Shhhh. I'm Thinking . . .
by dtkon
by dtkon
posted by File Boy & D.Tkon at 4:43 PM
Friday, March 07, 2008
About Me
- Name: File Boy & D.Tkon
This is a joint project between File Boy and D. Tkon (aka "Mr. Ass-Hat"). Ordinary office workers by day, these mild mannered bibliophiles don full body armor and shoot steroids at the end of the workday. If it moves it dies. If it dies it’s eaten. If it runs for office its shown no mercy here on the pages of WHY I SHOOT STUFF
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6 Comments:
Ahh television, the great distractor. Over the weekend that line of thunderstorms knocked a tree down into the power lines near my house. The power was out (and stayed out) from Saturday evening until Sunday evening. I wished I could watch t.v. I actually cooked food on the wood stove. I made coffee on the wood stove on Sunday morning, and it heated the house. Is there anything a wood stove can't do? Best of all, I was burning trees in the wood stove, which in some way helped me feel like I had scored one for the team since after all, it was a tree that was responsbile for my losing power in the first place.
Waht's really funny to me (now), is that when the power goes out, you expect it to come back on relatively soon. After about 12 hours though, you've already flushed all of the toilets in your house at least once, and they don't refill with water without power! You forget how important water really is. You can't shower. You can make coffee. You can't do laundry or run the dishwasher. I have about 10 gallon jugs of water in the basement for just such an emergency (I keep them near my panic room and extra ammo stash). I was able to make coffee using this bottled water, flush the toilets, etc. When the power came back on I looked around and all I could think was that without power (and especially water), all civilization goes out the window. There were plates stacked in the sink and food stuffs going bad in the fridge. Beer was getting warm, ice cream was melting, it was complete pandamonium!
Thank God for the people at DelMarVa Power!
Sorry to hear that you had to rough it for 24 hours. I think there's nothing more fun than camping in the comforts of home. I always am intrigued when the power goes out for an extended period of time, because I start lookinig at "gadgets" and muttering to myself "worthless."
It's amazing as you observed, that in the blink of an eye, 100 years of technology can go right out the window. Our society is so friggen delicate when you think about it.
I always shudder when I think about what would really happen if there were a real energy crisis or catastrophy - like no gasoline or electric for more than a couple of weeks. Only the military would be on the roads because none of us would have gas. We'd have to walk everywhere. You wouldn't even be able to buy sliced american cheese at the market because the slicers run on electricity. You'd have to buy fucking thick chuncks of american cheese, and I'd be pissed because it would take forever to make a grilled cheese sandwich, assuming you had something to cook it over. And all the cashiers at the supermarkets would have to learn to add and subtract so they could give you change when you make purchases. The cashregister drawers wouldn't open without power so they'd have to use a cardboard box as a register. They'd probably make all kinds of mistakes - so you'd be exhausted from walking home with your chunk of cheese, but psyched that made $600.00 from their accounting error when making change.
Hmmm. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad afterall.
Your line of thinking is exactly what was going on in my head during this catastrophe! (Well, not exactly, the huge fuckin piece of American cheese scenario you laid out below was a new horror I had not yet contemplated.)
During the height of the crisis I went down to the basement to inventory my water supply. Most (about 8 out of 10) of the gallon jugs of water had expired! How could I have been so careless?! I wondered how water "expires", but I wasn't going to drink water that had a "Best if Used By" date of "2002". I used one of the two good jugs for coffee, brushing teeth and watering pets. I used an expired water jug for flushing. Then I began to think, "What if it never comes back on?!?" so I took the empty jug I had just used and filled it up with creek water. I was getting out the guns and warpaint when the electricity came back on. I just dumped the creek water and went back to my normal life. But it was a close one.
As soon as the power came on I sprang to action putting dishes in the dishwasher, ridding up, getting laudry done, taking a shower, running around the house flushing toilets at will, watering house plants that were all a-wilt, etc.
What scares me the most about this weekend is that we actually considered getting out the scrabble board and playing that by candlelight. Can you imagine?
Like I said there’s nothing better than camping out in your own house. I’m still trying to understand why you couldn’t work your toilets without power – unless the pump at the local pressure station was knocked out as well, but they usually run on generators. Plumbing is all pressure and gravity – no power involved (usually). But then again, you live in that part of the state that’s a little slower, so maybe you guys haven’t discovered gravity yet. Here . . . take three apples up to your roof and try this . . . .
Anyway, I’m glad all that worked out for you. It sounds like it sure was a close one. If that had happened to me, the worst part would have been being trapped in the house with three women (wife and two teenage girls). I don’t have any guns, so I would have had to find another way to take my own life. As an aside, when I get home at night, before I put my key in the door, I take a real big breath and sigh real long in order to get ready for the auditory onslaught that awaits me on the other side. I’m telling ya, 3 women all talking at the same time can make you nuts. I always thought that the law prohibiting marriage to more than one woman was unnecessary interference by the government with my god given right to happiness. I had no idea that the law is on the books under the section on Public Safety.
As for the spoiled water, I think that’s a scam. The water might get a little age on it, but how can it go bad? I think they just like to make you think you need to rotate stock.. And quite frankly, I’m a little surprised at you that you’d allow yourself to get into such a dilemma. I always had you pegged as one of those folks with a nuclear bomb shelter in the basement adequately stocked with food, water, & porn – enough to get you through a crisis of unprecedented proportion! Actually, after 9/11 – I actually ran out and bought 10 cases of bottled water and researched the web about buying food that could last a long time in my basement. I found a site that basically sells you bomb shelter food that can last for 5 years or so. I thought the stuff was rather expensive and I also wasn’t happy about the food choices. Disappointed with the food selection, I started re-pondering not surviving the initial apocalypse.
Finally, if I was at the point where playing scrabble by candlelight was starting to look good, I’d have to rethink going back to rehab because I’d have to be pretty high before I’d consider that. I’d rather walk around the house looking for things to burn on the wood fire. Well TV Entertainment Center, I won't be needing YOU anymore.
I meant to explain the water thing. See, down in the sticks where we live we have wells. Those wells are run by electricity. No public sewer or water there at all. So no faucets will run which means you get one flush per toilet, then the tanks don't refill. Sure you can still use the toilets, but at some point you have to face facts. Without a flush now and then you can get yourself into some deep doo-doo if you catch my drift (wink wink - get it? I said "doo doo" because I mean poop. You get yourself into deep poop in your toilets when you don't flush. What I mean is it piles up and starts to stink - that kind of "deep doo doo". Let me explain. If you eat food and drink beer and then wake up and make coffee on your wood stove it makes you go poop. That's fine because you just flush it down. But then you only have one flush per toilet. If you have two people in your house and lots of poop you can exhaust your supply of tank water, thus deep doo doo).
ANYWAY, you can pour water into the tank and flush all you want, so long as you have water to pour into your tank. If you only have two gallons of non-expired water, you better save it for brushing your teeth, making coffe, watering the pets and that sort of thing.
I always use expired water in my toilets during times of emergency. But this emergency was so long I began to think I better save even the expired water because that would be better to brush my teeth to than creek water (it looks like poopy water, really). I think that pretty much explains it.
Poopy.
Thanks for clarifying. I knew there was a power failure somewhere in your story. And now I have a much clearer picture. If I didn't have potty power, I'd just go outside. Dig a hole and just throw some lime into the hole. Isn't that what good clean living is all about? Why do they call it good clean living if you have to go potty in a hole?
When I was 12, my uncle took me camping in the upper peninsula of Michigan. We were 50 miles from another living human. On the way there, I had to go number 2. He pulled over and handed me a roll and said "Go get busy boy." I hiked down the side of the road toward the stream and found a stump of a tree that was hollow. (I know your mind is racing ahead, but try to stay with me!) So God offers me this perfect perch. It looks just like a toilet. The only thing missing was a magazine rack. Anyway, I drop my pants and perch. Half-way into my business, I realize my ass is being eaten alive by about a zillion mosquitoes. I can actually hear them humming so loud I can't hear the stream anymore. I quickly finish my business and clean up, all the while swatting at my ass with my free hand. The mosquitoes that were on my hand were so thick you couldn't even see skin. Thank god the river was there to clean up in.
Anyway, that night, my ass swelled up like a hoppity-hop. I couldn't even get my pants up. I just laid there on my side in my bunk moaning with my ass sticking out. The whole time my uncle kept saying, "Aw quit complaining! How do you think those poor mosquitoes felt having some Jew ass from Atlantic city squat on their house and take a shit?" I'll never forget that week up on the peninsula. Ah, nature.
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