Исходное сообщение stuart1861
paranoid, Sorry pal, I don't think I've caught your idea... :-)

It's a great book by a great US humorist,
dedicated to home improvements. Full of
recipes like yours :)

Good and funny reading. Unlike South Park
can be fully grokked without living in
US and getting used to it.

few examples (text only, the book also have
quite funny pix by another great humorist):
----
The Three Major Kind of Tools

* Tools for hitting things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
bludgeons, and truncheons.)

* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)

* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
----

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-----
Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
"shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
these sometime around the middle of next week".
-----
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
difficult can it be?"
Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
----