If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Anyone ever ordered a long sleeve, button-down shirt from Ralph Lauren online? Usually, I just pick up a dress shirt in a brick and mortar store, where I can try it on (and it would typically be or come on a hanger) but I've been more agoraphobic than normal lately. Plus, I know the exact thing I want, and the exact size, so why not have it delivered to my door?

Well, the shirts I ordered arrived today, and I pulled one out.Taking it out of the plastic wrap was no big deal. Nor were the usual tissue liners and cardboard inserts. But Holy Fucking Porcupines, there were a LOT of pins. Every damned corner, every fold, beside every button. There pins in places where even with an advanced degree in textile engineering I could not discern any possible function. I pulled them out, one by one, and lost count after twenty. They were like clowns pouring out of a Volkswagen. After 10 minutes of "unpackaging," I tried on the shirt....and OF COURSE I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. Another pin! I carefully took it off, gave it another once over, and found 5 more. Seriously, is this really necessary? Is Ralph worried that the shirt might become sentient and try to escape the hermetically sealed plastic bag and cardboard bondage without 3 pounds of sharp steel holding it at bay? Or are these shirts marketed by the CIA to unobservant terrorists, who so want to blend into white collar America that they don the togs of a typical business dude and then walk through an airport metal detector only to get taken down when the excess pinnage sets off the alarm and brings a swarm of TSA agents to beat them into submission?

A word of advice: don't sell these shirts to hemophiliacs.

On the upside, if you are one of my enemies, and I have a voodoo doll in your image, watch the fuck out. I'm armed and dangerous.