I started the day with the best of plans laid out before me. I was going into my attic to mount the solar powered gable fan I bought a few weeks ago. I opened the box, surprisingly, all the parts were inside. It seems like lately every time I buy something, it is missing some (crucial) part when I get home. I ad-libbed the directions to the best of my ability. Climbed into my attic which started out at a balmy 100 degrees. I installed the frame, I had built. When I went to install the fan, the screws striped before they reached the end of their threads. Now by the time I got to this point it was about 110 degrees in my attic and rising. Hmm I new there was a reason I wanted to do this install on a rainy day. I knew the fan wasn’t going in today so I started fixing my soffits. It seems some brainless twit had blocked them up, so he could install three inches of blown fiberglass. I crawled on my belly like a reptile and pulled the boards out with my incredible super strength. I planed on doing the whole east side of my house before I was finished. I got about halfway and gave up. Something about dragging my fifty year old behind around in an attic, for a couple of hours, was just too much for me. I took a cold shower. Cold showers are something I object to, on a deep philosophical level. I threw aside by moral objections and saved myself from heat stroke. But I digress. I wanted to talk about cheap screws.
I think cheap screws are the reason for our current economic situation. Here is why; I used to drive American cars. I always preferred mopars but about fifteen years ago, I bought a brand new Chevy C-50. For those of you who aren’t into trucks, that is a big ass truck. That is the kind of truck you can throw a pickup in the back of, in case you get a flat. So anyway I had this truck for about three months and I had to go out of town for a few weeks. I decided I would pull the rotor out of my truck to make it harder to steal. That’s an old grease monkey trick. Rotors are easy to take out and the truck wont run without it. Well it is supposed to be easy to take out. Here is the problem. When I went to take off the distributor (the rotors house) the screw stripped out. This was a brand new truck It only had about three thousand miles on it and I was using all the right tools. The problem was someone had decided that they could save half a penny apiece on screws, if they just used a cheaper type of metal. Now I am sure if you add up all the screws on a truck, and multiple that, by however many trucks GM sells in a year, they probably saved a lot of money by using cheap screws, that fall apart. However on that day, I made an vow; I will never buy a GM product again, as long as I occupy this mortal vessel. Now here we are, fifteen years later. GM just declared bankruptcy. One of the reason GM is in so much trouble is, they couldn’t compete. It is all over the media. Everybody knows it. They have made crappy cars and trucks for a couple of decades now. One of the things that makes a car crappy, is little things like the screws fall apart, when you go to work on them. There you have it. If GM hadn’t started using cheap screws they would still be in business. The American economy would be strong again and all would be right with the world. But some moron with a fancy title and no common sense, decided GM should save money by using cheap screws. Now you can say what you want about them having a plan to emerge from bankruptcy as a better company. The fact is there are lots of people out there who wont mess with cheap screws.
Stalker Out!
Heterodox Stalker