When I am King: Fast Lane

When I am King...

We will have more products tailored for terribly busy people like us.

I'm a busy guy. And from what I've seen, everyone else is a busy guy too. Except the ones who aren't guys. But they're busy, too. And even the ones who aren't busy are pretty busy being not busy.

We've seen great speed advents in our society, like drive-up espresso bars and electric pepper mills, that have enabled us to perform tasks much faster with far less effort. They allow us to do even more of the important things in life. Like getting another espresso. And grinding more pepper.

But I know that we can go further. Think how much more we could accomplish as a society if we made everything in life that much quicker. I'm positive that on your death bed you would like to be thinking, “I accomplished twice the number of things I thought I could,” rather than “I wish I could have had more espresso. And pepper.”

Here are some examples of activities that I would like to optimize:

Reading

Our faster lifestyles mean that we have shorter attention spans and less time for wading through words, words, words. No longer do we have weeks to plow through single Faulknerian sentences, or years to struggle through epic tomes like War & Peace and The Little Prince. Instead, we need shorter books, smaller chapters, littler words. Short sentences. Like. These. OK?

Flowers

Have you ever noticed that you have to actually get close to flowers to get the scents they offer? Who has time to stop and smell the roses? I think it's about time that the roses came to us. Flowers will be genetically engineered to grow little fans that waft their smell up toward where our noses are passing switfly by, saving countless seconds of otherwise wasted time relaxing and enjoying life.

Pre-prepared food

There are many great prepared meals out there today, such as:

• TV dinners, warmed by the heat of the TV.
• Frozen casseroles that only need to be baked before going uneaten by children.
• “Lunchables,” whose nutrients ensure that their positive impact on kids' bodies will be as insignificant as the time that it takes to make them.

There are also meals that are partially-cooked, such as half-baked pizza, so that even the obscenely difficult and time-consuming act of heating the food is reduced.

But these foods don't go far enough. I still spend enormous amounts of time consuming the food. The process of putting the food on a plate, picking it up, putting it in my mouth, chewing it, swallowing it, and then digesting it is incredibly tedious, repetetive, and time-consuming. I'd like to extend the half-baked idea to eating, and be able to purchase half-eaten meals. I could then buy something that was nearly cooked and nearly eaten, and quickly go about my terrribly important life outside of food. Like getting another coffee.

Teeth Brushing

Brushing teeth is an important task, if only because it staves off more time lost sitting in the dentist's chair getting teeth filled and pulled. But it's just time down the drain. Flossing too, which I remember to do every month or two, has strings attached.

What if we embedded bristles and strings in our food, so that teeth got brushed automatically? Sure, it might taste a bit unusual, but the thought that your teeth were getting cleaned as you chewed through the gristle of your burger would more than compensate for any odd textures.

I envision entirely new foods cropping up, such as kids “Flossin' Gloss”: the world's first sugar-coated, dissolvable flossing string. Or how about “Crème Brushlée”: just like the succulent, smooth dessert, only with nylon bristles baked in to ensure that our teeth stay healthy right on through dessert.

Yep, bristle-embedded food will become everyone's best friend. Just think: as they go through our digestive system, the bristles will probably clean up a few other things along the way. With friends like these, who needs enemas?


I'm sure there are other bright ideas for products that can help speed up our tediously slow lives. And if I think of any, I'll be sure to update you. But right now, I gotta go take a nap.