Sometimes The 21st Century Embarrasses Me

At last, the perfect solution for people who can't quite figure out how to cut a thin slice off the end of a stick of butter. Behold the Butter Cutter!

No longer will you have to risk your personal safety with dangerous butter knives or fumble with unwieldy and complicated butter-holding harnesses and straps. No more will you have to engage the help of an assistant to hold down and steady your butter during the tedious slicing process. Now you can have a perfectly sliced pat of butter every time thanks to this extremely specific kitchen implement that performs one function, and one function only.

Need your frozen waffles buttered in a hurry? Boy, are you in luck! Just look at the speed at which the Butter Cutter expels its creamy oleo ammunition. Why, the camera could only capture the zooming pat as a vague yellow blur! Think of the hours you'll save every week!

Sometimes the 21st Century embarrasses me.

Honestly I'm glad that time travel is probably impossible. Imagine if a gentleman from the year 1800 somehow came to our century. What would he think when he saw modern man, his bloated and tattooed body straining against his stained sweatpants, using a contraption like this one? Most likely his reaction would be a combination of laughing his pantaloons off, sobbing uncontrollably and vomiting with rage as he witnessed what mankind has become.

Life Imitates Trek (Again)

Once again life imitates art, or more specifically, Star Trek. Last week a French-American scientist invented a spray that makes you feel intoxicated without drinking alcohol, just like Star Trek: The Next Generation's Synthehol.

What's Synthehol, I hear you asking? Sit back for a Trek history lesson while I tell you. After a hard day's work of keeping the Federation safe from the Klingon menace, you could always count on finding Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Scotty knocking back highballs in the Enterprise's rec room (never Spock, of course. Lord no. He was always in his quarters, busy inserting a fresh stick up his ass). The crew of the Enterprise only drank real alcohol; you know, the hard stuff. Cool, delicious, brain-rottting, and dare I say it-- human liquor. None of these fancy alien brews for Kirk and his men. Well, that's not quite true; Scotty wasn't above sampling a Saurian brandy or Romulan ale, but then he'd drink the anti-freeze from the warp engines in a pinch, so he hardly counts.

Flash forward 70 years or so to Captain Picard and his touchy-feely crew. Vaal forbid real alcohol touch the lips of any of those overgrown boyscouts. No, they exclusively drank Synthehol. Invented by the Ferengi, Synthehol gave the drinker a pleasant buzz, but without all the unpleasant side effects like hangovers, projectile vomiting, liver-implosion, addiction and losing the house to that brittle ice queen you married against your mother's wishes. And its intoxicating effects could easily be shaken off, allowing you to fake-booze it up right before you went on duty.

It would seem that scientist David Edwards (who apparently is secretly Senator Al Franken in disguise) has invented Synthehol a couple of centuries early. It goes by the incredibly catchy name of WA|HH Quantum Sensations, and comes in spray form, much like Binaca. One spritz and you instantly feel pie-eyed. The only problem: the intoxicating effect only lasts a few seconds. It would reportedly take around 1,000 sprays in the mouth to equal the normal effects of one conventional alcoholic beverage, and sounds like something no one should do unless they enjoy bleeding uncontrollably from the tear ducts.

One bottle of the spray costs $26. I honestly don't see this becoming a huge seller. Sure, the concept of instant intoxication sounds great; if your mother-in-law walks in the door, you could get sloppy "I love you, man" drunk in a flash. But who wants to be kippered for only five seconds? When I want to get sauced I want it to last all night, in order to still the shrieking voices in my head for a few precious hours.

Regardless of its usefulness though, Synthehol can now join the ranks of real life Trek inventions, along with cell phones, hyposprays and iPads. I'm still waiting for the transporter though, so I can travel to China in ten seconds without having to sit on a plane next to a screaming baby for 27 hours.