Today I tried the Neti Pot my friend Alex gave me. What is a Neti Pot, you ask? Well, it looks like a gravy boat, except instead of gravy you use salt water and instead of a turkey you use your nostril.

You see, a Neti Pot is some sort of ancient (?) Hindu holistic medical device that is meant to cleanse your sinuses. I have terrifically poor sinuses, so I’m the perfect candidate for said pot.

You fill the pot with very hot water and 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt. You then tip your head to one side, shove the spout up a nostril and pour the contents of the Neti Pot directly into your nose. The salt water travels through your nasal passage and sinuses and back out the other nostril. The whole process is utterly bizarre.

Here is a picture of me and the Neti Pot:

The sensation of hot water passing through your head is a strange one but it’s one I’d recommend. I mean, I imagined it would sort of feel like drowning but I found it weirdly comforting—just me and the Neti Pot, alone at my bathroom sink on a Sunday afternoon.

Alex expects the pot back, so I’ll be cleaning it vigorously.

EDIT: category changed to “Products I Find Myself Using”

English Muffins, I believe, are an American invention, based on the English model of the Crumpet. The people at Thomas’ create the benchmark English Muffin, a dense disk that must be carefully split with a knife to reveal the famed nooks and the less famous crannies.

Any fool can rig up a hamburger bun machine to spit out faux English Muffins. This is what the scholars are thinking of when they speak of “Late Capitalism”—buns dressed up as muffins.

After a nearly two-week absence, this is what choose to talk about.

Seriously.

It’s terrible for you.

But, that’s OK ‘cause we’re only concerned with the package here and here is what a modern-day Coke can looks like:

Look closer.

Notice the rendered beads of water, the superfluous yellow stripe, the several shades of red, the inexplicable halftone dots?

Why so much stuff? Why do graphic designers feel the need to pile so many doohickeys into their designs. It’s embarrassing. I hope it’s the higher-ups that are making them do it and not that they actually like this crap.

Maybe it’s because their Bauhaus-trained teachers beat it into them, but graphic designers from a generation or two ago were terrific. Look at the Coke can you would have been drinking from back then:

Pretty slick, right?
Makes you want to drink a Coke (you shouldn’t!)

What about this one.

Here it is more beat-up, but in a regular-sized can.

Sure there are some things out there with really great design; I’ve seen it. But usually it’s the kind of small-scale stuff that you’d find in a Williamsburg boutique, nothing as ubiquitous as Coke.

One glimmer of hope is the newly released Tab Energy.

I’m sure what’s inside the can is disgusting (I haven’t tried it yet, even though I had to buy a fucking four-pack just to take this goddamned picture). But the can looks great. Tab has always had that really cool dark pink color and that ball-and-stick grid is a nice choice. So good going, Tab.

This has been a strange post.

There I said it.

It’s not the taste, the taste is fine; it could be a hundred times less sweet and I’d be perfectly content. I just don’t think it works very well. I buy the anti-cavity formula and over the past three years, I’ve had three cavities. Sure I never went to the dentist over those three years, but still.

And I’ve sometimes skipped brushing my teeth altogether…

And rarely do I floss.

OK, fine, maybe it is because Tom’s is so ubiquitous among your average, workaday hipster. And Yes, I do have dreams of wandering into a shabby Polish pharmacy in Greenpoint and finding some Eastern Bloc-era toothpaste with a really cool label and making that my toothpaste of choice for the next few years.

But instead of the cool Polish toothpaste I bought this:

It’s Crest Tartar Control Whitening Plus Scope in a crazy capsule-shaped container.
I don’t know why I picked this one.