ost of the time, the things I buy work as they are intended to. Sometimes, whether due to bad luck, human interference, or poor manufacture, they don't. This page collects blog entries about the times they don't work, for whatever reason.

More recent updates are added on top of this page.

April 19, 2003

Honey bear!  Everyone is familiar with those cute little plastic honey bears that contain... honey.  Squeeze bottle things, bear-shaped.  Looks a lot like this, though mine actually has a sort of nozzle on top, like a dunce cap.

Mine is nearly empty, though I couldn't really say why, since I never use honey in anything, other than very occasionally if I make a quick and calorie-intensive PB, banana, and Honey topless sammich.  It's an old bear.  A Papa Bear!

Anyway, the half an inch of remaining honey hardens into a crystalline solid, and becomes impossible to extract.  However there is an easy way to get it out; heat it.  Nuke the ursine squeeze bottle for about 15 seconds and it heats up enough to become liquidy.  It's not properly viscous, being a bit too runny, but you can wait and let it cool down some, or just drizzle it out all runny and sloppy, while saying, "What the hell."  You can probably guess my technique.

The dangerous part is that the honey becomes super-heated very quickly, and when I say "nuke it for about 15 seconds" I mean it.  Twenty tops.  You go 30 seconds the honey will melt the bottle, possibly pouring out into your microwave.  This is sort of hard to clean up, if you're wondering.

So just a bit ago I was eating the last slab of cornbread, and decided I'd do a bit of honey on them.  Other slabs had been eaten plain, or with some raspberry preserves, and one had just plain canola spread on it.  But I wanted honey on the last one.  And I put in the honey bear, and was busying myself pouring a drink and washing out the baking pan, and guess who forgot to stop the honey bear BBQ before the 30 sec timer went off?

Not me!

I stopped it with about 6 seconds left, after hearing a small explosion from inside the microwave. *cough*  But hey, it was before the 30 seconds!

The bear had developed a volcano-like orifice, just a tiny pin prick sized hole, through which about half the remaining honey had been ejaculated rather forcefully, spraying across the rotating plastic plate in the microwave, and all over the side wall.  I removed Papa Bear and laid him on the counter on his back, with the rupture pointing upwards, and quickly wiped off the side of the microwave before the sticky sweet splooge had a chance to cool down and harden.  While washing off the plate, I looked at the bear, and had to giggle.  The rupture was exactly in front, and about a centimeter up from the base.  Exactly where Papa Bear's baby-bear maker would be, if he enjoyed the benefits of anatomically-accurate modeling.

The funnier part was that the rupture proved self-sealing.  The plastic that melted resealed itself as it cooled, thus depriving me of the dubious joy of sucking Papa Bear's sticky goodness out that way. 

It was probably for the best, since I have a full honey bear container in the pantry, and I think it's a Mama Bear.  And you know how angry mama bears get when they see someone coming between them and their Little Bear.

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