Have a good close look
And I thought the icons that Microsoft used on their toolbars made no sense!
Now have another look at this tag. I ripped it off my shower curtain one day when Mr. Colon disagreed with my choice of meals (I know: more info than you wanted. Deal with it.)
I tore it off the shower curtain because it was so bizarre. I am a reasonably intelligent man (take my word for it willya!?) But I didn’t have Clue #1 what this thing was trying to get across.
| I am assuming here that the boneheads at Creative Bath who came up with this tag only have gold in their heart. That they are trying to “Do The Right Thing.”It is a fine shower curtain.In fact, one of the finest shower curtains I have ever owned! This has no reflection on the company or any of their employees. And certainly makes no purportedly factual statements that could get me sued by the fine folks at Creative Bath in beautiful Central Islip. |
I am assuming that those four little icons are supposed to convey, to the purchaser, how to properly care (wash, dry, etc.) the shower curtain it was attached to. I think this is a reasonable assumption, but remember, I use, and prefer, Macs. Yeah I’m one of them. Perhaps I am wrong. I don’t think so.
As you may have gathered I think that there is a problem here. Not a major earth shattering problem. We are not debating the future of “This Great Republic.” We aren’t arguing whether or not the prez can’t keep it in his pants and shouldn’t have lied about it. We are discussing the failure of some well intentioned moron to actually use the English language.
I think that the last little icon is supposed to mean “Iron no hotter than 110°.” So why the hell can’t they print that?
As for the rest of those little icons: Looks like a cup with a “120” in it. A box with bars, followed by some sort of Egyptian hieroglyph. Are they trying to convey telling me that “The Sun God will have a cup of coffee, in prison after his ironing (with an iron carefully set to 110°) is done? Hellifiknow.
And don’t give me any crap about making instructions easier to read for non-English people. I showed this around work, a veritable melting pot of ethnic groups. No one knows what those little icons mean. I even made it a point to seek out the folks at work who are Indian, Hispanic, Oriental and the like who don’t speak English as their native language. The inescapable conclusion was that nonsensical icons are nonsensical in any language!
What would be so wrong with:“Wash in cold water, no bleach, tumble dry, Iron with a warm (not hot) iron” ?? (or whatever.) Nice and simple. Perhaps that is asking too much?
I dunno, maybe it’s someone’s attempt at justifying their job…
But for just a few moments, as I sat there on the porcelain throne reading this tag for the first time, I felt like I understood what it must be like to be Dilbert. Constantly puzzled by the world around him and wondering how the pointy-haired fools ended up in charge.
This seems like a colossal waste of time and effort, so why are you reading this or for that matter the rebuttal below:
Sometime in August of 1999 a very perceptive lady with whom I had been corresponding with noted my puzzlement with this shower curtain and rather gently took me to task for not knowing the obvious…
I finally got back to your web page. In todays adventure, we faced the dreaded Shower Curtain. The author gives a colorful interpretation of how to care for said Shower Curtain….
The “cup” is a wash tub and your water temp should not exceed 120F. The box with bars means “line Dry” and the “Sun God” tells you not to put it in the dryer…
But I would venture to guess that the shower curtain has still never been washed for fear of violating it’s explicit washing instructions or it was thrown away because one didn’t take the time to understand it’s needs.
Her ventured guess is wrong. Even without being able to divine the inscrutable meanings of said icons, I was somehow (in my clumsy and bumbling male way) actually able to wash the shower curtain, not once but TWICE. Both times with no ill effects to the shower curtain. God I’m good!
But regardless of all this nonsense, I still contend that this information is somehow linked only to female genes and that I would have no way of knowing this unless the Lady Of The Lake, her arm clad in the sheerest samite thrust out of the water and held aloft EXCALIBER! And then explained it. That a woman told me this information is as damming a testament to my inalienable rightness as there can be! Either that or I am just a bonehead…
Originally posted before I added WordPress to this site. Published date is approximate.