Category Archives: Gizmos

May 24, 2013 · 0:00

Modern Conveniences

Modern marketing really scares me.  And I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.

A few years ago John and I needed to replace broken toilet that had a built-in shelf above the tank top.  (Not the kind of tank top you wear, but the kind with all the parts of a toilet that break.)

We needed a special size and type.

Toilet with shelf 2

Naturally, I looked online to find the best price.  Then off-to Home Depot John and I went expecting to flush away a wad of money.

As we were trying to choose between two models, the salesman tried to help us make the decision:

“You can flush an entire bucket of golf balls down this American Standard toilet and it won’t clog,” he said.

John tilted his head, dog like, and looked at the salesman trying to figure out if he was joking.  He wasn’t.

I looked at John and then at the salesman.  Somehow I maintained an interested customer demeanor.  “Why would we want to do that?” I asked.  “We don’t golf.”

“I’m just sayin’ that you could,” said the salesman.  “I mean, if you did golf.”

“We probably wouldn’t be golfing in the bathroom,” John said, thoughtfully.  “I mean, if we did golf, we wouldn’t golf there.  We’d probably do it outside.

“And if we take up golf, I think I’d rather keep the golf balls in the garage,” I added.

“Plus we have a septic system.  I don’t know if it is designed for golf balls.”

“It might be hard to explain to the guys when they pump it out.”

We had to leave or we would have wet our pants in the toilet aisle of Home Depot.  In spite of the fact that it would be expensive, we opted to replace the innards of our own non-golfing toilet instead of spending – I kid you not – more than $1,000 on a toilet that would fit the spot and accept golf balls.

Since then, though, I have been getting ads for toilets.  But not just any old toilet.  Strangely shaped toilets.  Apparently, to the marketers of America, I not only like to flush strange hard things down my toilets, but I like my toilets to look like anything but.  Or butt.

Toilet 2Toilet 1Toilet 3

So imagine my dismay when I read this article that explains where modern advertising is heading.

They’re going to mine our DNA

to figure out how to market stuff to us.

The article gives the example of someone who is lactose intolerant getting special coupons for lactose-free stuff.

Oh joy.

I wonder if my DNA will tell folks that I’m not interested in what they’re selling.

Which gene says "NO SOLICITING"?

Which gene says
“NO SOLICITING”?

 

All the pictures are from Google Images.  I can’t wait to see what they try to sell me next!

81 Comments

Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Gizmos, Health and Medicine, Humor, Technology

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 4, 2013 · 0:00

The Voice of the Future

As you also may know if you’re a long time reader, I have a hard time with technology.  Particularly if it talks.  I wrote about it here:  I can’t get no.  You have no doubt heard me screaming from wherever it is you are, when I am asked the same question for the 128th time by the same incredibly patient voice on the other end of the phone.   If I could get a hold of the person behind the voice, I would slap her silly.  Because those auto-answering voices used by every single company I need to call — they make me crazy.

So naturally, I had to dig myself in deeper.

Yup, recently I got an iPhone4S, with Suri.  And within days, I wanted to strangle her, too.  Suri makes me crazy, and only partly because her voice is the same one as the voice prompt I named Sybil in I can’t get no.  (They are obviously psychotic twins.)  I gave Suri several chances to help me and to help herself in the process, but she always lets me down.  Once, I was trying to demonstrate to my boss how she can find a phone number for you and dial it:

“Suri, call home,” I commanded.

“You have 16 homes.”

Shit.  So much for my raise.

Another time, I tried all day to get her help with finding a nearby restaurant when we were on vacation.  I gave up in frustration, and in complete exasperation I said to Siri:

“Oh Fuck Off!”

She finally gave me a reasonable answer:

“What did I do to deserve that?” she said.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh.”

But actually, it isn’t only voice-activated prompts that make me nuts.  Real live people do, too.  Especially if they have an accents.   I cannot emphasize enough just how convenient this difficulty was when I lived in another country where they spoke a language that required the use of an accent.

Still, probably the most difficult accent for me is a Scottish one, which is quite frustrating.  You see, they speak English.  Sort of.

Actually, Scotland is near and dear to my heart.  John went to University there, and we have many friends in and around Edinburgh from those days.  Best of all, John asked me to marry him overlooking Edinburgh Castle at sunset after we hiked up the Salisbury Crags.  (See why I married him?)

Edinburgh Castle4

How could I say anything but yes?

Salisbury Crags

(Both Google Images)

But in lots trips to Scotland over the years, umpteen phone calls and reciprocal visits to us, I continue to have trouble understanding our friends. It’s the accent.

I canna understand it.

At first, I thought it was just the heavy Scottish Brogue and that my ear would get attuned to it.  Nope.  Not all of our friends have a brogue as few are completely Scottish.  Some actually hail from Northern Ireland, another was raised for 10 years in Czechoslovakia before moving to Scotland.  Others are English.  Some of our friends are even mutts and we don’t talk about them much.  We really only have two friends who are authentically Scottish.  It’s a motley crew.  No matter.  They are all wonderful, fun, and we have a blast when we visit or when they come here.

Or at least I think we do.  You see, since I have such a hard time understanding them, I never know what anyone is talking about or what I’m agreeing to.  Nevertheless, I agree to whatever I am asked.  I swear, their accents are thick as mud.  Thicker, even.  And they’re all professional people, doctors, dentists, executives and school teachers.  So my way is easier.  What sort of trouble could they get me into?  Besides, I’m pretty sure I’ve responded appropriately when spoken to over the years.  If not, I am hoping that when they laugh at me, that they think kindly of poor John’s wife, that agreeable deaf woman.

But somehow, I expect to have the last laugh.

62 Comments

Filed under Family, Gizmos, Humor, Mental Health, Stupidity

Tagged as , , ,

August 29, 2012 · 0:00

French is Dangerous

You’ve heard me talk about this before (Merde 101).  But the world has gotten more dangerous since I wrote that piece.  We need to be on the lookout.  We need to be vigilant.  We need to speak English.  No, this is not an anti-immigrant piece.  This is a potential-worldwide-calamity-caused-by-incomprehensible-grammar piece.

Yes, it’s true.  I’m saying that all roads to terrorism are sign-posted in FRENCH.  Believe me.  I lived there.  I know.  Well, I don’t know the language, but I know those signposts.  And what they say.  More or less.

Why would I make such an accusation?  Because French is stupid.

Well, actually, it’s really French possessives.  French possessives are stupid, illogical, dangerous.

You see, in French, objects get the gender of the object/noun, not the owner.  And that, is of course, the problem.

Imagine that there is a man and a woman in a train station.  Between them is a suitcase.

Google Image (or KGB?)

In it is a nuclear bomb.  Desperate to foil the bad guys, you cannot just shout out “It’s HIS!” pointing to the man who can be arrested and the bomb diffused.

Google Images are everywhere

Why not?

Because the word for suitcase in French is “valise” which is feminine.  Therefore, you can only say “It’s HERS” (“Est la valise!”) — regardless of who owns the suitcase/nuclear bomb.  The bomb would go off and everyone would die.

The terrorists would succeed because French is stupid.

Not speaking French is the way to protect the world.

*****

One of my blogging buddies, Paprika of Good Humored felt stupid recently.  She wrote about it here:  At Least We Can See France From Our Toilet.  And it’s not her fault.  You see, Paprika and her husband Oregano found themselves in French-speaking Switzerland, just down the road from where I used to live.  They came back feeling stupid.  They shouldn’t have.  Instead, they should have come back relieved that they had survived a nuclear attack.

[Note to folks who actually know French:  Before you get on my case, I do know that there are other was to say “It’s HIS.” But they are not short, sweet and to the point.  They are long and involved and the bomb would explode by the time anyone could get the sentence out.  The Terrorists would still win.]

67 Comments

Filed under Criminal Activity, Geneva Stories, Gizmos, Global Warming, Health and Medicine, History, Humor, Hypocrisy, Neighbors, Politics, Science, Stupidity

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 14, 2012 · 0:00

Forward, Crush!

One idiom that I’ve always found, well, odd, is this:  “That’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!”

Huh?

To me, going back to unsliced bread after years of Wonder Bread was a revelation.  It has taste!  It doesn’t dissolve in water!  It is something on which I could actually subsist.  Well, with a little water thrown in.

Sliced bread?  Mostly I think of that white spongy crap, although nowadays the mega-bakeries are trying to actually make bread that tastes good.  But there is a ways to go.

Me, I don’t bake bread; my husband did back in the day when we had time and smaller waistlines.  Me, I bake other stuff.  My carrot cake recipe is to die for (with so much butter that is literally true) but I don’t make it very often because, well, when we celebrate birthdays we would prefer not to expire before the next.

But I do like to cook, and mostly it is from scratch when I have the time and energy.  And while those are often in short supply those days, well, I do enjoy whipping up a meal without opening a box, without opening a can, and without pulling something pre-made out of the freezer.

Someday when I retire, I expect to do more cooking, more experimenting with world cuisines, the way I used to when I was home with my son when he was a child.  We had a blast, made messes and cleaned them up.  Discovered delicious and not so delicious dishes.

But sometimes a girl must draw the line.  And I found the exact location for that line today in the Williams-Sonoma catalog.  Because today Williams-Sonoma has gone too far.  Or it wants me to go too far.  Or maybe they just think that I have unlimited counter-space.

Today, they not only want me to make absolutely everything from scratch, but they want me to grind my own grain with which to make it.  And there are different types of grain grinders to choose from!

There’s your conventional hand-crank grain grinder for those looking for a workout. (Williams-Sonoma Catolog)

Or for the ones who want full convenience while grinding their own grain, there is this one:

The fully-electrified version so that you don’t have to do anything yourself, which, of course, kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me.

Why not choose them all!

But you know, still I wonder.

My ancestors were farmers, and even they didn’t grind their own grain.  They took the grain they grew to a mill where it was ground for them by the miller.  That was considered progress from the days where my ancestors’ ancestors had to pulverize the grain on rocks, scrape it up and figure out how to get it into the crock pot.

I’m just worried that the next step in being the perfect chef will force me back in time even further.

I fear I will have to revert into a hunter-gatherer.  Otherwise I will not be able to keep up with the neighbors.  Sigh.

Good thing there is a magazine that’ll help me get there.

Yup, it’s back to the land. I just need my glossy mag and my loaded mag.

58 Comments

Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Family, Fashion, Gizmos, Gun control, History, Technology

Tagged as , , , ,

January 5, 2012 · 0:00

Smarter than me

Lori over at Sunny Side Up posted a piece this morning about parallel parking.  She can’t do it.  Me, I can do it pretty well; I just can’t spell it without spell check.

And it made me think.  Well, that and a cup of coffee.

Now, it may just be the Cheerios talking, but I am starting to be afraid of cars.  Afraid of crossing in front of them, of crossing behind them and of driving anywhere near them.

I don’t like being around inanimate objects that are smarter than I am; and when they can move without my throwing them, well, it paralyzes me.

Have you seen the gizmos they’re putting in cars nowadays?  Lori, you can get a car that can parallel park itself.  Lori, wisely keeps looking for a place.  (Me, I had a bad-boy boyfriend when I was a teenager who taught me how to do it.  But I digress.)

But based on the commercials, by the time the Ford Focus maneuvers into the spot, I would have wet my pants, because these days I parallel park only when I stop to buy coffee/use the restroom after being stuck in traffic.

These gadgets though, terrify me.  There’s one that will brake automatically if you get too close to the car ahead of you.  What if you’re in the sort of traffic we have here in Northern Virginia.  Hell, I’d have whiplash on my first commute.

Have you seen the one that keeps you from hitting the car in your blind spot?  I’m not quite sure how that one works.  It might involve wheel-destroying spikes, a la Ben Hur, or maybe flame throwers, but hey you won’t hit that car.  And you won’t even need to look over your shoulder.  Cause looking over your shoulder can be dangerous.

And then there is the one that vibrates when it thinks you’re falling asleep.  I’m sure it will know exactly when you’re going onto the other side of the road to avoid pot holes, small animals and wheel-destroying spikes coming from the cars that won’t let their drivers look over their shoulders.  I’m positive.  Because no in-car gizmo has ever, ummmm, not worked properly, right?

I am surely not alone in my fear of these gizmos.  Because anyone who has ever had a car with an electronic device in it knows that they break down all the time.

Me, I stopped trusting them about 2 months after I got my current car.  It has lots of gizmos and I trusted one of them once, while backing up.  My car has a Road Runner stuck in side of it.  It goes “beep beep” when I get too close to anything behind me.  It is supposed to “beep beep” in a progressive fashion, as I get closer to stuff.  It goes apoplectic if I reverse to within 5 feet of a wall – knowing that I won’t be able to open the back hatch sends it into a frenzy.  Especially since I only open the back on weekends and at places where there are no walls.  The car will, of course, allow the nose of my car to be in the middle of the driving lane without a peep, though.

I trusted the “beep beep” once.  I was backing up into the only spot left in a garage.  It was the only way in.  My car was filled with a bunch of kids who were being kids and making noise.  Sadly, none of them said “beep beep.”  Neither did the car.  I inched into the wall, giving my  new car a custom bumper.  It is dented in as if someone hit it with a large muffin.

I’m pretty sure that these new safety features are going to lead to some pretty interesting reality TV shows.  And I guess anything that can make those shows worth watching might be worth a shot.

56 Comments

Filed under Driving, Gizmos, Humor, Technology, Traffic

Tagged as , , ,