But fear not! The Spray-Tan Tent is a lightweight nylon contraption that pops up into a cubicle four feet wide and seven feet high. Available in a range of colors and equipped with a clear vinyl roof, this portable sanctuary maintains your modesty while keeping the mess of sunless tanning contained. Best of all, it folds down to the size of a large handbag when not in use.
Of course, the tent alone—not even factoring in the cost of the airbrush, pigment, and ventilation fan—could set you back as much as $100. Because this is totally a legitimate, professional-grade accessory, and in no way simply a child’s pop-up play tent repurposed and marked up to a ridiculous margin for a new market.
WIND-POWERED MOLE CHASER
Tired of moles and gophers ruining your lawn and garden? Instead of using poisons and traps to kill them, you can annoy them off your property with the $23 Mole Chaser. It looks like a weathervane or windmill mounted on a long metal pipe that you hammer into the ground. The spinning blades vibrate in the wind, sending pulses down the pole and into the soil—which drive the underground varmints nuts, forcing them to move elsewhere. The idea may sound farfetched, but the devices have been around for years, and gardeners swear by them.
Each Mole Chaser is effective across 10,000 square feet of ground. And if there isn’t a lot of wind in your area, you can use battery-and solar-powered versions, which cost $25 to $40.
SKITTLES SORTING MACHINE
One of the things that makes obsessive-compulsive disorder such a drag is that it takes so much time to get anything done, especially the arduous task of sorting through bags of multicolored candy to separate the pieces by individual color. Thanks to an enterprising fellow by the name of Brian Egenriether, we now have the Skittles Sorting Machine.
The machine, which looks something like an old-fashioned food processor, uses BASIC Stamp 2 and 3 servos for actuation. An IR LED and phototransistor are used to stop the turnstile in position, which allows the color-sorted candies to drop into different bowls. If you understood any of that, congratulations, you deserve some Skittles!
Just don’t expect to eat them right away. A video Egenriether posted online of his machine in action reveals that it sorts Skittles at a rate of 37 per minute, or about as quickly as you could do it by hand. Still, it does free you up to perform more important tasks, like hand-sorting all your M&Ms.
THE NEARLY IMMORTAL SANDWICH
For decades, American soldiers have made do with MREs (short for “meal, ready-to-eat”). While these kits are necessarily easy to prepare and consume in the field, they’re notoriously unappetizing and typically contain stuff like bland crackers and freeze-dried meatloaf. However, they’ve been steadily getting tastier in recent years because military culinary scientists (a thing) have been researching new ways to keep foods fresh for longer and longer periods of time. One of their latest developments is a sandwich with a two-year shelf life.
Bacteria, mold, and moisture can turn a yummy sandwich into an icky mass of glop in just a few days. After studying stuff like honey and salt, which are exceptionally good at retaining moisture, the scientists got to work on a sandwich that does the same thing. In 2011 they unveiled a cutting-edge hoagie that can stay fresh for up to 24 months. It locks in moisture, which prevents the bread from going stale. It’s also stored in an air-sealed container with a packet that absorbs water molecules in the air. Soldiers say that the new sandwiches are a definite improvement over the ones they’re used to finding in their MREs, despite the strong possibility that that sandwich is older than their children.
TURTLE SUBMARINE
We generally think of the submarine as a modern invention, but it actually dates to the American Revolution. In 1775 Yale graduate David Bushnell designed a one-man submarine, which he called the Turtle. About six feet tall and three feet wide, and shaped like an egg, the Turtle consisted of two wooden shells waterproofed with tar and held together with steel loops, like a barrel. Inside were a variety of controls, including a foot pedal that cranked the propeller and a hand drill for boring into the hulls of enemy ships (damn the torpedos…because they hadn’t been invented yet).
The peculiar submersible attracted the attention of Benjamin Franklin, who knew a good invention when he saw one and recommended it to General George Washington. Washington was skeptical, but nevertheless provided funds for the Turtle’s completion in 1776. Sergeant Ezra Lee was given the daunting task of pedaling the craft through the waters of New York Harbor. His mission: attach a keg of explosive powder to the hull of the British warship H.M.S. Eagle. Unfortunately, because of copper plating, Sgt. Lee wasn’t able to bore into the hull as planned, and he was forced to abandon the attempt, and let his makeshift torpedo float away (it later exploded in the East River). A second attempt to blow up another British ship failed, and General Washington decided to abandon the project, although he praised it as a “work of genius.”
THE WORLD’S TINIEST CAR
….isn’t very much fun to drive. In February 2013, Jeremy Clarkson, who co-hosts the BBC program Top Gear, unveiled the P45, which he dubbed “The World’s Tiniest Car.” Clarkson allegedly designed the hybrid vehicle, taking inspiration from the Peel P50, a three-wheeled British “microcar” that was released in the early ’60s. It’s still considered the smallest production car of all time. Like the P50, the P45 was built to be both street-legal and as tiny as possible.
Clarkson’s creation resembles the offspring of a Jet Ski and a Rascal scooter. The P45’s roof consists of a helmet. The closest thing to a windshield? The helmet’s visor. There are no side doors, and the contraption makes a Mini Cooper look like a Humvee. But the driver is enclosed, just barely, with their head popping out, so it technically isn’t a motorcycle.
Nevertheless, with its 1.7-liter fuel tank and two-stroke 100cc engine, the P45 gets amazing gas mileage. As Clarkson proved during his test drive, it’s also a fantastic car for weaving in and out of traffic on the UK’s narrow roadways. The driver needn’t get out of the P45 to fill up the tank at gas stations either. On the other hand, the P45’s not so great with potholes, and driving it on freeways can be downright terrifying. As of press time, exactly none of the car industry’s major manufacturers were clamoring for Clarkson’s blueprints.
HORSE CAR
Automakers in the 1890s faced major obstacles in winning public acceptance of their newfangled contraptions. People still trusted horse-drawn vehicles over the unreliable early autos, and because automobiles occasionally spooked the horses they passed on the road, many people considered cars a public nuisance. The obvious solution: Combine this newfangled contraption with the old-fashioned reliable appearance of a horse. By which we mean, “Tack a huge fake horse on the front.”
In 1897 carmaker Joseph Barsaleux built a car that had a combustion engine and all that, but looked like a carriage, with a full-size replica of a horse in front. The horse camouflaged a fifth wheel that provided power and steering, literally pulling the rest of the vehicle along the road. The driver steered the vehicle using a brace and bit attached to the faux horse’s mouth for that familiar horse-controlling sensation. However, by the dawn of the 20th century, the public was getting used to automobiles, and people were replacing their carriages and horses with them. There was no longer a market for Barsaleux and his weird mannequin horse car.
PEEPING THOMAS
There are lots of products out there designed to make it look like someone is home when you’re on vacation (or even just at work for the day), so as to thwart burglars who might be casing the joint. Automatic light timers are one example. Another is the Peeping Thomas, invented by Terry Kirby after he walked in on three men trying to burgle his Texas home.
Kirby says he got the idea for Peeping Thomas almost immediately after the robbery. He went over to his grandmother’s house to stay for the night; when he knocked on the door, she put an index finger through two slats of mini-blinds and peered out to make sure it was him.
Peeping Thomas is an automated mini-blinds
peering device, making it look like somebody is suspiciously leering out the window at you, the potential criminal. How it works: A base holds up a two-foot-tall metal pole. A hook in the middle of the pole goes beneath an eye-level mini-blinds slat. A timer in the device moves the hook, and opens the mini-blinds just a hair, at intervals of 5, 10, 20, or 30 minutes. That gives the impression that someone is home…and constantly checking.
TWO HOMEMADE INSTRUMENTS
Pencilina: Invented by Brooklyn musician Bradford Reed, who used to play the zither in Blue Man Group, the pencilina features two wooden boards that serve as guitar necks, mounted atop legs, like a steel guitar. One board is strung with six guitar strings, and the other has four bass strings. Six electric pickups gather and send the sound to an amplifier. Double guitar! But wait, there’s more: Wedged under the guitar strings are two drumsticks that can be moved to change string length and, thus, pitch. The pencilina creates an array of almost otherworldly sounds that the Village Voice said “sounds like Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Rich playing ‘Dueling Banjos.’”
Glockenmundharmonika: This instrument was patented in 1908 by New Jersey inventor Ernst Koch, and its mouthful of a name means “bells mouth harmonica” in German. Unlike a normal harmonica, it didn’t have any reeds—it had 22 little bells mounted inside. When you blew into the Glockenmundharmonika, tiny spring-loaded hammers would strike the bells. It’s unknown if any were ever made, because none are known to exist today. There no recordings either, so nobody’s exactly sure what it sounded like, although you can imagine it sounding “tinkly,” if it actually worked.
THE ONLINE CHICKEN PETTER
Ever feel the need to pet a chicken, but there just wasn’t one handy? Good news: The University of Singapore has invented the Touchy Internet System. “We understand the perceived eccentricity of a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely,” says developer Adrian Cheok. “But this has a much wider significance.” The device will eventually allow people at zoos to scratch otherwise dangerous animals, such as lions and bears.
Users pet a chicken-shaped doll that’s hooked up to their computer, while watching a webcam image of a real chicken on the screen. Sensors on the doll relay the petting location to another computer, which then activates tiny motors in a lightweight jacket that the real chicken wears. The motors’ vibrations mimic the sensation of being petted exactly as the user at home is petting the doll. “This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed,” says Professor Cheok.
AMAZING TOILETS
In 1991 Saturday Night Live aired a fake commercial for an imaginary product called “The Love Toilet”—a two-person toilet for people so in love that they never want to be apart, even when they have to use the facilities. Like a Victorian love seat, the side-by-side toilets faced opposite directions, so the lovers could stare into each others’ eyes. In a case of life imitating art, the TwoDaLoo is now a real item, available for purchase for only $1,400. The only difference between the real TwoDaLoo and the fictional Love Toilet: The TwoDaLoo has a “privacy” bar separating the two commodes (as if that’s an issue).
The Great John is the first toilet, says the manufacturer, made specifically for “modern Americans.” By which they mean it’s an extra-large toilet made for extra-large people. Invented by the Great John Toilet Company, the Great John can reportedly accommodate any person up to the weight of 2,000 pounds. The base is wider than a conventional toilet’s to provide extra support, and it connects to the bathroom floor with four anchors instead of the standard two. The seat provides 150 percent more “contact area” than a normal toilet (as well as offering side wings to prevent pinching if flesh still hangs over the larger seat).
Lots of people want to teach their cats how to use the toilet (see here); it goes the other way with the Compost Toilet, essentially a litter box for humans. According to the World Toilet Organization, a legitimate, ultra-serious trade group based in Singapore, this Chinese toilet is a steel box filled with sawdust. It has a microcomputer that senses when the box has solid waste in it, and a mechanical arm that rotates the sawdust, burying the waste, which the company says can later be used as organic fertilizer, which you can then use to grow vegetables to turn into poop later, thus completing the circle of life. The device stays at a constant temperature of about 120°F, hot enough to make liquid waste evaporate, and has specially formulated low-odor sawdust that needs to be changed only once a year, but you can change it more often if you want to.
Shop while you plop! Twyford, a toilet manufacturer in Cheshire, England, created the Versatile Interactive Pan (VIP), a toilet that analyzes your urine and stool samples for dietary deficiencies, compiles a shopping list of needed nutritional items, then e-mails your local supermarket to order the foods. “If, for example, a person is short on roughage one day,” says Twyford spokesperson Terry Woolliscroft, “an order of beans or lentils will be sent from the VIP to the supermarket and delivered the same day.” The toilet can also e-mail a doctor if it detects health problems. Added bonuses: The seat is voice-activated, and the toilet flushes automatically. (That is one pushy toilet.)
GIVE IT A FRY
Enterprising food scientists have recently unleashed amazing new things at state fairs around the U.S., deep-frying things never before thought eligible for deep-frying.
• Bubblegum. Marshmallows flavored with bubblegum essence, then battered, fried, and sprinkled with Chiclets.
• Butter. Balls of butter are frozen, then breaded and fried.
• Chicken-Fried Bacon. The bacon is drenched in buttermilk, then breaded and deep-fried.
• Fried Pop-Tarts. It’s three breakfast treats in one! It’s a Pop-Tart stuffed into donut batter, then fried up like a donut and topped with Fruity Pebbles cereal.
• Fried Salad. Salads don’t have to be healthy. This is a tortilla filled with spinach, ham, cheese, chicken, tomatoes, and lettuce, then deep-fried and served on a bed of lettuce that no one will ever eat.
• Fried Frito Pie. Frito Pie is a southern favorite: a bowl of Fritos corn chips topped with chili, cheese, and onions. The fried version takes balls of chili, cheese, and onions, and rolls them in a breading made with crushed Fritos.
• Fried Chicken Skin. No meat necessary.
WINGSUIT
A company called Phoenix-Fly (whose motto is “Human Flight Innovations”) sells several versions of what it calls a Wingsuit. The Wingsuit is, essentially, a voluminous full-body tracksuit that fans out in the wind and allows you to hurl yourself out of airplanes and off of cliffs without dying (usually). As the name suggests, most Wingsuit models have large flaps of fabric along the sides that look like wings, eliminating the need for a silly parachute.
The Wingsuit website explains that to even be eligible to purchase a Wingsuit, you have to have completed at least 200 skydives. Ominously, it also indicates that several people have died “so far” in Wingsuit-clad jumping mishaps.
Prices vary; $580 gets you the most basic model of Wingsuit, which looks like a workaday nylon track suit, while for $1,690 you can upgrade to the deluxe Vampire model, which is custom-made for each buyer and looks sort of like what you’d get if you sewed yourself into a camping tent. But hey, if you’re the type who doesn’t mind jumping off of a skyscraper without a parachute, you probably also don’t mind looking like a flying squirrel while doing it.
HEELS ON WHEELS
High heels are uncomfortable, they’re awkward, and there’s a good chance you’ll break your neck while wearing them. They’re also not a product of the 20th century—they date to ancient Egypt. Those ancient shoes, which were made out of leather and held together with intricate laces, were all the rage among the higher classes circa 3500 B.C.
But one thing the Egyptians most certainly didn’t have back then were training wheels for the clunky shoes. While you probably won’t find a pair of “High-Heel Training Wheels” at the nearest Lady Foot Locker, photos of homemade versions have been passed around online for years. M
ost of the images feature conventional shoes with repurposed toy-car wheels attached to the heels, offering support for those learning how to walk around in the godforsaken things.
Kenji Kawakami, the magazine editor responsible for the Japanese art of Chindogu (see here), in addition to plenty of ridiculous inventions, may have been the first person to dream up the silly but brilliant devices. While you would think that every young and fashionable gal on the planet would have a pair in her closet, these shoes have yet to become commonplace. Why? Well, among other reasons, the wheels would probably only work well on perfectly smooth surfaces. And stairs would be a challenge.
BEERBRELLA
There’s really nothing better than kicking back on a nice day with a tall, frosty beer, either in the backyard, on the beach, or on the porch. The problem with that is that while the sun warms you up nicely, it also warms up your bottle or can of beer, which isn’t nice.
It’s not like there aren’t solutions to this problem. 1) You could drink your beer really fast, but too much beer + sun = naps. 2) The ever-popular foam “beer koozie” wraps around a can and keeps a beer cold, but really only because it blocks the warmth of your hand. It also only works for cans. 3) The Beerbrella.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Inventions Page 15