Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The China syndrome and other rants


I slacked off “work” work last night (not to mention missing that tasty Happy Hour at the Continental Club with David Grissom and Warren Hood) to assemble a couple of nifty new chairs we got at Target. My home office chair has been killing my legs (seat too high for my hobbitty frame) so I needed to find something lower to the ground. This chair is that, plus it swivels beautifully (wheeeee!!!). The first thing I do after opening a booklet like this is to get some nice background distraction going on the tube; preferably a vintage gem like this one. One comment on AMC is this: I thought they showed stuff uncut. They don’t. This one, “Easy Rider” included female nudity related to sexual activity, but didn’t show the bird-flipping near the end (and both are important to the plot). Boobs and butts can be shown but not a finger? Wha??

So my work was laid out in front of me. Two chairs to assemble that looked like this after sweeping up lots of Styrofoam. Only $68 for each one, on sale until Saturday. Of course they are made in China. The sad part is that I doubt I could afford them if they were made here. It’s a broken system, for sure. An unbelievable number of things are not made here, including a high percentage of American flags!!! Apparently, the number of imported flags shot waaaay up after 9/11 due to demand. How ironic is that? I also bought underwear, some of which was made by the company Hanes, which identifies itself with the tagline “An American Original”. The imprint says they were made in El Salvador. I guess Central America technically is “America” so their butts would be covered by that (and thankfully, mine is too). The other brand was Gilligan O'Malley, which was made in Malaysia. I wonder if the CEO’s money even goes into an American bank?

Well, one thing that is definitely not made in China is this excellent Texas beer, Firemen’s #4 made by the microbrewer Real Ale. mmmm. A necessary ingredient anytime your evening can be described as "Assembly Required".

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3 comments:

FreakyNick said...

MMMMMMMM Real Ale.

I've never had it out of a bottle, but I tasted some fine Real Ale (pumped out of a barrel the old-fashioned way) when I visited England. That was some of the finest beer I've ever tasted.

I know you wrote about other things in this post, but I forgot what you said after started talking about beer. "A necessary ingredient, anytime."

Ptelea said...

Funny post - I hope you were able to complete the assembly - I was kind of expecting an "after" assembly photo!

Blueberry said...

Nick, when you mentioned England I had to look up "Real Ale", and it looks like they have the "Campaign for Real Ale", meaning a type of beer... well, read all about it at this link. We also have a brewery in Blanco Texas called Real Ale Brewing Company, and they have some really fine products.

PT, yup, they went together fine and look like this.