Dave Barry - The Taming Of The Screw

A sheet of plywood

TOOLS

An industrial-grade spatula

DIRECTIONS

1. Assemble the plywood.

2. To use the project as a cutting board, simply place it in an attractive kitchen location and cut things on it.

3. To convert it to a platform bed, simply flip it over and place it on the floor.

4. To convert it back to a cutting board, use the spatula to pry it off the floor, which it will be attached to by congealed oxen blood.

Now that you’ve built the simple and utterly useless starter projects in Chapter 9, why not tackle these two advanced projects? One reason that springs to mind is that nobody has ever been able to get either of them to work. Another is the likelihood of serious injury or death. If you need any more reasons, drop me a note, because I’m sure I can come up with dozens.

Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs, I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite sex who are not necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in their hot tubs, Californians don’t give a damn about earthquakes or mass murderers. They don’t give a damn about anything, which is why they are able to produce “Laverne and Shirley” week after week.

MATERIALS

Footers and headers Many redwood slats Water A couple hundred gallons of Clorox Penicillin

TOOLS

Shovel Tub-making implements

DIRECTIONS

I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won’t do too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First, you decide which direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face is up.

The next step is to dig the footers. I’m not really sure why hot tubs need footers, but I have yet to read a do-it-yourself article that didn’t order the reader to dig a few footers, and I see no reason why I should be any more lenient than the other writers. Your footers should extend down to the “frost line,” which is a line of frost that you’ll come to if you dig deep enough. If you live in a normal state, such as Ohio, you should find the frost line about 2 feet down. If you live in Florida, you’ll have to dig 40

or 50 feet to find any frost; if you live in Maine, you’ll find your frost line 10 to 12 feet above the ground, almost any time of year.

Once you’ve dug your footers, you should build some headers and several joists, taking care not to mortise the soffits. Now all you have to do is get a large quantity of redwood slats and attach them together in such a manner that they form a watertight tub, and you’re all set to go ... except that now you need some way to get water into the tub and heat it.

Contrary to what a lot of so-called experts will tell you, you don’t need fancy plumbing and a filtering system for your hot tub. All you need to do is fill it up with the garden hose, or used dishwater. This approach is much cheaper and the only drawback is that after a couple of days the water will teem with every known form of deadly mutant disease-causing microorganism. So if you’re a real health fanatic, you might want to test the tub before you use it by tossing in a cat or a neighbor’s child. If neither of these is available, you might want to pour in a couple of hundred gallons of Clorox mixed with penicillin just to be on the safe side.

The only other question is how you’re going to heat your outdoor hot tub once the cool fall weather rolls around. One method that we have found to be simple, cheap, and dangerous is the wood-burning stove. What we do is perch the stove on a ledge above the hot tub, get it up to about 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, then tip it over into the tub. In a matter of seconds, the water that was once merely tepid is warm enough to vaporize stainless steel, and many of the deadly mutant disease-causing microorganisms are dead. Of course, the ones that survive are usually very angry, so it’s best to wait a week or two before you actually plunge in.

Despite what you’ve heard from computer salesmen, home computers are actually straightforward devices that can be built in an afternoon by anyone who has a few simple tools and the brains of a spittoon.

Once you have gained some experience with your computer, you can program it to do the kinds of things that computers owned by major corporations do, such as destroy the credit ratings of people you don’t even know, or answer your telephone automatically and tell your callers that everybody in your house is too busy to talk to them. And besides all these advantages, my easy-to-make personal home computer, which is the result of months of research, experimentation, and heavy drinking, can actually heat your home. Impossible, you say? Why not build it and find out?

First, head down to your home workshop and gather together the tools and materials you’ll need.

MATERIALS

Solder A television set 8 to 10 pounds of assorted electronic parts, which you can buy wherever electronic parts are sold. I find that transistors work best, although you can use diodes, provided they’re fresh.

TOOLS

A screwdriver An ice pick A drill A Bowie knife A hacksaw Something to melt solder with, such as a soldering gun or toaster

DIRECTIONS

Now you’re all set. Remove the back from the television cabinet, and, using your ice pick, chip out the insides and throw them away. Next, using your Bowie knife, stab the top of the cabinet to create an eight-inch gash.

Now arrange your electronic parts on your workbench in an attractive display and melt solder on them until they all stick together, taking care not to drop too much molten solder on your dog. Next, you can either wait for the parts to cool off, or, if you’re in a hurry, simply dump them in a bucket of water. (CAUTION: Never touch the hot parts with your bare hands. Ask a neighbor to do this.)

Once the soldered-together parts are cool, drill a few holes in them and screw them to the inside of your television set, using your optional hacksaw on either the television set or the parts to insure a good fit. Now all you need to do is reattach the cabinet back and check to make sure your fire insurance is paid up. You’re ready to enter the World of Home Computing.

First, you’ll need some data to put in, or “input.” Have your children go around the house, inside and out, and gather up, or “upgather,” all your bills, check stubs, candy wrappers, receipts, lawn clippings, tax records, and lint balls. The more data you give your computer, the better it will work. To input your data, simply stuff it into the Bowie-knife gash.

Next, send your children to another room, or, if possible, another state; then plug your computer in. For a few seconds, nothing will happen, but then you’ll hear the computer start to process, or “process,” the data. Before long, you’ll actually be able to see it working, even smell it; after 20 minutes or so, your computer will be processing data at such a rate that your entire house will be warm as toast. In fact, this easy-to-make personal home computer produces heat so effectively that since I built mine, we haven’t spent a nickel on home heating, primarily because of the medical bills.

In this chapter, we’ll explore various techniques for reducing common household pests to lifeless blobs of tissue. Now before I get a lot of angry letters from ecology nuts, let me assure you that I am all in favor of wildlife, as long as it stays in its place, which is Africa. I believe that if God had wanted us to share our homes with insects, He would not have made them so unattractive.