"SCREW" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic
furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and have a food section
specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls
manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the Hardware or
Housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure oriental
country and described as "Nine Tools in One," consisting of a little handle
with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool
set professionals use; not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great
safety feature not found in the so-called quality tool sets: The handle will
actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or
expose it to direct sunlight.

WARNING: Do not be misled by advertisements for so-called tool sets
allegedly containing large numbers of tools. These are frauds! Oh, sure, you
get a lot of tools, but most of them are the same kind! For example, you'll
get 127 wrenches, and the only difference is that one will be maybe an eighth
of an inch bigger than another. Big deal.


Chapter 2
Wood
If God had wanted us to use it, He wouldn't have made plastic


Wood has been the preferred building material for thousands of years,
because it is one of the few materials that will rot as well as burn.
Basically, there are two kinds of wood: hardwoods such as oak and walnut,
which are used by skilled craftsmen to make furniture that you cannot afford;
and softwoods such as fir, spruce, and tripe, which are actually members of
the crabgrass family and are more suitable to the kinds of projects that an
incompetent such as yourself will be doing.

Dealing with lumberyards

Lumberyards are dangerous and hostile places, inhabited by suspicious men
who wear bib overalls and spit a lot and duck behind piles of boards as soon
as they see a homeowner coming. These men have lived in the lumberyard since
childhood. It is the only home they know. At night, they just pull sheets of
plywood over themselves and go to sleep. They don't like intruders,
especially homeowners such as yourself who are buying wood for some idiot home
project, and they will try any crafty ruse to drive you away. For example,
all their wood measurements are lies. A so-called two-by-four is not two
anythings by four anythings, and so on. There is no way you can possibly know
what size of wood you're getting.

Another common trick among the lumbermen is to call things by silly
names, such as "soffit." They dream these names up at night while they're
lying under their sheets of plywood, and they use them to make you feel stupid