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One of the many blessings of economic impairment is that our furniture comes from moving neighbors, relatives with hand-me-downs, thrift shops and yard sales.
Though this method of interior decoration has drawbacks, it also means we can ignore the lurid prose of furniture advertisements.
Consider this, from about two months ago: Mission
Steel Bed. Handcrafted in Minnesota in natural raw
steel.
Raw iron rarely occurs in nature, generally from
meteorites. But steel is always a human artifice, the
result of centuries of experiment with iron ore, limestone
and charcoal. Saying natural raw steel
is like
saying natural raw plutonium
-- there isn't any such
thing.
Handcrafted? Without benefit of electric hacksaws and steam trip hammers? If Minnesota has giants who can perform such prodigies of strength, ripping and shaping raw steel with their bare hands, why have the Vikings lost as many Superbowls as the poor Broncos?
More recently, there was the chance to buy a light,
simple and charming
set of natural wood
chairs.
What, exactly, is unnatural wood? The last time I
checked, only trees made wood. The chemists have given us
simulated wood-grain veneers and chip board and particle
board -- but if it's just wood, doesn't it have to be the
natural product of some clear-cut old-growth rain forest?
What does natural wood
offer that mere wood
doesn't?
Natural
apparently means healthy, even though
smallpox and frostbite are gifts of Mother Nature, while
vaccinations and gloves are products of malign
technology.
This reaches absurdity on the label of the 6-ounce can
near my keyboard: Top All Natural
Cigarette Tobacco.
I don't need to quit rolling my own, since this cheaper
form of tobacco is natural,
and thus must be good
for me.
Go shopping for a car -- fortunately, no one has yet
advertised an automobile hand-crafted from natural raw
steel
-- and you'll see the phrase 32,000 original
miles.
Something original is something new, something you
haven't seen before. Are they telling us that this car
never took the same road twice? How else could all 32,000
miles be original
? Or does it really have 350,000
miles, of which only 32,000 are original and the other
312,000 are duplicate miles
?
While in Boulder last weekend, I heard of a market which
offers cruelty-free veal.
Does the smart Boulderite haul the vealer calf home as a
pet, this year's fad companion animal to replace the passe
pot-bellied pig from last year? Was the calf killed in a
humane way, with an overdose of sedatives which will have
the FDA and the DEA out in force when the ads urge us to
Experience some cruelty-free Boulder veal for that
relaxed feeling
?
Perhaps this happy calf succumbed to something
natural
like anthrax, but it could be that the
instrument of cruelty-free bovine bliss was an axe,
hand-crafted of natural raw steel.
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