Too many beeps
I have a question for you: Does everything in my goddam house have to beep? Some things probably should beep, like carbon monoxide detectors, fire alarms, and sarcasm detectors. But lately, it seems like engineers are outfitting every single possible piece of material with annoying beepers. Stoves are the least bothersome, because its nice to know when the timer has run down and your food is almost done. But microwaves? Come on. The microwave makes so much noise while its running - you'll know its done when you can hear ambient noise again and your ears are ringing. This is about as useful as a beeper that lets you know when the jet engines on an airplane have shut off. Also, the timing is way off. It has those three beeps right when it finishes. Okay, I get that. Then it has these periodic beeps just in case you missed the first three while you were engrossed in The Lizzie McGuire Show in the other room. Those also make sense, but they need to be timed right for them to be useful at all. On our microwave, its like beep..beep..beep...beep! The fourth one waits like 2 seconds, then the next one waits like a minute. This is like an annoying woman who calls you a bunch of times in a row, then if you don't call back right away, stops calling completely for like a month, until you see her at Piggly Wiggly. I don't know anything about women, but I've heard there are women like this.
Finally, in the worst case of all, we have a beeping toaster. Let me repeat this in case you were skimming and failed to recognize the ridiculousness of the concept. We have a beeping toaster. We have a toaster that beeps. Just typing that sentence makes me want to throw up. ¡The toaster already makes noise when its done! Its called the sound of a metal carriage throwing your toast into the air. This is at least as loud as the beeping. Also, I've been conditioned on that sound - even if I'm in the other room and the toaster isn't loud enough to register consciously, I'll start salivating. I'll be in the living room thinking "Wow that Lizzie McGuire movie actually looks pretty go... what the? Why am I drooling? Oh, toast is done!" What's really frustrating is that we have another toaster, without beeping capabilities, that otherwise works fine. But all my roommates use the beeping toaster, as if the ability to beep somehow makes the toast actually better. I have news for you: making a toaster beep costs a manufacturer approximately $0.80. It probably costed you $20. Wow, I had more rant in me than I thought on that subject.
Posted by mill1991 at July 27, 2004 9:42 AM