OH VALIANT, AND TO THINK AT ONE POINT YOU WERE EQUAL TO DC

Turok embossed foil covers for all at the thrift store!

CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN

One of the sad things left behind in the move was this hard workin' hunk of plastic and leaky chemicals. Sure it looks like a beat up air conditioner. That's because it is. How am I attached to some mechanical freeze box? Oh, it's background is vast, rich, and engaging. Poor ol' Cap'n Krunch. Have ye not heard the tale of the cap'n? No! Weeeeell sit back and fill a pipe for a yarn ta please ya.

One Summer, many burning seasons past, I gave up on sweating to death in my hotbox oven of a room in the old hobby flophouse I inhabited with 2 other goons. It was time for one of them newfangled air coolies I've read so much about. Of course I waited until mid-season to get an air conditioner and the choices were slim to none. There were vast swathes of empty concrete floor where all the good air conditioners used to be. Ya know, the neat ones with settings and a remote. But there were a few left, in way damaged boxes stuffed in a dank corner of the Home Despot. So I walked out with a big, weighty, stupid, expensive, no-feature having hunk of plastic. Great job.

I arrived home and got to setting it up. Like all air condition units claiming to fit any window, it didn't really fit too well. I fidgeted with stuff and wedged slabs of wood beneath it to level it out and in general made a mess of things. One of the roommates (we'll call him Spengy) eventually snuck over (he is sneaky when he wants to be) to see what I was doing. I sorta explained why everything is so stupid and in the midst of the rant, opened the window above the unit. The window holding the air conditioner in place.

Now, Spengy claims to maybe been able to grab the cord as it snaked it's way out the window, but instead opted to just let it go. I'm with him on that, I see the logic. Besides it was funny. My pocket wasn't laughing, but I sure was. Poking our heads out the window to survey the damage, the best part of the adventure revealed itself. Out there in our driveway, 10 feet or so from the dropped 80 pound or so deathconditoner, was a dude with a box of pizza. He just sorta looked up at us and walked off.

It ends here right? Nah. Being the cheap bastard that I am and the fact that I had yet to even turn the damn air conditoner on - I went to retrieve and revive the unit. I plugged 'er in and it sprung to life, despite the 2 story jump. But the fan was all mangled and rubbing against all sorts a shit and the plastic was busted and it was leaking water. All totally fixable with the one tool I had in hand, a hammer.

Buncha whacks later and some questionable internal duct tape jobs (red duct tape, the same stuff I later used on my busted glasses for all you trivia nuts out there) the monster lived! Sure it was way loud and grindy and had to be set on an angle just right or else it leaked a torrent of water back into the room, but it blew semi-cool air.

Out came the sharpie. A few teeth drawn onto the busted grill plus a name to fit the bill and Cap'n Krunch was born! He served to temper many a burnination Summer before retirement and eventual dumpster banishment. You were one of the good ones cappy.

Alright, so it's not a great story. More of an Aesop fable without animals or a moral, but it is what it is. I just happened across this photo and decided to post it. Now you can't unlearn what you've just read.

I DUNNO UNCLE TONY, MAYBE THIS WILL HURT OUR PIZZA BUSINESS. HOW ABOUT WE RETHINK THE WHOLE FELT STAR THING HUH?

Best pizza in all the camps!

I guess it's harmless.
I just think that maybe the choice for a 6 pointed star award to reflect
all those years of service weren't thought out none so good.
But, I'm just one guy.

File under: Sky Juice

I THINK I'LL HAVE A GLASS OF SKY JUICE NOW MOM.

File under: Bad name idea.
Carrion Crawler approved though.

THE STATE OF TODAY'S ADVENTURE

Found the local Ollie's. I guess every state/region has one of these. This one is called the Job Lot. A place laden down with so much random crap that it hurts the soul a little bit and takes a few minutes to take in. Just piles of discarded/rejected shit, horribly colored furnishings, castoffs, and sub-quality items. I declared it the colon of capitalism and was immediately at peace. Let the adventure shopping commence.

I was looking out for bargains! So bargains I must find! I found only a few bargains! I left behind the solar lawn ornament with a glowing red orb that I deemed the Eye of Sauron! I narrowly avoided the overflowing aisle of "as is" detrius! Here are 2 things I managed to photo as the mutants around me stared in awe at my magic!

This stitched wall scroll was a dollar. I didn't buy it, despite it featuring 3 dogs that my friends own. But I almost did.

And this here shower curtain reeks of class. I mean, if I were a rich fuddy duddy, there'd be no other item I would want surrounding me as I wash off the sweat from a jaunty hunt. Luckily it's part of a design collection, so if I wanted to, I could have the entire bathroom filled with the same awesome image. It was next to another shower curtain featuring turkeys and some shotguns.

I'll be back Job Lot. You amuse me.

CHEERGEAR or WILL THIS DUST KILL ME? - KEEP SWEEPING.

I guess I'm slightly more adulty/old/boring now. And the current interesting thing to me is this house that I own and have to make better in order to function. So the normal flow of nerdly crap will be interspersed amongst less exciting house crap. Either way you fine readers get some crap to look at. And who doesn't like crap?

Two of the more odious and straight up filthy areas of this creaky old manse are the garage and attic. Unfortunately these are also two of the more useful storage areas. Thus the towering box city we live amongst can't really go anywhere until the grime is dealt with. The basement is rather clean, but there are some damp issues in there that need to be addressed before I entrust much that own in there. Right now it's more of a staging area for debris and junk. I've been dragging around some of these boxes, unopened for about 6 years and they need a new place to rot.

The garage seemed like less of a nightmare, so I went for the easier kill. I set to it armed with a mid-sized shop vac which I named "Old B.O.B.", for hopefully obvious reasons, and an extension cord. Things went swell, I sucked up the bits of crumbly wall, spider webs, leaves, spiders, and crap for about an hour. Moving from corner to corner I set order to the filth. But, like everything, there was a hitch.

As I was happily deleting the debris from a high corner, I smelled a funny smell through my facemask. A smoky sorta funny smell. Old B.O.B. took on a different, high pitched whine, then stuttered a bit. I turn around and my vac-droid is on fire. So, I was finished vaccuuming the garage for the day. A quick trip to Lowes top exchange flamin' B.O.B, and I had a new shop vac. I toyed with naming it Bob II, for Devolutionary reasons, but really wanted to keep Old B.O.B. in the family. SO, Old B.O.B. lives on. I finished the wee bit left in the garage, declared victory and headed up to the attic.

The attic was a goddamn mess. I took no before shots like a dum dum, but folks that seen it already know, it was shitty. Old newspaper type insulation was everywhere. Thick ass linoleum from 1944 was scattered about, broken glass everywhere, wood shards hidden in the insultion, and random crud from the previous owners poked out from corners. Amongst the wreckage, I found a receipt for about $1500 from some place named "Cheergear". This helped explained the 30 or so pairs of tiny white socks (on the invoice) I found and the hundreds of iron-on letters scattered about. GO TEAM ATTIC DWELLER! (BUSEY).

So I'm using a push broom and I note the plume of crap in the air. I prey the respirator will keep me alive and press on. It's hot up in the attic, but honestly, the attic is almost as hot as my friggin' apartment used to be in DC. I start tossig trash bags and wood out the attic window onto the lawn. Then I employ Old B.O.B. once more. I vacuum between every damn floorboard. The space is awesome and ready to be filled with junk. Now I just had to move all that crap up the stairs and then up the attic stairs.

An hour of pain and I was master of my new domain of boxed up crap. Huzzah.

SO IT BEGINS

"Where are the funny photos of the robotkid from Gencon?" I hear the 5's of people cry into the interweb's series of connected void tubez? Well, it got dropped this year. Choke on this for now. And as Gencon is over and done with, the depression has faded, and I physically moved several states up the coast (hooray Northern movment!), I can crawl out of my digital hidey-hole and once more profess the word that the good people are forced to hear in their brains if they click and then read this page.

From what I've read and seen, Gencon didn't really produce any goodies I simply had to have. Outside of the annual "This Sucks" return trip Wendy's salad thrown down in disgust, of course. So there, suck it Gencon, you blew anyways. (though I think this looks kinda neato, and Darksun would have been fun to nab)

So what to fill the time then? Moving into and the fixing up some busted ass foreclosure built in 1928! The electrician dude found the orginal blueprints stuffed up in some nook in the basement. Neato.

So we moved. It was a semi-epic journey of slapdash new truckery. Rented and filled the biggest thing you can get from Uhaul, a 30ft truck. The pick up process was actually efficient and easy. Just doesn't happen at Uhaul. Remember Ghostbusters 2? The angry red goo levels under each and every Uhaul in America must be phenomenal.

Got it home without too much danger as it was all 495 type drivin'. But, wheeling it through the tiny streets of Takoma Park was a chore. Backing it in to the driveway, I hit a sign post with the rear bumper. Some buzzer went off in the cabin. It kept going off. It wouldn't stop. Some light on the dash lit up too. I performed the nigh impossible task of backing it into my tiny ass driveway and now it says the brakes are fucked up. I don't buy it for a minute. Some janky sensor has to have shit the bed and is now blaring this horrible beep. I tried encasing the side door speaker in foam to deaden it. It sorta worked, but the teeth jarring noise remained. No way was I gonna make it 8+ hours with that shit going off. The though of taking back the truck for a new less busted one was making me naseaus.

Then it hits me, it's just a damn speaker. So I dig around and find the well hidden wire that leads to the left door. Only took the popping off of 3 plastic panels. Oh and look, it has a handy snap connector. Noise problem solved. Brakes worked fine. About 8 hours in, the busted brakes dashlight turns off or blows out. Don't care. So, like I said problem solved.

Some brave folks decided to head North with us as support vehicles and bonus moving goons. The 3 vehicle convoy included my own personal lane clearer in the form a small pick up truck. I signaled to turn and the determined robotboy would get in that bizzatch first, indicating it was safe for me to change lanes. So very helpful. After about 3 too many traffic jams and hours wasted, we hit Connecticut. 95 cuts through the length of that bastard. Ugh. Around midnight, I've had enough of driving. So, with an audio book blaring on the phones (Dark Tower III) I go for it. Turns out the truck has a speed restricter. Maxes out around 80. The pedal just goes limp. So I keep it at 80ish, 30ft of shit barreling through the black towards Rhode Isalnd.

Finally, we get there. 2 shocks await. One, a minor shock, the outside porch lights are glowing this insane, clown-like color-rama which slowly fades from soft pink to blue to green to yellow and back again. Wow. 2nd, the contractor dude in the house that day didn't leave a key behind. Hooray. So we boost up through a window. Nothing like some friendly neighborhood B&E to kick things off right. "No, I swear officer, I own this clown-lit dump."

We crash out, and luckily the next day unloading went super smooth. Bang, 8 people and it's done. And the weather was fab, I only sweat through 2 bottles of Gatorade. Still nice out too. Likin' this Northern thing a great deal. (may begin to bitch come the Nov doomfrost-times.)

Now, we're here, and so it begins.