#267 Lots of Language

I’m holding in my hand an item that I think epitomizes America’s obsession with babble. Babble not in the biblical sense of everyone speaking in different languages and being unable to communicate, but in the sense of people communicating too much. A while back, the plug we put in our sink over the gaping carnivorous maw of the garbage disposal turned up missing. I’ve never really understood how something could both turn up and be missing but, hey, English is only my first language. In any event, I had to replace it. No problem—go to the hardware store, dig into the plug bin and come up with a suitable size. Wrong. I must be still be living in the days before the packaging industry took over America. All the plugs now were encased in their own cardboard and blister pack arrangement. And since each one had cardboard that meant each one had to have printing on that cardboard which meant that someone had to hire a copy writer for that print and so the consort to hyper-packaging in America, hyper-verbiage, flashed her strumpet’s smile and strutted her stuff into the street.
The problem, of course, is what the hell can you say about a plug? Turns out you can say everything but plug. This package was like the 50,000 dollar pyramid, it said everything but the word in question. Amazing, for years and years these things commingled in baskets, tubs and bins, there to be grabbed and added to the piles of screws and nails home handymen picked up to complete honey-do lists before the game. So here’s what the package did say In the upper left the brand. PlumbCraft by Waxman. Plumbing, or at least plug making now appears to have ascended to the height of a craft. Next, the name of the product: “Disposal Stopper.” That crafted item to be distinguished from an ordinary hole filler. The back of the card expounded: “Durable flexible stopper with “stay put” lip provides a watertight seal for most garbage disposal sink drains. Handy knob allows for east removal of stopper.” Then, “this package contains one flexible garbage disposal sink stopper.” Repeat after me: Flexible Garbage Disposal Sink Stopper. Now try this concise alternative: Plug. Finally the big finale. In big letters: “Installation instructions” and then an internationally understandable picture showing cartoon hands, which appear to be holding a disc by a little nipple (the handy knob I’m guessing) and moving it downward as indicated by an arrow towards what appears to be a hole. Underneath the picture it has the number 1 and a period, as if there will be a number 2 etc. There is not. After the number 1 it gives this instruction: “Place firmly into drain.” No hurry. Any sense that America had has already gone down there.
America, ya gotta love it.