Hi! To all of you!
Today I have copied an article from The Gazette,
Montréal's English newspaper. I buy this newspaper
every Saturday and read it during the weekend!
I'm especially attracted to certain columns and
my favourite one is written by Josh Freed.
I have been reading him for YEARS!!!
Don't you just love yhat face! Here's a photo of him
on the cover of the book he wrote a few years ago
and in which he 'talks' about Québec, and its culture.
I recommend it highly!!
So as an introduction I want to mention that
in class this week we talked about certain things
THAT BUG US! We really laughed hard!
What a coincidence ...
Mr. Freed picked up on our conversation. ;)
Here's the column written in only HIS style of writting.
Have FUN reading ... and you might recognize yourself.
*NOTE: the vocabulary might be challenging but it's
part of Josh Freed's humour. LOOOOVE IT!
SUZANNE
Patented ways to drive me crazy
I picked up a travel tube of Colgate “sensitive” toothpaste recently and
unscrewed the cap. But there was a plastic, notched seal blocking the opening
that puzzled me. I twisted it. I pulled, pushed and picked at it with my nails, then with
a steak knife — and finally I gnawed at it with my teeth. I even called in my
teenage son, but it seemed hermetically sealed.
We studied it as closely as safecrackers and finally cracked the vault. The
very top of the toothpaste cap had a small slot that fit perfectly onto the
notched seal on the tube — then turned like a wrench to open it.
It was child’s play for a mechanical engineer. But why was it so
difficult, and who were they trying to protect from getting in? Is there an
epidemic of children suffering from toothpaste overdose?
It’s just one of an endless number of tiny design hassles, designed to
drive me crazy.
In fruit stores, I find opening those flimsy plastic vegetable bags a
tough task for someone like me with 10 thumbs. It’s tricky to separate the
slippery two sides of the bag, which you must rub gently between your fingers.
I usually face the wall so I won’t be seen fumbling by others who aren’t
“bag-challenged.” Making it worse are fruit store employees who love to flick
every bag open dramatically — with a snap of their wrist — like magicians.
They’ll bag every apple and blueberry individually, then twirl the bags
in somersaults to seal them — just to remind you you can’t. Why don’t they give
courses — Bag-Opening 101?
Public bathrooms in movies are the headquarters for baffling designs. Take
those electronic-eye faucets, which work only when you move.
Often I walk up to the sink and wait — but nothing happens. So I wave my
hands in the air, then under the faucets, then over the faucet, then in circles
like I’m running an exercise class. If someone arrived from 15 years ago and
saw me waving, they’d think I was insane — because these gadgets didn’t exist
back then.
“Officer — help! There’s a lunatic conducting a symphony in the
bathroom!”
After one recent movie, I was waving my hands wildly at the faucets when
a man slipped up to me like I was a child and pointed under the sink — at a
foot pedal.
Many newfangled hand dryers do have a hand on them that indicates where
to wave, but you’ll see people conducting orchestras anyway — because half the
machines are broken. A friend puts each hand under two different dryers, and
eventually one works.
Finally there are those big industrial rolls of toilet paper obviously
designed by accountants — because the paper is delicately perforated so exactly
one flimsy tissue snaps off. You have to keep turning the giant industrial roll
around — and snapping off more single tissues — till you’ve sworn never to use
that bathroom again, which is just what the accountants wanted.
Hotel rooms are also design hell. Every last hotel
air-conditioner/heater on earth is different, to make sure you can’t figure
them out. There’s usually a remote control hidden somewhere under the bed, but
even if you find it, the battery is dead.
Instead, you have to fiddle with the machine itself, which is high up on
the wall, so you need to stand on a chair to reach it. But then it has
countless buttons with pictures of fans, thermometers and snowflakes that would
have confused Steve Jobs.
All this is entirely so you have to call the concierge and tip him $3,
since he’s the only person who knows how it works — and he’s also the one who
hid the remote and took out the batteries.
There are countless other tiny design hassles devised every day, like
those new Post-it notes with sticky stuff alternating on different parts of the
paper — but you don’t know where. Or packing tape where the seam is so
invisible you need tweezers and a magnifying glass to lift the tape up — in
tiny shreds.
Finally, there’s one of life’s oldest design mysteries. I’ve spent a lot
of my life kneeling down to re-tie my shoelaces, which unravel no matter how
tightly I pull them, because they’re made of springy material that’s designed
to untie itself (unless you make a kid’s double-knot).
Worst are sneakers that have tiny plastic eyelets so you can’t get a
slightly shredded lace back in unless you lick and twirl it (yech) — or use
scotch tape.
You’d think some genius could build a better shoelace — though I’m told
there’s a secret second method sailors have to tie their shoes. So if you know
it, please come by and show me.
My new book of revised Gazette columns, He Who Laughs, Lasts, launches
Nov. 30 at Atwater
Library, 5:15 p.m. to 8 p.m. Please join me.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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