It's another ordinary day at work. Feeling the need for a little health-risk in your diet, you head to the local burger joint and order an extra-large bacon cheeseburger, a side of fries, and an extra-thick milkshake. Upon sitting down with your cardiac arrest (excuse me, meal), you plunge a straw into
the milkshake and give a mighty slurp.
5 minutes later in the bathroom, you manage to stop the bleeding from the back of your mouth where, instead of sucking the near-solid milkshake through the straw, you instead sucked the straw down your throat at high velocity, where it gave you a stylish piercing in a location not normally seen.
As you stagger out, wiping the last few drops of blood from your chin, a stranger hands you an odd object and then walks away. It's a long plastic tube, not unlike the straw you just extracted from your head, except that near one end it has a large projecting flange. Upon closer inspection, you see faint raised lettering that reads, "5E Inc. Hilted Straw Pat. Pend.
Slowly the concept sinks in. You settle back down at your table, insert the straw into your drink with the flange-end up, and, after carefully bracing your lips against the hilt, deliver some soothing cold ice cream over your impaled tonsils, secure in the knowledge that no matter how hard you suck, the straw will stay in the glass where it belongs.