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From: bbanerje@sjuvax.UUCP (B. Banerjee)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: A Man's Guide to Housework
Message-ID: <547@sjuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Oct-84 19:26:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: sjuvax.547
Posted: Sun Oct 14 19:26:41 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Oct-84 02:01:57 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Saint Josephs Univ. Phila., Pa.
Lines: 159

The following article appeared on August 26th in the Philadelphia
Inquirer Sunday Supplement.  At the time, I clipped it, and promptly
misplaced it.  Today, while cleaning up my apartment, I stumbled across
it, and promptly broke up.

The article was written by Clint Collins, and is reproduced without
permission.

---------------------------------------------------------------



     The trouble with the  sexual  revolution  is  that  the
women are getting all the help and sympathy.

     They have entire books and magazines  that  do  nothing
but  teach  them how to tell the difference between a senior
vice president and an executive vice president, and all  the
other skills necessary for an exciting, satisfying career in
business.

     Meanwhile, men  are  back  home  doing  the  housework,
wandering about in a state of deep stress because no one has
told them which attachment to use to vacuum the bathtub.

     Up until now.  The book I'm working on, "A Man's  guide
to  Housework",  for  the  first  time  lays  out  in simple
language the arcane feminine lore men need in order to  keep
house  as successfully as any woman.  What follows is just a
sample.

_T_h_e _M_e_n_t_o_r_e_s_s

     The advice most frequently  given  women  entering  the
unfamiliar  masculine  world of business is "Find a mentor".
The mentor is some experienced man, higher in  the  company,
who  will  take  you  on  as a protegee.  The women who give
other women this advice claim that men do the same thing all
the  time.   That's  true, only men don't call it "finding a
mentor."  They call it  "buttering up the right person."

     All of which is simply preface to the first step that a
man  should  take  upon  himself  upon entering the feminine
world of housework.  Find an experienced woman in the neigh-
borhood  who keeps a clean house and has a good figure and a
reputation as a fun-loving person.  Then invite her over  to
show  you how to make up a bed.  This is one of several ways
you can take the drudgery out of housework.  There  are,  of
course, other ways to get assistance.  If you have children,
maybe you can train the dog to help.

_D_u_s_t: _I_t'_s _O_r_i_g_i_n _a_n_d _M_e_a_n_i_n_g

     Look closely some fine day, and  you  may  see  a  fine
powdery  gray  substance forming on the furniture and window
sills.  This substance is dust, one of the  driving  princi-
ples  behind the entire concept of housecleaning.  Just what
dust is no one really knows, but it is  probably  caused  by
walking.   As  we  walk,  our  pant  legs  or  pantyhose rub
together, grinding off fine particles of fiber and dead skin
that  float  through  the air and eventually come to rest on
the furniture and window sills.  One of the best things  you
can  do  to  keep  your house clean then, is to stop walking
around so much.  Try spending more time lying  on  the  sofa
watching TV.

     But no matter how careful you are, a certain amount  of
dust  will inevitably occur.  The traditional way of dealing
with it is to wipe it up with a dustcloth, but this is  time
consuming  and leaves you with the larger dilemna of what to
do with the dirty rag.  My own attitude is that if you leave
dust  alone,  it will leave you alone.  And it may even come
in handy:  How many times has a murderer been caught because
the victim was able to write his assailant's name on a dusty
table just before expiring?  I feel  that  would-be  killers
out  there  are  going to think twice about choosing me as a
victim after they see the heavy layer of dust on  my  coffee
table.

_I _A_b_h_o_r _a _V_a_c_u_u_m

     I used to wonder:  What happens to  the  dirt  when  it
gets  sucked  up  inside  the  vacuum  cleaner?   One  of my
theories was that the dirt was ionized so it traveled up the
electrical cord and into the walls.  Or I thought that maybe
it just accumulated, and once a year, a team of people  came
and cleaned it out, like with swimming pools.

     Imagine my surprise one day when I  was  vacuuming  and
noticed  small  balls of fuzz blowing across the carpet.  My
wife explained  that the fuzzballs were dirt coming from the
vacuum cleaner because the bag was full.

     Bag?  Full?  Brimming with curiosity,  I  unzipped  the
vacuum, and sure enough, pulled out a bag of dirt, resisting
an urge to slap it on the bottom.  When the bag  gets  full,
it  is necessary to buy a new one.  This is very depressing,
because who of us, when we were growing up, ever expected to
spend our hard-earned money on dirt bags?

     But here is the good  news:   You  don't  have  to  buy
vacuum cleaner bags.  Instead, every time the bag gets full,
buy a fifth of bourbon.  The bag it comes in will work  just
fine  in  your  vacuum,  and you can drink the bourbon while
cleaning.  You and your carpets will come out sparkling.

     Handy Hint:  Often you'll  find  yourself  pressed  for
time,  as guests are soon to arrive and you haven't vacuumed
the living room.  For these emergencies, attach a handle  to
a  2  by  4  which you have cut the same width as the vacuum
cleaner.  Rake the 2 by 4 across the  carpet  a  few  times.
The  resulting  streaks  on  the  carpet  will  make it look
freshly vacuumed.

_O_v_e_n_s

     Look closely some day, and you may see large  lumps  of
what appear to be petrified lava on the bottom of your oven.
These are actually hard-fired lumps  of  gravy  from  frozen
Salisbury steak entrees, one of the hardest substances known
to science.  The best way to get rid of them  is  to  buy  a
self-cleaning oven.  Lock it shut, hit the right button, and
the oven becomes an inferno the temperature of the sun.  The
intense  heat  turns the formidable gravy into a powdery ash
(which, by the way, is quite tasty  sprinkled  on  scrambled
eggs).   Put  the drip pans from the burners in the oven and
the blast of heat will clean them  too.   And  if  the  drip
pans, why not the lawn mower blades?  Or the tax records?

_T_h_e _S_e_l_f _C_l_e_a_n_i_n_g _B_a_t_h_r_o_o_m

     Inspired by the example of the self  cleaning  oven,  I
have  invented  the self cleaning bathroom.  Sprinkle every-
thing with Comet, turn the shower on "hot"  full  blast  and
lock  the  door for a half hour.  Small children left in the
bathroom during the cleaning cycle  will  come  out  looking
like new.

_A_n_d _A_d_d _F_a_b_r_i_c _S_o_f_t_e_n_e_r _f_o_r _S_t_a_t_i_c _F_r_e_e _D_i_s_h_e_s

     It frequntly happens that you need some  clean  dishes,
but  don't have enough dirty one for a full dishwasher load.
At the same time,  you  will  often  need  clean  socks  and
underwear,  but  won't  have a full clothes-washer load.  It
would be stupid, of  course,  to  wash  the  dishes  in  the
clothes-washer,  but  there  is no reason why you can't wash
your laundry in the dishwasher!  It will  actually  increase
your  efficiency  in  the morning when you're trying to find
both a clean coffee cup and clean underwear.

     And that's just Chapter  One.   Next  I  will  take  up
Chapter  Two,  in which I will explain that contrary to what
you may have thought, Windex is *not* a  remedy  for  flatu-
lence.
-- 
				Binayak Banerjee
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P.S.
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