Every time the K-Landnews comes across another specimen of the title statement It's so safe you can drink it or a variant like It's so safe you can eat it, with or without exclamation mark, a couple of things happen in the basement newsroom.
First, a chair will tumble to the floor, then a computer mouse will fly across the room, narrowly missing the lava lamp next to the comfy office couch, and hit the wall with its characteristic plastic on masonry impact sound.
To be sure, the lava lamp and the dark green velvet office couch are purely imaginary, added just for effect, but the computer mouse is very real, as is the scrunching noise when the faded yellowish shell strikes the old brick wall.
Please, don't think you have a piece of valuable meta data on the K-Landers now: they use at least one computer with a mouse, or so.
The flying mouse is a prop for one purpose only, namely to be thrown in exhilaration to celebrate a gotcha moment. It is not attached to a computer, the cable has been cut some five inches from the body of the mouse for easier throwing and reduced danger to bystanders from an oscillating three foot cable.
Our most recent find of It's so safe you can drink it, comes from time.com, where you can see "a Monsanto lobbyist" claim the herbicide glyphosate (the one from Roundup) is safe enough to drink - only to freak out when the reporter offers a tasty glass of glyphosate.
We have seen the scenario play out multiple times over the decades, most often in relation to wastewater treatment. The setting is predictable: a running camera, a guy with a glass of clear liquid, and another guy asking questions. The fatal It's so safe you can drink it! may or may not be preceded by a simple It's safe but it sure will come.
As will the request for a demonstration, to be followed by a red face and/or upset.
Other than wastewater treatment plants or their spruced up sewage to drinking water cousins, we recall a scene in which a bovine growth hormone specialist declined a glass of milk fresh from a cow treated with the hormone.
No particularly noteworthy example of the "you can eat it" version comes to mind. There are so many cooking shows that stretch the you can eat it paradigm, like Anthony Bourdain's great No Reservations, that the only remaining trustworthy yuck factor eat is probably near when you hear a group of small children in the backyard clamor eat it, eat it.
Now it is time to retrieve the computer mouse from its spot next to the lava lamp and the office couch to prime the giggle sweet spot for another one.
Have a great weekend.
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