"Wanted- Vacuum.
desperatly needing a vacuum just had carpets fitted and my vac has broken thank you"
Thus ran the ad in freecycle.. Freecycle, if you've never met it, is like a sort of Craigslist for people who want to give things away and recycle by re-using rather than dumping them. (Oh. Yes, just as in Craigslist, spelling and grammatical correctness are optional on freecycle.)
I signed up for it, but so far things I've put on there have failed to go. Nobody, NOBODY, wanted five steel landrover discovery wheels with part-worn, road-legal tyres on them. Except my pal Ken, who said "why didn't you tell me you'd got a spare set, just what I've been needing". Ken's not on Freecycle.
Those things I've seen, and thought OOOOH! I want that!" like the complete sauna cubicle, or the sony vaio laptop which needs a new battery, oh no. Even if I put in my request seconds after the alert pops up, I never get it.
After you've given a certain number of items away, and proved your green credentials, you're allowed to post a few wanted ads. Very few. This one caught my eye. I've often mused about vacuums.
So this person wants a vacuum. They're hard to come by. I had a thermos flask, with a vacuum in it once, but I dropped it, and when I unscrewed the bottom, I found a lot of bits of silvery glass, but the vacuum had fled. (like an elusive genie).
I had a pugmill, with a vacuum pump, but, the moment you turned the pump off, there'd be a faint sucking hiss, and the needle on the gauge would return to 1 atmosphere. plus or minus a few millibars. Damn that vacuum. The problem is, nature abhors a vacuum. You can buy a fresh thermos, but you have to take it on trust that it does really have a vacuum in it, because, if you try and open it to take a look.... pffft! gone.
So my experience with the elusiveness of vacuums leaves me bewildered by the number of vacuum cleaners out there, if nature abhors a vacuum, then ten thousand times more abhorred is a DIRTY vacuum.
Stop Press... updated. Our freecycler received a "Dyson Vacumn" in response to her plea.
Next request "A dictionary"?
Stop Press again: -
"Hi everyone, I am in desparate need of a vacum cleaner any type will do as long as it is powerful, so it can pick up all my cat's hairs he is malting ."
Malting, huh?
I don’t think I have ever come across a post with that many “U”s in it. Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteOkay, this may not have anything to do with your post (or your country, for that matter) but did you know why the wind in New Mexico always blows from the West? It doesn’t: Texas sucks. Ta dum da.
I didn’t know how thermoses (thermi?) worked. Thank you.
Tee hee, wonder what the RDM will say to that joke????
ReplyDeleteMax: Texas sucks? I saw a video of Lake Peigneur in Louisiana, being sucked out from beneath, when Texaco drillers made a fourteen inch diameter bore hole in the wrong place.... into a salt mine. But that would be Louisiana sucks..
ReplyDeleteActually, it's only because I'm learning American that I understand you. In British-speak, the use of "sucks" as an insult does not exist. Blank stares would ensue, you'd have to explain.
Thermoses? hmmmmmmmmmmmmm I approach this with caution, like a cat finding a strange object in a room.... any moment now there may be a hidden trapdoor beneath my feet....
I'm not sure whether to believe that you didn't know how thermos flasks work.....
They're really Dewar flasks, as James Dewar invented them, scottish bloke from oooh, way back, I recall at school, our physics teacher always called them "dewar" flasks and would get quite mad if we said "Thermos"... Thermos is a trade name owned by a company that makes DEWAR flasks , he would say.
Nature still abhors a vacuum.
Gary, I suspect she'd agree. She's a Red Dirt Mule, from far away from Texas. She's not exactly a cheerleader for Texas.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought.... If Texas sucks so much, is Texas full of wind?
I picture a chocolate kitty with an Ovaltine middle.
ReplyDeleteDo cats molt? Now I'm picturing a tabby using a nearby tree to rub off its skin, to reveal fresh shiny fur.
Oh Trollop. Remedial reading class for you, I think...
ReplyDeleteMALTING, she said, not MOLTING.
Usually, here, malting is a precursor to making beer or whisky, where grains of barley are soaked and spread out on a warmed malting floor, in a malt-house, they're started on the germination process, the starch in the seed turns to sugar, (maltose), the seed is heated to stop the germination when the sugar content is highest, and may be roasted to partly caramelise the sugars to turn them brown in colour.
http://www.ukmalt.com/howmaltismade/maltmade.asp
However, now I'm getting gruesome mental images of discarded catskins, intact. And maybe your old raggedy tabby might stroll back in as a gleaming, shiny ginger..... Agh!