I Choose to Believe This Product is Real

I Choose to Believe This Product is Real

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com

As you have (hopefully) realized since about five minutes after you first used the internet, there’s a lot of stuff on here that just isn’t real. 

The celebration of things that aren’t real is among my favorite purposes the internet serves. For years, I have delighted in online hoaxes like the early internet classic false claim that Microsoft had acquired the Roman Catholic Church and fake photographs of things like sharks attacking helicopters. (On the other hand, like most people, I’m not wild about fake stuff along the lines of counterfeit goods, of which the internet is chockful as well, obviously.)

A related genre to the internet hoax is internet stuff that probably shouldn’t or doesn’t need to be real, but somehow is. I can wile away hours chuckling as I peruse the brilliant innovations of Matty Benedetto, for example – although I sometimes dispute his of the self-imposed “unnecessary” adjective to describe his products. There’s nothing useless about a rotating recliner, for example.

Say What You Will About Andrew Jackson; I Bet Martin Van Buren’s Dog Didn’t Even Bother to Show Up at His Funeral

I think most of us, at first glance, have occasional trouble discerning whether something we see online is real. Often, these tricky questions involve something like an unlikely-sounding historical claim. Can it really be true, for example, that former President Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot had to be removed from his funeral for cursing loudly? Apparently, the answer is yes!

“Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house,” explained the Rev. William Menefee Norment, who presided over Jackson’s service, in a quote published in Volume 3 of Samuel G. Heiskell’s Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History.

Rev. Norment added that the bird, clearly “excited by the multitude” did “let loose perfect gusts of ‘cuss words’,” and that people in attendance were “horrified and awed at the bird’s lack of reverence.”

Honestly, the more you think about this one, the more plausible it seems. This is Andrew Jackson we’re talking about here, after all. Would anybody be surprised to learn that the parrot piped up to admonish those in attendance to temper their reverence with a healthy dose of realism? Maybe his profane shrieking amounted to something like: “Have you all already forgotten about the Trail of Tears? This stiff might have handed out tasty crackers upon demand, but otherwise he was a giant fucking asshole!”

This Valentine’s Day, Forget the Cliché Teddy Bear – Go with Giant Testicle Cat!

Happily, there are many unlikely products on available on the internet which may sound too good (or too weird) to be true, but happily are real. Some of them even make fantastic gifts for folks who can present significant shopping challenges to gift givers.

Let’s say you’re looking for something to get as a gift for “a boy’s adult girlfriend” (I know that’s a weird descriptor, but just roll with me here), for example, and you’re stuck. Where can you turn? Well, you turn to Amazon, of course – where you will find a stuffed animal cat with very prominent testicles that’s (evidently) just the thing to get for that boy’s adult girlfriend.

Amazon is a great place for this genre of almost-too-good-to-be-true products, which also include things that turn your light switches into penises (sort of) and instant underpants (for the traveler who has everything, including a tendency to forget to pack underpants, I suppose) and… well, whatever this thing is.

Until Death Do You Part – And Then, After Death, Continue to Do His Part

There is one thing you can’t get on Amazon – or that isn’t available there as of the time of this post’s writing, at least. I’m speaking, of course, of a glass dildo that doubles as an urn.

“Have your loved one’s ashes preserved in this glass vibrator and keep the intimacy alive even when your former spouse is not,” suggests the promotional text for this handsome glass vibrator urn. “This unique sex toy allows you to pack up to 21 grams of the dearly departed inside of it, so you can enjoy their company every night.”

Now, some cynics might suggest that this glass cock urn isn’t a real product, because if you follow the links to where you would hope to find a page with an order or buy link, it instead takes you off to a site which explains that these urns are custom made and elucidates why this elaborate, carefully constructed product takes so long to deliver.

I must admit though, even hardened as it has become by years of online disappointment, my tender heart just can’t take the idea that the glass vibrator urn is a fugazi. 

So, while I don’t have any empirical evidence to back up my belief – not even so much as an old book quoting a long-dead, foul-mouthed parrot – I choose to believe that this glass dick urn is a legit thing.

And yes, I’m ordering one.