And the string This Inventor Up By His Toes Award goes to ...

     I have a love/hate relationship with inventions. Some I love. Computers, television and Mr. Potato Head are examples. But there are other inventions whose creators I wish had never been a twinkle in their mother's eye. This is about them.

     Let me be clear. I believe innovation has fueled the American economy. My boyhood heroes were great American inventors like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Hugh Hefner.

     And, I want to go on record I'm in favor of progress and admit that many inventions have made my world a nicer, safer, and more expensive place to live. But some have created problems, ones I didn't have before. If it's your turn to make the morning coffee and you have a hangover that home latté machine is the devil incarnate.

     Here are my candidates for Inventors I Wish Had Never Been Born, the people who invented:

•     Shrink wrap packaging. To open this requires either The Hulk or special tools available only from Brookstone. As almost no one has those special tools, shrink wrap leaves a trail of broken fingernails and screaming children. (The shrink wrap travesty has been compounded by those white sticky labels along the seams of CD and DVD packages which hang on with the tenacity of a gila monster in heat. I bet this and shrink wrap were invented by the same guy.)

•     Plastic packing beads. These are really a new form of magnetism that will stick to everything. People who try to get them off their fingers look like they just finished picking their nose after snorting a line of that white powder credited with the economic revival of Colombia and Miami.

•     The "Push in here to open" flap on cardboard packages with that printed (but NOT ACTUALLY perforated) dotted line that will only open if you have nails like Ginzo knives. (Sorry, the special Brookstone tools will not work here).

•     The first departure from the traditional water faucet. There is now no standardization of water faucet protocol. Sometimes there are two faucets, sometimes one that moves from cold to hot. There are faucets you have to pull up to get the water going, others you push down. Some you twist the knob for hotter, some you push the handle, some you lift a little lever. My doctor tells me I have developed carpal faucet syndrome.

     I would it appreciate it if Mr. Gates took out his Plan, in which he intends to take over every industry in the United States, and moved Plumbing up near the top.

•     The blinking clock on the VCR. An old joke but even in this day of rising computer literacy only 12% of the population can set their VCR clock and half of those need glasses to do it.

•     Embossed labels for controls on TV sets and VCRs that are just a slightly lighter shade of black than the appliance. These are written by the same guy who wrote line 7 on the eye chart (F O L T A). For you aficionados, he also wrote L B M T A, which has been out of print since 1937.

•     People who invented personal hygiene products for diseases I know I didn't have until they invented the solution. Underarm odor, halitosis, ring around the collar. Okay, maybe just the ring thing.

•     The little catsup packets you can't open without exploding red, staining stuff all over your new pants and your about-to-be-ex-date's dress.

For extra credit let's include the guy who invented the alternate spelling for catsup (or was it originally ketchup?).

Some honorable mentions:

•     Multiple pillows: putting enough on the bed to accommodate, say, a small Arapaho tribe.

•     Car alarms: most have no off switch and the power of a 1952 air raid siren.

•     Tear off plastic bags in supermarkets where you can't get the two sides apart to open the bag or even figure out which end to start with.

•     Shredded lettuce for sandwiches. (Great if you want to mark your trail on the way to the Gingerbread house in the Dark Forest.)

•     The CHECK ENGINElight in your car. What does that mean? See if there is one?

•     Magnifying mirrors in bathrooms that show things on your skin heretofore only seen in dermatology textbooks.

•     Voice mail systems and the labyrinth audio text programs that go with them. People have died from thirst after getting trapped in voice mail loops they couldn't get out of.

     A related aside: Lily Tomlin worries the person who invented Muzak may be thinking up something else.

     AND FINALLY, the String This Inventor Up By His Toes Until The Blood Runs Out His Nose Award goes to (drum roll):

    The guy who invented the hospital gown. You can't get it on, you can't keep it on, and you can't get your ass warm unless you can find a friendly patient to back up against and the two of you pretend you are Siamese twins.)

     Or do nurses use those so they can check out guys' butts? If that's the case — never mind!