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Bizarre Twist to the EPC Story

(an excerpt from one of my books)

My compulsion to think of the social needs of patients probably stems from watching too many episodes of Marcus Welby, MD as a youngster. Would you like to meet the patient who cured me of this compulsion?

First, a preface to make this story understandable. Years ago, I noticed that the brass-colored prongs on electrical outlet plugs eventually become tarnished. I wondered if this tarnish would increase the contact resistance of the plug and thus waste energy (whenever electrical current passes through a resistor, energy is wasted). I performed some measurements and determined that this waste does indeed occur; the worst plug I tested was wasting 25% of the energy being supplied to that device. Aren’t you appalled? Well, I was. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I made a device to quickly remove the tarnish from plugs, giving it the rather unimaginative name of EPC (for electrical plug cleaner).

It worked, but I wasn’t done yet. I wanted to sell them. Taking a cue from the mavens of marketing, I decided to copy their brilliant strategies of persuasion and incorporate a surefire means of drawing the attention of men to my advertisements:  include a beautiful woman in the ad. (It may seem sexist of me to say this, but I thought that men were more likely than women to spend countless sleepless nights worrying about electrical contact resistance.)

Besides being an inventor, I’m also something of a cheapskate. Consequently, I wasn’t going to pay a lot of money for a professional model to pose with my EPC. The apparent solution to this dilemma popped into my mind while speaking with a beautiful patient on welfare who was in obvious need of money. I offered her $100 if she would smile and hold the EPC while I took her picture. I wasn’t sure if Marcus Welby would approve, but I thought I’d be able to help her out and save some money in the process. She seemed befuddled by the request and didn’t give me a straight answer, so I assumed she wasn’t interested and let the matter drop.

A few weeks later my boss called, saying that someone in administration had fielded a call from her highly irate mother who lived 1000 miles away. The two women had somehow concluded that I wanted her to pose nude while holding the EPC. This was such a non sequitur that I wondered if they were hopelessly stupid, or just trying to extort some money from a well-intentioned but naive inventor. Posing nude with an EPC? Oh, wouldn’t newspapers just love an ad like that? I may be as horny as the next man but I don’t have a sick mind. Until those two fruitcakes mentioned it, the thought of posing nude with an EPC never occurred to me. Thanks for the education, ladies.

You know what they say: "No good deed goes unpunished."

Back to Dr. Pezzi's gizmo page

Organize your garage beautifully.

If you want a beautiful garage that is easy to keep organized, see the GarageScapes web site:  www.GarageScapes.com.

ContactMeFree is a dream come true for anyone involved in online dating. If you have your profile posted on a personals site but don't pay for a membership, you know how limited you are in terms of being able to send or receive messages. You probably assume that those limitations disappear if you pay for a membership. Guess what? You are still far more limited than you realize. Frankly, if you knew how limited you were, you would be furious that the personals site was charging you $20 to $50 per month and still keeping the shackles on you! The person who created ContactMeFree was so outraged by those limitations that he decided to do something about it. So he did!

You know that writer's block you get when you sit down to write the essay portion of your personal profile for online dating? And you know the difficulty you have trying to think of a catchy headline? Well, MyProfileWriter allows you to create a profile essay and headline without typing, just by clicking!

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