Storytime! The Department of Mislabeled Bottles Project

In which Howard goes down a twitter rabbit hole and emerges with labels you want in your kitchen

TL;DR: Patrons will be getting a PDF version of these labels and info for how to put them on any bottles you may wish to mislabel in a separate post. Read on for the story of how this project took over our lives for a week.

From Peanut Butter to Panthyrr Breath 

By Howard Tayler

A week ago today I happened upon a Guardian Long Read article about our obsession with metrics. It had quite the hook: you can buy three jars of peanut butter for $1,069 from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the same agency can sell you powdered radioactive human lung.

It was fascinating, and that’s how these things usually begin. Unusually, I documented the whole thing in real-time on Twitter. The ball began rolling downhill right about here:

Image shows a pair of bottles labeled Human Lung and Human Liver. Howard's tweet says: "Not available for web order."  I don't know why I want these jars on a shelf in my office, but I want these jars on a shelf in my office. The image is good enough that I could absolutely fake the fonts and print my own stickers. Dunno what I'd put in the bottle to fake the powder, but it should be easy to come up with something less illegal than human remains.

You see it happening, yes? That transition from “I want a thing” to “I bet I can make a reasonable facsimile of the thing” has never been starker for me.

After a few minutes in Photoshop, most of which time was spent locating a suitable font, I tweeted this:

Image: Howard says "That didn't take long" Label Shows DFB 4352 Human Liver Packaged by the Department of Fake Bottles.

At this point all we have is a fun thing to put on a jar in the curio cabinet in your game room. What actually goes into the jar, though? I think I have to give credit where credit is due…

Image: @WhyATater tweets The human lung looks like cinnamon sugar while the liver looks like slightly clumpy salt. Man, it would be wild to have those for salt and pepper shakers though thinking about it.

This moment right here… THIS is when I was off to the races. I had spied a suitably gamey prey, and the game was well and truly afoot.

From there it unfolded like clockwork. I spun out some silly ideas for spice bottles, then Sandra looked at what I was doing and realized she already had everything she needed to turn it into a viable product.

Image: Howard says "And now that I've built it I can make these all day." Label says DFB 9322 Sasquatch Hair, Powdered Packaged by the Department of Fake Bottles. Sandra says: "Sigh. Do you need me to buy you some interestingly shaped bottles and jars. And printable sticker sheets?

From here, the project progressed through three phases:

1) I guess we’re making a new thing now. Let’s document all the bits we need.
2) This is more complicated than I expected. I’m shelving all the OTHER projects in order to navigate the complexity correctly.
3) About five days of grinding on various project tasks.

There was also a delightful moment when Patrick Rothfuss took a shining to it…

Image: Patrick Rothfuss says: "So I promised that I won't commit worldbuilders to any new projects for Geeks Doing Good without consulting them but... (But we could totally make sets of these and sell them for charity is all I'm saying.)  Howard responds with a new label saying "Are you sure you want to?" Label says DMB Non-standard additives 5930 Florida Man, Disarticulated  bottle may also contain Orange Rind Packaged under the authority of the Department of Mislabeled Bottles.

Image: Pat Rothfuss answers: I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of me imagining putting these labels on bottles and having them in my kitchen and then also sending you some and then also making so much money for charity. 

Good times, good times.

When I’m doing a silly thing, and other people like it enough that they want me to see it through to its silly completion, I take that as a strong indication that I should keep going. So of course I did.

If you’d like to scroll through the tweets, this tweet is a good starting point:
https://twitter.com/howardtayler/status/1530021176986042368

Here we are, a week later. We have seventy-five of these things…

Image: three labels They all say DMB Non Standard additives Packaged under the authority of the Department of Mislabeled Bottles. One says Panthyrr Blood Dried, Still sticky bottle may also contain Brown Sugar, One says Panthyrr Farts, Thrice-Autoclaved bottle may also contain Artificial Sweetner, One says Pyroclastic Essence, Krakatoan bottle may also contain Liquid Smoke.

And, for your patronage, YOU can have seventy-five of these things. 

We’re making digital files available for you to print stickers in black-and-white and/or in color, and we’ve got simple instructions available for printing on plain old paper, then using milk and sugar to turn that paper into a sticker. Patrons can get their download here. Or you can purchase the PDF in our online store.  If you're doing your own printing on sticker paper, these are the label sheets we use. 

We’ll also be printing stickers ourselves, which we can ship to you. You can buy them in our online store. We’re not shipping any glassware, but we recommend the SWOMMOLY brand on amazon.com, many of which are inexpensive enough that I can’t believe we haven’t already re-bottled all of our spices.