Saturday 5th April 2003: Things that Should Not Exist
Food Dehydrator
I admit I’ve never actually seen one of these; I just heard about it in the Book of Ratings, so I may be missing the point. But still, a food dehydrator? If my dictionary is correct, this device will take in food, and yield an inedible version of said food. Apples will become piles of fructose powder. Pieces of meat will become instant shoe-leather. Coca Cola will be stripped of its disguise, and rendered as a small chemical processing plant. Corpses, I suppose, would become unidentifiable and easily removable, but I doubt the marketing department were thinking of Dispose-O-Corpse when they made this one. Technically, I guess, you could pour water on the powder coming out of the dehydrator, and so make an appallingly disgusting pulp that resembles the original product only in colour, if that, but if you’re doing this, what’s your goal? Are you planning to break out your caravel and take a trip round the Cape of Certain Death? Useful I suppose if you happen to believe that the major white goods firms making portable fridges are in collusion to own our souls, but for the rest of us, a mystery.
Wrigley’s Extra Thin Ice
What kind of satanic meeting of the marketing department created this one? I can only imagine the Director of Marketing had sat on a VCR Remote that morning, and it had been irreversibly wedged up his ass, just far enough to be awkwardly stimulating every time he moved, but not quite far enough to prevent the appearance that he did in fact have a rod up his ass. Even then, he’d have to have been discovered unexpectedly impotent the previous night, and have fallen into a carelessly placed box of bear traps within at least four days. I mean, look at what you’re eating, people! It’s a sheet of biodegradable, mint-flavoured polythene! Personally, I’d actually prefer some actual clingfilm that’s been doused in flavouring; at least that way, it won’t suddenly lose its form and latch onto my tongue like it’s some sort of alien attempting to take command of my body, starting with my teeth.
American-style Cars
Or Armoured Personnel Carriers, to give them their original name. As far as I can see, there are three things you can do better with these than with your standard automotive product:
1. Smite your enemies. This is great when you’re actually trying to smite. Whilst the Mercedes A-Class has been known to bounce when in collision with pedestrians, a proper American car, properly modified, will enable you actually not to notice your smiting as it happens. The problem occurs when you’re not vested with divine power, and most of your smiting is accidental; when unable to open a fiery portal to the realm of dread and so make good your escape, the authorities don’t tend to draw the proper distinction between righteous smiting and Causing Death by Dangerous Driving, the bastards.
2. Burn oil. All very well if you happen to be named Alan Greenspan and so have an interest in propping up the oil industry, but a bastard when you want to travel between cities without draining significant portions of the Persian Gulf.
3. Create spatio-temporal anomalies. This actually happened once – a section of bridge collapsed, and a total of 1,483 drivers plunged to their fiery doom, one after the other. The resulting wreckage was found to be the densest material encountered by modern science, and though it was eventually cleared away, temporal and gravitational anomalies persist to this day. Rumour has it that as a consequence, there is actually a spot in America where time doesn’t move at all, and one can eat the fabled everlasting mince pie. Still more rumours have it that this spot is named Milwaukee.
The Clementine
We’ve got oranges for the large, tangerines for the small. There just isn’t room in the market for another orange-coloured, citric acid-filled fruit. If I urgently wanted one at short notice, I’d eat an old shirt and think happy thoughts.