Todd Stadler's blog

Now you're cooking — with time!

I think more than any other household appliance, the microwave makes me really think about the nature of time. It's just the most time-based device I can think of.

Put in your food, enter a time, and go. The food usually doesn't change appearance, it just gets hotter. Not like an oven, where time isn't as important as, say, whether the cheese has melted, or if the dough has risen.

But what really gets me about microwaves is the important lessons they teach me about what time is worth.

I am constantly surprised by what I can get done in the time I'm waiting for the microwave to go thirty seconds more. Thirty seconds - it seems like an infinitely short time. Nothing. And yet I can often go to the bathroom and wash my hands in that time. A complete voiding of my bladder, in zero time! Of course, being a guy helps.

Still, give me a minute, and I can gulp down a vitamin with my water, set the table, and still make it to the bathroom. A minute. I mean, really, it's barely enough time to bother marking on a clock face. People routinely ask me to give them a minute, and then take five or more. And yet the microwave gives me precisely that, and I am amazed at what I can get done.

It makes me wonder what I'm doing in the rest of my life.

If I can do all that in a minute, why do I feel like I got nothing done this whole evening? That's six hours - three hundred sixty minutes! I could go to the bathroom seven hundred twenty times, if I and my bladder were so inclined. Can't I at least get some good writing done, maybe pen a song or at least a song's lyrics or for heaven's sake a song's chorus' lyrics? Apparently not.

Viewed at such a larger scale, time slips by. It makes me think of quantum physics, in that there's something different going on at the smaller scale.

It really puts me in awe of people who create television commercials. They have but thirty seconds to not only tell you who they are, what they're selling, and why you should buy it, but often a compelling story with characters to wrap the whole thing in. They know the real value of thirty seconds.

And yet for most of us, thirty seconds are like pennies - we have them in spades, but if we lose them, well, that's okay. It's not until you realized that you didn't lose just a penny but several dollars that you feel at a loss.

I think the antithesis of the microwave is the television. Which is odd, considering how similar they look. Or used to, before TVs got rid of buttons on the actual set. I can only hope that man's unceasing quest for innovation in technology will someday lead to a microwave that can only be programmed with a remote control.

Anyhow, on a microwave, you say that you want to use it for so much time. Then you usually stand there waiting for those blasted two minutes to be over. Or, in my case, you go to the bathroom.

With a TV, you start it usually without any clear idea of when it'll be done, and the time flies by so quickly. No one would complain that a two minute show is too long.

I've seen people watch shows they considered utter bilge for longer than that, just because they didn't feel like changing the channel. You may argue that television programming is more entertaining than watching a burrito reheat, but have you seen some of those sitcoms? Are you sure that you wouldn't sometimes prefer the burrito?

Wait, when did this turn into a self-righteous anti-television screed? Criminy, can't I write one entry without resorting to hackneyed urban liberal claptrap?