Greetings from The Office Microwave!

If you have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars sound effects, you can go ahead and scroll to the memes.

Otherwise...heat up some leftovers, sit back, and enjoy.

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As the Office Microwave, I keep an ear to the streets and hear the best conversation topics for your work friends, for your boss, for your latest client, and everyone in between

TLDR: Chindōgu is the art of inventions that effectively solve a problem, but are still useless.

Here’s a coffee table book recommendation: The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions.

This book explores the art of chindōgu, which loosely means "weird tool.” The term was coined by magazine editor Kenji Kawakami, who began inventing absurd not-for-sale gadgets for his section in the publication Mail Order Life back in the 1990s.

Kenji’s chindōgu always solved an actual problem, but did so in a way that made the device virtually useless.

Some examples are: noodle-cooling chopsticks equipped with a fan, a glue stick of butter, and a back-scratching t-shirt with a numbered grid to help the scratcher hit the right area.

The book is a lot of fun. Trying to think of your own chindōgu is also a challenging mental exercise. If you come up with one, please reply to this email with your invention.

TLDR: The Wellbutrin-Passion of the Christ car was real. It was driven by Bobby Labonte in the 2004 Daytona 500.

In case you were wondering, the “Passion of the Christ” + Wellbutrin branded race car from last week’s newsletter is real.

In 2004, Bobby Labonte raced in the Daytona 500 promoting Mel Gibson's film, a commonly prescribed antidepressant, and Jesus...all at the same time.

Here is an article from the AP that was published ahead of the event which gives incredible historical content to this meme.

TLDR: The Wilhelm scream is the one of the most widely used sound effects in movie history. You definitely know what it sounds like.

If you haven’t heard of the Wilhelm scream, you’ve undoubtedly heard it.

The unique scream is one of the most widely used movie sound effects in history. It was recorded in 1951 by Warner Bros. and used frequently in the studio’s films over the following two decades.

In 1977, it was famously used in the first Star Wars film. Since then, it has become a sort of joke among Hollywood sound designers to sneak the sound into projects.

It’s estimated that the Wilhelm scream is heard in more than 400 films.

Although it was named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River (1953), it was first used in the 1951 film Distant Drums.

Here is the first-ever Wilhelm scream.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

• Here are “rappers in the style of Wes Anderson looking way too fresh.”

• The Wolf wrote an interesting thread on the “mother of franchising.”

• Here’s a historic video: The only time Vincent Price performed his part in Michael Jackon’s “Thriller” live.

• This is the world's largest database of public domain media.

FOR YOUR WAY OUT: 5 MEMES

That’s it for this week’s Work Talk. These topics are meant to be shared with your co-workers, so if you liked it, forward this email to you best friend or colleague and have them subscribe here.

And if you made it this far, reply back to this email with a meme I should put in the next send.

Until next week…

— the Office Microwave  

Written by me, the Office Microwave.

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