tipsandtricks

Tips and Tricks from the Meanest People in the World.-

For some reason, the fields of skin care and household cleaning are bombarded with suggestions of common products to treat and fix common ailments and household messes. I’ve tried many of these and have come to the conclusion that there is a group of people out there who make all this stuff up just to torture us kind hearted and somewhat gullible souls.

For instance….and I kid you not….I recently had an atrocious coffee cup stain on my copper table. I whipped out the drugstore brand copper cleaner but to no avail. Amid the mirror-like reflection of my sad face there still sat the green coffee cup ring. I then decided to be very-very-oh-so-wise and do a search on products to clean said ring.

The Internet is a vast place, and three, yes three different message boards instructed me, well, not me, but “Mabel in New Jersey” to put ketchup on the coffee cup ring and watch the copper sparkle before her very eyes.

Raising my eyebrows and smushing my mouth in the face that only can be described as the “you don’t say” face, I went to my fridge and retrieved the ketchup. Well, I guess I didn’t retrieve it, since I hadn’t gotten it before….(correcting self) I trieved the ketchup. A burger sized dollop and five minutes later, I was again staring at the ring, which now smelled much like warmed-over tomatoes. The shade turned from emerald to forest green, but other than that, the ketchup should probably be best left for the non-frog fries (or whatever the heck we proud Americans are supposed to be calling them these days-Yehaw).

I was duped, hornswaggled, foiled and fooled by those evil little home remedy folk.

Now, in all fairness and accepting part blame, it’s not all their fault. If ketchup really WERE the absolute answer to our copper woes, I’m sure Almyer and Heinz would have figured it out long ago and come up with “Organic Tomato Scented Copper Cleaner” at $10 a jar.

But, and you know BUT is the universal eraser word for any words that came recently before it (eg: that’s a nice haircut BUT it makes your face look fat, sounds like a great deal BUT it’s a little too pricey for me, etc), I am still disgruntled.

The worst such experience ever was a dry hair remedy I tried two or three years ago. It said that for dry hair, try beating an egg and coating your locks for five minutes. The proteins from the egg supposedly strengthen and fortify the hair.

PEOPLE DON’T DO IT!

The result was a cooked egg which neatly surrounded and stuck to every one of my follicular protrusions. It took approximately 241 shampoos and a lot of scrubbing to relieve my mane of the scrambled mess, and I vowed never to listen to “them” again. I think in that case, it was probably a group in Idaho that stands up for the rights of chickens. They disguised themselves as “Barbara from Santa Cruz” and “Mary from Heighton Heights” and proceeded to inundate any and all message forums with their reverse psychology propaganda. Their thought was that women would soon loathe and revere the egg and never buy it again. Nice trick, ladies, but eggs still taste good.

So before you rub hemmorhoid cream under your eyes, try to make windows shine with peanut butter or attempt to strengthen your fingernails by soaking them in jello (especially strawberry), think twice. Then think again, for a total of three thinking sessions.

Things have a name and a description which generally match what they were designed for in the first place. Window cleaner is for windows, toothpaste is for teeth, and eggs are for French toast.

Dammit, I mean Freedom Toast.