Nothing But Iron: Truth in Plastics January 3, 2005 Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. As a brief diversion, let’s open with another weather tidbit. I direct this one to my step-dad Ken, who reportedly suffered a chill just miles from his home in Chandler, Arizona, when he bit into a dinner mint. At my house, the temperature was one degree when I awoke. Three hours later it has soared to almost ten times that, giving us a new understanding of the Wisconsin state motto: "Coldanuf for ya?" O.K. I wrote that brief diversion a couple weeks ago, before we suffered a stretch of snow-killing locally-concentrated global warming, but I didn’t want to waste it. My family does not know the difference between 40 and no degrees at all, and it is important to remind them of how tough I am to withstand the rigors of my environment. They’ll get back to me in July when their pool water temperatures exceed 100. I really write today to ask you to support the following proposed product packaging legislation, SRL 79948, affectionately known as the Truth in Plastics Act or the Plastic Product Armor Reduction Act, PPARA for short. This soon-to-be-controversial bill was introduced last week by legislators who succumbed to the pressures of intense lobbying by highly-paid NBI lobbyists, trained to promote the best interests of amateur sportswriters and other consumers of items in overly bulky plastic product armor (PPA). Having just endured the commercial reality–I mean celebrated the joyousness of the Christmas spirit of giving and unwrapping stuff, you know what I mean. A perfect example is the Hexmark 256 MB compact flash memory card, which I bought at Sham’s Club as a present for Kelly to give to me. (I just love it. She shouldn’t have.) For the record, Hexmark and Sham’s Club are made-up registered trademarks, and I support the real entities from which these are derived by giving them my money. The memory card measures an astounding 1.4 by 1.6 by 0.2 inches. It is small enough to fit inside the new camera that I bought for Kelly to give to me. More astounding than the size of the product is the mass of the packaging. Because memory cards are apparently sensitive to environmental influences like air and consumers, the card was packaged inside a 6-by-8 inch nearly-impenetrable plastic encasement. That encasement was further encased by another nearly-impenetrable encasement measuring 10 by 15 inches. By my rough calculations, using complex mathematical operations like addition and multiplication, the total square acreage of the plastic was about 4000 times that of the surface area of the planet Venus. Not only is PPA packaging bulky, it is next-to-impossible to open because the seams are sealed by the strongest substance known to the animal kingdom: spider web silk. How they get the spiders, who I envision working for pennies a day in dreary spider sweat shops in Indonesia, to cooperate is beyond me, but they do. I have tried different tools to breach PPA. LASER is effective, but far too expensive and inaccessible. I can rarely get the LASER machine because the selfish surgeons are always hogging it. Scissors quickly become bent and dull. Box cutters, with a digit-threatening amount of downward pressure can breach the plastic, but product damage or an ill-timed appendectomy scar are constant risks if one miscalculates the path of the razor during attempts to enter the product compartment. Same problem with the Swiss Army knife. I did not have a knife from the Swiss Marines. If you have one, you might want to try that.

Further research proved that the best tool for removing items from PPA is a pair of metal shears. Metal shears are like big scissors for men who spit indiscriminately and refuse to adhere to regular shaving schedules. They (the shears, that is) have large handles and sturdy blades that beg for a challenge like sheet metal or aluminum gutters or, yes, product armor. Proponents of the product armor industry might argue that product armor is cheap, prevents damage to products during shipping and stocking (which explains why ever-fragile ski gloves are so packaged), and since it is a lot more painful to stuff a 12-by-17 package with sharp edges into a would-be shoplifter’s pants, helps prevent theft. As a self-serving example they might even cite the use of PPA to house 8-packs of environmentally-friendly fluorescent light bulbs, which save energy. In reply, I have this to say: Triple blah! Sure, after a lot of toil, not to mention personal expenditure of energy equivalent to a year’s worth of fluorescent light, we get intact bulbs, but all the future saved energy will be offset by that needed to manufacture more plastic containers that will soon serve as the landfill that will one day support the foundation of my great-grandson’s preschool. Do NOT touch that drinking fountain, little Stevie. Furthermore, I am convinced that PPA technology, in the wrong hands, is dangerous. Questionable government sources (sorry for the redundancy) have informed me that Saddam Hussein was able to prevent his weapons of mass destruction from discovery by encasing them in PPA. Arms inspectors allegedly found the weapons, but they did not have metal shears, or the shears they could find were packaged in PPA, so they just gave up and said there weren’t any weapons.

The proposed legislation to control PPA has multiple components: First, there would be a tax of $1 per excess square inch of PPA used to package any product sold in the U.S. A portion of the tax would go to the individual who originally called attention to this ridiculous practice. In addition, there would be a $2000 surcharge per package on any package that could not be opened within 30 seconds by a single unarmed fourth grader. Funding to pay unarmed fourth graders to randomly inspect packages would come from the surcharges, estimated to be in the billion dollar range annually. And, no, you may not repeat the soon-to-be-lucrative fourth grade if you already passed. Finally, for purchase of any item encased in PPA consumers would have the option of presenting payment–money or credit card–in packaging similar to that of the product itself. If the legislation doesn’t pass, I may resort to the common practice of filing a class action suit that will make several attorneys rich, and, if successful, will provide each member of the class with a certificate for 25% off metal shears. _______________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column, that periodically has nothing to do with sports, although many sporting goods are sold in PPA, so that makes this topic legitimate substrate for sportswriting. The author, who at this time is unshaven, is a long-time owner of metal shears. All rights reserved. © 2005 DrTM Enterprises.