What matters is that the plot makes internal sense as an elaborate self-enclosed contraption.
Certainly, watching machines being created or destroyed -- an idea that dates at least to the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely's self-destructing contraptions in the 1950's and 60's -- has become an acceptable form of television entertainment.
And how gruesomely difficult — what a philosophically daunting contraption of self-interest and self-delusion love appears to be — if you are not!
Step one: Mod your Android device to play nicely with a Wii Remote Step two: Find a cheap Wii Remote steering wheel Step three: MacGyver an universal mounting bracket or something Step four: Totally disregard your self esteem and use this contraption on the subway.
Now, as Tom Friedman has pointed out, the party is an empty shell of its former self, the rusting hulk of a Rube Goldberg contraption slapped together to garner the support of Christian fundamentalists, the gun lobby, the Tea Party, global warming deniers, birthers and other right-wing conspiracy theory nuts.
Among the current exhibitions, "One Second One Year" (through Dec. 31) features odd devices and contraptions that self-activate — or don't — at intervals, continually creating and frustrating viewers' expectations.
They call the piece-parts of the selection engine interviews and tests and background checks, but we could also label the whole contraption a test of mojo and self-esteem.
It's pretty self-explanatory: adults believe that teenagers are using some kind of innovative contraption to pour grain alcohol into their eyeballs to get drunk.
Throughout, rotating and sliding contraptions evoke the self-destructing machines of the sculptor Jean Tinguely — as does, perhaps, the periodic chime of a Mac starting up.
As a child, Thomas Heatherwick was a fan of the comic inventions of W Heath Robinson, whose best drawings – the Automatic Back Scratcher, the Self-Operating Napkin – featured ingenious contraptions held together by cogs, pulleys, steam kettles, candles and lengths of knotted string.
