No Zytrons In Range

Tonight for dinner, I thought I’d slowly kill myself in a slightly different way than normal and microwave-up a TV dinner instead of attempting to cook something, or attempting to eat something cooked at a fast food joint. After careful consideration, I chose Hungry-Man “Mexican Style Fiesta” as my main meal this evening. I am, after all, a man who is hungry. It consists of a plastic tray with three compartments. One has a oily-looking mass of refried beans, one has what an enchilada prepared by an alien from Venus who only received a vague recipe over the phone, and the third has the dessert: a brownie. (The box proudly proclaims it’s a Duncan Hines brand brownie.)

Here are the cooking instructions with the seemingly random application of boldface preserved:

MICROWAVE OVEN

1. Remove plastic cover from brownie. Keep plastic over refried beans and enchiladas.
2. Microwave on HIGH 4-1/2 minutes. Carefully remove brownie with a fork; set aside. Turn back plastic cover; stir refried beans. Replace plastic cover. Return tray to microwave oven.
3. Microwave on HIGH 2-1/2 minutes.
4. Let stand 1 minute in microwave oven. Stir refried beans and rice before serving.

Do you see the problem with these directions? The brownie is done a full 2-1/2 minutes before the rest of the meal! The delicious-smelling brownie, sitting idly on a plate for minutes while the hungry dinner-maker stares at a slow-moving two-minutes-and-change timer on their microwave screen.

I put forward that there is not a human being on earth who has followed these directions without eating the brownie first, and thus ruining their dinner.

(It doesn’t look like the picture on the box.)