When Anti-Drug Propaganda Undermines Itself
A pencil with a hidden message.
An anti-drug pencil with a hidden message:
No, that isn't a Photoshop. Pencils like those really were manufactured back in 1998. Apparently, no one involved in making and distributing the product picked up on the problem until a fourth grader pointed it out. "We're actually a little embarrassed that we didn't notice that sooner," a spokesperson at the Bureau for At-Risk Youth said at the time.
Now these jokers have revived the design and are selling pencils bearing the slogan again, this time with more self-awareness. It comes in a pack of five, so if you want to mount four of them on the wall in the above arangement you can still have one left over to write with.
[Via Boing Boing.]
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"Drugs are for losers, and hypnosis is for losers with big, weird eyebrows."
Would it really have been so hard to simply switch ends so that it goes like this instead:
Too Cool to Do Drugs
Too Cool to Do
Too Cool
Too
That's what the company ended up doing.
You want me to write with the eraser?
No, no, you pry the metal bit off and sharpen the end under it. It's a safety seal for shipping 🙂
Even the full statement can be taken other than intended. You have to assume the "I'm" at the beginning to make it a proper sentence, but I mentally insert "It's" for some reason.
Who the hell uses pencils these days? Other than the 85-year-old guy I train dogs with, I mean.
Scantron forms still require #2 pencils and are all the rage for standardized testing.
I go through lots of pencils, doing exercises in mathematical textbooks. They're convenient as hell.
Elementary school kids, of course.
And, just as when I was a kid, the eraser is inevitably gone before the pencil is sharpened twice.
You mean you weren't issued a big pink brick eraser too? We had the same base problem, but rather than buy more pencils, they got the brick erasers to compensate.
I preferred the white eraser.
Those were more expensive, and this was a city school.
Sanford Magic Rub 1954. Boo-yah!
Please explain how you could be more of a nerd. I'd like to be amused.
These are just the tools of my trade. If someone wanted to know which anal lube tasted the best, they'd ask you.
Tools of the mega-nerd.
And it's Pipedreams Tushy Tamer Anal Desensitizing Cream, just for the record.
And it's Pipedreams Tushy Tamer Anal Desensitizing Cream, just for the record.
Epi begged, "Don't get any of that on my clitoris!"
But Warty just squeezed out the entire tube onto the dingy carpet of the van and laughed.
I relive it every night...in my dreams.
Holy crap. That doesn't really seem like a very good idea.
That doesn't really seem like a very good idea.
It's a devil's bargain. The initial entrance might be easier for the receiver, but it also desensitizes the penis, making the penetration take longer until ejaculation.
I thought that was Nikki's purview?
Having Warty do it to you ruins it for all others.
I didn't make mistakes.
You responded to Sugarfree, so...
patently false.
I responded to the Canadian. But it matters not, for any answer I give is made to be the right one.
I preferred the white eraser.
Racist?
Depends on who you ask. The people who'd play that card would calim you can't be racist against whites, so an eraser for removing them can't possibly be racist. The rest of us would see i as a descriptive element of the object.
So no, not from either side of the debate.
When I was in Kind3rgarten, the.nuns removed the.erasers from pencils. Mistakes were not.to be.made.in the.first place.
And look where it got you, using periods instead of spaces. The sisters would be ashamed.
Seeing as how I.was writing before I.went to Kindergarten and they forced.me to print in all block capitals, forever setting me back from my potential progress, I think they deserve.it.
Could be worse, I mean my wife uses periods to prevent exclamation marks
Am I the first to notice this excellence?
+1 internet to Rasilio.
Math and engineering people feel strongly about using pencils. They tend to use mechanical pencils. Mechanical pencils suck.
For surveyors, using a pen in a field book is practically illegal, even though erasing in the field book is practically illegal as well.
Not all. I use a few at work that I'm pretty happy with. I recommend the Pentel Twist-Erase QE517.
Is it metal?
Plastic body with a metal clip and innards. We don't use the all metal ones because of the fragility of the paper we often have to work with.
It's light, with a clean action, holds 7 leads and a full inch of soft white eraser that doesn't require a cap. (You can recess it to keep it clean.)
If you want to make anything other that shitty faint marks, you still have to dispense the exact right amount of graphite or it will either wear down too quickly if too short, or break off if too long.
Oh, man... You're one of those.
You depress the action, push down on a surface to put the lead flush with the carrier, let off and then click it twice. Perfect lead every time.
Twice is too much. I need about one and a half, so I always push some back in. And the shit still breaks half the time.
With a sharpened wood pencil, I can do hard lines all day.
I just dislike sharpening them to suit me. I do get them for the students that prefer them. I'm not some sort of pencil Nazi.
You know who else did lines all day?
Episiarch back when he was in Menudo?
Those truly were the salad days.
For fans of wooden pencils, try a Mirado Black Warrior sometime. It's has a great weight and balance.
Do they still make the Blackfeet Indian Pencil? Those rocked. They were lacquered.instead of painted and they were of.real wood, so they had great balance, feel, and smell.
No, Blackfeet closed in the late 1990s.
*wipes tear*
Until this moment, I never knew there was a pencil fetish.
I'm not surprised, but I didn't know.
We're actually veering close to a zone of near-hipsterish danger in our artisinal pencil discussion.
I don't have that problem with mechanical pencils, even when I use them for marking wood. You must be doing something wrong. Or you need .7 mm leads.
I was gift3d with an.awesome 0.5mm lead/ink pen combo on one of.my trips.to.Japan. best.mechanical pencil ever.
I had the same problem. Now, I've found that Staples makes one with 1.3 mm leads--haven't broken one since!
I think we.stock those.in.our office.supply cabinets.
I almost exclusively the QE519, same thing but in 0.9 mm. I find the thicker lead writes smoother and almost never breaks.
I use pencils at work.The erase function is good for sketching maps and diagrams in a Rite in the Rain
Who the hell uses pencils these days?
Carpenters, people who might want to erase things they wrote, mathematicians, people who have a bad habit of writing on themselves with pens. Should I go on?
I sometjmes prefer old style pencils. They break.less often under the.abuse to which I subject mechanical pencils.
Really? The Bureau for At-Risk Youth is a thing?
Good name for a skater culture company or something.
It's all cool until the kids start wearing uggs.
NO JEGGINGS!!!!
Remember those jelly shoes girls.used.to.wear in the early '80s?
Is there such a thing as a jeggings yoga pant?
"We're actually a little embarrassed that we didn't notice that sooner," a spokesperson at the Bureau for At-Risk Youth said at the time.
"Nevertheless, we still know what's best for you. If we don't fight the good fight, your state will also lose 37 lives when marijuana is legalized there."
Of course they didn't realize it sooner...would-be social engineers rarely realize that people are not just passive clay waiting to be molded, and may actually have ideas of their own.
Those disposable mechanical pencils were the worst.
Absolutley. What is the point?
Apparently, no one involved in making and distributing the product picked up on the problem...
That's a pretty big assumption. I'm sure that many people here would have realized that but STFU about that.
I'll bet the people who actually made the pencil didn't care what it said so long as the check cleared.
Well the people who made the pencil didn't care becuase they couldn't even read their native language forget English
I would deliberately sabotage a statist campaign.
I want to make some that say "not cool enough to do drugs" now.
Have all of the pencils
Currently, irony is cooler than clowning around. I'll take the top pencil, thanks.