Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   computer dumpster diving with the Dart
Friday, April 10 1998
M

iserable drizzle fell from cool cloudy skies until late afternoon, at which time the skies cleared and the chill continued. As I rode my bicycle, I wished I was wearing gloves.

Morgan Anarchy had spent then night sleeping on Jessika's leopard-print day bed in the room between the kitchen and living room. His fetid gutterpunk socks stunk up a good half of the downstairs.

In the afternoon there was a non-housemate female voice in the hall talking to Jessika outside the door of my room. I was partaking of personal privacy and had no plans to come out; I was sure, you see, that the voice belonged to Michelle. Whoever it was knocked on my door and almost came in my room. When silence indicated that everyone had gone, I found two chocolates in the kitchen with a note saying that one candy was for me, the other for Deya. This seemed even more Michellesque (what with her ever-present hypoglycemia, she's forever buying, making, eating, giving away, losing, and talking about candy). Later, though, I learned that the mysterious female had actually been Amy from Memphis. At that point, I actually did eat my candy.

I went on a bike ride around Charlottesville today, depositing unemployment checks in my bank account, checking my favourite computer dumpster on Preston (there was a fresh collection of loot, not all of which I could actually carry), then buying some groceries at the nearby supermarket and a half gallon of essential vodka at the ABC store.

Back home, I drank a little vodkatea and listened to the radio while flipping through a computer catalog trying to decide upon an expensive gadget to buy with my unemployment checks. Deya came home from work and we watched the Simpsons. Later on, Jessika came home from a day spent at Ray's house doing laundry (among other things). She'd washed all the covers for the couch cushions; they'd still been muddy from the days of Shira the Dog and recently they had started to smell like ass.

U

nder the cover of darkness, I fired up the Dart to return to the Preston Avenue computer place's dumpster. Deya and Jessika came along, and gave me assistance as I passed them various treasures I found, which included an AT-style case with a 25 MHZ 386 motherboard, obscure ISA/PCI combo cards, and bags of tee shirts with dorky logos. We also checked the dumpster at Bodos Bagels, where we occasionally find bags of good bagels, but tonight the contents were completely disgusting.

B

ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, we watched a black and white Japanese film called Iron Man, about a young businessman whose body is gradually taken over by machine parts. The film was full of blood and gore and featured an Industrial soundtrack. We thought Monster Boy would probably like it.

I was sort of amused to be watching such an obscure little foreign film with the housmates. So I asked Deya if she just went looking through the foreign film section and picked out this film. Somehow this made Jessika pipe up, "All video places have a foreign section." This is something that I sort of knew, but it was a fact to which I never really paid much attention. I'm not really interested in video stores or their organizational systems. The truth is that I'm not really into movies in the first place. So I replied, "You have to understand, I'm a farm boy; I'm not from the big city like you. You can't expect me to be urban and sophisticated." It was, as you can see, yet another of those vaguely contentious conversations that I'm forever having with Jessika.

one year ago

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