Silly Patent: The Butt Kicker

Before taking this class I genuinely thought that all patents were important and useful to our world in anyway. Well.... I guess I was quite naive in thinking that. On top of the centrifugal force machine to birth a baby (honestly how did anyone think this was safe or necessary) and the fact that someone was successful in patenting a branch (????), I have come across many patents that just make me go "huh?" Amongst them is this beauty; US 6293874 B1 User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user's buttocks. I don't even know what to say, just please look at this picture. 
The patent is described as, "an amusement apparatus including a user-operated and controlled apparatus for self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user's buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms bearing flexible extensions that rotate under the user's control... As the user rotates the crank, the user's buttocks are paddled by flexible shoes located on each outboard end of the elongated arms to provide amusement to the user and viewers of the paddling." I cannot tell you which part of this made me laugh the most because it was all of it. But it just keeps getting better because of how serious the patent is. The inventor, Joe W. Armstrong, has included 14 claims to his 62 part invention (SIXTY-TWO just have to emphasize that) as well as including information regarding the prior art, which in the case means, "individual spanking devices that must be reloaded or reset after each individual spanking action."

Now all I can imagine is some random person who paid real money for this device and has it in their basement and decides from time to time that he or she needs a laugh so all by their lonesome they venture downstairs and begin the crank to smack their butt. I can imagine the little giggles so clearly and I would like to thank Joe personally for this invention. And here are some more pictures just to make your imagination of this clearer: