Queen Dust Bunny approved labeler.

Brother Family Labeler (PT1090BK) by Brother. At no additional sacrifice to your own bottom line. Dust me off and label me appreciative.

"Want to see a corpse on a can of Pringles?"

(Via Overlawyered.) A. Barton Hinkle rankles at "those graphic new cigarette warnings Washington regulators unveiled last week."

"We'll begin ... studies to make sure that we are keeping people sensitized," says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius. "What may seem quite shocking at the beginning, people get used to quite quickly." So if people build up a tolerance for the repulsive, the FDA will amp the dial up to grotesque....

The old warnings — informing buyers that cigarettes cause cancer, and so forth — conveyed information. The new labels are designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. A warning on a ladder that reads, "Caution: Improper use could lead to serious injury from falling" conveys information. A graphic photo of a compound tibia fracture conveys only sentiment.

Only sentiment... I disagree. Vividly pictured information is still information, even if it offends your taste. Years ago, if I remember correctly, the radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon argued that free speech rights shouldn't cover pornography, because it didn't convey any ideas. It was a sensation... designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. Those are Hinkle's words, not MacKinnon's. I don't think she said "lizard part of your brain"... though she might well have said "lizard part."

[INSERTION: "40 years ago: The Lizard King breaks on through to the other side." Did you forget to remember Jim Morrison 3 days ago?]

But, of course, the government doesn't need free speech protection to say what it wants to say to us. It's the government. The question is only whether it can require a private business to carry its message (or its delivery of sensation straight to that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach). The messages that already appear on cigarette packs give you the short answer: It can. The better question is: Do we want our government reaching past our intellect, into our deepest instincts, injecting its vision of how we ought to behave?

Well, of course, government actors are always trying to manipulate us on an emotional level in the hope that we'll vote for them or tolerate a war or a tax and so forth. I think the key is to become conscious and critical of those manipulations (and every day, I work at that, in public writing, to model and encourage awareness and resistance). Perhaps an even better question than whether we want the government to manipulate us emotionally is: Do we want the government to manipulate us emotionally with respect to the decisions we make about what to do with our bodies?

Phrased at that level of generality, the photos of cancerous lungs on cigarette packs (trying to get us not to smoke) are like the photos of aborted fetuses (trying to get us not to have abortions). Except we haven't seen the government go graphic with an anti-abortion message, and it's not as easy to think of a commercial product to stick the message on. Something for women. Tampons?

Hinkle's mind drifts to food:

[I]t's reasonable to ask when the federal government will start showing us disgusting pictures on packages of food, in which Washington also takes a keen interest. Indeed, someone asked Sibelius that very question during a press conference about the cigarette labels. Her response was evasive. Food labels are voluntary, she said. And tobacco is unique because smoking is "the No. 1 cause of preventable death."

It won't be No. 1 forever. Obesity is gaining ground fast. Sibelius says smoking imposes "$200 billion a year in health costs." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity costs the U.S. about $150 billion....

Two days after Washington unveiled its new warning labels for cigarette packages, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study reporting that our food choices influence our weight more than exercise does. And potato chips pack on the pounds faster than any other food, including candy and desserts.

Hence the question about a corpse on a can of Pringles.

ADDED: Want to see a corpse in a can of Pringles?

Finally succumbing to Blogger's "Layout" format.

I've updated the blog to "layout." If anything looks worse now, let me know. One thing that's clearly better is that if you click on a tag, you'll be able to see all the old posts with that tag. Also...
Now, I can do this!

And check the sidebar. The blogroll is spiffier, and there's a list of tags — not all 3000+ tags, but 700+ of the most significant/interesting tags. It might be fun to click on them. Some of them anyway.  The archive is displayed differently now, and actually, before, for some reason, when you clicked on an old month, you only got a small part of that month. That's what pushed me over the line and got me to update.

ADDED: Another really cool thing is that the blogroll is in order of most recent post. 

How crazy must a person be to get this warning?

"A blog may have at most 2000 labels."

"This guy is the embittered Dr Bronner of the west coast soft-drink trade."

Cory Doctorow encounters a lemonade label.

Let's mix up that cocktail we call a Sarah Palin.

So remember when -- it was only last post -- I challenged you to find old posts of mine that would seem most explicable on theory that I wrote them drunk. It was because of something Ron said, not because I ever was.

Palladian said:

How about any of the ones where you explain your decision to vote for Obama?

Ron said:

If I'm going to say "Althouse, you're drunk/high/Voting for Obama/obsessed with squirrels!" I'd have to have more direct evidence than blog posts! Maybe a vlog...

Yeah, I know the vlog that the whole internet thinks shows me drunk. Apparently, it's easy to look drunk on video. Just hold a glass of wine, laugh, and say something frivolous.

... I get philosophic and morose when drunk, so I'm no fun there...

But if you announce getting drunk first and then say at time X, you'll be blogging, I bet you get Sarah Palin-like Sitemeter push!

Let's make a cocktail for you to drink first...a "Sarah Palin." On the rocks! (ice, don't ya know!)

Bissage then said something that made me say, "Some people when drunk are said to get 'tight.' Bissage, I'd say, gets Titus-y." And if you know what that means, you know why I'm not front-paging it.

But Palladian answered the call to mix up a Sarah Palin:

What would a Sarah Palin cocktail be?

1 oz Stolichnaya (because you can see Russia from her house)

1 oz Southern Comfort (to assuage the "base")

1/2 oz Jägermeister (for both the elk's blood rumor and the label)



1/2 oz Bénédictine (for that religious flavor)

dash of Vietnamese fish sauce (a nod to Alaska's fishing industry)

pour over a large quantity of ice and shake until very cold. Empty contents into a very, very expensive Baccarat crystal glass purchased with funds from the RNC. Run a MAC-brand lipstick, color "Verve", around the rim of the glass. Sling contents into the face of the first reporter you can find. Sell glass and donate proceeds to charity.

Ha ha. I'm not putting fish sauce in a drink! But, cheers!

Why the wine ads don't mention the benefits of resveratrol.

They don't want to litigate:

In 1991, some aggressive winemakers sought to trumpet the health benefits of wine, but they were quickly shut down by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which then regulated the industry at the federal level. Even the industry’s trade organization, the Wine Institute, counseled against promoting wine as a health drink....

“We put on a back label, that wine is healthy and recommended in the Bible,” [Michael Mondavi said]. “The B.A.T.F. sent us a cease and desist letter and made us change the label even though we went back to Washington and showed them the scientific evidence and read them the Bible passages.”

The article doesn't identify the passages. There's this:

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

And this one, which is less grand but actually makes a health claim:

Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.

I'm offended by my juice bottle. I was annoyed when the mango juice sold in the Law School snack bar changed its name from Fantasia (no connection to American Idol) to Naked. When I'm consuming liquid, I don't want to contemplate nakedness. That's just wrong: why are you making me think of bodily fluids? For a year, I refused to buy the drink I had been buying for years. Today, I bought one, and I have a number of additional complaints about the packaging.

1. The full name of the juice is "Naked Superfood Food-Juice/Mighty Mango-go." That's too heavy on the assertion that the drink is also a food (big news) and too un-clever in the idea of jazzing up mango by repeating the "go." "Food food" "go go"--and naked! I'm sorry, I don't even want a drink that exciting.

2. Under the ridiculous name it says, "It's an anti-ox mango-fruit-tango!" First of all, I don't need ox repellent. There are no oxen in these parts. Second, it's not clever enough to combine mango and tango especially since you didn't resist mango and go one line up on your packaging. It's like you brainstormed about "mango," then just used all your ideas. (Hey, how about "Man, go!"). Third, mango is also a fruit, so technically, you should say "It's an anti-ox mango-nonmango fruit-tango!"

3. Then it says "Get Naked! 'cause Life is Sweet Enough!" That's not even positive. You're saying your juice is sour? You're going to make my life worse, apparently, and you're also injecting sex into the subject of some juice you want me to drink. That's not good!

4. On the side, it directs me to "SHAKE & CHUG." Okay, fine to tell me to shake it. It needs shaking. But telling me the attitude I'm supposed to adopt while drinking and dictating a speed? That's an irritating intrusion into my lunchtime demeanor.

5. Elsewhere, it says: "With extra A & C, plus Vitamin E and Selenium, every velvety-smooth mouthful of this tropical treat helps you fight free radicals without swinging a punch." Now, you're mixing incomprehensible science, sexual innuendo, and weird political humor. That's just a mess!

It doesn't seem to taste as good as when they called it Fantasia and the packaging had a mild psychedelic theme. I guess they thought they needed to update it. (Or did Disney threaten to sue them?) Maybe they decided they needed to get men to buy it. I really can't understand, but it seems as though they just had a big jumble of motivations and really just didn't think about anything clearly.

UPDATE--CHRIS OFFERS A CORRECTION: "Fantasia did not change its name to Naked. They are two completely different companies. Naked put Fantasia out of business by making deals with all the stores to sell their product and not sell Fantasia." Yeah, the people who sell it kept asserting it was the same thing, but it really doesn't seem to be. So I guess Naked tasting worse wasn't all my subjective reaction to offensive packaging. I won't keep buying it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader credits Naked with trying for a Dr. Bonner's Soap kind of effect. That old too-much-on-the-label approach to cleverness is very much a late 60s/early 70s sort of ethos, which I find hard to see in Naked, because it replaced my beloved Fantasia, which was had a tastefully psychedelic label. That Dr. Bonner's Soap sort of humor was adopted by Madison Avenue when products got names like Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Now if Naked had called itself Why The Hell Isn't This Fantasia, I would have found it amusing.