OT: I love chocolate, but ...

["Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rslade () sprint ca>]

I find some amusement in looking through the "sell stuff to people with more 
money than sense" catalogues, such as those in in-flight magazines.  I am 
reminded of the line from C. S. Lewis's "Crissmas and Exmas" about "whatever, 
being ridiculous and useless, they have been unable to sell during the year, they 
now sell as an Exmas gift."  The "loyalty" card mailings tend to be full of the 
same sort of thing.

The latest "Air Miles" magazine has one such.  It's a chocolate fondue fountain.  
It is one of the most bizarre things, and ideas, I've ever seen.  From the 
illustration, it seems to have a (rather lumpy) spire in the middle, rising from 
something that looks like a smallish crockpot.  I assume that there is a pump 
down at the base, probably left over from the tranquility fountains that seem to 
have had their day.

Given the spire in the middle, it would be difficult to dunk your fruit, cake, or 
whatever into the chocolate.  I suppose you could stick something against the 
spire, and wait for the chocolate to drizzle down over it, but it doesn't seem that it 
would be any cleaner than dunking.  I also imagine that you would have to have a 
fairly good heater in the pot since the chocolate running down the spire would 
cool off quite quickly.  (You'd probably also be lmited in the recipes you could use: 
a good, thick, fudgy sauce would probably gum up the works.  Speaking of the 
which, it would probably be almost impossible to try and clean it.)

No, this has nothing to do with security, but it was just too weird not to share.

I figured that I would have to prove that there was such a thing, and so did a search 
on the net.  To my astonishment, these things seem to be all over the place.  
AltaVista found almost a quarter of a million pages.  (Although most of them 
seem to be for caterers.)

http://www.shopathometv.com/shopathome/network/jshop/shopdev/product/detail.
jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2108407619.1128014469@@@@&BV_EngineID=cc
claddfkmfflhkcefeceeedffjdfnj.0&OID=73320&catOID=-26041&n=0

This one's even got a video:

http://www.homefonduefountain.com/

This one shows that the spire is not solid: the chocolate is supposed to pour off 
plates and I guess you stick your fruit and stuff through the "chocolatefall."

http://www.instawares.com/Chocolate-Fountains.2.4.8413.0.0.8.htm

This one looks closest to what I saw in the AirMiles magazine.  Note the finger 
and strawberry for size:

http://www.cozycook.com/kitchen-
38410.html?src=over&src1=kit_fondue_fountain&src2=chocolate+fondue+fountai
n

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade () vcn bc ca      slade () victoria tc ca      rslade () sun soci niu edu
The magnificent and the ridiculous are so close that they touch.
                                           - Le Bovier de Fontenelle
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade

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