2013-03-27 Wed

SUFE

So you trot over to your friend's house, where her youngster has eaten a banana and dropped the peel down the toilet before pulling, in a manner of speaking, the chain.

The toilet is blocked, water escapes slowly, but not, sad to relate, solids.

Your friend does not own a plunger.

By the way, a plunger should be pressed gently into service, then yanked back, vigorously, OUT of the toilet bowl. The idea is to bring the blocking material back into the real world, not to wedge it further into the S-trap by forcing it in.

Grab the ever-present toilet brush and one of those plastic milk bags, rinsed.

Place the toilet brush inside the bag, and tie it off with one of those elastic bands or hair-rings that litter the city sidewalks. A tight wrap is not mandatory.

Turn on the bath-tap, slowly, warm water. You may want to wash your hands and forearms after this exercise.

Grip the handle by the rubber band to effect a good seal; the toilet-brush, encased in an air-tight bag has morphed into a flexible but strong balloon.

Gently insert the balloon into the drain, letting water seep up and around it, then give a vigorous backward yank to create a partial Vacumn behind the blockage. Rinse and repeat.

This normally does the trick.

If this fails, you can try vigorously PUSHING the balloon; that sometimes forces material through, especially if it is flexible biomass, such as orange or banana peels.

But if the blockage is a feces-encrusted plastic toy, it may be time to call the plumber.

Clear Thinking

So off to the Dollar Store this morning for a $1.00 pair of 3.25 reading glasses.

Attached to the glasses is a clear plastic pouch bearing the sign "Warning enclosed".

I expected to find the standard stuff about heat, batteries, small children suffocating and so on.

Instead, a bit of text.

I am fascinated by the part that reads "These glasses are not designed to replace corrective glasses sold by prescription".

Huh?

I thought the sole purpose of dollar-store reading glasses was to provide presbyopic folks with a means to read.

Aren't these glasses meant/designed to replace prescription lenses, when you are out of town, left your glasses at home, dropped your glasses down the elevator shaft, and so on?

Isn't that the whole purpose?