Good morning fathers, including my brother John.
This Sunday is Father's Day. It's a cultural tradition to honor fathers, and I am going
to give you all a Father's Day present: A list of tips and tricks to make your lives
a little easier.
Here is some duct tape. We all love duct tape. It's a very manly substance. But this is kind
of the only size it comes in, right? So if you want a smaller piece of duct tape, you
have to get it off, and then you have to rip down the side...
Interestingly you can actually do this permanently, and you can do it any size at all. All you
need is an Exacto knife and the ability to not cut your face of while using one.
Duct tape has little strings inside of it. You can see the little ridges where those
strings are. Cut in between those little strings. You can actually have one duct tape that is,
in effect, devoted to several different widths of duct tape. So just by cutting and yanking,
we now have a duct tape roll that has three different widths of duct tape. So you don't
have to use the whole thing. This will make your duct tape last much longer.
Now let's talk about knots. Knots are extremely useful. The one that we usually use is this
one, but it's not very good because it binds up and it's hard to undo which is why you
should always do the figure-eight knot.
Figure-eight knot: You go around, and then back up, and through, and this is your figure-eight
knot. Now that will tighten, but it's also really easy to untighten - wink! - and it's
done.
So all I'm doing is going around, and over, and then back up. You can do it in a loop:
go up, and then over, and around, and up with the loop, and then you've got yourself a figure-eight
loop. And this won't go anywhere, but it's really easy to untie so if you ever need to
- well - fatherhood's hard, but not that hard.
And if you want to tie two strings together - or two usb cables - with the figure-eight
knot, just do your figure-eight knot losely with one of them, and then with the other
come the opposite direction and follow this knot around.
[sings, fast forwarded]
...do do dooo! And then you have a really good knot that's really easy to untie.
Tip number three: Flossing sucks. You've got to wrap it around your fingers, and then you've
got to put your big ol fatherly hands all up in your mouth, and then by the time you're
done your fingers are turning purple and they're about to fall off.
This is why you should get one of these. They are inexpensive and they let you floss without
having to shove your fingers in your mouth.
Number four: Do you have a bunch of old VHS tapes and family photos lying around that
are just taking up space, and you want to have them in a more managable format?
There are tons of companies on the internet that will take your things, scan them, so
that you can have them in dvds or on your computer. It's super easy, not very expensive,
and I've linked to some of them in the description below.
Disposable razors are great, but I hate it when they start getting dull and I'm like
"I can do it one more week" as it yanks every hair individually out of my face. It turns
out that this doesn't need to be sharpened. What it needs to be is honed. It's not because
the razor is dull that it's hurting you so much. It's because there are tiny microscopic
bends and imperfections that have formed in the razor. And it's really easy to hone a
razor. Just take our your jeans and rub it backwards on your jeans ten or twenty times.
And all those microscopic imperfections will totally be gone. This will be much shinier
and much prettier and hurt way less. This can make expensive disposable razors last
for months instead of weeks.
And now for my final trick, I'm going to teach you how to relax more, eliminate pee spatter,
decrease marital strife, and decrease the volume of the noice of your urination.
Yup yup yup yup.
Oh yeah, that's right. I just peed sitting down. I know what you're thinking. You're
like "What kind of man is this?" I'll tell you what kind of man I am. I'm a man who's
comfortable with my sexuality, and I am a man who isn't overly concerned with irrational
constructions of our society and culture.
Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers.
And if you are a father who is only watching this because someone sent you the... for the
tips, stop watching now because it's about to get confusing.
I'm playing a couple of shows in Missoula this week and next week. July 23rd is the
first at the Unitarian Universalist church with the Whomping Willows and several other
wizard-rock bands. I hope that all Missoula nerdfighters come out to those shows because
I would really like to see how many of you there are.
John, stop trolling! Tell us what the freaking title of your book is, jeez! And I will see
you on Monday.