Hot Dog: Newsletter Challenge (07/03/07)

Better yet - puncture the skins of the brats in a few places, then simmer in beer, then finish on the grill. Yummy!! Serve on good, substantial rolls - not those flimsy Wonder Bread clones that turn to mush. Condiments: mustard, vinegar, fried onions, chopped peppers, sauerkraut. The kraut is best if rinsed, drained, heated, and mixed with the onions.

Oh, man, now I'm hungry - and Wisconsin is so far away!!

Since we're into radical cooking now , how about beer-can chicken ? The idea sound good , but I only tried it once (those cans must be lined with something icky ?). It's a bit like the once trendy chicken-brick , but much more fun for the average Engineer. Mincing around by stuffing the poor chook with garlic/herbs/whatever is a bit Jamie Oliver. Doing a chicken the beer can way looks damn funny as well. If you put foil over the ends of its wings and legs it's downright scary.

http://www.arizonavortex.com/vortex-tube/?OVRAW=compressed%20air%20cooler&OVKEY=vortex%20cooler&OVMTC=advanced&OVADID=7460159511&OVKWID=44335130511

I know I'm late but this was my first thought. AC current powers a compressor blowing through a vortex tube which "divides" heat out of the air stream.

And the cold stream could be used for English Rose's ice cream.

Fyz

Cut the nasty tasting ends of cooked dogs. These can be recycled to make more dogs for cooking. An accountancy firm can figure out a pricing strategy , and a PR company will sell the various decreasing grades of dogs to eager customers. STLEngineer may have a stockpile of these dog-cookers , and be planning to open 'dog-u-like' in a city not near himself very soon.

STL ROFLMAO!

Kris, I have no particular interest in the "dog-cookers" (a colleague brought the one in to our office) other than observing the novelty of them, but your little scenario reminded me of the "Seinfeld" TV show episode where Elaine and her (former?) boss, cook up a scheme to sell only the tasty muffin tops at their "Top-o'-the Muffin to You" cafe. When left with dozens of bags of muffin "stumps", they are forced to deal with the growing problem. First they attempt to "donate" the "stumps" to a homeless shelter, but are turned down because, "Oh, you don't think the POOR are GOOD ENOUGH to get the WHOLE muffin?". When trying to dispose of them in the trash, they are told (if I remember correctly) by a police officer that foodstuffs are not allowed in the landfill-bound trash stream. Finally they must turn to....who else...NEWMAN! As the "the Cleaner", sitting down to a table full of stumps, Newman declares, "I think we are going to need more MILK!"

I don't know if I'm relieved or disappointed that there's no secret master plan ! Keep on cooking 'em up !!

hmmm. All the hot dog that I ever ate were already cooked in the package . right ?

so just leave them on the dash board before lunch and they well get very hot by lunch break

utra sonic was my first thought next is induction, magnetic the lid on the device as discribed is plastic not an electrode

Automotive cooking! I wondered when this would come up!

Boy Scouts and long-haul truckers can cook food in foil packets on top of the engine.

And old programmers know how to cook eggs on overclocked CPUs.

"Boy Scouts and long-haul truckers can cook food in foil packets on top of the engine."

Back when I was in the Army National Guard, whenever we would convoy to summer camp, they gave us C rations for lunch on the way down to Ft. Chaffee. The truck drivers would take the cans that had the main dish in them and wedge them between the engine block and the exhaust pipes. Whenever we stopped for lunch, they had a halfway decent meal, and the rest of us had cold food. Yuck!

Each case of C rats came with a variety of main dishes. The last ones to go were usually the ham and eggs, and the ham and lima beans. I won't tell you what troops in Vietnam called the ham and lima beans.

Seems like good ideas get carried through the ages. I don't know how true it is , but both Mongol horse riders and latter day Goucho's reputedly 'cooked' meat by putting it under the saddle while riding all day. I guess the average biker doesn't want raw steak juice and asses milk dripping over their tank , but maybe the spirit lives on.

I ate "C rats" while on FTX at Ft. "Lost-in-the-Woods" for Army ROTC during college at nearby UM-Rolla. As I recall, the "ham and eggs" had raw eggs that had to be cooked. If we were eating "cold rats" our kindly CSM (himself a Viet Nam Vet, Army Ranger, and Green Beret) culled through the "C's" and pulled out all the "ham and eggs". Then the next morning he had a big pot of water boiling and tossed them all in for around a half hour. When you are cold and hungry, even "ham and eggs" taste pretty good, if they are cooked!

Never had the "ham and lima beans", but the "beans and wienies" wasn't too good either.

Electrical wires are attached to the hot dog(s) and their internal electrical resistance generates heat, which cooks the dogs. Safer if you wire a light bulb in series as a current limiter, though.

I saw Mr. Wizard, the late Don Herbert, do this in the late 1950s. He was such an inspiration to many young people in encouraging their interest in science. I have cooked a few hot dogs by this method and it does work. Even tried 220 VAC. Cooking time was quite a bit less. Looking for a pickle to light.

Hot dog cookers that run electric current through the hot dog are dangerous! They were outlawed because they produce nitrites in large quantities. That causes memory loss and other problems. Do not make one of them!

You can create a magnetic by wraping a screwdriver with wire and touching the ends to the postive and negative post on a battery. The longer you hold the ends to the post the stronger the magnetic, but also the hotter the wire gets.

I expect you will find inside the tray holding the hotdogs a regulated flow postive to negative that is providing heat for the cooking process.

I used to have one of these hot dog cookers. There are multiple points on two buss bars separated by a little less than the length of a standard hot dog. One end of the dog is pushed onto a point, the dog flexed a little, and the other end pushed onto the opposite point. Each buss is connected to one line of the power cord. The dog apparently has enough moisture to be conductive, and about the right resistance to heat up without overloading the circuit. The unit would handle up to about 6 dogs at once.

The hot dogs tasted more like they were steamed, as they did not get browned and crunchy.

OK, STL, now I've got a nit to pick about the wording of the question!

"It uses no chemical fuel, no resistive heating elements..."

Fyz in particular resisted the idea of the hot dogs becoming resistive elements because of the wording. Yet the official answer states: "The hot dog itself becomes a resistive heating element."

For the CQ and the official answer to agree, the problem should have stated "no internal resistive heating elements." I know that would have put you 1 word over the 75 word limit, but you could have elminated another word and avoided the controversy too. Who knows, we could have spent our time discussing baseball again, one of the more common venues for consuming hot dogs!

One good thing might still come out of the controversy. Someone here might take one of the alternative ideas for a heat source and create a better hot dog cooker!

The question could have been reduced in word-count by giving part of the answer.

what would happen to your finger if you left it too long between two AC contacts!

Well it does sort of address the same issue.

It was interesting to learn about this slightly eccentric gadget. Respect to STL for taking the trouble to submit a question to CR4 , but I couldn't honestly say it was the best I ever read. This question does still have mileage for spreading word of unusual/strange cooking gadgets. The only thing that immediately comes to my mind is the automatic tea-maker that was popular in the late 60's/early 70's. I think I've mentioned them before , but what the heck. It's truly hideous. The major brand name is pretty funny though.

Are you referring to the missing letter in TeaWaker? Or is it the Goblin Teasmade that turns you on (perhaps Goblins are your present Avatar's little helpers)?

That one looked really hideous. But the Swan TeasMade looks like any other anonymous gadget. But you are a bit unfair about the function - they do have attractions for those of you who can't afford servants (whom am I trying to kid here) and like a cup of tea in bed as soon as the alarm-clock goes off (I'm off to collect my fee now).

Fyz

LMAO ! Please tell me I've played some small part in helping to corrupt you Fyz. My finely honed bio-clock has no need of alarms. It processes all the moon data and different bird songs to waken me from my stupor at just the right moment. I then of course reach over for the tabs , and start musing on the confusion ahead. So much work for all those hands to do....

You have slightly wrong-footed me today by introducing the relative merits of Goblins and Swans , but I shall bounce back soon enough. Just be gentle and patiant with me.

You have certainly been of service in releasing my normal level of corruption into these fora. But I still aim for accuracy/clarity whenever discussing "technical" or "logical" aspects, so you've a long way to go yet.

Fyz

Re: Swans - all the action is under the water (could that have been deliberate in naming the brand? I somehow doubt it).

.... I'm very persistent . Inspiration and novel ideas usually spring from the most bizarre of places , so my madness has a certain method to it. A sort of impromptu version of 'brain-storming' and silly 'beanbag meetings'. It's also a good cover for my thinly veiled insanity.

The Swan idea is interesting , but my first thought was Swan Vesta matches which sort of inverts the notion. It would be interesting to know the reason behind the name. Lot's of products get named through the inventors whim or surname , but I'm sure a lot have very interesting origins. The naming of Car models is the most obvious case of carefully researched product names (with more than a few big mistakes I think) , but pre 1970's gadgets are interesting. There is at least one book I recall seeing on the origin of Brand names. Plenty of brands such as 'Bic' are surely around and not generally know due to lack of knowledge about surnames in other countries

I think I'm correct in saying that 'Television' is a horrible mix of Latin/Greek (?). If so , what would the Greek/Latin alternative have been ?

"I'm very persistent" - I'd never have noticed.

I always thought that Bic was a bit of a Bich, subsuming the name Biro like that.

All-Greek 'telescope' may be familiar to you. I suppose the all-Latin version would be 'proculvision' or 'ultravision'

Life's a bich and then ya die ! I sort of new.

What I want to know is 'tele + vision' converted to its counterparts in Greek or Latin (whatever the case may be). I have a decent dictionary to figure it out , but not to hand right now. I should be able to figure it out by word associations but my brine is not ticking that way at present.

tele = greek for at a distance

vision = latin for to see

You obviously have internet access, isn't that a good substitute for the dictionary you've misplaced?

PS
The Germans use the same logic, but their own words, to get Fernsehen = television

I'm being lazy !

I thought 'tele' was more specifically remote ?

Some things are more fun with a book - you can hope the connections far quicker. No matter , I will be back later with my analysis of this minor puzzle. I thought that in general Germans just concatenated existing words to get words for new things , that being why they have so many long words ?

at a distance, remote - same idea

fern + sehen = two words concatenated to make a longer one

did you take your tablets this morning, or didn't the TeasMaid go off?

New Sig: A definition is corallaing of meaning within a fence of words.

Did you take my meds by mistake this mor.....

I'm not in fur and singing slowly am I ?

Remember you're a womble....

Hey , that's so true ! They were a sort of latter day Clangers really. I would doubtless have had an affinity if I'd been tuned in to kids TV then.

About long German words - True dat! My cousin Fritz in Nuremberg tells me this is currently the longest:

Ludwigmaindonaukanaledampfschiffahrtgesellschaftenkapitanswitwenrente

Possibly misspelled, as it's not in my dictionary! :p

It's the name of the pension awarded to a woman whose late husband was a captain in the steam ship company operating on the canal (the one built by King Ludwig, not the new one) between the Main and the Danube rivers.

I think that's cheating - it's just a one-time construction.

LudwigMainDonauKanale is probably OK for the name of the canal,

Dampsshiff Fahrtgesellshaften works for "steamer journey company" (note additional f)

KapitaensWitenrente is only pushing it a little for captain's widow's pension (I've substituted a trailing e for the umlaut over the final a of kapitan)

Fyz

Hey, I don't create 'em - I just report 'em!

The National Geographic liked it enough to publish in their Letters to the Editor.

Understood. The pictures in National Geographic are terrific - but I'm often uncertain about other matters. (Put crudely - just because it convinces them, we don't have to take it as gospel)

Fyz

Unless I am missing something: just separate the segments of tele-scope (Greek) and ultra-vision or procul-vision (both Latin) and you have your answer.

I'm not a classicist, I haven't replaced my classical dictionaries since one of my children borrowed them many years ago, and I don't really trust internet dictionaries. My imperfect recollection is that Scope is closest to "view", Ultra is "other" or "distant", and Procul is closest to "far-off".

Fyz

So normal 'Television' = 'Ultrascope' yes ?

Then normal 'Telescope' = 'Ultravision' ?

I like to know these things in order to annoy people. The 'Ultravision' doesn't sound quite right.

Proculvision probably sounds worse => better (unfortunately, it's also more accurate for what a telescope does)

Fyz

"I think I'm correct in saying that 'Television' is a horrible mix of Latin/Greek (?). If so , what would the Greek/Latin alternative have been ?"

I don't think anyone so far has put together the Latin/Greek alternative, although all of the root words have been put forward.

If "Television" is the Greek/Latin mix, then "Proculscope" should be the Latin/Greek mix. However, that sounds too much like "Proctoscope", the instrument doctors use in a bowel inspection, or "proctoscopy". I like Ultrascope much better. Sounds like something Ultraman would have used!

I believe that "Ultravision" was used as a movie camera or cinematographic process trademark, like "Panavision" and "Cinemascope".

Sorry fella, I missed your post in my haste . I kind of like the possibility of Proculscope (for Television) - It has a nice Victorian sound to it. The possible confusion of how it's heard is an added bonus !

Well (and exceptionally tactfully) pointed out that I misconstrued Kris' meaning and gave the all-Greek and all-Latin versions.

Fyz

"Respect to STL for taking the trouble to submit a question to CR4 , but I couldn't honestly say it was the best I ever read."

Geez! Everyone's a critic! I never claimed it was a great one!

It was a complement ! By having 2 questions posted you've shown what an apathetic lazy bunch the rest of us wingers are. I'm desperately thinking of a question to submit - you're getting all the kudos for contributing and I'm jealous ! That's why I've been reduced to trivia on tea making stuff.

I have actually had 3 challenge questions accepted. The two most recent ones and one a few months back.

Really, I sensed that the Hot Dog cooker question may have been way too easy. I just wanted to see what kind of response it got. Amazing that so many came up with way different answers. I would put these in three categories:

1. Outside the box (Cool!)

2. Over the top (Whoa!)

3. Off the wall. (Hmmmm.....)

"One good thing might still come out of the controversy. Someone here might take one of the alternative ideas for a heat source and create a better hot dog cooker!"

And, isn't that the real point, not whether "hot dogs become resistive elements" versus the cooker using "no resistive heating elements" of its own. And that was the implication, that the cooker, as manufactured, did not contain any "resistive heating elements". I guess that comes from my experience as an engineer (who actually worked for an industrial heater and heating element manufacturer). No one in their right mind would think of a hot dog being a "resistive heating element" in an engineering sense since such elements usually they are made of high temperature, resistive wire with some insulating materials to keep from shorting, and transfer their heat to the object being heated, either by convection, conduction, radiation, or a combination of those. Yes, in a strictly "theoretical" sense, they would become resistive heating elements, which is why I gave my answer that way. Saying there are no "internal" heating elements automatically implies there could be "external" heating elements, whatever that is! I guess I could have said the cooker "does not include any resistive heating elements". Would that quell your objection?

Personally, I think I prefer another portable, countertop "dog cooker", the "Hot Diggity Dogger", basically a pop-up toaster with holes for two dogs and two buns.

Mm, mm, mm.....toasty!

How can you get more internal than heat generation inside the hot dog?

Fyz

Interesting question. I actually had one of these devices back in the late seventies. I do not remember who made it but it worked real well.

Hamilton Beach actually made a hot dog cooker like this back in the late 70's. My Parents bought one of them. They worked but the ends seemed to burn where the electrodes were.

I thought of using the hot dog itself as the resistive heating element, but that should not be allowed as a solution because the question states that NO resistive heating elements are allowed. One solution I thought of is that the cooking chamber is the bore of a superconducting inductor (must be superconducting because no resistance is allowed)

which induces eddy currents in the dog. This is valid as long as "no radiant energy" means "no photons" but allows magnetic fields.

Jim Strieter

Test design engineer

EE grad student

No go - eddy currents heat via resistive losses...

Fyz

I read this interesting but equally silly debate about the hotdog.

Why to eat this stupid thing called HOT DOG.

I do not understand that when people know all the bad things go into the dog then why eat it? You know it is not healthy and still people feed their kids this idiotic thing.

I never had one and I shall never have my kid eat it. Shame to the people who eat this most disgustibg thing and feed their children.

Nadeem Butt

07112007

To each their own, I say.

Many people all over the world eat "idiotic things". Yes, many different animal parts go into the hot dog. Does that mean they are bad for nutrition?

Yes, they are generally high fat, but they are also high protein. Some people eat items that are nothing BUT fat, with maybe some sugar added. Which is worse?

Who are you to judge ("Shame to the people who eat this most disgustibg thing and feed their children.") what others eat and what they feed their children?

There are also many varieties of the Hot Dog, available, including ones made from chicken and turkey, low fat, low salt, no preservatives, etc.

Making sausages like Hot Dogs and others out of otherwise unusable, unappetizing animal parts is actually an eco-friendly way to be more efficient in our food production. As long as there is no unknown health hazard, what is the problem?

I would like to know what your diet consists of and whether or not you NEVER eat anything "bad" for you. I will bet if you really examined EVERYTHING you eat, you would find things that you might consider unhealthy, and definitely things others might consider "idiotic".

Perhaps your diet has all plain bland "healthy" foods, but is deficient in some vitamin, mineral, fiber, or other nutritional requirement. That would be just as "stupid".

"To each their own, I say."

Indeed! Lutefisk, sweetbreads, cracklings, snails, fugu, chitlins, poi, blubber, chicken feet, prairie oysters, tripe, blutwurst, anchovies, haggis...

People eat the darnedest things.

...I end up eating my own words sometimes and that's really painful ! I gave up being an employee because I was sick of eating s...

I know a restaurant in Sikeston, MO ("Home of Throwed Rolls") that serves Mountain Oysters (probably same as your "prairie oysters") and Rooster Fries.

What's Rooster Fries? Well, that uses the part of the chicken "what the hen ain't got!"

What are mountain/prairie osysters? Jusy in case I'm ever offered them...

Prairie oysters can be a highly spiced form of eggnog. But that is not what is meant here, and I'm far too delicate to say. Try googling them.

Fyz

Ah! The same as the old English term sweetmeat...something I've always wanted to try! I see from the recipe that they're dusted in flour and then pan fried - it would have to be a gluten free flour! They were considered a great delicacy in the 10th - 16th centuries. I guess it was the Victorians who began the usage of the word [sweetmeat] to mean confectionary.

It seems there is a Canadian band called Prairie Oyster...

Bu66er - in hunting for info I've found a Grimsby based fish company that deliver fresh fish - whole crabs and sea oysters (the shellfish kind). I'm going to have to order some.....

Well, there's not much prairie, and no oceans, in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, but they raise hogs there, too, so that's probably why they call theirs "mountain oysters". That and the fact they are generally larger than the oysters that come from the sea!

Hoo, boy! A plate of mountain oysters, rooster fries, and some fried okra. Now them's good eatin'! Anyone for some throwed rolls with sorghum molasses?

If we can get everything gluten free - I'm in! (Currently ravenous)

You can't eat oysters on a motorbike ! It's like a duct tape sort of thing.(just been catching up on a bunch of threads).

Sorry, throwed rolls have lots of wheat gluten! The flour in the breading on all the fried food probably does as well.

Welcome to American dining, Southern style. If it doesn't get smoked and slathered in BBQ sauce or spices ("dry rub"), roll it in flour or batter and deep fat fry it! And then please pass the ice cold pitcher of Sweet Tea (iced tea with lots of sugar in it!)

For dessert, how about a nice slab of homade (well, that's the way they spell it "down South"!) pecan pie? (Pronounced, "pee can pah").

I always heard that Mountain Oysters came from bulls, and they were the part of a bull that made a bull a bull. Must be a regional variation, since cattle are more common around here.

I knew two guys that had worked at a local meat packing plant. I won't mention what one guy said went into bologna, or what the other guy's job was.

Talk about different foods reminded me of scrapple. It started with people saving up scraps of leftover bread, biscuits, and cornbread. Then when they had a ham with nothing left but scraps of meat on the bone, they would boil the ham until the meat fell off, remove the bone and and then add the scraps of breadstuffs. Eventually, the scrapple would form a loaf that they would slice and fry for breakfast.

I suspect lots of foods stated as a way to use leftovers. Hot dogs are probalbly a good example.

Hot Dogs are not the only thing people eat Nadeem. Having a great time with freinds and enjoying life with occasional stuff like hot-dogs is good for you. Doggedly (it's a play on words joke) eating healthy lentils/beans etc will kill you through depression far sooner. Getting too stressed and neurotic over what you eat is arguably much worse than some occasional 'junk-food'. Happy people live longer and get more out of life. Maybe you can suggest somethin healthy that could be cooked on the gadget under discussion ? It's all just a bit of fun and shared learning really.

Sounds stupid but I built just such a cooker when I was a youngster. The hot dogs tended to explode until I dumped a rheostat in to control the current. I did not think to put them in water though which I believe would enhance to overall experience.

I have tried this myself with my friends about 30 years ago in Europe where I lived at that time. The difference between our setup and the one describred was that we used 220VAC from the outlet and that sausage thickness was about 3-4 times larger than hot dog. Our results were not that good. The electrical current thru the sausage took only a very narrow route thru the sausage (shortest distance), while there was almost no signs of electricy (heating) around it. So the end result was a cold sausage with a thin burned section inside. I concluded that time that it would have been better if our electrodes were flat (round ) plates with the diameter of sausage to provide better current distribution.

Kari

Q: "It uses no chemical fuel, no resistive heating elements, ..."

A: "The hot dog itself becomes a resistive heating element,..."

Does anyone else see the contradiction here? ;-)

Not a contradiction but a paradox! This has already been discussed to DEATH.

Try reading the earlier posts FIRST!

Welcome to some extracts from the p section of the Fyzzer's dictionary (filched from Encarta).

Paradigm (2): an example serving as a pattern or model for something, especially one that forms the basis of a methodology or theory

Paradox (1): a statement, proposition, or situation that seems to be absurd or contradictory, but in fact is or may be true
Paradox (2): a statement or proposition that contradicts itself

The original excuse (at least partially valid, I think) was that including "forming part of the barbecue as supplied" would have both made the question longer than the 75 words permitted, and also given the game away.

Fyz

"Paradox (1): a statement, proposition, or situation that seems to be absurd or contradictory, but in fact is or may be true"

Well, I definitely meant Paradox (1). I had even considered "oxymoron", (Def.#2: something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements), but was afraid of the consequences of people focussing on the "-moronic" part of the word! <grin>

So we have a paradox, or an oxymoron if you will, in that the cooker contains no manufactured heating element, and the hot dog is not a manufactured heating element either, but becomes one when placed into the cooker and activated by the electrical energy.

Is everyone happy now?

"Is everyone happy now?". In any context, that is a question about which J McEnroe might say - "you cannot be serious".

In any case, you say "it USES no chemical fuel, no resistive heating elements...". The chemicals would obviously be added, as is the hot dog. And there's nothing there about 'manufactured'...** In my book that makes the solution a "paradox" according to definition 2 (which personally I consider a misuse of the term - as I suspect do you).

Fyz

**You may have wished to ask that, but it's not what we were working from.

"Is everyone happy now?"

Hahahaha - that's a good one, STL! This is, after all, CR4. Our readership positively delights in quibbling over trifles. So, come to think of it -- yeah, everybody should be happy now that we've defined (and disagreed upon) so many trifles!

For the sake of Argument, I shall be "M" below and Fyz shall be "A":

(From Monty Python's "The Argument Sketch")

M: (Knock)
A: Come in.
M: Ah, Is this the right room for an argument?
A: I told you once.
M: No you haven't.
A: Yes I have.
M: When?
A: Just now.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't
A: I did!
M: You didn't!
A: I'm telling you I did!
M: You did not!!
A: Oh, I'm sorry, just one moment. Is this a five minute argument or the full half hour?
M: Oh, just the five minutes.
A: Ah, thank you. Anyway, I did.
M: You most certainly did not.
A: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you.
M: No you did not.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't.
A: Did.
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!

A: Yes it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
A: No it isn't.
M: It is.
A: Not at all.
M: Now look.
A: (Rings bell) Good Morning.
M: What?
A: That's it. Good morning.
M: I was just getting interested.
A: Sorry, the five minutes is up.
M: That was never five minutes!
A: I'm afraid it was.
M: It wasn't.
Pause
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue anymore.
M: What?!
A: If you want me to go on arguing, you'll have to pay for another five minutes.
M: Yes, but that was never five minutes, just now. Oh come on!
A: (Hums)
M: Look, this is ridiculous.
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid!
M: Oh, all right.
(pays money)
A: Thank you.
short pause
M: Well?
A: Well what?
M: That wasn't really five minutes, just now.
A: I told you, I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid.
M: I just paid!
A: No you didn't.
M: I DID!
A: No you didn't.
M: Look, I don't want to argue about that.
A: Well, you didn't pay.
M: Aha. If I didn't pay, why are you arguing? I Got you!
A: No you haven't.
M: Yes I have. If you're arguing, I must have paid.
A: Not necessarily. I could be arguing in my spare time.
M: Oh I've had enough of this.
A: No you haven't.
M: Oh Shut up.

Can't argue with that!

Or can we.....

.... yeah, of course we could ! The sketch has popped up frequently on CR4, including as a YouTube link. A link saves space and its much funnier to watch. Yup, I'm being lazy by not providing such.

I think you mean mustn't - he hasn't paid (and anyway, I'm losing the will to live)

Fyz