Through June we ran our Great Guide Entry Giveaway contest. Here is one of the entries, giving advice on not where to set when listening to certain music. At least, that’s what we got out of it!

Matter Disintegrator

The most widely known matter disintegrator is most easily constructed from a three-bar heater and a rendition of the “Queen of the Night” aria, sung by Diana Damrau. This fact was discovered by David Harvey, of Roundshaw, near Croydon, England, Earth, some years before the planet was destroyed.

David was listening to the aria on a cold winter night and accidentally put his coffee down at the precisely-required distance between the heater and his laptop speakers. His mug, the coffee and the fully-contained marshmallows instantly disappeared. Only the tops of the marshmallows floating above the rim of the mug remained.

Note: the disappearance occurred fifty-three seconds into the playing of the video. Very few people have been known to listen much longer than this.

Given the vast expanse of the universe (see the Guide entry re Chemists), this experiment has been repeated on millions of occasions but has not been fully documented elsewhere than the Guide. The precise wattage of the heater and the musical composition of the aria have not been fully identified other than in the examples given in the appendix to this entry.

The fact that these experiments result in a matter transporter, rather than an actual disintegrator, is known only to the people of Jayscondel VI, whose entire economy is based on the astonishing assortment of objects that appear atop a particular mountain at various times during the day and night. Their prayers to the great god Omnifacutous do not in fact have any effect but no-one is about to stop now, not when they seem to be on to a good thing.

— Willo Hanri