Take a Tip From Me (Please!)The worst thing about the Web is just how darn helpful it is. It is lousy with tips. If you need advice on anything from how to travel with a toddler to how to raise your own pig to how to stop an argument at Christmas, there are 17 (million) different sites with seven or eight tips each. OK, I'll tell you the Christmas one: In case of an argument, inform the jerk(s) they have to pipe down or they won't be invited next year. That way, if they shut up, you win. And if they don't — you win! Because next year will be a lot less miserable. (Unless you are, indeed, trying to raise your own ham, at which point you are probably in for a rough holiday no matter what. And so is your snout-nosed friend.) Anyway, my point is that individually, these tips are great. I'm happy to know that I can shave my legs with hair conditioner. (A Web site tells me Natalie Portman does!) And to substitute honey for sugar in a recipe, all I have to do is use half the amount called for. And how helpful it is to realize that if I'm worried that an egg is rotten, I simply can put it in a bowl of water; if it sinks, I should throw it out. Or ... maybe if it floats , throw it out. Lemme just go look that one up again. FLOATS! Float starts with an F like FAIL, so if it FLOATS, it is a FAILED egg. Got it. For two seconds. That's precisely the problem. The sheer volume of extremely helpful advice means that either we fire up the smart phone every time we spill a drop of tomato sauce on the tablecloth ("First, cover the stain with talcum powder...") or our minds start swirling like Heloise on heroin.
Forget TMI. We're talking TMT — too many tips. A quick Google search of kitchen tips leaves us knowing that we always can grab a cheese grater to grate soap for laundry detergent (which sounds way harder than buying some Tide). And we can keep a bunch of parsley ever at the ready by simply washing, trimming, drying and freezing the stalks in individual plastic snack bags (which sounds a lot harder than medical school). Here's another tip I just discovered: If you want to get walnut meat out whole, soak your nuts overnight in saltwater. Your walnuts, that is. My problem is that right when I'm trying to remember some great little hint — how to dry out a cell phone that has fallen in the toilet, for instance — all I can remember is, "Starve a cold; feed a fever." That one fact is pretty much taking up the entire "tip locker" in my brain (which becomes a hurt locker when I say, "Don't you know ANYTHING about what to do with extra slivers of soap?"). There is, of course, one simple way to deal with all this information. Simply Google "how to store information." Then check out the 118,000,000 (really!) sites. Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now" and "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
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