f13.net

The worst part about that as a consumer is how goddamn hard it is to get into those fucking shells. I could crack open a turtle and eat all its goopy bits in the time it takes to open a seam in those motherfuckers.

Our daughter, who is 4, has WAY more friends than we do. There are thousands of them, and they were all, at some point, born. So pretty much all we do is attend birthday parties. We always take a toy, and I always feel pity for the wretched parent who will have to try to remove this toy from its packaging.

In recent years the toy industry, after consulting its lawyers, decided it's too dangerous to let children come into contact with toys. So the industry went to the Institute of Defensive Packaging, which is the outfit that made it impossible to open an aspirin bottle without a hammer.

For toys, the institute came up with a vicious system that involves attaching the toy to the package with dozens of nearly invisible twisted titanium wires, which are then covered with powerful adhesive tape, after which everything is encased in thick, weapons-grade plastic that, when you try to cut it with a knife - and, trust me, you eventually will - defends itself by turning into lethal shards that can slice through your arm like a machete through a Twinkie. And while you're grappling with this packaging, cursing and bleeding, your child is in your ear, asking, "When can I play with it when when whenwhenwhenwhenWHENWHENWHEN?"

Such is the power of child nagging that some parents are, incredibly, still getting through to the toys. So the Institute of Defensive Packaging is working on a new system: Soon, toys will be inside Lucite blocks like giant paperweights, so the child can only look at them and cry while the parent checks the Yellow Pages under "Acetylene Torch Rental." Homes will burn down; people will die. But that is the price we pay for safe packaging.

The guy that 'invented' that packaging also 'invented' a special knife to open them.

If anybody ever finds a DVD player which ignores the DVD's instructions not to allow them to skip over that stuff please post it.  I recently bought a Toshiba that would not even let me turn the fucking machine off if it was in the middle of those warnings.  The only way out would have been to pull the plug, it got returned in disgust.

If anybody ever finds a DVD player which ignores the DVD's instructions not to allow them to skip over that stuff please post it.  I recently bought a Toshiba that would not even let me turn the fucking machine off if it was in the middle of those warnings.  The only way out would have been to pull the plug, it got returned in disgust.