Which of these sites do you think provides the closest comparison between animal and sportsperson? (1)
monkeys vs. Gareth Bale (2)
eagles vs. Arsene Wenger (3)
capybaras vs. Rafael Nadal
Have you beaten 2048 yet? What about the 3d version?
If you invented a food product where you mixed together 2 parts of butter with 3 parts of "I can't believe it's not butter", what would you name it?
(Warning: the last one's a long one)
You acquire a popcorn-making machine from somewhere. I don't know where, let's just say you... er... won it from an arcade or something. You've used it once before and it worked exactly as it should. So, one day, you invite a friend over to your house to watch a movie. Naturally, you decide to make use of your newly acquired popcorn machine, but you haven't told your friend about the machine and want to surprise him/her with the popcorn machine when he/she comes over. I'm tired of writing "he/she" so from now on I'll use
impersonal "they".
So your friend tells you they will arrive at around half past 2 in the afternoon (it's about 1 o'clock), so you begin to set up your house and make sure the furniture points towards the tv screen and whatever other stuff you do to get ready to watch a movie - but that's irrelevant for the question, so I'll leave it to you to make the details up, like what movie it is, and stuff. (Incidentally isn't the phrase "and stuff" sort of weird, if you think about it, and stuff? Heh.)
You turn your popcorn machine on, make sure the timer is correct (because, you know, daylight savings and stuff can screw over every electronic device with a timer that you own), and set the machine for 2 popcorns for 2:30. Then you have your lunch, wherever (again, fill the details in, whether you're eating in or out is not part of the question). Then you finish eating and discover that there's a cabbage stuck to the kitchen ceiling with a post-it note attached to it which says "If you're wondering how I got here, here's a hint: it probably isn't surface tension". You wonder how it got there, but that isn't part of the question so I'll skip the details.
Shortly before 2pm, without any warning or preparatory notice, the popcorn machine starts whirring. You don't exactly know why it's making that strange, slightly disturbing noise that it didn't make last time you used it, or why it's doing that half an hour before your popcorn should be ready. You don't really think anything of it. Or maybe you do, but your thoughts don't amount to anything concrete.
Time: 1:58:11pm
The noise of the popcorn machine has got distinctively louder and again you are unsure what any of this means. You inspect the popcorn machine but there is nothing suspicious about it and the display only shows the time.
Time: 1:59:04pm
The popcorn machine escalates into a fairly loud roar, like, loud enough so you can hear it from the other end of the house, but not loud enough so that if you were having a conversation you'd need to shout over the machine. You're desperately scouring the machine trying to find answers, with no success.
Time: 1:59:30pm
The popcorn machine's noise subsides down to almost (but not quite) zero, but is then replaced by a quiet rumbling as the seconds tick down. You sense the machine is trying to communicate with you or tell you something, especially since the machine's noises seem to sound like there's an alien species trying to communicate with you or something.
Time: 2:00:00pm
The first popcorn packet comes out of the machine, perfectly wrapped, just like last time you used it. You have no idea why (a) the machine is giving you popcorn half an hour too early or (b) what caused the unearthly noises preceding the ejection of the popcorn packet. You inspect the popcorn and it all looks good. You pop one into your mouth and it tastes just like a popcorn is supposed to taste like, so you restore some confidence, but it all seems extremely disturbing. You put the popcorn packet on the table.
Time: 2:00:22pm
The second popcorn packet comes out of the machine just like the first. The noises the machine is making have completely died down to normal levels, but even by looking at the display you still have no idea why it's giving you popcorns half an hour early. You inspect the second popcorn - it's all good - and place it on the table alongside the first.
Time: 2:00:39pm
The third popcorn packet comes out of the machine. At this point you are distinctly worried, since you only ordered two popcorns and have no clue why the popcorn machine is still sounding like it's continuing to try to make popcorn. You hesitate and wait for the machine to keep doing whatever it's doing before you try to make any sense of what is going on.
Time: 2:00:53pm
The fourth popcorn packet comes out of the machine. All the popcorns so far are identical and you still have no clue why it's continuing to produce popcorn with increasing rapidity.
Time: 2:01:04pm
The fifth popcorn packet comes out of the machine. You've run out of space on the table by this point and now begin placing popcorn packets on the carpet next to the table, unsure of how long this is going to go on for.
Time: 2:01:13pm
The sixth popcorn packet comes out of the machine. You start pressing buttons on the machine in desperation while at the same time trying to hastily move the packets out of the way of the exit of the popcorn machine, with limited success.
Time: 2:01:20pm
The seventh popcorn packet comes out of the machine. You're too busy pressing buttons to try to remove popcorns now. Also, you've noticed that the noises emanating from the popcorn machine have begun to increase in volume again and you are distinctly scared.
Time: 2:02:51pm
By this point, you are still desperately pushing buttons, while popcorns are coming out of the machine faster than you can remove them, and there are now a total of 21 popcorns scattered across the living room table and floor. Most are closed but a few managed to burst open (not dramatically, I mean like all the popcorn is still inside the boxes except for like a few scattered popcorns) while being rammed into by other popcorn boxes spewing from the machine. Besides, the noise from the machine continues to increase in volume and is now at about the same level as it was shortly before it started producing popcorn.
You've already tried to hit the "off" switch on the machine with no success - the screen is telling you that it has to finish the popcorn making job before it turns itself off. You're thinking: "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING!!?!?" but you have no answer. In a desperate haze of confusion, panic, and desperation (I know I said "desperate" twice in that last sentence, but whatever. I don't care) you mash all the buttons on the machine as if you were trying to score in a combo based scoring ffr tournament on a song way above your skill level.
Time: 2:03:03pm
SUDDENLY THE REALISATION HITS YOU. While pressing buttons and trying to work out what the screen is telling you, you have come to realise, with an abject look of horror, desperation, shock, and total disbelief, that the reason why the popcorn machine is trying to lead you into what you believe is a "popcornocalypse" is as follows.
Instead of 2 popcorns at 2:30, you accidentally set the machine to 230 popcorns at 2.
Your entire life flashes before your eyes as you realise the enormity and the magnitude of what you just did, like the guy who steered the Titanic into the iceberg, whoever that was.
Time: 2:03:07pm
The 29th popcorn comes out of the machine. Also around this time the cabbage on the kitchen ceiling falls off, but that's irrelevant to the story.
Time: 2:03:29pm
You've been desperately trying to get the popcorn machine to "cancel" the current job. Unfortunately, during your abject struggles, you have come to realise that the interface and design of the popcorn machine very closely resembles that of a printer, and of course you know how good the printers of today are at cancelling print jobs. You scream "NOOOOO" as you're desperately trying to find a way to stop the impending huge influx of popcorns, and talking/shouting to the machine to get it to obey you, as you have just noticed, does not work. Meanwhile the noise of the machine has escalated to a loud roar, but you can still hear your own self screaming, so not REALLY REALLY loud.
Time: 2:03:44pm
One last jab at the off switch fails to have any effect, so you try to gather any ability to rationalise your thoughts inside your brain amongst this popcornocalypse and make your mind up. You plan to get a hammer and smash the machine to smithereens. You no longer care about the fact that popcorns are pouring out all over the floor now that there is no room left for the popcorns to come out of the machine after production. You'll deal with that later. At this point the machine has got so ear-splittingly loud that it resembles a 10-year-old Italian washing machine on spin cycle.
(I don't know if it's just me or are Italian washing machines really loud compared to non-Italian ones? Maybe I'm generalising because my family only ever had one Italian washing machine for a short while and it didn't really work properly and made disturbing noises worse than Bieber, but I digress.)
Time: 2:03:59pm
You're in whatever room you keep your hardware stuff in and pull out all the drawers and whatever and try to locate the hammer. But you're doing this in a huge panic and rush and you're not going to care about doing it gently, so you locate the hammer, but at the expense of sending everything else in the drawer flying to the floor. Whatever, you didn't really need those 500 screws anyway, and it's not relevant right now if someone hurts their feet stepping on the pointy bits of all the screws that landed on the floor, as long as it's not you.
You didn't think it was possible but the popcorn machine's noise has now turned full-on apocalyptic. You have honestly never heard a worse continuous noise than that in your entire life.
Time: 2:04:12pm
You desperately need to get back to the living room to stop the popcorn machine. But there are tons of pointy screws between you and the doorway out of the room. In one graceful motion, you stick the hammer down the front of your shirt, leap up in the air trying to grab the top of the door frame to gracefully swing your way over and out of the room, past all the screws lying around on the floor menacingly pointing up towards you. You have no sense of how, if you fail to make it, this will end really, really badly - at this point you are only acting on impulse and adrenaline.
Time: 2:04:14pm
You make it out of the doorway! At least there's one bit of good fortune for you. Well you didn't even realise how lucky you were until after the event. You're on a mission: 1v1. You vs the popcorn machine. The living room has now started to look like an impending popcornocalypse. The noise from the popcorn machine lacks adjectives in the English language to describe it.
Time: 2:04:15pm
Unfortunately you don't get there soon enough. As soon as you enter the room and are graced by the sight of loads of popcorn packets continually being thrown around near the exit of the popcorn machine, and try to reach back into your shirt to grab the hammer, the unthinkable happens.
POW
The popcorn machine explodes sending smithereens of itself flying through the air in all directions. You duck, narrowly avoiding the largest chunks of metal that spew randomly from where the machine used to be, but some of the smaller bits get you. And the tv screen. And the... well, everything. At the same time as the explosion, all the popped popcorn that had been contained inside the popcorn machine - that's all 230 boxes of popcorn minus however many boxes there were scattered across the floor, but there can't have been any more than about a hundred boxes on the floor - fly up into the air in all directions, but not in boxes, just individual popped corns flying about.
Time: 2:04:16pm
The individual popcorns fly down from the ceiling and it feels like it's raining popcorns for quite a long time. You had absolutely no idea a machine so small could contain so much popcorn. Popcorn begins to fill the entire room, landing on the carpet, table, tv, drawers, furniture, inside the lamp, and just about everywhere you can think of that could in even the vaguest sense act as a popcorn storage receptacle.
Time: 2:04:20pm
It continues to rain popcorn down. You strongly suspect that the machine actually bothered to make all 230 packets of popcorn by now, but at least the machine isn't making disgusting noises anymore by virtue of the fact that it no longer exists.
Time: 2:04:30pm
All the popcorn finally settles down, and you survey the damage.
Small chunks of metal from the popcorn machine that used to be there are scattered across the room amongst the popcorn. Unfortunately they've made small dents in a few things like the TV screen. It looks like it should still work, but the dents are definitely noticeable even from a moderate distance.
Popcorns have covered the entire room to an average depth of about 6 cm in popcorn (I didn't work this out, I'm just guessing how much 230 packets of popcorn strewn across a decent sized room would amount to. Feel free to call me out on this if my guess is way off.) So up to your ankles or something. I mean, it's now impossible to walk across the floor without trampling on loads of popcorn (and even more riskily - the metal bits from the machine - and the screws from where you got the hammer from). There is no other way to describe it - it is a true popcornocalypse.
You test the TV by crunching popcorns under your feet (i.e. walking) until you get to it, and turn it on. Fortunately the TV still works.
Time: 2:05:00pm
You have no clue what to do now. Nothing is there to be done, except clean up the 230 popcorns, the metal bits and pieces lying around everywhere, and the 500 screws from the room you got the hammer from.
Unfortunately, you know full well that there is no way you can do this in 25 minutes.
You think about telling your friend to not bother coming along after all, but you think that you definitely need quite a lot of extra help to clean up all the surrounding mess.
You munch a few popcorns because you're hungry. They taste just like they're supposed to.
You're still feeling hopeless and desperate, because you have no idea how any of this happened, and you can't conceivably think of a way to efficiently clean all of this up.
What do you do?