a couple years ago i bought some paperclips online.
now as we know, it is no longer possible to make sundries - nobody does. all things that cost less than $500 come from "somewhere," and that somewhere is "the factory in south china that happened to draw the lottery this week." you can order "the same thing" ten times and get ten different things, and they'll be ten different kinds of bizarre scam, because the era of paying employees a living wage and sustaining a company by making a low-cost product that people unquestionably need is over, thanks almost entirely to amazon.
so, unsurprisingly, these paperclips ended up being a bizarre scam. i have no idea how to explain how one counterfeits a paperclip, but someone did. they're metal, obviously, and you would think that's where it would end, but they're coated in something. it's like cheap chrome plating, maybe. when you bend them - you know, in order to use them - the plating turns into a million shards and covers your hands.
i haven't done anything to replace these because i know that there's no hope. i can buy another random thing, but what difference does it make? it'll just give me a different kind of slow-growing-hard-to-detect cancer. doesn't matter if i buy it in a store, amazon, or aliexpress.
well, after two years i couldn't take it anymore, so i decided to go looking for a brand made by an actual company. surely, someone must care about paperclips, somewhere. there must be a reliable source of paperclips. as i looked through obviously-fake paperclips that clearly came out of the same factory as my somehow-fake paperclips, i kept noticing a consistent theme was "ACCO," whose packaging looked just the tiniest bit out of date. outdated is a good sign, here.
so i looked them up. it's not enough for a "brand" to have a fixed business address - there are trillions of sixletters "brands" that supposedly have addresses, so you have to dig a little to try to prove that there is a real company. and, well, this seems likely. the website has a picture of a large building with an actual sign on the front, not a photoshop or a generic stock photo. encouraging!
and then I learn that,
ACCO Brands Corporation's roots stretch back to the founding of Wilson Jones in 1893, the American Clip Company (ACCO) in 1903
okay, okay. you have me interested. The American Clip Company is perhaps the most Gotham City Business Name possible. this is a kind of industry that is incompatible with modern existence, so i'm getting excited. and then i learn that,
It was created by the merger of ACCO World from Fortune Brands with General Binding Corporation
oh fuck yes. American Clip Company merged with General Binding Corporation. this is sitcom shit. this is something that would happen on the Simpsons. I am ordering these clips. i will report back
