Thursday, April 17, 2008

Save the Zero!


I've made a personal lifestyle choice. I've decided to see if I can go the rest of my life without using the zero button on the microwave. Now, it would be ironic if I were struck down by a rogue meteor before tomorrow morning's Pop-Tart. Ironic and painful. But wait, isn't irony only for the unexpected? Since I'm sending this out to the world, one can hardly now consider the rogue meteor "unexpected", which would make it cliched, rather than ironic. So I must be safe, as I avoid cliches like the plague. Ooh, you say, a sudden plague would be more than a little ironic, wouldn't it? Dang. I'm not gonna sleep tonight.

Anyhow, back to the microwave. I've recently started to notice that the zero is always the most worn button on any microwave control pad. It gets more use than "Popcorn", and for no good reason. It gives one a useless illusion of precision, nothing more. Who's to say you should nukulate that slice of pizza for 60 seconds, rather than 55 or 66? If you forswear the naught button, you'll be off by no more than 10%, and it's a 50/50 chance that it'll be an improvement. So stop kidding yourself. Try 53 seconds sometime. 11 seconds is almost 10, plus you save the time you would have spent finding zero with your finger. In that split second you just might be struck with the inspiration of what to say to that fetching, raven haired beauty who's presence overwhelms your basic motor skills and who's absence haunts your sleepless nights. Hint: "Hey" has always worked for me.

By "worked" I mean elicited no reaction whatsoever.

I don't expect you to follow my path unless you feel it in the depth of your being. Don't do it for me. Do it for yourself.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.school-house-rock.com/0.html

You aren't the only one who respects the zero.

- Barney Rubble

Anonymous said...

HA! I am not alone!

Believe it or not, I have not pressed the Zero button on my microwave for YEARS -- although in my case I refuse not out of respect for the Zero, but out of contempt for the decimal mathematical system, which I consider to be abysmally inefficient. It is my well-considered opinion that we ought to use a duo-decimal system -- so whenever I microwave anything, I always choose a number of seconds that is pleasantly divisible by 3 -- unless it also happens to be divisible by 10 (which makes it a tainted number), in which case I add another 3 or 6 seconds out of spite.

And I do not use the "Popcorn" button at all (or any of the other preset buttons), because they are an insulting, fascist attempt to impose choices on me that I am perfectly capable of making for myself.

Occasionally, OCD can be quite entertaining.

Tom said...

I haven't used the duo-decimal system since I was a Library Monitor in elementary school.

I agree "Popcorn" buttons are tools of the underground fascists.