Remote Rant

I am so frustrated with electronics these days. Perhaps it is because I buy cheap crap from Wal-Mart that was made for 10 cents by impoverished Chinese children but I am incredibly frustrated at the absolute necessity of the remote controls.

We lost the remote for our dvd player. It has been missing for over a week now. I don't know if was smuggled out of the house by one of our runaway socks or if it just hitched a ride via one of my children to some dark corner of the basement and hid itself under a mountain of forgotten toys...but I miss it. I miss it, not because I'm too lazy to get up off my butt and walk to the tv...but rather because our dvd player has lost much of its proper functionality since the remote's recent hiatus!

Our dvd player is one that 'remembers' where you last left off when watching your disc...which is all fine and good most of the time but when the movie has played it's course, it will often take you to the next menu...let's say the bonus features. Well...most of the dvd's use is facilitated by my children who want to watch the same disc three days in a row. The problem is that the dvd player unit itself only has four buttons--power, open/close, play/pause, and stop. All navigation requires the remote control...so in most cases if Eden wants to watch 'Cinderella' for the umpteeth time...without the remote, she would have to work her way through 3 hours of bonus features before it would return itself to the main menu! I find this completly ridiculous!

Seriously...common sense would dictate making all functions of the unit operable from the unit itself so that when the remote goes on vacation...we can still enjoy our movie watching experience. Am I right?