With everybody all “#SOPA” this and “#PIPA” that and killing middle-schoolers’ history essays, no one seems to be paying attention to the day’s BIGGER story: that Burger King, quietly testing a new delivery service these past few months, has supposedly mastered the “proprietary thermal packaging technology” that has long stymied advocates of burger transportation reform. Once upon a time the ability to move a flame-grilled Whopper from the kitchens of BK to your dining room table was practically non-existent, the loss of condiment crispness and patty heat TOO MUCH to overcome. But no longer. Harnessing all the powers of modern science, BK is once more leading Americans of discriminating taste to the Promised Land of freshness. They told us this day would never come. Their shortsightedness will one day be written of alongside that of King George and the Hindenburg engineers.
The real question, of course, is HOW WILL IT WORK? No one really knows! As Megan Garber at The Atlantic points out,
It’d have to lock in enough moisture, microwave-style, to ensure that the food it contains doesn’t dry out; it’d have to release enough, though, to prevent those contents from steaming. It’d have to, ostensibly, include some kind of mechanism that prevents the “fresh” ingredients on the burger — the lettuce, the tomato — from cooking while the other ingredients are kept warm.
That’s a lot of masters to serve! The sheer number of variables at play — dry/wet dynamics, veggie moisture, bun integrity — makes cracking the code here at least a Calc 4-level problem. But if BK’s top scientists can make this work…I mean, what is there left to accomplish? We won.
But that’s beside the point. Succeed, fail, or fall woefully somewhere in-between, your efforts at changing the Game are admirable and worthy of recognition. So here’s to you, Burger King — the Hertz Rental of burgers, forever trying harder. What did you do today, Carl’s Jr.?
“Beards,” “Sunsets,” and “Chicago” are all nouns around which previous entries in the Barfoed Does America series have revolved. Today we add one more: “Limbo.” Not the party game, fascinating a 500-word exploration that might be, but the state of being. Limbo isn’t uncomfortable; it’s not anything, really, except maybe the absence of defining edges. It’s the middle, Purgatory, that sensation you get when you’ve been living out of your car for two weeks and feel more at home driving a stretch of unfamiliar highway than you do at any of the places you’ll sleep, including the room you left way back when (…two weeks ago). Limbo is perfect room temperature and feels like it has been and will continue to be this way forever.
As someone whose longest romantic relationship has been with the sound of his own voice, I’m no stranger to making myself heard. Sometimes in public, with a microphone! For over a year I served as the VOICE of Columbia Swimming & Diving, announcing meets with what many called a “mixture of fun and ineptitude.” In 2009 I MCed the Haddonfield Memorial High School Class of 2004 5-year reunion, telling my classmates that unfortunately ticket prices had gone up and the cheesesteak table would be shutting down in five minutes. Critics raved.
Henning
DJ Steve
