When Appliances Weep

In his standup-comedy days, forty-plus years ago, Woody Allen did a routine called “Mechanical Objects.”

It was a narrative about the highly mixed blessings of living at the tail end of the Machine Age, at the start of The Age of Electronicus. I found the following transcript of the routine on the Web; I can’t swear to its accuracy, but it conforms to what I remember:

I have never in my life had good relationships with mechanical objects of any sort. Anything that I can’t reason with or kiss or fondle, I get into trouble with.

I have a clock that runs counter-clockwise for some reason. My toaster pops up my toast and shakes it, burns it. I hate my shower. I’m taking a shower, and somebody in America uses his water. That’s it for me, y’know, I leap from the tub, scalded.

I have a tape recorder, I paid a hundred and fifty dollars for, and as I talk into it, it goes, “I know, I know.”

About three years ago I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was home one night. I called a meeting with my possessions. I got everything I owned into the living room. My toaster, my clock, my blender. They’d never been in the living room before. And I spoke to them.

I opened with a joke.

And then I said, “I know what’s going on, and cut it out!…”

And I spoke to each appliance. I was really articulate. Then I put them back, and I felt good.

Two nights later, I’m watching my portable television set, and [the picture on] the set begins to jump up and down, and I go up to it. And I always talk before I hit, and I said, “I thought we had discussed this — what’s the problem?” And the set kept going up and down, so I hit it, and it felt good hitting it, and I beat the hell out of it. I was really great, I tore off the antenna, and I felt very virile.

And two days later I go to my dentist in New York. (I had gone to my dentist, but I had a deep cavity, and he’d sent me to a chiropodist.) I’m going into a building in mid-town New York, and they have those elevators, and I hear a voice say, “Kindly call out your floors, please,” and I say, “Sixteen,” and the doors close and the elevator starts going up to sixteen.

And on the way up the elevator says to me, “Are you the guy that hit the television set?” I felt like an ass, y’know, and it took me up and down fast between floors, and it threw me off in the basement. It yelled out something that was anti-Semitic.

I thought of this story the other night while helping The Missus with a bit of the evening’s dinner preparations.

Recently, we acquired a “Micro-Computerized Rice Cooker/Warmer” which, The Missus assures me, is among the most highly rated of the ricemakers she looked at. We hadn’t had a chance to actually use it yet, however. So when I asked if I could do something to help, she said, sure: “Read the manual and see if you can figure out how to cook rice with the thing.”

Well, the booklet was certainly enigmatic.

You know how such documents, in these multi-national days, usually include instructions not only in English, but also (say) French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese? For this ricemaker, the only Western language included is an approximate sort of English… and there are three sets of instructions in what are clearly Oriental languages (I’m guessing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).

But the manual’s designers do take into account that readers might not know any of those four languages. What they did was include — in the three pages of cautions, warnings, and product advice — these little cartoon images of the ricemaker (often in the company of human hands) being dealt with in one distressing way or another.

The catch: the cartoon drawings aren’t always (or even mostly) unambiguous.

Which worried me a little, for altruistic/humanitarian reasons. I mean, it’s pretty obvious what the icon at the right means, right? Something on the order of “do not place the ricemaker on uneven surfaces,” right?

Right. That interpretation is pretty much common sense, with or without an explanatory note.

Likewise, for the image at the left — although it’s a bit more mysterious — a thoughtful reader can probably be expected to understand it as something like, “Do not stab at the icemaker with pointed or other sharp objects.” (Close: The caption supplied actually reads, “Do not insert any foreign objects into appliance openings or outlets.”)

But after they’d done a couple of obvious images, the designers of this crude dialect of international pictogramism started to get sloppy, or maybe just overly creative, or maybe both. Hence my concern, you see. Somewhere out there (potential) ricemaker owners with no knowledge of English are preparing to be electrocuted, or simply deprived of their ricemakers’ use, because they can’t make head or tail of the more enigmatic cautions.

Accordingly, as a public service and after (I assure you) much painstaking research, I herewith offer explanations of some of the things which can interfere with your relationship with your ricemaker, according to this manual’s creators. I implore you to share this information with anyone you know who’s acquired a ricemaker; preferably, do so in his or her native tongue.

Because, in terms of satisfying our appliances, we really are one world.

Icon	Meaning
	Your ricemaker cannot handle tools, you idiot (especially not tools suitable for ricemaker dismemberment).
	Do not embarrass your ricemaker by making it wear a showercap.
	Your ricemaker has an unreliable sense of humor, especially humor in a slapstick vein. Do not taunt it with joy buzzers.
	Your ricemaker is probably hungry, most likely for one of Subway’s sandwich specials. (Alt. meaning: Your ricemaker is an accomplished angler and hates you for not believing him.)
	Like most of us, your ricemaker appreciates a nice cup of coffee in the morning. But in a cup, you insensitive bastard.

…and yet, coffee aside, please do not cook a hot breakfast for your ricemaker. Especially if paparazzi equipped with strobes are outside, shooting through the windows.

	Even ricemakers like good old-fashioned TLC every now and then! The softer the cloth, the better, and always use smooth, even strokes…
	…but please, keep sexually precocious toddlers away from your ricemaker!