Wednesday, September 1, 2004

One of the more imaginative epithets I’ve received at work, gentle reader, is “Ben the Lunchtime Terrorist.” Before you jump to any conclusions and envision gory panoramas of destruction, let me assure you this doesn’t involve violence or incendiary devices. We’ve got enough of those things to go around and then some. The reason I’m called the Lunchtime Terrorist, quite simply, is because I sometimes hijack lunch plans.

A few people will decide on a place of ingestion, what some might call a restaurant, but these decisions prove very malleable. Why walk blindly to Chili’s when the true foodgeist of the office calls for sandwiches? Why trot to a pizza joint when everyone–unbeknownst to themselves–actually desires burritos? See, that’s my function: I divine what people really want to eat, and I don’t have to hold a goddamn séance to reach my conclusions.

As I mentioned yesterday, though, my powers of divination have waned lately. I mean, can you honestly think of anyone, living or dead, who would truly desire foot after foot of Subway goodness in a single week? For the love of Benjy, the store is named after a rancid underground labyrinth of urine and rusty tracks! That’s why I’ve handed my autonomy to the Lunch-o-Matic, a simple but useful piece of JavaScript made by my co-worker. It contains a full list of all the restaurants in the area. You hit the button, it spits out a random eatery. Hit it again and–guess what?–out comes another name.

The system isn’t perfect, of course, as it tends to select restaurants that fly in the face of the foodgeist, so that’s why we pick five names and choose from those. Ah, the wonders of automation and robotics! I’m considering purchasing a robot to clean and organize my gun collection. He will have knives for hands, which will allow him to cook for me. I will also program him to guard over me while I sleep soundly each night. See? Absolutely wondrous.