More Scams

A few years ago, this site ran an article discussing some of the more nefarious frauds that inflict civilized society today. We're talking such insidious scams as mail-in rebates, lobster, and of course Kellogg's Special K (it's just malformed and overpriced Rice Krispies!). There are a lot of other scams out there, though, that the public needs to be informed of. And no, we're not talking about Nigerian royalty with 20 million dollars they need to move offshore. Here are a few more everyday scams to be on the lookout for.

Pantyhose — As a guy, I have to admit that I've never really understood pantyhose. Wait, let me rephrase that. I understand that pantyhose are a form of sheer women's hosiery that extend from the waist to the toes. That part I get. Why anyone wants to wear them, that I have trouble understanding.

Now, at this point I assume any women reading this article have written me off as a clueless male. But hear me out. I understand that you wear hose to protect and beautify your feet and legs. Fair enough. I'm not sure how much protection and warmth a thin layer of nylon will provide, but some is better than nothing, I suppose. As for beautification, most pantyhose are designed to look basically invisible against skin. Would you wear a transparent hat because it might make your hair look a bit better? Wait, don't answer that.

My biggest complaint about pantyhose, though, is that it seems to be designed to fail at every opportunity. Snag it on a corner, catch it with a fingernail, come anywhere near velcro, and hose failure is imminent. Is it a conspiracy to force women to keep buying the stuff, or just conveniently poor design?

Febreze — The more you use it, the more you love it. That's the slogan they used to use to market Febreze. Now, they go with it's a breath of fresh air. I guess someone figured out that the old slogan was better suited for selling cocaine. If you aren't familiar with Febreze, it's an air freshener/odour eliminator that removes bad smells rather than just covering them up with other scents. The product uses cyclodextrins to do so, by trapping the molecules that smell bad. Sounds good in principal, although one wonders if it's such a good thing to have all these spent cyclodextrins floating around in our air. You know what's an even better way to have fresh, clean, indoor air? Open a couple windows, throw out the garbage, and actually clean stuff. It's more work than a spritz from a spray bottle, but it might actually get worthwhile results.

Extra Cheese — Long, long ago, in an article about pizza toppings, I expressed my feelings about extra cheese. Those feelings have not changed, although perhaps they have been enhanced somewhat. I like cheese, I like it a lot. A four-cheese pizza is a wonderful thing. But extra cheese or the dubiously named double cheese remains a massive scam. There's no way of telling how much cheese is 'original', and how much is 'extra.' Technically speaking, a single gram of additional cheese qualifies as extra. What a waste of a topping. Plus, there's the simple question of how much cheese is actually needed on a pizza, especially with the availability of cheese-stuffed crust? Madness, I say. Perhaps the pizza makers are just filling a demand for additional cheesiness, but I still call scam on extra cheese.