More from the artisanal mailbag

Okay, it's been a while since I bitched about the overuse of the word artisanal (see my artisanal whining page if you miss this sort of thing), so today I'm going to pick a few out from the pictures that I keep in a handcrafted folder on my computer desktop.

First we have perfume, which is likely handmade in some 3rd world chemical plant. The ad gets bonus irritant points for using handcrafted and artisan in the same sentence:

"We could fill these bottles with donkey piss, and people would still buy them. So let's do it."

This picture was sent by a reader living in China, to show that the word is now planet-wide, regardless of economic system.

"It sounds better if you use the word twice. As least that's what I think the English-as-a-2nd-language teacher said"

Next, from the United Kingdom, we have this place:

Is the trench digger artisanal? Or the power generator? Or the guy who takes your credit card when you order one?

Of course, no artisanal posting would be complete without something that grows in the dirt, was picked by someone making minimum wage, packaged by a machine, and had a label slapped on it.

Here in the U.S even a piece of paper is now artisanal:

If you're going to buy artisanal paper, you probably want a printer equal to the task:

"Handcrafted by mass-production assembly line machines in a Chinese sweatshop"

Lastly, it's important to remember that artisanal things can boldly go where no one has gone before:

"We canna go any faster, Captain! We're all out of handcrafted anti-matter!"