Microwave Love: Safety and Microwaves

(In case you missed the post where I first mentioned this.)

We begin our exploration of Love is Cooking With Microwaves on a somber note.

Microwaves once had an uphill battle to fight (little wonder, when the first public model was larger and heavier than most modern refrigerators and cost more than a new car). Thus, scare tactics yell at you from the back cover, where you're likelier to see them.

There was a time when I would have pointed and laughed at this and made jokes about use of scare tactics, which seem absurd in the present. However, this is a real safety issue, and a friend of my sister's lost her little boy to exactly what "Junior" there is doing.

So yeah, I can't laugh at that or encourage you to.

I can encourage you to laugh at this:

You know that destruction of the English language that people complain about due to the internet and text messaging making people abbreviate overmuch? It actually started here, on the back cover of some weird pamphlet. (We'll revisit the subject of microwave safety in a little bit.)

Also holy cheese there's something inexplicably disturbing about that lightning bolt microwave guy.

1. Why is he sweating?

2. Why is there a smaller version of him holding up a sign from inside the microwave?

The questions only intensify as we turn to the inside front cover:

3. How is the thought of a bunch of sperm-shaped lightning men wearing toques bouncing around on your food supposed to encourage you to use a microwave?

4. "Travel 2 1/2 billion times per second..." What the heck is that supposed to mean? "Travel through the inside of the microwave 2.5 billion times per second," perhaps?

5. Friction? No, that's not how it works, actually.

It gets, um, better...

6. If there's no heat inside a microwave oven, where'd you get a match, lightning bolt guy?

7. Actually, those plastics... For that matter, nobody being hurt by a microwave oven... Those things aren't true.

Anyway, let's wrap this up for today with... um, this.

"They cannot heat container!" (False. Also, I know I added the exclamation point, but it just seems wrong without it.)

"Only heats the food!" (Also false.)

"Cook with time only!" (...What is that even supposed to mean? Are you trying to claim that you don't need electricity or something? What? What? ...Sorry, I had a moment there. It's like Engrish before Engrish or something.)

Join me next time, when we talk about... hot sandwiches!

-Signing off.