Top Tips
Not a lot of people know that one of my first publications was a contribution to the Top Tips section of the esteemed Viz Comic, which originates from my home town of Newcastle upon Tyne. The aforementioned Top Tips offer absurd, impractical or ludicrous suggestions to parody those in “lifestytle” magazines proposing handy hints to make domestic and everyday life easier.
I’ve been tweeting a few of my favourites over the last few days, including a couple of (very) vaguely astronomical ones, so I thought I’d collect some of them here. The first is relevant to this week’s festivities:
- Avoid feeling uncomfortably hot during your graduation ceremony by wearing only underwear underneath your gown
- A ‘guide bat’ tethered to your finger with a short piece of string is the perfect way to avoid trees and horses in the dark.
- Prevent your shoes from giving you blisters by lining their insides with sticking plasters
- Astronomers avoid total blindness when viewing the sun by using a telescope rather than binoculars
- Reduce the risk of night-time fires by soaking all your furniture with a hosepipe before going to bed
- Make your own inexpensive mints by leaving blobs of toothpaste to dry on a window sill
- A used condom filled with water and left on a radiator makes an attractive yet inexpensive lava lamp
- Avoid the need for expensive binoculars by simply standing cl0ser to the object that you wish to view
- Avoid hiring unlucky people by immediately tossing half the CVs into the bin
- Sausage rolls sewn together side by side make an excellent emergency wig for judges
- Dabs of silver model aircraft paint can transform repulsive facial warts into fashionable piercings
Feel free to add your own contributions- preferably original and, even better, with a physics or astronomy theme – through the medium of the comments box…
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In the Dark 
July 18, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Impress people at parties by changing the subject to the “shrinking globe” then quoting distances between cities in astronomical units
Amuse your friends and confuse staff at your local DIY megastore by asking where the Max Plancks are.
When asked for the length of the plank you require by in the local DIY store quote it in Planck lengths
Those people who are not impressed by your ability to quote distances in AUs at parties can be made to feel small by looking at them down the big end of a telescope
Avoid having to send coals to Newcastle by keeping them in Cardiff where they belong.
(sorry, best I could do at short notice)
July 19, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Great. Those are definitely the best I’ve received so far…