(Update below)
Mark Cuban has a hilarious, but empathetically painful post, on yet another person's battle with opening those danged, impossible-to-open, and downright dangerous plastic
blister packs 
(Mark bears a slight resemblance to Rambo here, no?).
Some readers may remember my own feelings on the subject from a post this May, titled "On the perils of plastic blister packs".
But Mark's experience, and particular his rendition of the sharp and brutal facts, is far more dramatic and entertaining.
Even the title of his post is cool: "Seagate leaves me Bloody".
You should read the whole thing, but allow me to set the stage a bit with excerpts of the drama. It opens with:
"I love seagate products, but what genius designed the packaging for their 6gb Pocket Hard Drive ? THe drive came packaged in one of those impregnable plastic shells (see picture in link above) that makes it look pretty on retail shelves but impossible to open once you buy it."
By this time, I was already nodding emphatically, having just battled with the exact same product a few weeks ago.
And this wasn't just a "Guy gadget" for Mark...he was doing this for his wife and family:
"I bought the thing so my wife could backup all her digital pictures at home and on her parents computer at their home. Plus i thought it would be nice for her to be able to plug it in at her friends house and show off the pics of our beautiful daughter."
Oh, the risks we take for those closest to us...
He continues:
"Took the pair of small scissors I keep at my desk and gave it a shot."
No, NOT the SMALL scissors, Mark!
Don't be a fool!
It was like watching the kid in a horror flick going down the dark hallway, that we all KNOW he shouldn't go down...for the inevitable:
"The result was deeper impressions in the skin of my fingers than progress on the plastic."
Of course, the story escalates:
"Next was the “big scissors” we keep in the storage closest with various office supplies. No finger problems, but they could only make a small incision into the surface of the packaging."
And then Mark hits on the reason why this issue is probably a bigger one for guys:
"Now my manhood was at stake. If i cant puncture a plastic package…well. You get the picture."
Then, Mark goes for the equivalent of the BFG gun in Doom (the computer game), of course:
"So into the kitchen i went for “THE KNIFE”. Not a butter knife. Not a steak knife. Its THE KNIFE that you know you have and when you see it in the kitchen you think to yourself:
”Ok, if someone ever breaks in the house, this is where i go and I grab THE KNIFE and I protect my family as the slashing sounds from Psycho play through my head”
thats THE KNIFE i grabbed."
Of course, there's a reader named Nelson who has an opinion on why Mark had the WRONG knife, as he reproachingly explains in his comment to the post from the bleachers:
"I personally use an Olfa knife. Industrial, strong, replaceable blades, inexpensive. Just cut the thinner plastic around the edges, and voila! Your product is in your hot little hands."
That then prompts me at once to type in "Olfa knife" on Amazon, in a separate Firefox tab of course, but I digress.
Back to Mark's almost mortal combat:
"I sliced, I diced, i cut, i sawed. I broke the skin just enough to squeeze my fingers in hoping to pry apart the jaws of plastic that had intruded into my simple goal of helping out my wife."
At this point, I was almost on my feet, tears rolling down my cheeks, cheering for Mark. After all, who among has not done exactly this for his wife?
Back to the fight:
"The plastic drew first blood. My fingers went in, and I swear I heard it laugh milliseconds before it punctured me in a far more precise manor than i could ever inflict on it. Paper cut my ass. This was a plastic cut. Quick. Deep. Bloody."
Why won't the referee stop this fight?...the man's badly hurt...oh, the humanity...
"Bloodied, but not beaten, i went back to the big scissors and finally managed to break down the plastic to the point where it could no longer put up a fight and could be ripped to shreds."
At this point of course, we're all applauding on our feet, swept up by the moment.
Man over plastic...wins again.
I'm inspired.
Ready to finally tackle that bag of electronic gizmos each in their very own plastic blister pack. The shopping bag from Circuit City has been taunting me from the closet for a few weeks now.
One of the dozen items or so is even for my wife, I think.
Thank you, Mark, for blazing a bloody trail for the rest of us.
"Honey", I yell to my wife, peacefully reading the Sunday paper, "Wish me luck".
I should have added, "And where are the band-aids?"
And I can almost hear Nelson yelling from across the internet:
"Use the Olfa laminate cutter knife, you damn fool!"
(Update: Warner Crocker has a related post on the trials of blister packs, with gory pictures to boot.)
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