Have you ever gotten to your front door, got ready to unlock it, reached for your key and: BRRRR! The metal is freezing! And the rigid, unyielding shape! So harsh and uncomfortable! There’s got to be a better way!

Well, there is. Our intern Reiko brought us some lovely presents today from Japan: these rubber key-end covers, all brightly colored, many taking the shape of adorable cartoon animals and vegetables. Now instead of cold metal, we have piggy and duck and mushroom keys. And who knows what kind of exciting world waits behind a door opened with a mushroom key? Probably a gummy bear roller coaster! It’s the only logical conclusion.

Is it any wonder people say the American manufacturing sector is in trouble? We are years behind the Japanese in key-cozy technology. Look at some other areas in which the Japanese are at the forefront of innovation: the boyfriend-arm pillow, organic socks for dogs, diet water and, of course, the indispensable earwax camera.

It almost makes you want to cry softly into your Hello Kitty toaster.

We’re doing some cleaning at the studio, getting a bunch of our old computer equipment ready to sell. But now we’ve got to thinking: do we want to just get rid of this stuff, or do we want to immortalize it?

Because if we want the Tritonic machines to live forever (and who doesn’t share that beautiful dream for their old computers?), we know just the guy to call. Gil Poulsen, whose Mac expertise has rescued this studio from disaster more times than we care to remember, is the owner and curator of The Mac Museum of Franklin Park, NJ, located conveniently in his own basement. Watch the CNN.com video about it, which features plenty of our buddy Gil talking about his favorite pieces of now-antiquated technology. A lot of it was way ahead of its time — including Apple’s 1994 digital camera, the QuickTake 100. Sure, it weighed a hefty 1.1 lbs, held 32 grainy pictures and could barely focus, but what do you expect for a paltry $749?

And for another reason we love to shout out our Gil, here’s an excerpt from his review of a hi-tech, wired jacket, which he wrote unprompted in July and we just found today:

“We’ve received an urgent distress call from a design group located in Newark, N.J. What do you know about a company called Tritonic, LLC?”

“Tritonic, LLC … yes … . Grown astoundingly quickly in the past few years. Entirely Mac-based except for, I believe, their telephone system. Upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 Tiger before it was even fashionable to do so. Remarkable blend of talent and enthusiasm…Nunzio is a great dresser although he could probably use a haircut based on our most recent surveillance photos, which also show—”

Should we be worried?

Last week Dre spoke to a grade school in Paterson, NJ called “Great School Number Five” about Tritonic and careers in design. The kids were excited, were eager to learn and had tons of questions. Too many questions.

Think about it: these kids are smart, motivated, have great teachers and go to a great school (the name even says so). What happens if Dre just turned these Wunderkind into an army of designers? Will we be the Vader to their Luke? The Lycos/Alta Vista/Dogpile to their Google?

We’re not scared. Really. In fact, we can’t wait to see these kids realize their full potential. And become astronauts. Nice, faraway astronauts.