My friend, Joey, built a rinky dink ice cream machine out of cardboard and pencils. When he poured the cream into the top hole, the sides would darken and the box would leak. He swore this was the best way, even though he would lose a lot of it in the process. You could always tell when he’d made a batch because the floor was sticky.
Once, he made a batch with broken candy canes and almond paste. He didn’t mop the floor for a whole week because the room smelled that good.
Lately, his cat has been clawing at the machine, so he has held off on making more.
He says his next project is to build an ice cream machine that makes a regular ice cream encased in a ball of astronaut ice cream. He says that in the future, astronauts will enjoy tasting the sweet danger of a potential accident by breaking the candy sphere, as it could spread inside the ship and ruin the controls. Figuring out how to get back to earth in the lunar module with a sugar rush could be part of the culinary experience, he says.
I don’t think Joey’s ever met an astronaut. I hope he gets his meeting because I’m looking forward to watching him talk out loud to the NASA guy and hoping that the NASA guy peppers his reply with the words “fuhhk” and “dammit”.

Jim was working on two projects. The first one was a pipe organ made of robotic mouths. It was based on a toy that he’d seen as a child which was a musical keyboard where each key made a tone and triggered the release of a puppet character ascribed to the sound. Jim’s organ ascribed a series of robotic mouths to respective keys and stops. Each mouth was able to pronounce vowels but not consonants. The mouths were visible to the audience, whose reaction possibly dipped into the uncanny valley, a place usually reserved for androids. Jim worked on a set of 3 songs for his organ’s debut: Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the main themes of Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. His debut was a success. People loved his organ and his performance. Word got out and he was asked to play his organ on a semi-popular television program. The excitement inspired him to buy a fitted suit. Looking very sharp, he went on the television show, performed the Bach piece and stood in front of the hosts who also happened to be judges. One of the judges was in a couple of popular bands sometime ago and therefore could not be judged on anything.
“How long did it take you to build this?”
“Six years.”
“So, you wasted six years of your life?”
Jim promptly put his second project on hold.