The Fajita Odor Eater

Bleh! I cannot stand to be gassed in a Mexican restaurant when the waiter serves up a smoking fajita on a platter right next to me. I do not need to see popping grease before I eat it or before a stranger eats it. Someone, please, invent a silent Dust Buster to follow that waiter out of the kitchen. Suck up the smoke and cracking grease so I don't have to smell it. I am choking to death here.

What would you love to see invented? Or, better yet, what can you invent? Be sure to get a patent. The poor fellow who invented the yellow happy face only made $45.

"Designed to Boost Morale: The original yellow happy face has its origins in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the drafting table of freelance graphic designer Harvey Ball. Joy Young, Promotions Director for a subsidiary of the State Mutual Assurance Company, ordered up a button design from Ball that would help boost morale at the company (which had recently gone through a merger). According to press reports, Ball originally drew just a smile, but feared cynical employees might simply wear the button upside down. So he added two small eyes for vertical reference. A sunshine-yellow background and, voila, the happy face was born.


"In an interview with the Associated Press in 1996, Ball recalled: "There are two ways to go about it (drawing a happy face). You can take a compass and draw a perfect circle and make two perfect eyes as neat as can be. Or you can do it freehand and have some fun with it. Like I did. Give it character.

"Ball is also on record as having said that 'never in the history of mankind or art has any single piece of art gotten such widespread favor, pleasure, enjoyment, and nothing has ever been so simply done and so easily understood in art.'

"State Mutual originally printed up 100 buttons, but when they became popular give-away items, many more were produced. A 1964 picture shows State Mutual vice president John Adams wearing one of the yellow buttons. Ball was paid a $45 fee for designing the button, and neither he nor State Mutual thought to trademark the image."

See http://www.creativepro.com/article/heavy-metal-madness-put-a-happy-face