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Photo posted by Language Log author Heidi Harley.

Heidi Harley of Language Log links to the image from an ad, above, calling out some gratuitously irrelevant filler product-packaging text. Literally gratuitous, I suspect she suspects, because she adds that packaging text for another product from the same product brags “holds all digital cameras small enough to fit.” Harley’s take?

Someone at that company has a cute sense of humor!

She said it here.

And in a context like this? Yup, pretty darn cute. In other contexts, though, saying totally obvious, irrelevant things that reflect on standard tropes isn’t so hot.

Consider the horrific, headliner story from my morning’s newspaper. It begins

Shot dead, Army couple was then doused with acid

Suspect allegedly tried to destroy Parkland bodies.

...

The 22-year-old woman now held on suspicion of aggravated murder and kidnapping — of the couple’s 6-month-old girl — left the Millers’ home after the shooting, bought muriatic acid at Home Depot and returned, the affidavit of probable cause said. She tried but failed to destroy the bodies in a bathtub, a court affidavit said.

Source: Seattle P-I, March 3, 2008

Now, honestly, assuming you wanted to hear anything about this at all would you want to know — in the third flipping paragraph, no less — that (italics mine)

The suspect, Spc. Ivette Gonzalez Davila, a member of Fort Lewis’ I Corps color guard, shackled and dressed in an orange Pierce County Jail inmate’s uniform...

I’m pretty sure that, unlike the deliberately out-to-lunch packaging copy, it’s a local journalistic tradition to describe every prisoner as manacled and brightly outfited when they appear in court. Still, considering what she’s accused of it’s surreal to read about what Davila wore in court as if she were an Oscar-night actress in a red gown.