Open letter to The Industrial Designers Society of America

Dear IDSA Members:

Raytheon filed its patent for the microwave oven in 1945. These devices, which today are far more sophisticated than their predecessors, have been widely available since the 1970's. Why then, do they continue to beep after the door is opened? It seems one of your geniuses should have solved this problem, like, a billion years ago.

Get on it, quick.
BattleCobra90000

Public radio

I want to gush over our new public radio station. WUNC rulz! It totally kicks our old station (KUOW) in the b-u-t-t! Take, for example:

Time	KUOW	WUNC
9am	Steve Scher	BBC Newshour
10pm	Some hippy banging on his damn hippy drum	BBC World Service

Plus, WUNC's local host for morning edition is Eric "They denied us the" Hodge. This summer's pledge drive? Not having one (give online if you like, friend). Weekends? Back porch music.

Take that, Chicken

I ate a deep-fried, half chicken with chopsticks the other night.

Take that, Pluto

You dirty, good-for-nothing dwarf planet. I hate you; you are dead to me.

Stink fighting

Male ringtails are equipped with scent glands on their wrists which are used in "stink fighting" with a rival male. Here, two males stand facing each other a few feet apart and, repeatedly drawing their tails through these glands, they proceed to wave the tails over their heads, all the while staring in a hostile fashion at their rival. Eventually, one of the males will break down and run away.

I'm a stink-lover, not a stink-fighter.

http://lemur.duke.edu/animals/ringtailed/

Okay

So I'm breaking the 50-post mark with this one.

I started writing something about myself, but then decided against it. Happy 51!

Not easy

Chester Cheetah says that it's not easy being cheesey. I'm not so sure it's such a good idea that he share those kinds of thoughts with us.

This second to last point bears repeating

I am not an idiot, I am a battle cobra. It's who I am; it's what I do.

Lease breakers

I broke my lease yesterday by putting a hole in drywall that did not terminate in a stud.

I ask---is there no provision for those of us whose holes always originate with STUDS? Get it? Because I'm a stud? I thought so.

Oscar Night Weiner

My wife, our friend H, and I watched the Oscars last night. "The Oscars" is a registered trademark, but since this isn't commercial speech, I think I can get away without digging out the TM symbol.

After the Oscars, which were about 3.5 hours looooong, ABC presented this strange post-Oscars program featuring reporters trying to get (more on this in a second) interviews with celebrities as they were filing into the various post-Oscar parties. A couple of points:

• The post-Oscar show was almost as long as the actual Oscars
• The interviewers were not able to get interviews with anybody---that is, not with anybody who's anybody!
• This one guy in particular, I will call him Weiner Man, resorted to sticking his microphone into somebody else's interview. The former Q13 woman and her cohort interviewed actors from ABC television dramas and situation comedies. Did you know these people were invited to the parties, but not the main event? I didn't. You learn new things all the time if you just keep your eyes and mind open!

How hooked up is the movie industry? They put on a boring trade event where they don't serve meals. People get dressed up for it, and people who aren't even in the industry watch it on TV. They congratulate themselves for being so wonderful---this takes 3.5 hours, during which they give out fewer than 20 awards. They rudely cut off any award recipients after as little as 15 seconds for taking too long with their speeches. They host a post-boring-trade-show-TV-show so we can watch people leaving the event, and then idiots like me spend time the next day talking about it (although in all honesty, this is more about filling up my blog than having Oscar fever. And I'm not an idiot, I'm a battle cobra. It's what we do.)