Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The core of hell

I think that Dante was wrong about hell, but that it wasn't his fault. They didn't have electronic gadgets back in his day. How could he have known that deep down in the bowels of hell there would be a core used to cruelly torture scientists that brought blinking and beeping things into this world?

I cite two recent examples and leave you to consider them:

1. I have on my new car a safety feature called Dynamic Stability Control. It is a whiz-bang feature that improves handling in slippery conditions. However, when it engages an icon flashes three times in yellow. Blink. Blink. Blink.

Why?

At a moment that I am slipping and sliding my dashboard wants to distract my attention from my driving to tell me that I am slipping.

This engineer, I sez, will be subjected to the special torments of the core of hell. As his feet, say, are placed in the brimstone an icon on the wall will flash warning him about the temperature. An insistent beep will beep beep beep along with the blink blink blink. The devil jailor will grin.

2. While shopping for band-aids recently a motion-activated advertising gizmo blurted out a verbal assault upon my person in a child's voice. It wanted me to take interest in a purple-whatzit to cover my "ouchie". It took the trouble to repeat this helpful advice every thirty seconds. If I had a hammer that thing would have been a pile of plastic fragments wrapped in purple whatzit. Needless to say I moved on without making a purchase of band-aids.

The marketer, and the engineer, which inflicted this scourge upon the rest of us will be subjected to the special torments of the core of hell. As their sides are pierced with hot pokers they will hear helpful advice every thirty seconds offering them purple whatzits.

Again, I don't blame Dante, since how could he have forseen such monstrous behavior?

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Foot Quotes

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

Charles Darwin