The Spare Button Dilemma

I vaguely remember a Jerry Seinfeld bit, where he talks about the buttons that come in little packets when you buy a new shirt or pants. His point was-- does anybody really keep all of these spare buttons?

Over the holidays, I got some new clothes, and one of the pairs of pants came with a little packet of spare buttons. Seinfeld is right-- what am I supposed to do with these buttons? Store them in a little filing cabinet with a description of the pants they belong to? Unlikely.

The real question to me here is... why can't we make clothing where the buttons just stay on permanently? Seems to me like there's got to be a better way to keep buttons on a piece of cloth than by using a tiny piece of twine to keep it attached. Or at least find a way to secure that piece of string on better. Whoever can invent a method to help permanently attach buttons to their pieces of cloth will surely revolutionize the button industry.

Are you that revolutionary person that us clothing wearers so desperately need?

Parenthetically Speaking: Let's Update the Area Code Norms

Perhaps I get it from the comic stylings of Jerry Seinfeld, but I tend to appreciate, scrutinize, and contemplate on the small things in life, just like he does in his comedy career.

Case in point:

Every day I look at dozens, maybe hundreds of phone numbers. And I came to realize... what a waste it is to put parentheses around area codes. I think we're mature enough as a society to realize that the first three numbers in a phone number indicate the area code. It's simply excessive to surround those three little digits with unnecessary parentheses, just like it's unnecessary to put http:// in front of your website name, every time you reference your website in marketing materials. They served their purposes for a long time, now we move on.

Let's revolutionize the world of telephony and ditch the parentheses (shall we?).

Now that we have that settled, please enjoy this tangentially related video clip featuring Victor Borge, Dean Martin, and punctuation noises (just watch):