Using Humor

Blue Mask, Venezia by Gret@Lorenz

While checking out an MSNBC article about Latisse, the “eyelash enhancer.” that can grow hair in “unintended places” change the color of eyes and other great things. I found these sites:

Truthinaging.com and Realself.com which, I don’t know, seem like odd names for web sites that are concerned with body enhancement procedures, whether surgical, plastic or non-invasive.

Maybe it’s just me.

This could be your heart! Image via Wikipedia

An Associated Press story this week reported:

Hundreds of auto dealers in the New York area have withdrawn from the government’s Cash for Clunkers program, citing delays in getting reimbursed by the government…”

(Here’s the link from the Dallas Morning News.)

This certainly appeared to be a simple program to set-up and administer. If you have the right old car, you could receive up to $4500 back on the right new car. There were basically only two standards to meet, and yet the program ran out of money almost immediately and now it’s taking so long to pay that dealers are dropping out.

This is the same government that wants to reform our health care by getting more involved in the process.

God help us all.

Well! That was easy!

I have a running battle with easy-open containers. Most of them aren’t.

Medicine bottles with the cryptic “Push & Turn” instructions. Tabs on boxes that dispense paper cuts as often as the contents. Plastic packs that slice & dice. This Pop-Secret example of the “glue every possible edge” school of package design.

Hill’s Science Diet Cat Food bags, not only have an easy open design, but also a resealable zip-lock… Except tearing at the tab provided doesn’t open the bag, and cutting anywhere below it ruins the zip-lock.

After marrying me, Arlene had to get over occasionally seeing the naked cereal bag laying on the breakfast table next to what was left of the box.

I believe every architect should have to actually live or work in a building he designs, every doctor should take some of his own medicine, Congress should have to live with the laws they pass, and every origami expert who thinks they can design packaging, should be dropped on a desert island and forced to survive by actually opening their boxes, tubes, jars and bags.

It’s a small thing I know. But life is too short for bad staplers, pens that don’t write, web-sites desgined for Internet Explorer and easy-open containers, that don’t.

Share your experiences with easy-open containers in comments.