Top 10 Most Useless Items of Crapola
Once upon a time, things were made to serve a purpose. Consider the light bulb, the compass, and the cardiac pacemaker. No doubt necessity was once the mother of invention.
Fast forward to the present. What's happened? It seems that everywhere I go, I'm bombarded with completely useless and unnecessary stuff. Yesterday, someone tried to sell me a 14-inch pencil--the "Jumbo Jotter." I'll admit I was tempted, and I imagined myself sauntering into Monday's 3:00 meeting, only to whip out my enormous pencil and start taking notes like it was just another day at the office. My colleagues would laugh, we'd all have a good chuckle, but then some persnickety associate would point out the obvious: I had wasted $9.95 and a tree in Paraguay for a D-list joke.
The problem with useless products is threefold. First, they squander natural resources (energy, raw materials, mineral deposits and infomercial star Anthony Sullivan's precious time). Secondly, they clog up landfills and, thirdly, they throw us into a Samsara-like cycle of never ending consumption.
Take for example, the Toastmaster Electric Can Opener - Model TCO2 (white). Yes, of course this gadget could be a godsend for the arthritic and handicapped. For the rest of us, however, it's just another gateway to misery.
1. Lift blade assembly.
2. Place can against positioning bar guide and metal wheel.
3. Press button until can opening process is complete.
We press the button and eat our spam with little worry. Then the tragedy sets in. A few weeks go by and a rubber tire forms around our recently slim midsection. A double chin appears. Is that arm flab? Manual can opening burns calories. The lack of physical activity has atrophied our muscles.
Hence useless gadget number two: the Sauna Belt (note this product was recently recalled for safety reasons). This girdle of a device claims to heat the belly, increasing body temperature, so to literally melt away excess pounds. As it happens, the only thing the Sauna Belt is really good for is repelling members of the opposite sex and scorching its clientele. Burned and fat, what are we to do? Sharper Image's personal air conditioner provides comfort in times of distress. Just place the battery operated metal collar around your neck and you'll enjoy the blissful blow of cool air and water vapor on your face.
My point is that it never ends. As we're buying up all of this "stuff," we're wasting money, polluting the earth and adding another piece of junk to our already overcrowded lives. To offset the havoc we purchase yet another useless product and on and on it goes.
Yes, it's a cruel cruel world out there. And if for a moment a gigantic pencil, fuzzy toilet seat cover or fat burning belt will make it seem all the more bearable, then purchase away. But at least try to buy used.
Behold the gallery . . .
Top Ten Most Useless and Unnecessary Pieces of Crap
The Auto-Adjusting Wrench
Put the monkey wrench to shame. No need to sweat and waste your energy spinning the thumbwheel manually. Instead, just press "power" and the Auto-Adjusting Wrench will mechanically close in on that nut like a python closing in on its prey. Of course, once adjusted you'll have to turn the wrench yourself, but at least you got the hard part out of the way.
The Banana Holder
Not to be confused with the "Banana Hammock." Seriously though, what happens when you are down to one banana? How does that Banana stay safe?
Oh, of course! Silly me! Just put it in a Plastic Banana Guard.
The Plastic Banana Guard
The Battery-Powered Spinning Bottle
Jeez, kids today! They have it so easy. Back in my day (insert rambling aged voice here) we actually had to rotate the bottle. Can you imagine? Whirling it by hand to facilitate a painful make-out session or seven minutes in heaven. What torture. We really were living in the dark ages.
The Fuzzy Toilet Seat Cover
Aside from serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever, the furry toilet seat is gross. I mean, why on earth would I want a carpet on my toilet? I don't want to get into graphic detail here, but stray tagnuts and winnets . . . before you know it you've got a dingleberry garden.
The Paper Weight
If by divine intervention a gust of wind blazeth through your windowless cubicle, be sure to protect thy papers with a 4 ounce paperweight.
The Mechanized Egg Cracker
The line of crap destined to fill up your kitchen is seemingly endless. Exhibit A: the egg cracker, a plastic device with which you . . . crack an egg. God forbid we need to knock on the side of a bowl. How, one wonders, has humanity ever survived without a mechanized egg cracker?
The Baby Wipes Warmer
The baby industry capitalizes on the deepest fears of new and nervous parents. Certainly your baby will be uncomfortable, unhappy and will hate you for life if you do not wipe its bum with a warm wipey. This particular model ensures that it won't dehydrate the wipes, "as leading wipe warmers tend to do." You know what else won't dry out the wipes? Not using a wipe warmer.
The Melon Wedger
Need I point out that most kitchens have a knife?
The Leaf Blower
What good is a rake when you can happily puff leaves into your neighbor's yard with a gas powered leaf blower? Yeah, blowers hemorrhage fossil fuel, but then again nothing's more satisfying than chasing down that last recalcitrant leaf and blasting it into oblivion.
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Watches or clocks w digital display. If you have to know when it's exactly 2:23PM, you need to slow down.
Firefighters aside....
HuffPost's Pick
The plastic banana guard is fatally flawed right from the beginning, as everyone knows, all bananas are not created equal. In this case, size really does matter.
The banana guard is extremely useful for cyclists. Stuffing a banana in an already overstuffed hydration pack is a recipe for sticky, banana-flavored disaster. Banana guards are heaven sent!
not to mention kids who like to take bananas to school and sometimes accidently squash their lunch bags.
Also for spandex wearing rock n rollers
God forbid they should pack an apple.
And I like my banana hanger. I cut off the second to last banana, leaving it's top stem to hold up the last remaining banana. It's the closest I'm going to get to a life in the jungle.
The photo in the article of the leaf blower is actually a leaf sucker. Note the collection bag...
it's actually both a leaf blower and a leaf sucker. It is possible to have both in one now.
As a Wildland Firefighter I find the leaf blower to be one of the most efficient tools for creating fireline. I sure if your home is ever saved by one that you will concur.
I've been using an _ELECTRIC_ BlowerVac for years. Blow the leaves into a big pile, suck them into a bag, and deposit into a mulch pile in the back yard. By summertime the leaves have turned into a pile of dirt which I spread around the yard.
WHat is wrong with leave blowers? I love using them.
They make a horrible noise on Sunday morning.
Emissions from gas powered leaf blowers include particulate materials, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons (CO, NOx, and HC). Leaf blowers are terrible for the environment. The American Lung Association has produced research to illustrate how leaf blowers generate as much pollution in one hour as a car driven for 100 miles produces.
Where to start? They waste gas, they're loud as hell, they stink of burning gas, they're LOUD AS HELL!!! The same job can be done better using a rake. Instead of blowing your mess "away", you can gather those leaves and compost them or bag them for collection. It might take a few minutes more and you might need to actually exert some physical effort, but in the long run isn't the knowledge that the bastard Oil companies aren't making any money off of you clearing you yard worth the extra effort?
Are you volunteering? I do get a bit annoyed by being lectured by apartment termites and suburbanites with postage-stamp lawns and 2 12 -foot "trees" in their 1/10th acre lot.
I wouldn't mind raking leaves, either, if I could do it in an hour or two.
Like a lot of other "time savers," something like a leaf blower may worth what you are willing to give up for them. Like 32-40 man-hours of raking, accompanied by days of lower back pain afterward. I have too many things I *like* to do and not enough time in which to do them. There's nothing particularly romantic about 40-50 maples and plane trees dropping their leaves in your yard, year after year. They do look wonderful during the summer, though.
Oh yeah, and next year, for sure, I am buying a snow blower!
http://www
Thanks.
mp
For some reason, there is a NECESSITY to use TWO leaf blowers immediately outside my (apt) bedroom window for a full hour at the crack of dawn several times a week to blow leaves across a space no bigger than my apartment itself.
You think they're loud? Two of them. Echoing back-and-forth from my building to the one 40 feet from my window. FOR AN HOUR!!!
I'd add HBO and SHOWTIME.
Hey, Americans are only semi-pros in this type of thing. In Japan, Shindogu (unuseless inventions) is an art form.
all leaf blowers should be outlawed! they are nothing but noise pollution! heaven forbid one may buy one of those large sweepers (or a rake), take about 10 minutes longer to accomplish the task and expend a little elbow grease....
nanny state.
Leaf blowers are an essential when you are working with desert landscape. A rake just doesn't cut it.
It's a fallacy that manual labor contributes significantly to overall health. Yes, you can burn off calories and that is not a bad thing. But you don't get organized and systematic muscle activity, the way you do with athletics or workouts at the gym. Most people who do manual labor for a significant portion of their lives end up with one or more of a variety of repetitive task injuries, such as back strains, neck and shoulder strains, hamstring or other leg injuries, carpal tunnel and so forth. I know from personal experience. I am just this week doing penance ... again ... for a lower-back strain acquired during my years as a warehouseman.
What usually happens is that your activity is restricted to the particulars of your job -- lumping out a truck means standing in one spot for hours, picking up boxes making a half-turn at the waist, placing the box on a pallet, (sometimes bending down, which puts you most at risk for back injury), then repeat ad nauseam and usually under orders to get it done as soon as possible. Landscaping means lifting and bending under load, and so forth.
These days, I get my exercise at the gym. I stay in shape and minimize the re-aggravation of old injuries.
Thanks.
mp
so a guy with two acres and a shit load of trees should just suck it up and rake for a few weeks? i don't know about that... i can see how it would be useful if you have a very large yard or some kind of medical issue that makes the labor difficult.
So the plastic "banana guard" was designed for actual bananas? I wish I'd known that before I got all my pants refitted.
I love the idea of this post but I must beg to differ with you on leaf blowers. Now, I can't stand the darn things, they're noisy and bad for the air. For years, when I worked at home, the proliferation of leaf-blowers in the neighborhood made daytime at home as noisy as an industrial park. However, I have since learned that the very proliferation of leaf blowers that so annoyed me pointed to their value. Leaf blowers move small debris faster and more efficiently than rakes. That means it's possible for gardeners to do more homes and yards in a day than they could before. Whicn in turn means a significant boost in income for poor immigrants who work as gardeners in my part of the world, Southern California. So as much as I dislike leaf blowers, they're arguably a social benefit, and I don't think it's fair to call them useless.
There are electric leaf blowers that could do the same job with a fraction of the gas wasted. They're not as loud either. I don't see those around much though...
I like the comments defending the leaf blowers as more efficient, faster, and easier than raking. But (unless you are a firefighter) why is "more efficient, faster, and easier" considered such an advantage? Yes, sometimes those are huge advantages. But not always. Check to see if you need to get your yard work done faster and more easily because you want to have time and energy left to go to the gym so you can use up some of that time, energy, and money too!
Ooh! Where can I get the fuzzy toilet seat cover? My bathroom is always cold! I have an automatic washing machine, so it's OK.
No, the fuzzy cover is stupid!
What you need is a HEATED toilet seat, available from Kohler: http://des
First the electric chair, now the electric throne! American ingenuity at its best.
Here is the BEST invention I've seen in a long time:
I was in the Tokyo airport and needed to use the toilet. The men's room stall had walls all the way to the floor, so nobody with a wide stance could intrude on my blissful time alone with a heated seat throne complete with a variable pressure/t
years ago i was on one of these in tokyo but it also had a small blower to dry off the water from the bidet (ass washer). the toilet had so many buttons and took a while to out just how to flush.
My favorite useless item is the Ronco in-egg scrambler, the contraption where you actually scramble the egg while it's still in the shell.
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