If there’s anything that defines Americans, we’d like to say “ingenuity”, and this first week of 2012 was a showcase of just that.

The week started with nearly a billion people around the world watching New Year’s Eve coverage of Times Square.  The anticipation was palpable.  Not if the ball will drop or if an unusually tan Dick Clark would awkwardly banter with Seacrest, but how exactly they’ll make novelty glasses out of that year’s digits.  From 2000-2009, the glasses designers frankly got lazy, but from 2010 until now, we’re making them work for their money.  And, this year, the designers again showed that a 1 can be just as oval as a 0.

Then on Tuesday, as a quaint American custom we like to pretend that the Iowa caucus means something.  In reality, it’s a giant, state-wide PTA meeting gone wrong.  The nation was amazed that there was only eight votes between first and second place.  Then again, only 12 people voted so it really was a landslide victory.  But since the state has a remarkable track record of choosing who won’t eventually win the party’s nomination, both Romney and Santorum’s campaigns argued vehemently that the other candidate won.  Read more »

You know that feeling.  You’re in a corporate conference room and a speaker comes to the front to present a new policy of cover sheets on your TPS Reports.  They distribute a print out which includes of all the slides they’re about to present.  It’s 37 slides of 10 point text!

A wave of panic overcomes you while blood rushes from your face.  You glance over to the windows, but are crushed to find your one possible escape hatch doesn’t open.  You wonder if texting a bomb scare could be traced back to you.  You are then resigned to losing 90 minutes of your life going over five minutes of information.

Millions of doodles are done each day in American conference rooms because of PowerPoint.  In fact, the bad ones have been called “hypnotizing chickens”. And while this has been the bane of the corporate world, a new study by the Editorial Staff of MullerOver has found that Microsoft PowerPoint presentations don’t just kill white-collar brain cells, but actually threaten national security.  It’s true. Read more »

CNN reported today about the first cyborg. In 1998, Kevin Warwick implanted an RFID chip into his arm, and programmed it so when he snaps his fingers, the lights turn on. Hey, that’s pretty cool.  But, the mad scientist just couldn’t let it stop there.

In 2002, the glutton for punishment decided to connect his nerves to electrodes to let his wife take control of his body.  The article says it was the first time the nervous systems of two humans had communicated electronically. Um … I’m going to have to think about that one.

Fellow husbands –  don’t you think letting our wives to control us through electrodes is a terrible idea?  Just think if just one of our wives read about this new technology.  What would happen then?

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OK – sorry, I’m back.  For some reason, I just painted our bathroom a lovely shade of mauve.   Read more »

During our off-site planning meetings at MullerOver headquarters, we set out to find the low hanging fruit, next gen viral ideas, and synergies to create  a win-win, cutting-edge, eco-friendly environment. Smitty, our office manager, broke free from the business-speak hypnosis and pointed out that our entire two-day agenda had no discernible meaning.

After much debate, we realized that we had gotten sucked into a web of business speak and immediately used the two day off-site meeting (except the team-building ropes course) to develop the following list of banned cliches and descriptions within the office:

Thinking outside the box.  

A passive/aggressive phrase meant to insinuate that the listener was stuck in a limited way of thinking, while the speaker had achieved a level of business enlightenment not seen since the dalai lama.  Or Steve Jobs.

Throw under the bus.  

This was a cute phrase 15 years ago, but now it’s just gotten plain silly.  While I’m sure it’s just a lame business cliche, I still feel a need to stay an extra step away from the curb when a Greyhound goes by. Read more »

To date, there are dozens of lists of the “Top Stories of 2011″, adding to the mental clutter in our heads. As a public service this year, the MullerOver staff spent the week debating the least important, most overhyped stories of 2011. In other words, the ones that you should feel free to delete from your mental hard drive.

10. Charlie Sheen. His career crashed and burned in a spectacular light show seen around the world. Next time, we should try timing these collapses better around July 4 so we can save money on expensive fireworks.

9. The Republican Primaries. There’s nothing that instills less confidence in a system than seeing a dozen presidential candidates placating four families in a corn field.  We’re pretty sure the only one who came out ahead from the laughable primary system is President Obama. And maybe Sarah Palin for side stepping the circus. Read more »

It’s a battle of the classes.  Rich vs. Regular.  The 1 percenters vs. the other 99.   Alec Baldwin vs. American Airlines.  And it all started with Words with Friends.

You see, this week, Alec Baldwin was distracted on an American Airlines flight while playing the popular phone app, Words with Friends.  Undoubtedly, a triple word score was involved which would make the whole incident understandable.  And Alec didn’t put down his iPad 2 when the flight attendance warned him, promptly causing the mammoth airline to eject Baldwin.

If you haven’t been on a plane in a decade or so, you might not be aware that  a jumbo jet can be taken down by using anything electronic.  In fact, reading Oprah’s book club on the Kindle is the electromagnetic equivalent of rocket propelled grenade.  So, the sheer panic of the American Airlines flight crew of a passenger playing a wannabe scrabble app is perhaps justified.  Although, ironically, moments after Baldwin was escorted off the plane, every other passenger discreetly tweeted on their cell phones that Alec Baldwin was kicked off their plane for using electronics. Read more »

Did you ever notice that people are always protesting things? Americans in particular seem to be continually discontent with large organizations, and to prove it, groups of them are actually willing to hold a handwritten sign on a stick until it’s changed. Come to think of it, holding a protest sign doesn’t seem that hard. But – camping on a city sidewalk in freezing cold weather really starts to say something.  For instance, take these kids occupying different cities.  I’m not sure how strong their convictions are now, but come February, if they’re still out there under six inches of snow, I’ll listen to what they have to say.

And speaking of things frozen solid, the company that makes the snack Dippin’ Dots filed for bankruptcy this week. When I was a kid, we had ice cream. And it was a lumpy, pile of creamy goodness. Today, everything has to be in fun shapes. Like kids breakfast cereal. I don’t think I should have to be thinking about physics when eating dessert. It’s seems just plain unnatural. Read more »