Writers: Myles Andrews-Duve, Jon Hammond and Christian Monroy, SSW
As you may have heard already, Elon Musk’s far-from-aptly-named Boring Company recently and very quickly sold all 20,000 of the flamethrowers that it was selling — each flamethrower a fabulous deal at only $500 apiece. Regrettably, we were not any of the lucky new owners of these devices, despite their many practical uses for both home and business. So instead, we sat down to brainstorm situations that would be immensely improved with access to a flamethrower.
- When it’s raining outside: Living in Southern California makes it really easy to forget that rain actually exists, so when those cold, wet mornings bite at you while you’re walking around outside, they bite hard. Maybe you were caught off guard in your shorts and t-shirt because you expected to see sunshine courtesy of all that global warming, not icy rain and frigid winds that keep trying to eat your umbrella. You might consider buying a sweater or a raincoat, but why bother wasting money on a sensible investment like that when you can have a flamethrower? If you think about it, it’s a portable campfire! You can toast up s’mores wherever you want, just watch your fingers.
- When you want to light up but nobody has a lighter on hand: Bumping a lighter off someone in a public setting can be difficult for two reasons. One, watching people judge you for smoking can be uncomfortable and two, nobody ever seems to have one when you need it. This is prime reason to always keep a flamethrower nearby. Just imagine being the one in your group who saves the day by lighting 10 cigarettes at once with one Elon Musk-provided flame, and also the new friends you’ll attract along the way. Lighting up has never been easier (especially with Prop. 64 on your side).
- Instant noodles become even more instant: Nobody can question the economic efficiency of subsisting on cheap noodles, but it’s fair to say that they’re not really “instant” if you have to boil water and actually cook the noodles on a real stove or in a microwave. After all, cooking takes a whole couple of minutes! We are all busy people, we have things to do and places to be; each nanosecond of your time is liquid gold, and you’re wasting it while you wait for your noodles. Why let it keep going to waste? Cup of water, noodles, flamethrower. Bam. Instant noodles? More like even-more-instant noodles.
- Melting snow in your driveway instead of shoveling it: Snow is usually pretty fun, except when you have to shovel it out of a driveway. Nothing about that is fun. But someone has to do it, so why not make it less of a pain? You could quickly and efficiently melt it all away with your flamethrower, easy-peasy. Why not have fun with it? You could even sculpt the snow with the fire into shapes or snowmen too! Then you could walk away from your driveway and look back on all your creations with pride. This, people, is why Prometheus stole flamethrowers from the gods.
- Drying your clothes when you’re in a hurry and have nothing to wear: I know there are plenty of students who have woken up five, 10, maybe 50 minutes late for class, it happens. But nothing is worse than sleeping through a dozen alarms for your 8 a.m. only to realize you have nothing to wear because your laundry isn’t done. Of course, you don’t have time to put them in the dryer because that takes way too long and you can’t be bothered to put up the quarters, so what do you do? You fire up ol’ reliable and dry the whole load in five minutes, for free! Wrinkles will be a thing of the past, and who doesn’t love how cozy you feel when you put on freshly dried clothes? People who don’t have flamethrowers, that’s who.
- If there’s a bug stuck in your house: Maybe you haven’t been on top of keeping your apartment or house clean, and you occasionally run across the odd colony of spiders and roaches who share a room with you. Or maybe you just left the door open a half-second too long and a fly — or, God forbid, a wasp — wandered inside. Why bother moving around all your furniture or risk breaking all your antique vases trying to swat the insects with a rolled-up newspaper (not to mention the mess of bug guts that leaves)? While we’d be flattered if you used your copy of The Highlander to swat bugs, you could sit back and enjoy the week’s articles instead if you simply burned the bugs with a flamethrower.
- Have a barbecue whenever and wherever you want: I’m sure we have all been in this position before: You and your friends are hanging out, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool when you all decide that you’re hungry. One of your friends then says, “Hey why don’t we grill some burgers?” The only problem is you don’t have a grill. But worry not, because The Boring Company’s flamethrower lets you hit the grill no matter the situation. Walking to the gym? Pull over for a quick burger. Taking a bathroom break? Flame grill some crisp vegetables. Sad because the bookstore just robbed you blind? Sear yourself some juicy steaks. And the best part is you will never have to to worry about lugging your grill and charcoal around again.
- Keep warm in the winter if your landlord cuts off your electricity because you haven’t paid your bills because you’re a college student and made poor choices with your money/life: As you may or may not know, running the heater costs money, which is a rare commodity amongst college kids. Adding yet another bill to your financial burden is ridiculous, I mean where is the extra money coming going to come from? Buy less beer or recreational drugs? No way. Spend less on video games? Fat chance. Stop spending ungodly amounts of money on a children’s card game? I told you I don’t have a problem mom, I can stop when I want. Of course, with a flamethrower you could keep yourself warm at no extra cost by burning your trash or your beer boxes or your 10 foot pile of common trading cards.
- Give your car a speed boost on the freeway: Our Managing Editor and resident engineer had to step in for this one. “Does the thrust from the flamethrower justify the additional mass of fuel and flamethrower for overall velocity?” he asked. We have no idea, but racing games often use fire coming out of a tailpipe as a visual representation of speed boosts and going fast in general, so it appears that the science is settled on this one. Video games haven’t lied to us yet.
- It’s dark and you don’t want to waste your phone battery on the flashlight: We have all been here. You dropped something outside after a party, or dropped something in the middle of a crowd or dropped the ball on paying your electric bill (see: Number 8) and now you need to crouch down to find it. In the olden days, folks would use candles, today, we use iPhones, but going forward we would be much better served to use a trusty flamethrower. Imagine if they had The Boring Company during the witch hunts or the cavemen era; not only would Ben Franklin be obsolete but it would be remarkably easier to get the job done. Fast forward to today, when our iPhone flashlights depend on batteries and batteries depend on an available charger. Now, next time you drop your keys in a mosh pit, you can preserve that remaining five percent and whip out your fiery friend, which requires nothing more than the sheer force of an index finger.
