Making fun of a video

5 Items That Are Better Old Than New.

This video is supposed to be showing what items are better old than new. It starts off with our host using an electric beater. She's "struggling" with one of the beaters and is supposedly having trouble getting it out. She then easily and simply pulls it out, realizes this, and shoves it back into the mixer before moving her hand away and letting it "fall out" into the bowl. Somehow this is her excuse for using a hand beater. The problem with hand beaters is that generally all you can find are egg beaters which aren't very good for mixing up anything thicker than pancakes or cakes in general. The handles are strenuous to hold on to and make your hands ache.

Next on her list are fans. She says older fans with metal blades work better than fans with plastic ones and that you can find metal blade fans for "30-50 dollars" online, which is "half the price of a new fan". Wait, what? Is she for real? On Amazon alone I just found 6,195 Results when I searched for fans under 25 dollars. Huh. Who in their right mind would pay 60-100 dollars for a fan, old or new?

Then she talks about sewing machines. Yeah, older ones do work well. However, it depends on what you're doing. Some people don't like making buttonholes by hand, others like the ease of a machine stitched button hole (and if you're making clothes to sell it's much faster to let your machine do it). What if you want the various stitches new machines come with? Also her claim is that new Singer sewing machines start at 150 and run up to 500 dollars while old machines can be found for 50-150. So I went to the Singer official site and did a search. I found ten machines under 150 dollars. And, really, it's not fair to use just Singer. You can find Brother machines for 60 dollars brand new and they're actually pretty decent looking, with a bunch of stitches and buttonhole makers.

Then she goes on to talk about furniture. If you happen to find a good deal on something at the thrift store, fine. But I see nothing wrong with buying assembly-required newer furniture. She makes fun of people having to put it together as if it's hard to follow directions. I could put together furniture in my sleep and have been putting it together since I was a child. It's really not hard. All it really requires is the ability to read directions. About the only stability and quality issue I've ever had is the backboard on bookshelves. They're flimsy and not pretty and my only consolation is that they're hidden by whatever's on the shelves so it doesn't matter much. But if you're moving and you need to take it apart a bookshelf's backboard won't stand up to too many reconstructions. Some new furniture looks very nice and you might not even know it was something you had to put together. Really all depends on your taste, if you prefer older style furniture. Or if you're rich you can go to a store and buy these things pre-made.

And then she talks about cast iron cookware where older ones work better. It was my understanding that a cast iron pan needs to be seasoned. Thus older pans are very seasoned and cook very well wheras new ones are, well, unseasoned and therefore impatient cooks won't spend the time necessary with them which leads to the belief that they're not as good, when, in 20 years, these pans that are new today will work as well as the 20-year-old pans of today. At least as far as my understand of cast iron goes.

Audio Equipment is next. Well, gee, I sure hope those audio systems from the 50s and 60s can play my cds.... Bet they can't hook up to ipods and mp3 players either. Speakers, if found cheap, maybe, if their sound isn't tinny and staticy. I really don't know much about speakers in general.

In general this woman just really gets on my nerves. Check out her "how to feed a family on 15 dollars a day" video for more annoying but amusing "helpful information".