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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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February
/ March 2007 Contest Results |
Figuring
The Future Is A Remote Chance
By Burton Cole,
Ohio
Have you considered the worldwide havoc that would be wreaked when
remote controls go bad?
We could end up watching shows we never meant see, such as the
educational ones. True, something this unspeakable rarely occurs. But a
recent scare left me fretting about the possibilities.
I was lying in bed the other night when I heard a muffled, whirring,
grinding, clanking sound I couldn’t identify.
Then it stopped. Then again. Silence. Noise. Silence.
The bed was warm and the pillow soft. On the other side of the blankets
was cold, winter air. I decided the commotion was coming from across the
street and drifted off to the strange bedtime cadence.
The next day I was chilled to find the door wide open on my attached
garage.
As I navigated the glaciers that floed as far back as the workbench, the
garage door -- apparently of its own accord -- rumbled down with a
whirring, grinding, clanking kind of sound.
It turns out my garage door opener spent the night opening and closing
the door on whatever whim possesses electronics gone insane.
I suppose there is a proper way to fix it. But since I live alone
without a female to insist on proper procedures, I used the guy method:
I yanked the 9-volt battery from the remote. To open the door now, I
touch the battery to the terminals -- but only for a moment. Otherwise,
the door starts down again. It adds a great deal of excitement to
pulling into the garage.
Soon it will take a science degree to get into a garage. Or to run a
house.
The only reason microwave ovens aren’t run by remote is we have to be
standing there anyway to put our bags of popcorn inside. But as soon as
the remote control kitchen robot is invented to ferry the food, we’ll
have another set of remotes to lose in the couch cushions.
When those babies go screwy, your robot will be baking so many cookies
and cakes in your microwave that you personally will be responsible for
upping the average by which Americans are overweight.
Hooking lights into a timer seemed like a great idea. But what’s that
remote really doing when you’re away? It’s probably flashing Morse code
to your mother-in-law, telling her what you muttered AFTER she hung up
the phone.
What if this summer our remote controls for the air conditioner would
quit? Could we, as a nation, walk all the way across the room to move
the dial? And does anyone remember, without looking it up in an
encyclopedia, how to change a TV channel by hand? Is such a thing still
possible?
Because my home entertainment system is a hodge-podge of unrelated
pieces I bought in sales, I have separate remotes for the DVD player,
the TV and the stereo system through which I run my imitation Surround
Sound. So it takes me three devices to watch “Futureworld.”
If any one of the remotes cops an attitude, the TV could be flashing
like a strobe light while Mozart plays overtop previews that wouldn’t go
away. Frightening.
I’d go home and hide under my bed but I can’t. Every time I push the
“unlock” button on my car key fob, the doors nestle in more tightly and
the horn beeps “Nah, nah, na-nah-naaaaa.”
The remotes have taken over.
http://www.tribune-chronicle.com
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