With all the technological advances society has made over the last 100 years you’d think they would have found a way to replace nails.
Think about it. Sharp metal rods that we hammer into layers of wood to keep them stuck together. Doesn’t that seem like a little primitive? I mean, we’ve replaced stone wheels with tires. We’ve replaced radio with TV and digital media. We’ve replaced wired telephones with cell phones and Blackberrys. We’ve replaced the record with the tape with the CD with the MP3 file. We’ve replaced bi-planes with airplanes with stealth bombers with flying discs that everyone thinks are UFOs but are really government-created nuclear spinning thingies.
But the nail? Still here.
I’ve thought long and hard about this whole nail thing. And in thinking about the primitive-ness of the nail, I have come up with many other options that would be greatly welcomed into society. Here are some of my ideas:
1. Replace the nail with the “light-beam goo gun.” The light beam device would shoot a beam of light between two pieces of plywood, burning a hole in through the two of them, then squirting a gel into that hole which would be much stronger than everyday nails and steel and metal.
2. Replace the nail with the “latch-poker.” The latch-poker would hammer a rod into two beams or wood planks, and as that beam was firmly inside, would reconstitute the wooden beams and add latches and grooves which would easily connect up (think about how Lincoln Logs connect up). When the latch-poker re-emerged from the wooden slats, they would be connected by complicated wooden latches and would need no metal to keep them together.
3. Replace the nail with silly putty. Obviously, an already-created technological marvel, Silly Putty could be easily shoved inbetween two pieces of wood and keep them stuck together. But also, and more importantly, if you were waiting to put a house together and had all that Silly Putty on hand, you could create a thousand little balls and bounce them all over, or spread them across the funny pages and keep your favorite Dilbert comic with you at all times. Even better, you could take those copied funnies (now imprinted on your Silly Putty) and place that putty inbetween wooden slats. Then, you wouldn’t just have a house put together – but a “funny house”… one with comics hidden between each seam and corner.
And so you can see – from a normal guy without any scientific background (I know, hard to believe) comes a slew of amazingly great ideas for replacing the boring, everyday nail. I have not patented these ideas nor will I ever do so for the one very important reason that I feel the replacement of the nail is more important than any notoriety or fame or fortune for yours truly.
The nail must be replaced. Let’s get together to make that a reality. How? Start a message board or something, I don’t know. Let’s just get the dialogue started before North Korea invents their own replacement.
If that were to happen…that little meglomaniacal short-little dictator-dude and his newly created light-beam goo gun, well, we’d all be done for. And really, really embarassed.
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