Earlier this week, I wrote about the worst product that I have ever read about: jewelry made from the ashes of people’s dead pets. Though I could concoct a hundred different complaints about this carbuncle of commerce, I promised to limit myself to three.
The first complaint outlined my general displeasure with pet pampering. The twits that would spend thousands of dollars to turn the carcass of Snuffles the Pug into a fashion accessory are without a doubt the same people who would waste money on dog spas, cat cafes, and a 24-pack of beef-flavored Gutter Water from K9 Water Company.
$35.99 for 384 ounces of beef stock in plastic bottles? Shameful.
Buy some bullion cubes and make your own, or, better yet, how about fresh drinking water for an eight-year-old girl in Zambia instead?
2) Neurotic or Exploitative Business Ideas
This from the bottom of the article: “It was my friend who gave me the idea of mixing pets’ ashes with jewelry after her dog died…â€
This snippet of inanity has something to teach us: Never listen to business ideas about pet ashes from a bereaved pet owner. This entrepreneur needs new friends. She needs a bucket of cold beef stock to the face. She needs someone to explain the difference between a business niche begging for high-quality products at a fair price and talismans made from the cremated remains of Cocker Spaniels. Next, we’ll be worshipping our pets and asking them to forgive our sins. You can already bring them to special church services.
Dead pet necklaces perpetuate a neurosis, an illness. We may as well market a candy of the month club to children with diabetes or offer recovering alcoholics free tickets to a beer festival.
I would say, “Have a conscience,†but that seems too condescending. “Get a clue†is much more polite. Just because something hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it should be.
Maybe I should start harvesting urine for an all-natural ammonia-based cleaner. Maybe I should wear Lady Gaga’s meat dress and go diving on the Great Barrier Reef. We’re not talking about leather or a fur coat; we’re talking about ashes from creatures that licked crumbs off your kitchen floor. And defecated on your rugs. And ate grass only to vomit this cud in your bedroom.
This lady probably scrapes the ashes out of the fireplace. Her customers aren’t even wearing your dead pet; they’re wearing trees from the Qinghai province.
Or cigarettes.
I’m going to pick up gravel and start selling it as moon rocks. Even better, I’m going to tell my cosmetologist wife to bag up the hair she cuts and start a new business. I’ve already started writing the infomercial:
[cue voiceover]
Do you want Megan Fox on your head?
[zoom in on stock footage of Fox talking, smiling, tossing her hair; end with a tasteful shot of her breasts]
[resume voiceover]
Weave in real hair from this sex icon’s head, and watch as her keratin’s supercharged pheromones totally awesomely take your love life from Zero to Bazillion!
[cue stock photography of a rocket launch]
I remember thinking that Angelina Jolie was a freak for wearing a vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck. Compared to Pooky’s vertebrae, the blood seems almost sweet.
Imagine the conversation.
“Cindy, I love your new necklace! Where did you get it? Anthropologie? Urban Outfitters? Etsy?â€
“No! But I’m glad you asked. Get this, remember how I told you that our chocolate lab Ginger died? Well, we had her cremated and shipped the remains to a mentally unstable Japanese entrepreneur who threw them away. She then took cigarette ash, sprinkled it over clay, made beads from the clay, made a necklace from the beads, made a killing selling the necklace to us, and then went to sleep in a coffin made from cat skin and whale bones. Now Ginger will always be with us, and the money we spent on my necklace and the frames of my husband Burt’s new coffeeshop glasses will never help a person in need. Isn’t that great?!!â€
If you know someone wearing a dead pet, I suggest that you cut off all contact. That relationship is a short cut to cult membership and arsenic cocktails. If you really want to honor the memory of your dead pet, why not give other people animals so that they may simply live? Heifer International is a good place to start.
But wait! There’s more! Read Part 3 here. (It’s less sarcastic and more encouraging.)
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