DIY bedroom shielding
Now that I'm not wating my employer's money anymore, here is a simple DIY recipe for the members of the tinfoil brigade wishing to shield their well-desserving sleep from noxious brain-cooking, cancer-inducing, kiddie-fiddling electromagnetic radiations. It's not as efficient as living in a 10-cm thick airtight copper box but it should dim the radiations enough to cut most man-induced signal transmission. (effect on headaches not guaranteed, though: paracetamol -or in this case Xanax- are probably more efficient).
Material:
-A few tens of Times worth of newspaper
-a bunch of cheapo white bed linen (two times the surface to be shielded, plus2 linen. Don't forget floor and ceiling.)
-a few tens of tinfoil rolls (adapt the number to the area of the shield needed. Don't forget to take floor and ceiling in consideration). Real tin foil (i. e. Fe, not Al) is probably much better, but Al foil will probably do the trick anyway (tin foil is more difficult to get -and more expensive). Given the choice, go for the "industrial" or "heavy-duty" variety, a bit more expensive but probably more "effective" -especially regarding your time and curses: save your fragile nerves, kitchen-type aluminium foil is nigh-impossible to handle for the kind of surface we're talking about. And thin tin foil is even worse.
-a few bags of dry poster glue (cheap as dirt, don't hesitate to over-buy, you can still pour the surplus in your neighbour's mailbox, oughta teach'em). If you want, recipes for poster glue abound on the web. Just check your fave pseudo-activist website. Most artisanal glues will crumble to dust quite fast though, so you might want to use real wallpaper glue instead.
-a large glue brush.
-some way to keep the shielding in place (nails and hammer for permanent wall install, rods, string and contact glue for your very own fort, same plus 147 rolls of duct tape if you are an engineer, etc. Your imagination is the limit)
-semi-optional: a heavy-duty bathtub, large amount of water (x2), mop, pants.
-optional: assorted acrylic paint pots, assorted paintbrushes, paint thinner.
Method:
-lay one linen on the floor, cover generously with poster glue.
-remember that you forgot to cover the floor with newspaper
-frantically remove the glue-soaked linen from the floor, throw in the bathtub.
-clean floor with large amount of water and mop
-Allow the floor to dry.
-get glue-soaked linen from the bathtub
-The floor was not the only thing to dry...Soak linen in second large amount of water (in the bathtub, of course)
-lay new clean, dry linen on the newspaper-covered floor
-cover generously with poster glue
-apply tinfoil on the linen so as to cover the whole surface. Avoid tinfoil superimposition as poster glue does a bad job at gluing metal on metal.
-if you used the kitchen-variety of tinfoil: realize that tinfoil prefers to stick to your glue-covered hands rather than to the linen. Cuss a lot, make a total mess of the thing, stop short of turning yourself into a tinfoil mummy and throw everything in bathtub.
- go get industrial-grade tinfoil (well, you can't say I did not warn you)
-take fresh linen
-realise that the newspaper protective layer went in the bathtub with the rest of the bloody stuff.
-Lay new layer of newspaper.
-Ooops, what was this Sun edition doing in there?
-Admire page 3, save it for, erm, a friend of yours who collects them and happens to miss this particular one.
-finish laying the newspaper.
-lay new linen, cover in glue (you should be an expert at that by now).
-Cover the linen with tinfoil, avoiding superimposition.
-Notice how easy it is when you use heavy-duty tinfoil. Laugh at the cheap fools who try to use the kitchen-grade one.
-Wonder what you are going to do with these 30 rolls of kitchen-grade tinfoil that the missus seems to have bought for some reason. Seriously, what was she thinking.
-once the linen is covered with tinfoil, lay a second linen on the floor.
-realise that you don't have that kind of surface available, go do that in the neighbours' living room (hey, you're watering their plants, they owe you that)
-cover generously with poster glue.
-realise that you forgot the newspaper
-don't give a crap. After all, you're watering their plants. Not to mention the mail. (more about that later)
-Lay the second, glue-covered linen on the tinfoil layer covering the first linen to make a linen-glue-tinfoil-glue-linen sanwich.
-carefully chase air bubbles away.
-let dry (while possibly admiring your friend's collection of Sun's page 3s which he happened to leave there for some reason -if you forgot to wash your glue covered-hands, cuss a lot)
-check the dryness state of your crafty creation
-realise that glue-soaked jeans dry faster thant tinfoil-covered linen. Especially at 37 degrees.
-cuss a lot
-be thankfull that you don't have to shave your legs anymore.
-actually, don't. Especially when you realise that it's not only your legs.
-stumble to the bathtub
-after half an hour in the bathtub, take off your pants, discard the mud (made of 2 linen, some tinfoil, newspaper, and your pants.)
-have a shower, get new pants
-repeat until shortage of any supply.
-cover walls, ceiling and floor with your homemade shielding.
-optional: decorate (using the optional acrylic paint, paintbrush and paint thinner).
-notice that you have 9 liters of glue left. Pour half a liter in any letterbox you have access to (except your own, stupid). That should take care of your neighbour's mail. What do they think you are, their slave?
-realize that you have 8.5 liters of glue left. Use that to water the neighbour's plants. It's organic, they should like it.
-Realise that you had only 8 liters left, not 8.5. Wonder where the missing half liter went
-don't check your mailbox now, you've had enough for today.
-go to bed, have a nice, quiet night, undisturbed by all the nocive radiations.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
