100%

October 21, 2015

Because I am a cheap bastard, I’ve been buying home stuff for New Genehouse from Dollar General. It won’t last, of course, but it gets me through the next couple months as I finish moving in.

On today’s foray, I bought an outdoor and an indoor broom, each for only 69 cents. I looked at some shelf paper, and for fun, I read the label: “Made from 100% unidentified material.” I know, it sounds like the Bush brothers’ brain cells or Donald Trump’s mystery hat. But this begs the question: What is unidentified material?

Do you, say, crush some corn husks into a fine powder, and mix it with paste and create sheets of unidentified material? Do you sweep your daughter’s scabs and dandruff up and weave the stuff into duvets? Or how about collecting your Aunt Sally’s toenail clippings and fusing them into a substance harder than kryptonite? I could make a fortune by making blankets from Scout the Cat’s shivery fur.

I possess a large quantity of white (once red) beard and neck hairs. Perhaps I’ll shave and weave the variegated hair strands into faux Persian carpets. Come to think of it, my peskiest and most luxuriant hair comes from my—. Never mind. Suffice it to say, the world is missing out on potential modern art hangings.

The paranoid among you (69% of people who read my columns are paranoid) are already pulling out everything you own and checking the labels. How about that ceramic coffee mug you bought at Mugs R Us for a quarter? Or that bookshelf you purchased from Walmart that contains no discernible wood, wood shavings, plastic, polypropylene, oat bran, coyote droppings, or meat by-products? How does that five dollar price tag feel now? Oh, and remember that refrigerator you bought that the manufacturer claimed was made from “recycled appliance parts?”

Just what is recycling? Godfreyites believe it is a Communist propaganda concept; you know: guns don’t kill people, recycling kills people. Buddhists believe you can recycle dreams. I prefer reusable dreams, especially those that involve actor Jessica Chastain and jazz genius (and total babe) Esmeralda Spaulding having hot lesbian sex. Oh, and remember that news story about the guy who got a recycled penis transplant, only to discover it came from a German shepherd named Gustavus Adolphus Liebchen, and that he could only make love if his lady friend was in heat?

I just looked at my mouse pad and checked underneath it, and there was a stamp reading: “Made from 100% burned plastic with cancer ingredients preserved for flexibility.”

New Genehouse is populated with a man and his cat, and 300,069 Chinese ladybugs clinging to all the light fixtures. You know that nut smell when you crush those suckers?

Announcing: GeneDream Scents for Societal Gents and People Hellbent Not Content with natural perfume and crunchiness, and 100% American (well, China is the new America after all). Buy three for forty dollars and receive an absolutely free luxury bonus gift bottle made from 100% unidentified material!

May I take your order?

About Eugene Jones Baldwin

I am a writer: non-fiction, fiction, journalism (Alton Telegraph), essays (The Genehouse Chronicles) and have a website: eugenebaldwin.com. I've published a couple dozen short stories and had eleven plays produced. Current projects: "Brother of the Stones" (available on Kindle), a book of short stories; "The Faithful Husband of the Rain, short stories"; "A Black Soldier's Letters Home, WWII,;" "There is No Color in Justice," a commentary on racism; "Ratkillers," a new play. I am an avocational archaeologist and I take parts of my collection of several thousand Indian artifacts (personal finds) to schools, nature centers, libraries etc. and talk about the 20,000 year history of The First people in Illinois. (See link to website) I'm also a playwright (eleven plays produced), musician, historian (authority on the Underground Railroad in Illinois, the Tuskegee Airmen) and teacher.
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