Sunday, May 10, 2009

Three Teflon ® Tubing Presenters

Back on April 15 Dianna Booher had a blog post with an embedded link to a video with a “perfectly polished bozo presenter.” She saw the video while leading a writing workshop at Microsoft. He should be called a Teflon ® tubing presenter: slick on the outside, hollow on the inside and totally unbelievable. Watch and see what you think of the Rockwell Retro Encabulator.

When I saw that video I vaguely remembered hearing about encabulators long ago. I looked on YouTube and found a similar but longer Chrysler video. It uses two presenters: one who describes the Turbo Encabulator, and another who demonstrates how to diagnose and service it.

The product shown may actually be an Ultradrive electronically controlled automatic transaxle. Why is one presenter picking up that spark plug cable at 1:30? Also, what is that open box of Argo cornstarch doing sitting out on the service bench? Perhaps the other presenter used it to dry his sweaty palms.

Turboencabulator is the original terminology. Of course the product is an engineering joke; it is described entirely with doubletalk. The text might actually date back to 1946. A phony General Electric catalog page insert for the product apparently was created in 1962.



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