Uninformative Beeper

Beep! Beep! Beep! The little electric steamer shouts out to us that the lentils are not nearly done, nor will they progress any further unless we put more water in the steamer. It sounds like a pulse monitor, on a man whose terrific aerobic workout is about to cross the line into full-on cardiac incident. I'm right there in the kitchen, tall glass of water in my hand, but I can't pour it in fast enough to silence the thing. Beep! Beep! Beep!

That's when my wife chimes in. Barely audible over the beeping, she says "that sure is an informative beeper you've got there. They made that thing terribly effective, didn't they? Quite the technological marvel..."

I stopped pouring. Thoughts boiling into words, and steaming out my mouth, I disagree. It's not terribly effective, not at all. If it were literally terribly effective, it wouldn't tell me a thing. Now wouldn't that be a technological marvel? A completely uninformative beeper. A beeper, built into a steamer, that communicates nothing. You'd have to make it beep randomly, not only when you're out of water or the lentils are done. Of course that still lets you know it's running, so you'd need to design it to beep at unpredictable intervals. Even if turned off for months, it'd save up some power to surprise you. In the middle of the night, you're up to sneak a snack in, and there's this random beep coming at you from a nearby cupboard. Damn thing's unplugged, yet there it is beeping at you, for no good reason. Of course, that communicates where the steamer is, so even it's not entirely uninformative. No, for that, you'd have to send the electric steamer to ventriloquist's school. It might be beeping at you out of the fridge, or beeping from your sock drawer, then.

That, I think smuggly to myself, but loudly enough to get her blood boiling, that would be a true marvel of terrible effectiveness. Ventroliquist steamer. A machine that cooks your food, keeps you company in the middle of the night, and can entertain the kiddies, all while communicating nothing. There's bachelors who'd put down hard money down for that. That's about when I notice that the look she's giving me. Just below my nose, the steamer was still beeping. Informative little thing, trying to tell me that I might be one of those bachelors if I keep this up.