espresso

dear sleep, precious sleep, how long has it been
since we last did meet, was it april, since then?
i can't remember, you see, for i am barely awake
a long time i've missed you, come back - goodness sake!
dear sleep, precious sleep, my colleague, my partner
whenever i'm with you, i wake up much smarter
and avoid things like car crashes and ending up fired
dear sleep, precious sleep, please make me not tired

Fun With Dehydration

I love infomercials. I don't own a single product that was ever "seen on TV," but I admit - when Sunday morning rolls around and the head is pounding from the night before, I can often be found on the couch, entranced by some of the coolest products and outrageous promises on the airwaves. Nay, not sipping hot chocolate and reading a good book, nor watching Star Trek reruns or even eating a big omelet with too much Tabasco bring me as much contentment as watching Ron Popeli pawn his useless crap on unsuspecting audience members.

My most recent favorite "must have" product is the Magic Bullet - that little food processor that can make alfredo sauce out of garlic and butter in one...two...three pulses. Or, rinse out your garlic flavored plastic cup and dump in some ice and fruit for a delicious fruit smoothie. The cup even comes with a plastic rim to protect you from screw threads - you can drink right out of the blending cup; pretty cool stuff! (I've since been able to test the Magic Bullet. Let's just say the alfredo sauce wasn't nearly as creamy and the fruit smoothie was significantly more garlicy than I had anticipated in my "Ronco-solves-world-hunger" fantasy land.)

Anyway...I think perhaps one of the niftiest inventions to come out of Ronco headquarters has to be the food dehydrator. Oh my how they have evolved in the past 20 years, and now their clout seems truly unmatchable in the ultra-competitive category of useless home appliances. To that end, I really want to spend the 50 bucks to get one of these things and start testing out the effects of dehydration on a few products other than beef and apples. I've often wondered what would happen to product A when placed in dehydrator 1 at setting II - but seriously, who hasn't?

Let's examine a few of the more unconventional tests I'd like to run on my hypothetical water extraction machine:

1. Watermelon - After an extensive etymological analysis, I believe that only melon would remain. However, I find it extraordinarily hard to picture a raisin shaped melon. Then again, ever since they gave raisins a microphone and sunglasses back in the 80s, I have to admit - raisins creep me out.
   
2. Water balloon - I have a feeling that I'd be pretty under whelmed with the outcome, having seen a deflated balloon on more than one occasion.
   
3. Goldfish - I think we'd finally prove that the Pepperidge Farm cracker is the next logical evolution of Carassius auratus.
   
4. Chocolate Covered Cherries - would the chocolate melt from the heat, or would the gooey inside just become...less...gooey?
   
5. Snowball - you'd think it would just melt; I think you are opening Pandora's box of Frosty nightmares.
   
6. Scotch Tape - Does it still stick?
   
7. Liquid Gel Medicine Capsules - both quick acting and long lasting versions. I bet a two sample t-test would prove there is no statistical difference in how they hold up under The Super Dehydrator 4000.
   
8. Pizza - I'm convinced this is how they make Combos.
   
9. Hot Dog - This one might seem a little unfair, since we know when you put a steak in a dehydrator, you get a much smaller steak we call jerky. Does this translate to a hot dog? What if they started serving hot dog jerky at baseball games...would you eat it? Mmm...dehydrated pig ass.
   
10. Chapstick - This is probably one of the few substances that would bring the dehydrator to its proverbial knees. It is, after all, specifically designed to prevent against dryness. Definitely a battle of titans here.

There. 10 brilliant ideas that I bet no one has ever tried in their dehydrator before - probably for good reason. In any case, I'm convinced that I could sell them for Ronco by the pallet if they changed their marketing strategy toward the dehydration of abnormal substances. Everyone knows you can turn beef into a portable, pocket sized snack with a dehydrator; not everyone knows you can build a perpetual motion machine if you use chapstick instead...

The Tangent

tan·gent (adj) 1. Making contact at a single point or along a line; touching but not intersecting. 2. Irrelevant.

tangent (n) A line, curve, or surface meeting another line, curve, or surface at a common point and sharing a common tangent line or tangent plane at that point.

Personally, I like "Irrelevant."