The City Weekly (Incorporating The Sydney Times) July 1-7 1999
mikey robins picture

The list just gets longer

Welcome to this week's look back at the great dumb achievements of the past century. As you may remember, last week we looked at The Dumbest Haircuts of the 20th Century. This week we turn our attention to the dumbest inventions of the past 100 years.

I feel I should point out at this time that this list is completely subjective. Technological change makes greatly different impacts on different lives, so, for example, as all the world might applaud the elctronic heart valve, for a lonely man in a hotel room the invention of the self-inflating love doll might represent the zenity of human achievement.

With this reasoning in mind, I humbly submit my list for The Dumbest Inventions of the Century.

The chopomatic: Sure, it dices and slices as it chops, but so did a piece of sharpened flint on the African plains a million years ago. In fact, since the bronze age we've had a little invention called the knife in all our drawers. I know that some boffin thought that he was improving on the original and I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to pull out a chopomatic in a street fight. I mean you can't imagine Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee saying, "that's not a chopomatic; this is a chopomatic".

The hula hoop: I'm speaking here on behalf of all the fat kids for who the hula hoop just meant that there was a bit too much wiggling and jiggling going on. Also on behalf of all the really fat kids for who the damn hoop fitted like a blt. Talk about embarrassing.

Inflatable furniture: Or any furniture that the act of getting in our out of (sic) makes a farting noise.

The fish stick, the chicken nugget, beef jerky, bacony bits and so on: Forget about the ethical dilemnas of the next century concerning genetically altered food. Let's finish the century by banning any meat product that can't be easily identified as a body part from the animal it was meant to come from. Chicken loaf . . . I rest my case.

Any sexual aid that relies on a 240-volt power source: Enough said, really.

Quadrophonic stereos: Remember these? Remember the handful of albums that actually got released in this format? Remember you hi-fi nut uncle making you sit dead still in the middle of his lounge room so you could hear the formula one racing car "actually go around the room"? Remember it disappearing just after your uncle had spent a fortune on it? Remember your aunty getting the house in the divorce proceedings? Now go and visit your uncle again and be amazed at his $7000 home movie system and watch Star Wars on a 60cm screen. Now watch as your uncle defrosts a frozen dinner for one. Expensive audio gear never leads to emotional fulfilment.

The banana slicer: A length of banana-shaped yellow plastic with partitions that placed over a whole banana can render it sliced wiith one quick movement. Apparently they didn't need a cure for cancer on the day they invented this.

The karaoke machine: Oh yeah.

The word count button on the home computer: Which tells me I've run out of space, so maybe we should continue this list next week.

Until then, I'm going to go and relax and put my feet in the self-heating foot spa and massager I bought from a catalogue. Hey, I said this list was personal.

-Mikey Robins

Typed up by VellaB.
Next Week: 8 July 1999; The flu and remedies
Last Week: 24 June 1999; Another list worth adding