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Helpful household hint: Do you wonder if your shirt has spandex? There's an easy way to find out! Just take your iron, set it on high and try to get out the wrinkles. You'll know it's spandex because both the shirt and the iron will be permanently ruined.
Oh, I suppose you could check the label, but then you wouldn't have all the fun of asking the internet how to get the gunk off your iron. Because this actually is no fun at all, and I've already done it, I'm here to help.
I have to be honest: I got all the plastic residue off the bottom of the iron with a razor blade. It took an hour. I wondered if my hand had slipped and sliced the hand holding the iron, and I went to the ER, would this have been classified as a razor-related injury or an iron-related one? The latter would be accurate, but it would probably skew the national statistics for iron-related injuries, and I wouldn't want to do that.
"What did you say?" my wife asked. I said, "Make sure it's marked down as a razor-blade related injury." I don't think she understood.
Anyway, the iron, once cleaned, continued to scorch, and that's the stuff I tried to remove. Let's google!
The search returns a list of videos. I do not want a video. I want instructions. Why does everything have to be a video? And why does every third video have a thumbnail of some guy with a beard and glasses making that open-mouth exaggerated happy expression that infects YouTube content makers like some brain parasite that burrows into the neurons responsible for facial expressions?
It's as if the parasite makes them look like that so other parasitically infected YouTubers will recognize each other, and they will mate. How they might do that in a browser, I don't know and don't want to.
Sometimes a video is helpful. When I changed a headlight on the car, a video walkthrough was nice. But there probably are walkthroughs for opening a carton of milk. First you have to sit through an ad for a vacation rental place, and an insurance company that thinks it's funny, and then the Insurance Lizard, whom you can't really hate, and maybe an ad featuring one of those permanently self-satisfied young women who just bought a car online with three easy taps, which is like buying a house because you flipped through some paint swatches.
Anyway. I finally get to the video. The narrator shows us an iron. Good; yes. The voice-over tells us to plug it in, let it heat up, then unplug it. I'm bracing for a commercial at this point, you know, "Find your gooey at Velveeta.com or something, but no, that might cause the people with fractured attention spans to seek out another video and start all over.
Next step: Rub Paracetamol on the scorch.
What? The subtitles note that this stuff is available at the drugstore, and it might go by other names. It turns out that one of those names is acetaminophen. Well, we have that. According to the video, rubbing the pill on the scorch removes the residue. People in the comments testify to its efficacy.
So I get a Tylenol PM, rub the bottom of the iron and guess what? It melts.
Perhaps that's because this pill is coated. I try it with an uncoated pill. Nothing. Should I try rubbing NyQuil on it? Get out the BenGay? Nah. Dump this, find another video.
"Mix equal parts white vinegar and baking soda, and rub the scorched area," the narrator says. So I follow the directions. This also doesn't work.
There was another video whose description mentioned toothbrushes and dryer sheets, and probably required you to smear Irish butter on the thing as well, but I didn't bother.
Perhaps it's all an attempt to get ad revenue, and YouTube doesn't care whether any of this actually works. If so, I could make instructional videos about anything.
"Welcome to WeFix, where we show you fast and easy ways to solve your everyday problems! Today we're going to set forth the best way to wring out your sponge. First (video stops for a 15 second ad for an electric car) you grasp the sponge firmly in one hand, and press it against your stomach. Next, find a wall. Any wall will do!
"Run at the wall as fast as you can with the sponge still clenched next to your gut. This will remove some of the moisture, but not all. Run at the wall repeatedly until the front of your pants are wet, and the sponge seems drained of all moisture.
"Thanks for watching, and don't forget to smash the like button and hit the bell to get notifications."
There would be a list of videos that showed me making the stupid brain-worm-infected face, so people would want to see more. Including "How to dispose of an iron whose scorch marks cannot be removed." That one has me in a field, swinging it around by its cord like an Olympic shot-put event and flinging it far into the distance. After a few seconds, there's a distant, pained "Moo."
Sorry, Bossie. You should have had insurance. You need to get some, I can help.
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
