BTNEWS.INFO

The world is just full of people with bad ideas. You can’t swing a dead cat without whacking some goofball upside their oversized craniums, craniums sloushing over with crummy ideas for a better this or a better that. Now, I am all for making things better. Far be it for me to discourage entrepreneurs from making and marketing a better mousetrap and harvesting the untold millions that would inevitably accompany the mountain of dead or captured mice. But on the other hand, let’s not encourage inanity. I suspect a lot of useless inventions are born in someone mother’s basement, cobbled together during Star Trek commercials, fueled by mass consumption of Hot Pockets and Twizzlers.

Perhaps I am being a little too judgemental. I suppose that the inventors of the pocket fisherman and the Pet Rock are really blameless; they are only filling some warped need. It’s the goofballs that actually buy X-ray glasses, new car scent pine shaped deodorizers, or flame resistant matches that are the real culprits. I suspect Da Vinci and Edison roll over in their respective graves for every penny spent on a Chia Pet, Sea Monkey, or socks with toes.

While I have come to terms with spending what days I have left surrounded by the Snuggie for Dogs and finger gloves, I just couldn’t live with myself if I allowed the current invention insanity to infect our beautiful Bluetooth corner of the world. It’s a bit of a religious thing – a moral, a spiritual obligation to preempt the legion of Bluetooth entrepreneurs, to warn them that there are certain items, certain devices that neither I nor the rest of the world permit their existence to infect our quiet, staid existence.

So, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. If anyone out there dares to give life to the following ideas, the wrath of Khan will descend swiftly upon their pulsating dome.

Bluetooth Wine
I am sure that somewhere, some closet lush is considering making a “saucy little wine, a mischievous blend of oaken Lambrusco, petulant Zinfandel, and inquisitive Dolcetto. The blend, stomped to pulpy perfection by C++ programmers from Italy’s Mastalone Valley, promises a high-tech taste that envokes images of encrypted algorithms, HCI layers, and dual mode capability.” Bad idea, very bad. First of all, I am not drinking anything stomped by a programmer, no matter how clean their feet. Second, licking a motherboard would probably taste better. And third, no foo foo wine is going to come close to matching the ecstasy that is an evening with a chilled gallon of Night Train.

Bluetooth Activated Garbage Disposal/Sausage Grinder/Blender
Look, I am as lazy as the next guy, if the next guy happens to be someone who worships at the altar of the Great Barco Lounger. The less I have to do, the more time I have left to do nothing, something which I am an expert at. Still, even I would have to balk at this one. The mind fairly reels at the thought of some homeowner repairman wannabee, in the kitchen, arm stuffed down/inside the voice activated disposal/grinder/blender, up to their elbow, trying to fish out a dropped screw/ring/tire iron that got stuck. Then in the family room an infomercial for that very device is on the tube when the D List celebutante yells out the magic, pre-coded word that activates the whirling blades of distruction, “Turn On.”. Viola. From that point on Dad is known as “Stumpy.”

Mute/Unmute on the Telephone
I hope I am not too late with this one. The Mute button and accompanying red light on conference phones have caused enough tragedy in conference rooms and offices across the world to make a fired person cry. Who knew the stinkin’ button was broken when you made that innocent comment about the boss’s love of all things lacy and frilly: Jack the ex-Marine boss who threatened to remove your larynx through your nasal cavity, but settled for giving you a permanent limp and knarled hand, just before he fired you. I ask you then, who in their right mind would want to invent something that would increase the chances for board room mishaps exponentially? It’s hard enough to figure out what the little button and the light means and which one to push and when. Now you want to complicate things further with a voice activated device that might trigger inadvertently in the middle of an innocuous description of my boss as a blovating hedonistic lush with delusions of grandeur, a hyper Napoleonic Complex, and the people skills of Vlad the Impaler. Anybody can be taken out of context.

I hope we can all agree that while progress is good, there are some doors that need to be left unopened.