A Vast International Conspiracy

 

 

There are many people who believe that a vast international conspiracy exists and speak of black helicopter fleets and the "Tri-partite Alliance" that has us all under their surveillance and control. It is even thought that these people have gained control of the government of some of the larger nations of the world. Many believe that Bill Clinton's secret trip to Switzerland just before his first inaugural was tied to this secret organization and probably just as many point to the membership of George Bush (#41) and George W. Bush in Yale University's secret Skull Society as indicative of the same connection. There are those who see a link between Tim McVeigh and this force. Others propose that the FBI has already been infiltrated.

All of this may be true but let me tell you who the real villains are. They are those who in the mildest of disguise seek and almost succeed in making it impossible for you to open a tin of food or other common household package. It is the packaging engineers, sometimes hiding under the title of "Product Design Specialists". These sleeve gartered, bespectacled, green eye-shaded bastards who hunker over a drafting table or graphics driven computer with the design goal of creating a package for a product that will not allow you to get to the product until you vow suicide twice.

For instance take my tin of Crown Prince Kippered Herring. I like kippered herring. Last week I put my tin of kippered herring in my Magic Chef can opener and watched it wildly rotate when I pressed the handle. It did so but did not open the can. Frustrated I got out my machinist's calipers and proved to myself that the top of the tin was recessed .010 inches deeper than the cutter knife was long. How did the packaging engineer know just exactly how long the knife was on my Magic Chef can-opener and that I was going to buy THAT can of herring. I got my hunting knife out and ate my herring.

I like sausage and biscuit sandwiches and buy them in a large package where they are both individually, and as a group wrapped, in the world's strongest, toughest plastic. The U.S.S. Cole should have been wrapped in this stuff. It laughed at my scissors and the butcher knives, a surgical scalpel from old comparative anatomy lab wouldn't touch it. I finally succeeded with an Exact-O knife. Then I noticed that my efforts had made crumbs of the biscuits and sausage.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Don't worry about those idiots in the black helicopters. Lets just get all the packaging engineers at the end of a rope.