Horror technology chomps into pursuit of chocolate, er, happiness
By Burton W. Cole, columnist
As a certified, professional humor columnist, I have researched thousands of depressing, horrible and shocking news stories during my career.
None of them prepared me for the brutality of the brief item that fluttered across my desk one bleak day several years ago: Some nutty engineer designed a “smart” refrigerator programmed to withhold unhealthy snacks from dieters.
A refrigerator trained to taunt you with food it won’t let you have: “Na-na-na-na. Lookee here, I’m holding a stuffed-crust, deep-dish pizza, but you don’t know the combination to my force-field lock. Neener-neener-neener.” No late-night horror flick could possibly top this in sheer terror.
Did we not become adults for the expressed purpose of being able to spoil our dinners with cookies any time we felt like it? Now we’re going to let our appliances send us to our rooms without any supper?
The news item didn’t specify just how the stingy refrigerator worked, and not one of them has ever set crisper drawer or ice trays inside our house. I hope saner minds prevailed and the technology was smashed like a potato, piled with butter, sour cream and bacon.
This couldn’t happen here in America, you say. What about our constitutional right to life, liberty and happiness, meaning chocolate and frying grease?
Read the fine print: “...and the PURSUIT of happiness.” Capturing it is optional.
Think of the implications. This technology could spread like some insane virus threatening to destroy every cupcake, sub sandwich and stadium dog that mankind holds dear. Could any vaccine be powerful enough to overcome it?
Someday, you might drive up to a fast-food restaurant and order a juicy double burger dripping with cheese, bacon and barbecue sauce, giant fries with lots of salt, and a jumbo chocolate milkshake.
But while you are speaking into the crackly intercom on the menu board, it’s scanning you with laser beams measuring the wallowing fat cells per body inside the car.
When you pull up to the window, instead of what you wanted, the kid in the cap hands you a garden salad and ice water.
“And hey, if you drop eight pounds, we’ll throw in some low-cal dressing. Have a nice day, tubbo.”
“Hey, that disgusting order wasn’t for me, it was for a friend! Who’s not in the car. Trust me, he’s withering away. It’s a medical emergency. Gimme that milkshake, stat!”
Or you may head to the grocery store for proper nourishment and find the carts are electrified the same way fences are juiced to keep grazing cattle in check.
Once you touch the grocery cart, it scans your fingerprints and pulls up the list of all the good stuff, such as chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, that your diet doesn’t permit. Make a grab for the ice cream and the cart will zap you until you fling the offending delicacy back.
Broccoli launchers pop up from both sides of the cart and fire at you if you even try wheeling down the same aisle where the cheesecake lives.
This is devastating stuff. It’s not only high-tech cruel and unusual punishment, but denying a person chocolate rates the same as denying our pursuit of happiness.
However, it would make great technology for credit cards, saving families thousands in useless purchases.
For example, when the department store clerk runs your card through the scanner, a digitalized voice would announce loudly for everyone in line behind you to hear, “Yeah, right, like you’re really going to use a treadmill. Having that sitting in the closet collecting dust ain’t going to make those ugly pants look any better, fat boy!”
That’s useful technology.
There’s only one major purchase cards like these should allow — a low-tech refrigerator, one without any diet-busting gadgetry. It will save the cheesecake from rotting.
Burt stashes his pizza and chocolate cream pie in a gadget-free refrigerator. Join him for a meal at burton.w.cole@ gmail.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or at burtonwcole.com.