Category: Humor

No corner of American life is such a fertile field for the restless, little brains of consumer products marketeers to spin wildly out of control, than the kitchen. Thanks to them, we have Ginsu knives, Bread Buddies, egg peelers, crackers, and genies…Dr. Nick Riviera’s Juice Loosener, and on and on.

There’s a good reason why they sell these things in the middle of the night. Only the severe neurosis caused by sleep deprivation or insomnia can make a normal, rational human being buy this crap! Well, that and stupidity.

Now, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen junk drawer, comes this abomination…

Continue reading “C’mon Man!”

<sigh> Well, I guess I’ll have to turn in my Junior Luddites of America membership card. Yesterday I took delivery of an…an…I can’t say it.

[What? You’ll do what? You can’t be serious?? Where did you get the authority to…Okay, okay, I’ll say it…Damn you!]

Yesterday I took delivery of an iPhone. But I want you to know that I am being coerced into the following remarks by the unspeakable terror that is the Apple Marketing Department. I had no idea they had this much power. And to think I was worried about Barack Obama!

[What are you gonna do with that rubber hose?? Okay, fine. Give me the damn script! <paper rustling sounds>]

This product is superior in every way to every other wireless device currently or ever available, with the exception of the iPhone 5. It is the single most revolutionary piece of technology to be conceived by the mind of man. It has changed the life of mankind for the better. It will now change mine. I now realize that only fools and monkeys use a Blackberry. All hail Steve Jobs and long live his beneficent rule over us all.

[Aw c’mon, you’ve got to be kidding! I mean, the guy’s dead for cryin’ out loud…<rubber hose applied to side of head sounds>]

Owww!

I honestly don’t know what could have made me so blind for so long. But now I’ve seen the light! I am finally free to…ignore everyone around me, <alarmed scuffling sounds> hand over gobs of money to the evil minions who work in the app store, while my brain devolves to a single, neural synapse whose soul function is to release dopamine into my system whenever I upgrade to the latest version because it has slightly bluer blues and goes “bing” in 200 languages!

Arrrrggggghhh! <dragging sounds>

…to um, uh, what was I going to say?

Oh yeah! Lose. A mind is a terrible thing to lose. I guess one of life’s little jokes is that as we get older we experience momentary lapses in memory and/or concentration. They older you get, the goofier the results. I have certainly been reminded of my mortality of late, to wit, the following recent episodes of my encroaching senility.

Episode 1, in which we see our hero shuffling into the bathroom of a morning to perform his daily ablutions. Take meds, check. Grab toothpaste, check. Root around in the drawer for the razor, check. Apply toothpaste to razor and…Well, I almost shaved my teeth, but I realized my error just in the nick of time and brushed my face instead. Still recovering from all the cuts.

Episode 2, in which our intrepid moron, saunters over to the microwave to warm his tepid cup of coffee. Open door, insert coffee mug, close door, and wait. After staring at the machine for the requisite 50 seconds like the RCA dog listening to his master’s voice, head tilted endearingly to one side, our moron opens the door and retrieves his coffee. He takes a tentative sip. “Hmmm…seems a bit cool. This microwave must be acting up. Oh well, I’ll take a look at it later.”

Ahem. I think you need to turn the microwave ON for it to work, Dimwit!

Oh, I could go on, but there’s a limit to how much humiliation I can take before noon. Now where the hell are my glasses??

Heh, they were on my head the whole time…heh…<sigh>

I’m not talking about Apple…yet.

Instead, I’d like to introduce you to Rob’s Integrated Razor Blade Theorem, which states:

Let (M) be m-dimensional consumer utility with impulse radius imp(M). Let vol denote the volume form on M and let  X denote the volume of the standard m-dimensional utility. Then

vol(M) =  X (imp(M))

                     B    ,

with equality, if and only if, (M) is isometric to the m-sphere S^m with its usual round metric.

Or, in layman’s terms, the more utilitarian an object, the fewer ways there are to get you to buy it. The classic illustration of this theorem—which, if I may digress for a moment to boast, is now taught in all the best business schools—is the eponymous example as presented in my scholarly paper to the Nobel Prize committee.

Continue reading “Another Triumph of Marketing over Common Sense”