Lippard.Multics 1985-11-12 15:07:03 mst Tue Subject: Dave Barry on Toolsheds Date: Tuesday, 12 November 1985 14:56 mst From: Charlie Spitzer To: {mbx >udd>m>jjl>misc>misc} Date: Fri, 8 Nov 85 10:39 EST From: Nancy Connor A PERFECTLY STUPID SHED by Dave Barry In this article, I'm going to explain how to build a geodesic storage shed that will be the talk of your neighborhood, to the point where you will be afraid to answer the door. I'll just give you a rough idea of how you would build this shed; those of you who wish to see detailed plans may send in a self-addressed, stamped envelope and wait until hell freezes over. Why do you need a storage shed? Safety. Just think for a moment: What would happen to your loved ones if a fire were to break out amongst the deadly substances stored in your basement? And if you try to tell me you have no deadly substances stored in your basement, my reaction will be to laugh in the sneering, condescending manner adopted by French waiters when you try to pronounce "fromage". According to the United States Department of Explaining Things for the Benefit of Consumers Who Have No More Sense Than a Plate of Mashed Beets, virtually everything stored in everybody's basement is a highly toxic explosive. This includes all the cans of old paint that you are saving in case we have a worldwide economic collapse, and you have to survive by living in your basement and eating paint that has congealed to the consistency of snow tires. In recent experiments on the Utah Salt Flats, government scientists used a remote-control device to drop a six-year old, one-quarter-full can of old latex paint (Eggshell White) from a height of 7 feet, and the resultant explosion destroyed every living creature in an area the size of Botswana. Of course, you don't get a great many living creatures down in the salt flats, so what we're really talking about here is six, maybe seven poisonous lizards of the variety that starred in so many Japanese science-fiction films in the 1950s. But the damage to your house could be much more serious. So you really do need a shed. I realize, of course, that you have seen ready-made metal sheds on display in such places as home-centers, and perhaps you are tempted to buy one. Don't be a fool! These come in kits consisting of thousands and thousands of parts, many of them invisible to the naked eye. It takes a team of crack home-center employees as many as eight consecutive days and nights without any sleep to assemble such a shed, which is why they always appear so listless. So what I am suggesting is that you construct this modern shed that I have conceived of, because I am dying to find out whether it will work. It utilizes the famous "geodesic" principle, under which you get tremendous strength and rigidity by making everything into a pentagon; it could be a triangle. Whatever it is, the important thing is that it gives tremendous strength and rigidity, which will be darn useful when your paint explodes. Your first problem is going to be getting the pentagons to stand up without falling over while you nail them together. Here I have come up with a rather clever idea, which is to heap a great big pile of dirt in the shape of a shed, then lean the pentagons against it while you nail them together. Of course, then you will have a shed full of dirt, but personally, I view that as a safety measure. Another problem is going to be how you get into the shed. I advise against installing a door, for two reasons: 1) neighborhood youths could use it to get into your shed and steal your dirt, and 2) I gather, from reading homehandyperson articles, that, to install a door, you must engage in "mortising." I am not sure what this means, but it sounds dirty to me ("WASHINGTON A United States Senator was arrested today in a seedy downtown hotel and charged with attempted mortising"). So I suggest you enter your shed via a tunnel. For detailed instructions on tunnel building, refer to the fine educational World War II POW escape movie "The Great Escape", starring Charles Bronson. The trick is to hide the tunnel dirt in your pants and scatter it surreptitiously around your yard during the exercise period. If the guards figure out what you're up to, your best bet is to lob a can of Eggshell White at them and make a break for it. (Rodale's New Shelter, January, 1984)