Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Drive-by education

My kids have been drinking Snapple again.

With every Snapple comes a “Real Fact” inside the bottle cap, which the kids, bless their little cotton socks, save up to show me. As a long-time parent, I find the ability to feign interest an invaluable skill…

“In 1900, 1/3 of all automobiles in New York City were powered by electricity.” Which sounds impressive until you realise that there were only three automobiles in the whole city in 1900, and that the other two were powered by specially imported Italian midgets in gerbil wheels.

“The fastest recorded speed of a racehorse was over 43mph.” Not from any of the three-legged neddies I’ve had any money on.

“Antarctica is the driest, coldest, windiest and highest continent on Earth.” And the most boring.

Who actually researches these? Are they meant to be interesting? Surely they used all the fun ones years ago? If this threesome is anything to go by, whatever desperate drone they have walled up in the “Real Facts” Research Crypt of Snapple HQ has long since lost the will to live. Let’s just hope that when they finally snap(ple) there are no high-powered rifles or clock towers involved.

“Help help im trapped in the real facts dept at snapple they wont let me go oh god oh god kill me now” Coming soon to a bottle near you…


Snapple “Real Facts”, yesterday - now available as a board game. Oh. My. God.

7 comments:

Pat said...

They are reading - that has to be good.

Desargues said...

These "facts" very much sound like the kind of "interesting facts" that we had at the end of each lesson in my geography textbook, back in Eastern Europe circa 1986. Like, "did you know that earth is heavier than water? But the heaviest element is quicksilver, with a density of 13,600 kilograms per cubic metre." So I suspect there's gotta be some underground conspiracy of dusty old librarians who've run out of books to catalog and are now researching irrelevant trivia.

But face it, Ivan, there are only so many interesting facts one can collect. Tabloids and paparazzi have a monopoly on interesting stuff about celebrities, whom kids may be suspected to care about. And no child in their right mind would feign even remote interest in facts about politicians--like, "Did you know that Ted Kennedy is a fat drunk?" or "Have you heard that Randy Cunningham is corrupt?"

Desargues said...

Business idea for Le Hutton: maybe he should contact the makers of Snapple and offer to sell them his vast collection of Killer Facts (leaving out facts about actual killers, of course--we're talking children here). Then they could hire him as a permanent researcher, thus setting loose the crammy old soul who find out stuff about Alaska at Snapple and, simultaneously, putting an ennd to Hutton's existential tedium and metaphysical malaise. Of course, that may end up depriving a hundred or so social misfits--most of whom live in their parents' basements--of the unpunished vice of reading his blog.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Basement-dwelling social inadequates sound like a valuable target demographic for Snapple. It's not impossible that Harry is already working for them. He hasn't mentioned it on his blog, but then again, would you?

Stew said...

For TruFax you must go to: Holy Moly TruFax

JB said...

Today I got "Real Fact"#400 "About 40 women go into labor on NYC subways each year."

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