Sometimes a refrigerator should just be a refrigerator

By Mad Dog

According to legend, Sigmund Freud once said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” If he were alive today he’d probably change it to “Sometimes a refrigerator is just a refrigerator.” Of course that would be assuming that a 151-year-old man would have the energy to speak. And that he could find a plain refrigerator outside of the Museum of Archaic Kitchen Appliances. While Freud was interested in what was going on inside his patients’ heads, it would be nice to know what manufacturers are thinking when they add everything in the world to an appliance. Nothing, apparently, can be simple anymore.

Take the refrigerator. It has two functions -- to keep things cold and to give you a place to stick every photo, note, scrap of paper, toddler scrawl, and very important reminder you never want to see again. First they added ice cube makers and water dispensers, which are pretty appropriate add-ons.

But this being the 21st century, Whirlpool decided to go all Refrigerator 2.0 on us. Soon you’ll be able to outfit their Centralpark Connection refrigerator with a digital picture frame, an iPod docking system with speakers, and a Wi-Fi-equipped removable touch-screen tablet computer that will let you watch “Water for Chocolate” when you should be boiling water for dinner, check out The Food Network while you’re waiting for your frozen entrée to defrost, and surf the Internet for recipes so you can leave one visible on the monitor in the hope that no one realizes the microwave is your best friend. Sure it would make more sense to have the computer monitor on the wall by the counter where you do most of the cooking, but hey, is it really that important where you put a useless appendage?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to making our lives easier. The first is the gadget school, which says you need a separate utensil to perform each task, no matter how small, mundane, or easily it can be done using an existing tool. That’s why kitchen drawers are jammed with things like lemon peelers, hard boiled egg piercers, nut choppers, potato chip bag openers, and corn on the cob butter holders. These are all chores that can very easily be done with a good old knife. Then there’s the other school of thought: the Swiss Army school thinks it best to consolidate everything we own into one unit no matter how incongruous it might be. This actually sounds pretty good until you realize that you just don’t need a web cam inside your stove. Yet.

The idea of a robo-combo-kitchen-appliance is nothing new. Back in 1998 NCR Corporation showed a prototype appliance called the Microwave Bank. And no, it wasn’t designed to cook the books, much to the chagrin of early adopters like Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco. To call it an appliance would be like calling Sybil a personality. It was a combination microwave oven, ATM, television, and computer all rolled into one. Just look in any kitchen and you’ll see how successful the idea was. Heck, they would have done better if they’d have come out with a washer-dryer-ATM combination. At least then you could launder your money.

Manufacturers, the media and Bill Gates are all enamored of the combo idea. Me, I just want a refrigerator ice maker where all the cubes don’t end up as a solid chunk after two days, an oven that turns off when my dinner starts to burn (uh, how hard would it be to put a smoke detector and cut-off switch in the oven?), and a microwave oven that has a reverse button so I can uncook everything that cooks around the edges during the gentle defrost cycle. Then again, I’m still waiting to drive those jet cars all the magazines of my youth said we’d be tooling around in by now.

Combos aren’t confined to kitchen appliances. Cars are becoming entertainment centers, which is a good thing since you can never be too distracted by using the cell phone, eating a sandwich, reading the newspaper, and putting on make-up to change a DVD. The truth is, MP3 players belong in everything. I mean, if you can’t plug your iPod into your car, refrigerator, exercise machine, and Taser holster, what’s the good of even having one?

Yes, I said Taser holster. Taser International (motto: “Our products will shock you.”) has released a holster for their C2 personal Taser that has a built-in 1GB MP3 player. Forget the old news red, pink and leopard print holsters, now you can listen to the “Don’t Tase me, bro!” audio clip while incapacitating someone with 50,000 volts. Hey, it doesn’t get much better than that. Well, at least until they offer a holster with video.

This is only the beginning. If this trend continues we can expect to see other companies climbing on the multi-appliance bandwagon. Look for Chop! Chop!, a combination food processor, chainsaw, and hair clipper. Or the new A-Ford-Able car/ATM/back-massager that makes paying your auto mechanic a less painful experience. And then there’s G.E.’s Mr. Coughing, a combination coffee maker, vaporizer, and lawn sprinkler system that takes care of all kinds of drips.

It doesn’t get any better than this. Unless, of course, they all came with an MP3 player.