Extraordinary Uses For £30.

"Why is this man taking car wax into the shower?"
That has to be one of the greatest lines ever used in a TV commercial! It features in the ad for the truly extraordinary "Extraordinary Uses For Ordinary Things", a book which I find a tad baffling, to say the least.
Anyway, back to our showering man. So why, exactly, is he taking car wax into the shower? Well, first of all, is it any of our business? Surely what the guy does in the privacy of his own home is his affair? It might just be innocent enough, anyway. I mean, maybe he's got a really, really big shower and his car's in there with him? Then again, maybe he's just absent minded? Maybe, a few seconds after shambling into the shower, he stumbles back out again and says: "Oh bollocks!!! Doris? I've got the bloody car wax again. Where's the sodding Vosine?" The fact that the most likely explanations are that he is a pervert or his loved one's juices dried up some years ago and he fancies a bit of shower fun are, as I said, none of our business.
This laugh-a-minute book, brought to us inevitably enough by Reader's Digest, also includes sections on such things as "How to buff up your shoes with a banana", "How to turn a loaf of bread into a dustpan", "How to blow up a balloon with baking soda and vinegar" and "How to clean your dishwasher with Coca Cola"!!
The problem I have with this tome is that it keeps throwing questions at me, rather than providing answers. For instance, why would I want to clean my shoes with a banana when bananas are for eating and shoe polish is for cleaning shoes? Isn't bread, again, for eating? Has there been an international run on dustpans? Wouldn't a good way of blowing up a balloon in the absence of a chemistry lab be to blow into it? Have they stopped selling dishwasher cleaner? etc.
Perhaps the publishers think that these fascinating tips would prove life savers if, by chance, you found yourself marooned on a desert island? Well, are you any more likely to have a loaf of bread, vinegar, baking soda and Coca Cola in the middle of the Pacific than you are to have a dustpan, your own breath and dishwasher cleaner? No doubt bananas could grow on your island but would your first thought on finding them be "Thank fuck for that! I know we're bloody starving to death Agnes but at least our shoes will look good when they find our corpses"?
Maybe Reader's Digest believe they are just trying to pass on canny ways of saving money around the house? Sorry, but that dawg don't hunt either. "There! My shoes look fantastic now. What a shine! God, all that polishing has made me hungy. I just fancy a banana. Oh shit! That was the last one. I'll have to go out and buy some more, unless of course this shoe polish is spreadable? I know, I'll spread it on my bread. Double shit! I used the last of the bread to clean up the baking soda and vinegar which spewed out of the dishwasher. I know, I'll spread it on the dustpan and eat that."
What, then, is this book trying to tell us - that you don't have to use the traditional tools to do traditional chores? I think we were all kinda aware of that already. I mean, I'm sure you could use your granny's budgie to hammer in a nail - it's just that a hammer is so much more suited to the task and less distressing to elderly relatives. No doubt you could trim your pubic hair over a six month period and then glue the shavings together to form a passable Brillopad, but wouldn't the real thing be slightly more hygienic? I am sure I could use my erect penis to hold purchased doughnuts (I'm not saying how many), thereby freeing up my hands while shopping but, not only is that again unhygienic, it would vastly increase my chances of getting slung out of Sainsbury's.
Sorry. It's an interesting concept but I don't think they've really thought it through. It's got to go.