You In Britain Call Them 'Tins'

Whereas we here in America call them, 'cans.' Which makes a bit more sense to me, since while they are in fact cans, they are not in fact made out of tin. Historically, maybe so! But history is a whore, with her eyes turned always sideways, slantwise back towards the past! Which neatly discredits that argument.

But anyway, back to these tins. I had a question to ask, and maybe some of you can back me up on this. You'll note that these days almost all of them come with the easy-pop tab top. All you have to do is manipulate the tab into a good "pull!" position, give it a good pull, and SHTLORPT! the entire contents come sliding right out onto the kitchen counter! Arguably, that's not the fault of the design - you weren't supposed to be holding it upside down.

Look, that's not what I want to get into, here. Nor the devastating effect of this innovation on the innocent tin-opener manufacturing industry - I imagine some modern Dickens even now slaving away at his magnum opus wherein some oddly-named tot finds himself in dire straits because pappy lost his job at the tin-opener factory. And he's in a real bind too, 'cause he can't play an instrument, but then Mark Knopfler takes pity and teaches him a few beautiful blues moves on that sweet Strat of his. Soon his burgeoning fame and fortune have saved the day financially, but is our young hero happy now? No, what I wanted to talk about is this: the lid of the tin comes right off. One good yank! Are we to believe that this doesn't call the integrity of the seal into question? Will we still be able to rely on tinned goods as the shelf-stable shelter staple of our science-fiction post-apocalyptic potboilers set far into the future?

Another troubling question: the expiration on the bottom of this thing reads Jan 2011. Are we really expected to believe that this whole involved post-society society, with its elaborate tattered fashions and dread mythic rituals built up around worshipping that fake-looking rat (who turned out to be a computer!) - all of that evolved over something like 20-30 months? Come on! And I don't care if it is the apocalypse - who puts a computer in a rat?

Even given it is the apocalypse, I'm sure you have more pressing needs for your expertise and resources than to put a computer into a rat.

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