h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you think that the regular remote is bad, try one of THESE! They not only control the TV, but also the VCR and DVD player! Oh, and if you get your remote snached, you can always buy a uni. remote and have a remote fight.

The thing about remote controls is that there they multiply and reproduce. No sooner do you get a new box to put in one corner of the lounge, but you also get another box to fill your sofa.

The idea being that you can push buttons on the box on the sofa instead of pushing buttons on the box in the far corner of the room.

This has lead to universal remote controls, which claim to be able to reproduce other remote controls by some staggering electronic metamorphosis. What it's so obvious is what the buttons on these universal remote controls are supposed to do. Suppose you have a box on your sofa that you regularly lose down the back of the sofa and it has a button marked "Self Destruct", or "For goodness sake, I just want to record what's on telly", it's a 99% chance that the universal remote control doesn't have a button marked "Self Destruct", and you find that you cannot reproduce the "Self Destruct" functionality, which isn't much use when you need that functionality and the original remote control has fallen through a wormhole in the space-time continuum and emerged on a distant planet populated soley by guppy fish.