OPINION: Five more useless items, ranked
The night sky has been chased away by the rising of the morning sun, and it is yet again time for me to rank another set of five fruitless, inanimate objects.
After the publication of the last column ranking, I received heaps upon heaps of praise. My letterbox was so full of mail that I, in a fleeting moment of weakness, thought that the IRS had finally caught up to me under my new veiled identity, subpoenaing me regarding my years and years of tax evasion.
Luckily, that wasn’t the case. Just fan mail and Hello Fresh coupons.
The items on this week’s list are: a harmonica, a chenille stick, a hand mirror, a rusty nail, and a container of pudding.
In last place is the chenille stick. If you’re anything like me, you probably had to look up what a chenille stick even is. Maybe it’s the result of an extremely French person trying to say the words “channel stick,” because they forgot what the name is for a remote control.
“Chenille stick” is French for pipe cleaner, the furry caterpillar-esque sticks commonly used in elementary classrooms to make flowers, crowns or nooses for your enemies. Good luck trying to turn up the volume of your soaps with that. (Or, if that extremely French person I mentioned earlier is reading this, “Oui oui, baguette.” Hope this helps!)
In fourth place is a container of pudding. I try to leave my opinions and biases at the door for my columns, especially when it comes to personal rankings, but for pudding I must make an exception. Pudding stresses me out, severely.
What is it? Why is it like that? Thankfully, pudding is a delicacy most commonly enjoyed by Brits. Bread pudding, blood pudding, black pudding. It begs the question: Do British people have bad teeth simply due to subpar dental hygiene, or is it because the teeth are literally running away from the pudding like their lives depend on it?
In third place is the hand mirror. Eyes are the windows to the soul, and compacts are the mirrors of the hands. Conversely, a hand mirror for humans could double as a full-length floor mirror for a very small person. A Lilliput resident, perhaps, or possibly a Smurf.
There’s something quite debonair and suave about using a hand mirror to check your appearance, rather than a phone screen or a window reflection, I think. It makes me feel like a 14th century Germanic princess taking a well-deserved break from embroidering and dodging the bubonic plague to check my pallid reflection in the nearest still bowl of water.
In second place is a rusty nail. I believe it was the apostle Peter who wrote in his self-titled New Testament epistle, “You can’t spell tetanus without ‘us!’” Nowadays, if an individual were to mistakenly step on a rusty nail, the recovery process would be nothing but a grocery list of antiseptics and antibiotics. Annoying, but doable.
Do you ever look at a really old person and feel like if you were to even sneeze in their direction they would just crumble away like a Nature Valley granola bar? That’s how I feel a Middle Ages-born child would react after being stung by a rust-infested screw.
“Oy, pap, me heel! Peace, break thee off! Mine own heel hurts, anon i shall keel ov’r and kicketh the bucket. Bid mine own mother i loveth h’r!” Dust in the wind. Curtains close.
And in first place, on the top of the pyramid, is the harmonica. Don’t be fooled by the innocent nature of this instrument, and heed even further caution if your name is Monica.
The instrument’s name is nothing more than a threat to all Monica’s in the world, promising harm to them all. Are the tunes blowing out of the instrument’s pipes nothing more than a battle cry? Has anyone heard from Monica Lewinski since this revelation has been made?
Things to think about.
Write to Joey Erickson at joseph.erickson.2@mnsu.edu