Blowing Up Some Cheap Chinese Junk

Americans are terrible consumers. With all the practice we have at shopping you'd think we'd be good at it (my mom sure is!) but too many of us make purchase decisions based on price alone and we completely ignore quality. This has made airplane travel miserable because airlines provide minimum service so they can compete on price. It has also resulted in stores packed with cheap junk that we insist on filling our houses with.

The fridge in our old house only lasted seven years. My parents' water heater lasted about that long. Chris installed a brand new Chinese piston into a 50cc scooter, and it wore out after one week. Next, the windings in the motor of our Shop Vac melted after less than two years of ownership. So to get full enjoyment out of our Shop Vac, we sucked up some gasoline into the machine and watched it explode.

Safety tip: If you want to vacuum up gasoline with a Shop Vac, take a few steps back.