Les Pages Aux Folles: Slap Me! Happy?
Slap Me! Happy?
by NANCY GONGLIKWANYEOHEEEEEEEH,
Alternate Reality News Service Writer, Technology
Twenty-seven people have been hospitalized with a variety
Of lower back and neckal injury.
What could the source of all their problems be?
A poor choice of morning coffee.
"Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Owie,"
Said victim Haworth McWowie.
Each victim owned a brand
Of coffeemaker called Espresso 3000.
"It is for people upon whom the charms
Have warn off of their regular alarms,"
Said the midnight mistress of spam
And CEO of LLG Enterprises, Lexi-Lou Gundam.
To wake people the Espresso 3000 puts to use
A mechanical arm out of a book by Doctor Seuss
At the end of which, so cleverly planned,
Is a typical white gloved hand.
If the alarm goes off and no waking takes place,
The Espresso 3000 slaps its owner's face.
The waker-upper machine has several settings to work in,
including "gentle (for sensitive skin),"
"moderately irate (for general usage)"
and something with the odd, evocative label "Stooges."
"Let us not," Gundam said, "be forgetting,
There is a section in the manual on the Stooges setting,
With diagrams and many a still
From classic films like 'Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb' and 'Saved by the Belle.'
We carefully documented our enterprise -
Nobody should be taken by surprise."
"Nobody should be - oh, I am sorry,"
Said eminent class action chiropractor Philip Wright-Extempore.
"But that is ridiculous. While being woken, nobody would expect
Their head to turn seven times on their neck.
There is gentle rousing, and then there is excessive use of force,
And Espresso 3000 is clearly the source!"
The particulars of the class action suit are too obvious to here rehash;
The main issue has to do with a setting called "whiplash."
As Wright-Extempore elucidated, the whiplash setting
Rested next to one called "gentle petting."
"You get home late at night and know you will need help to wake,"
he said, "and it's far too easy to make a bad, bad, very bad mistake.
Gundam should immediately resign -
She is clearly guilty of terrible design!"
"The whiplash setting, in full retrospect,"
Gundam allowed, "sure was a dumb device aspect.
A better method must exist
To rouse a rouserless somnambulist.
Still, for customer reason I am advising -
The feature was in all of the advertising!
Delicate Espresso 3000 owners, by their good graces,
Should have known to wear neck braces!"
[EDITRIX-IN-CHIEF'S NOTE:
The Espresso 3000 gets my vote!
It takes a lot to wake my sorry ass:
So, I need to use the "Whiplash."
Plus: the thought of millions of people waking up this way
Helps me look forward to the coming day!]
"Oof. Ouch. Grunt. YOWIE!," commented
Haworth McWowie from his uninsured hospital bed.
"I believe what my future client is trying to say,"
Wright-Extempore stated, pushing McWowie away,
"Is that he has been under so much physical duress
That he hopes for a maximum penalty I will press."
And so, amid the coffee industry's hollers,
Wright-Extempore has asked for a gabillion dollars.
"That is outrageous!" shouted Delucca Sawyer,
Gundam's part-time masseuse and full-time motorized lawyer.
"There is no precedent for that!"
"He's obviously never heard of Nescafe v. Pratt,"
Wright-Extempore crowed.
"A. Cili Pratt was hit by a car on the road.
The judge ruled against his cup of coffee -
Would you like to hear the size of his lawyer's fee?"
Sawyer's nose appeared out of joint
When he argued, "That case is not on point!
It was overturned when Pratt was seen to be a faker,
And, in any case, he wasn't drinking from his coffeemaker!"
Wright-Extempore's tuttances were mild.
He just nodded his mildewed head and smiled. And, smiled. And, smiled.
"I don't - oww! - want - OWW! - don't - ooh whee!"
Said a newly sedated Haworth McWowie.
"I don't need a lawyer, don't want to be part of a suit.
I just want to get on with my life - whoot! Whoot! Whoot!"
"Do not listen to him," Wright-Extempore said of McWowie's balking,
"It is not his real opinion - it's just the drugs talking."
As long as the coffeemaker remains in use,
The investigation into its effects continues.
But, what would be a good way to end this fable?
According to Gundam, the Espresso 3000 will be getting a warning label!
