Things that Make You Go Hmmmmm

There are vast tracts of land in this country where you can drive a full day’s worth of daylight and see nothing but corn standing higher than the roof of your car in every direction as far as the eye can see.  Further if you have binoculars.  Further still with a tripod mounted Celestron NexStar 8 SE Telescope standing on the roof of your vehicle.  Shoot – with this gadget you can almost see the marijuana fields on Jupiter!

So with this in mind, imagine my surprise when I read the words “Product of China” in the package of Member’s Choice^® Sweet Corn I purchased at my friendly neighborhood SAMS club last month!

So far we’ve found lead in the paint on children’s toys imported from China, Asbestos in drywall imported from China, and that’s not enough to tickle our inner warning response triggers, so we’re going to import food products from a source with a track record of exporting known poisons and carcinogens in their products?  Never mind that the stuff tastes more like field corn than sweet corn, what is happening with the hundreds of thousands of acres of corn we’re growing in this country, I mean, apart from continuing to scam us into accepting the fictional resource that is ethanol?  Hmmmmm

Moving on.

I read this on a bottle of Hanneford Lemon juice yesterday: “100% lemon juice with additives”.  I mean, doesn’t the whole ‘with additives’ make it somewhat less than 100% lemon juice?  When I read the rest of the label, it read ‘water, lemon juice concentrate, two different preservatives, lemon oil.  Hmmmm

The bottle of Kraft Parmesan Cheese says: “100% REAL Grated Parmesan Cheese – No Fillers”  but the ingredients in the fine print section says ‘cellulose powder added to prevent caking’.  The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language published by Houghton-Mifflin defines Cellulose as “A complex carbohydrate, (C₆H₁₀O₅)_n, that is composed of glucose units, forms the main constituent of the cell wall in most plants, and is important in the manufacture of numerous products, such as paper, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and explosives.”

So let me get this straight – adding powdered dynamite to grated parmesan cheese doesn’t constitute a filler?  Hmmmm

I guess this stuff falls into the category of that of the infamous J.C. Penney coupon that reads “20% OFF Entire Store – No Exceptions” followed by 20 lines of microfine print which contains the list of exceptions to the ‘no exceptions’ clause.  Hmmmmm

Well, as I write this, we’re about 5 minutes removed from a ¼ inch line of thunder storms on the TV radar that could produce a tornado at worst, or kill the electricity at the least.  While I’m certain that the real thing is larger than ¼ inch – mostly because I know from experience that Florida is bigger than it looks on the radar map – I don’t know if there are any fillers, Chinese corn or exceptions.

Happy Trails!

 

Post Script.  It's two and a half hours since I posted this the first time, and the storm was a bust.  We got a little wind (our weather station on the roof said 15 MPH was as high as it got), the amount of rain was negligible and the lights didn't as much as flicker.  Probably could have everything turned on.  Oh well.  Got to go put the emergency lights away.