include something like that. For instance, we all know that the classic Bic pen can draw a 1km straight line on a good day, and that those outer space pens are closer to 3 miles in terms of writing capacity. It’s common knowledge that a solid ballpoint which is a cut above the aforementioned classic Bic can get you between 5-7 miles worth of writing if you keep it properly serviced and that the standard graphite pencil can you take you close to 35 miles in its lifetime, which is a dollar to mile value that I personally feel is under appreciated in our Society.
The felt tips aren’t going to take you as far as the ballpoints. Everybody knows that. Even a well-cared for Sharpie whose cap is securely fastened after each use and whose tip is frequently hydrated with an isopropyl alcohol swab won’t take you much further than a Bic. Anyway I’m blabbing on because you basically already know all of this. I just happen to remember all these precise distances off the top of my head because in elementary school we each had to take turns standing at the front of the classroom and reciting the average writing distance of popular writing instruments, right after we put our tiny hands on our little beating chests and pledged our daily allegiance to God, The Republic, indivisibility, etc. So to wrap this up, while I like the form factor of EMOTT Fineliner Pen Set #3, 10-Colors and believe that they each run true to color, I have a hard time trusting this day in age any pen, pencil, or marker that isn't upfront about its estimated lifetime writing mileage.
This product was krazy all right, but not in a good way.
I made a HUGE mistake going for Krazy Glue, Max Bond Gel, EZ Squeeze, 4 g, as it was ultimately only able to perform 1.5 of the 3 jobs that I had purchased it for (a chair leg, a boot sole, a box lid). The problem is—the problem was—that I was lazy with my calculations. I saw 4g of adhesive for $7 and I thought Sure Why Not, Sounds Great, That Should Do It. I didn’t think I had $7 worth of gluing needs. But the thing is that with the EZ Squeeze tube you’re just paying for plastic. Pay what you want but at the end of the day 4 grams is 4 grams and 4 grams is absolute diddly squat. And I'm kicking myself for not doing my research better. I think if I had in my head the market rate for 4 grams of various substances ($240 for gold, $60 for saffron, $50 for decent weed, 0.16 cents for sugar...) a flag would have been raised in my head because $7 for 4 grams of Krazy Glue seems a bit rich in comparison to these other household staples.
If only I had noticed a superior product sooner. Take for instance Krazy Glue Maximum Bond Super Glue, No-Run Gel, 20 Grams. With Krazy Glue Maximum Bond Super Glue, No-Run Gel, 20 Grams, form is really following function. It's just a tube cram-jammed with the good stuff. Same crooked "A" in the logo, same bizarre repairman mascot spreading his legs for no easily discernible reason (is he falling? lounging? seducing?), but at $8.29 all in we are looking at a mere 40 cents per gram, a fraction of the unit cost of EZ Squeeze. And honestly, it’s not like it’s hard to squeeze Krazy Glue to begin with.
Reflecting on my failure, I think it comes down to my impressionability in the face of the Krazy Glue mascot man. On the EZ Squeeze package, he’s telling me in big block letters that this is the product for MAXIMUM CONTROL, whereas on the 20g tube he’s telling me it’s PERFECT FOR BIG JOBS. I looked at those completely subjective opinions and I thought to myself “you know, this isn’t a particularly Big Job, whereas I would like to Maximize my Control.” But this is all trash. What makes a job big? Control compared to what? I need to STOP letting the Krazy Glue mascot man talk to me like he's some sort of condescending shopkeep at an ACE hardware in some hodunk town that doesn’t even have a AA baseball team.
So in conclusion, do the math, reach your own conclusions, and don’t let the mascot man into your head. It’s not kool.
This product review puts me in a difficult spot as a reviewer.
I purchased Hobonichi Techo Planner Book [English/A6/January 2022 Start/Monday Start] as a gift, which puts me in a difficult spot as a reviewer. Why? Because I have not used the product myself and all I can say is that I got a 5 star reaction from the gift recipient. I suppose in some ways that this is as good as any review. You don't know me, so the fact that somebody I know gave me a 5 star reaction when they unwrapped this product should effectively be as meaningful as if I personally awarded it 5 stars after using it.
Of course if I had used it myself I would have been able to provide more in depth commentary that would allow you as the reader of this review to discern if I'm the sort of person you want to trust reviews from. I imagine that if I had more of a personal interaction with the product I would be able to comment on it's unobtrusive but substantive size, the rewarding quality of the paper, and the way that the daily quotes ask a little more from you than the in-your-face Page a Days you're likely to encounter on this side of the Pacific. And if I was reviewing it after having used it for some time I might be able to provide even more insight and substance, such as remarking that the Product doesn't lay open flat until mid-February, or that the shoe size comparison chart included towards the end was both novel and effective, or that I ate 13% more donburi rice bowls during months in which I used the product daily. But I can't say any of this because, as I said, I bought this as a gift and all I can truthfully say is that it felt good in my hand as I wrapped it and that I got a 5 star reaction from the gift recipient upon unwrapping. I suppose I can go just a tiny bit further and comment on the character of the gift recipient: capricorn, midwestern by birth, in the market for a day planner, yoshoku (western-style Japanese food) enthusiast, not married to a multi-millionaire. I have to imagine that if you tick at least 4 of those boxes you will really enjoy this product.
This product is super, don’t let my fellow reviewers misguide you.
Oftentimes, when I hear something described as "the best ______ money can buy", that _______ is not affordable for me, and I will have to settle for an inferior product. However, occasionally, the ________ will be a small kitchen gadget, and in those cases I cosplay as Mr. Moneybags and treat money not as an afterthought per se but also not as the primary driver of my decision making process. I'm very satisfied with this garlic press. Pressing garlic is something that I do multiple times per week, and Dreamfarm Garject | Non-Scratch Garlic Press with Ejector | All-In-One Garlic Mincer Tool | Chrome Plated Zinc Garlic Peeler | Easy-To-Clean Garlic Presser | No Peel Needed & No Smelly Fingers | Red works leaps and bounds better than its predecessor, which suffered a hairline fracture in the line of duty halfway through soup prep a few weeks back. It's heavy, this garlic press, and when I hold it in my hand and look at the little garlic cloves on the cutting board I can't help but cackle aloud because I just know that peel or unpeeled, the cloves aren't going to stand a chance. In the past it was more of a dance - I had to act a little more coy and reserved in the kitchen because there was always the chance that the press would jam and I'd spend 15 minutes with a toothpick extracting little bits of garlic from the countless crevices. But now I really feel like I'm the one in control, both in terms of delivering a consistent garlicy paste on one end and effortlessly releasing the non-edible bits on the other.
I have seen some negative reviews about how the skin release mechanism on Dreamfarm Garject | Non-Scratch Garlic Press with Ejector | All-In-One Garlic Mincer Tool | Chrome Plated Zinc Garlic Peeler | Easy-To-Clean Garlic Presser | No Peel Needed & No Smelly Fingers | Red sometimes causes a garlic peel to be launched across the room. Now I wouldn't want garlic peels constantly flying every which way in my home, but I can say that this did happen to me once and I found it to be hilarious. The force with which the peel left the device, the unpredictably perpendicular trajectory of its arc, the sound the garlic casing made when it splat on the opposite wall…well to me this all just meant that I hadn't yet tamed the machine. With great power comes great responsibility and if you're going to complain about flying garlic peels then I would say take a look in the mirror and remember that the garlic press works for you, and not vice-versa. I mean, who chooses to come onto the internet just to tell the whole world that they can’t control a 9 inch long lever, i.e. one of the six canonical classic machines, the other five of which are a pulley, wheel and axle, wedge, screw, and inclined plane? I wouldn’t. I’d just put my head down and get back to work honing my craft.