Warning!

I bought a modem the other day on Ebay. It's the best modem $8.95 can buy! Oh the modem worked fine, it's some Taiwan job but it uses Intel Chipsets. But after I installed it I began to read the installation instructions.

Now I know $8.95 isn't that much money, but I hope these Taiwan folks spend a little of their profit to hire a better translator. It contains many good ideas about installing the modem like:

"Option driver path, like upon."

It even has an illustration to demonstrate this maneuver. The only useful bit of information in the whole book is step 19, the final step, it simply says, "Uninstall."

I never read the instructions usually, but after this I began to go back and read some of the instructions with other gadgets I've bought.

I recently purchased my five month old daughter Hannah some bath toys. Now what could be dangerous about a rubber whale? It had a whole list of cautions roughly translated from the manufacturers original Chinese. It warned me of things I shouldn't allow my child to play with in the tub. Among the things it cautioned me against were, water too hot, telephone, hair dryer and sharp objects. And after all the time I spent breaking Coke bottles making bath toys.

I swear to you it said that. But unfortunately, that's not the worst. I bought little Hannah a bathtub. It measures about 30 inches in length and about six inches deep. It's made in America! Surely an American product wouldn't have silly warnings would it. I dug the instructions out of the trash and found a note from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (taxpayer funded). Here it tells me some of the things I shouldn't allow Hannah to do in her new tub. These dangerous activities include (remember this is a 30 inch tub):

Scuba diving, Water Polo, Fly fishing, Water Skiing, Relay Swimming, and High dives. People, our tax dollars paid to have this stupid label printed! Oh, you doubt me? Chip lies constantly, we can't believe him. Well, folks here is a copy of that label!

So I began looking around the Internet for more bizarre product warnings, surely I wasn't the only person to notice this. I wasn't:

On a blanket from Taiwan -
NOT TO BE USED AS PROTECTION FROM A TORNADO.

In a Honda Motorcycle owner's manual -
REMEMBER, OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE ACTUALLY BEHIND YOU.

In a Dell guide to setting up a new computer -
TO AVOID CONDENSATION FORMING, ALLOW THE BOXES TO WARM UP TO ROOM TEMPERATURE BEFORE OPENING. (Makes sense, but the instructions were inside the box.)

On a Japanese product used to relieve painful hemorrhoids-
LIE DOWN ON BED AND INSERT POSCOOL SLOWLY UP TO THE PROJECTED PORTION LIKE A SWORD INTO ANAL DUCT. WHILE INSERTING POSCOOL FOR APPROXIMATELY 5 MINUTES, KEEP QUIET. (Anybody know what a Poscool is?)

On a Japanese food processor -
NOT TO BE USED FOR THE OTHER USE. (Could this be what a Poscool is?)

On a bag of Fritos -
YOU COULD BE A WINNER! NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. DETAILS INSIDE. (Wonder if I could just stand in the store and open bags...when the manager yells at me I could point to the "No Purchase Necessary" line.)

On a Husqvarna Chainsaw owner's manual -
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO STOP CHAIN WITH YOUR HANDS OR GENITALS. (Whew, talk about the bad translation...Those Swedish lumberjacks must be real tough.)

On a kid's Superman costume -
WEARING OF THIS GARMENT DOES NOT ENABLE YOU TO FLY. (My wife found this one in the ABC Catalog.)

I don't know which scares me more, a Poscool, Swedish lumberjacks or that there are folks out there that need to be warned about these things. I think I'll go back to ignoring instructions before I accidentally poscool myself.

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