A shower of bastards

I have a new alarm clock. It's shiny and fab, and you can plug iPods into it so it can alarmingly blare your own music at you at or around stupid o'clock in the AM, and it even has a dedicated button to switch the alarming blare off when you're over having your iPod alarmingly blaring at you at or around stupid o'clock in the AM. This marks a huge advance over my last alarm clock, which didn't have a dedicated button for switching off the alarming blaringness so produced, but rather a complicated system of ropes and pulleys (OK, a slider switch that never seemed to work), and as a result my old alarm clock met a fractious end against the floor at or around stupid o'clock in the AM. But that's not important right now.

What I wanted to talk to you about was functionality. My new alarm clock has buttons. Lots of buttons. It even has a button to switch from normal time to Daylight Savings Time, saving you the frig-around of having to reprogramme the time every six months. In order to save the user a good three or four digit-presses, Panasonic have engineered into the unit a button that will only be pressed two times a year. That's dedication to superfluous functionality, homes. I even reprogrammed the time to an hour behind so I could advance it again with the DST button, which is either REALLY getting into the spirit of things, or completely fucking mental. You be the judge.

Not all functionality in Modern Stuff is superfluous. Those clever electric seats on cars-you-can't-afford which have pre-set memory positions for you and your inevitably-short-arsed missus (unless you're boofing Lauren Jackson of course). That's top concept. The seat memory thing I mean (translation: my wife is reading this.) While myself and the somewhat less vertically gifted Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo somehow share mirror adjustment positions on our cars (or near enough for government work), shunting the seat forward after she's nicked off with me motor for a pre-dawn gym sortie is enough to leave one pretty shunted off. It's a sanity saver. It's probably a marriage saver. It's one of those clever little bits of functionality which actually adds value to your day-to-day.

Furthermore, dear reader, one can definitely see the utility of similar technology in other gender-polarized forums of modern life. Like the shower. If you've got a shower with one of those lever-type mixing taps - and who the fuck doesn't if their shower was installed any more recently than the Industrial Revolution - and you simply yank the tap on whatever setting your missus has left it on, it will scald whatever is left of your bits. This is because it is a fact made of scientific factiness that your missus can tolerate - and indeed thrive in - temperatures far exceeding that of mortal man. Women, in short, are cold-blooded reptiles. Particularly that one who did that thing to you that time. (No not that one, the other one.) Simply put, a system whereby you could flick between a couple of pre-set positions would make shower time far less burny-burny-hot-hot and a lot more ahh-fuck-this-I'm-standing-around-here-all-day.

Of course, this raises two points. One, this is where a bunch of you say 'They've already invented that, and I've got one, because I'm rich as pig shit.' To which I say, good for you, you impotent fucktard. And secondly, by which I mean Two, you're still fucked if you shower together. But I always figured that was kinda the point.

The Doctor is OUT.