Bring Out Your Dead

3/26/08

Long-time readers will no doubt be aware of my affinity for “found objects.” You may recall the massive haul that Hanni and I made from out apartment dumpster last summer, right around the time MSU students were bounding back home for summer break. If not, I invite you to enjoy that here, right after you finish this brief post.

With the ever-decreasing price and availability of consumer electronics, it’s easy to give up and throw away any product that malfunctions even minimally. And how couldn’t you? It costs more to repair, say, a TV than just to buy a new one. Plus, the new one will have a better picture and consume less power. Even so, I feel a severe pang of white, liberal guilt anytime I have to chuck a piece of electronic detritus into the trash to clutter up our ever-expanding landfills. Not only for the fact that I’m creating trash, but because things like TVs, cell phones, radios, microwaves and the like contain some really rather nasty materials and chemicals that may or may not turn all our decedents into flipper-babies.

Fear no longer! In an NPR story earlier today I heard of a website where you can go to find out what type and where certain recycling centers exist near you. Just plug in your zip code and you’ll find places that will take and recycle everything from TVs to cell phones to cameras to any and all computer parts. It’s http://www.mygreenelectronics.org/, dear readers.

Use in good health, my friends. Because a race of angry, mutated flipper-babies is much more frightening in a world where the ice caps have melted. Thank you for your kind attention.

Incest and Home Repair

3/10/08

My wife and I are buying a house this coming spring. Given our budget, we’re probably not getting a top-of-the-line, ready-to-move-in model. Think the “BEFORE” pictures on an HGTV show. Hanni is less enthusiastic about the level of “fixer-upper” we should be willing to get ourselves into, given my propensity for procrastination. I’m sure she has visions of living for two months in a house without a front door because “I’ll get to it,” and really, that duct-taped cardboard rectangle looks fine, doesn’t it? I could even cut us a porthole and pretend like we’re in a submarine! Wouldn’t you like that, First Mate Hanni? Hey, what are you doing with that suitcase?

I feel she has little faith in my inclination or ability to complete home projects. And that’s really unfair. Sure, I don’t have “experience,” or any “know-how,” and nothing in our tenure together has given her any reason to believe I won’t blow off installing the cabinetry in favor of building a small army of paper maché men, but by-thunder I’ve got moxy, and a head full of wild ideas, and that’s something you can’t quantify!

Today I was surfing around trying to find out the best way to paint cabinetry, in the event that we purchase a house with cabinets that look as though the previous owners were running a diaper-testing factory. So, you know, there I am on a website called This Old House, discovering the ins and outs of making like Bob Villa. After reading the article I get to the “comments” section, which started out pretty normal—“normal” in this case meaning normal for the internet, which includes horrific spelling and the grammatical equivalent of having your nuts twisted—with comments such as this:

Mr. Cabinets Wed, Aug 01, 07 at 10:27 AM
Great article about painted kitchen cabinets.

Ruth Robertson Sun, Aug 05, 07 at 12:25 PM
how to paint metal kichen cabinets?

Ruth Robertson Sun, Aug 05, 07 at 12:29 PM
How can you paint METAL kitchen cabinets to look as if they were sprayed?

Fine, right? As I read on, the comments get increasingly weirder, and seem to be posted by people who didn’t bother to read the article, but treated the comments section as if it was going to summarize and get back to them:

Sue Mon, Aug 27, 07 at 04:51 PM
Again,can you paint over oak in the woodwork,or cabinets? Will the wood grain show through? Thanks, Sue

edna stewart Sun, Sep 02, 07 at 01:18 AM
the kitchen cabinets at my church are old we cant afford to replace them but so how would i clean them and what do i use to paint them to give them new life

nancydumas2000@yahoo.com Sat, Sep 15, 07 at 11:13 PM
I need to repaint some metal kitchen cabinets. How should I prepare them and what type of paint do I use to paint them?

I would point out that all of these things were covered in the article. But I mean, these people are busy; look, that woman Edna doesn’t even have time to use capital letters! Ugly kitchens have infected her with chronic run-on sentences! How can she be expected to read when she’s clearly so panicked about her shit-stained cabinets* it has rendered her illiterate?! That’s all good for a chuckle and I can hear the sound of grammar-loathing readers chambering their shotguns, so I should say language isn’t the point of this story.

What I came across shouldn’t have shocked me. We all know that spammers use software to automatically post comments to blogs without verifying passwords. Even so, I was hilariously floored at the direction the comments took on February 29th. I’ll just give you a taste:

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Jesus! They put “Spamer” right there in the name; the brazenness of it all! Animated incest? I had no idea there was such a market for hillbilly cartoons. Not to be outdone, the magic crowd chimed in just for variety:

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I only included examples of the postings on here, but a good 90% of the comments concerned the unnatural love between family members. Maybe there’s some bizarre, hillbilly connection between revitalizing your home and banging your favorite sister-daughter, I dunno. I’m a little afraid that sanding and painting my kitchen cabinets is going to give me a powerful urge to drink Mad Dog and booty call my sister.


*That’s two jokes in one blog about cabinets being inexplicably covered in excrement. I assure you, this is a state of kitchen nightmare to which I have never been privy. What the hell is wrong with me?