machine dominance

Today we had a few power fluctuations at home and I had to reset the clock on the stove and microwave. On some level it really annoys me that these appliances have clocks at all. I guess I can understand the stove needing to know the time of day as it does get up early and make me an organic, local goat cheese omelette and boil the filtered water for my coffee, but why does the microwave need the date? The stove doesn't seem to care what the MM/DD/YY is...why does the (rarely used) microwave want to know? Does it have a date with the neighbor's tivo? Is it because I often have remarked (out loud, standing in the kitchen so I know it hears me) that we only keep the microwave because it hangs over our stove and has a light? I would replace it in a minute if we found a nice, plain stove vent without an attitude. The microwave has lots of attitude and this is control freak, psycho roommate attitude. If you heat anything in it the second the timer finishes the panel flashes READY READY READY like a too-eager hand in the air. Yoo-hoo, over here, your FOOD is READY! When I have to reset the clock there is this series of flashed, bossy commands like PRESS CLOCK, PRESS CLOCK, PRESS CLOCK and then the microwave waits a few seconds and if you don't for pete's sake press clock it will begin pleading PRESS CLOCK, PRESS CLOCK, PRESS CLOCK. If you are a real sadist (like I am) it will eventually start scrolling this command, sort of like a digital whine P-R-E-S-S-C-L-O-C-K-P-R-E-S-S-C-L-O-C-K-P-R-E-S-S-C-L-O-C-K. I don't know what would happen if you ignore that as quite frankly, I cannot bear to watch the poor thing writhe in pain. I do press clock. I dutifully enter the correct time. When it comes to MM/DD/YY however I find myself randomly entering information.

Right now my microwave thinks it is April 12, 1963.