I am still gloating over this huge television I managed to score over the weekend.
Sunday morning I woke up and sat at my computer with a cup of coffee to scan the headlines. I took a peek on craiglist and saw that someone was giving away a free television in Sanford. Why
thought I
I happen to live in Sanford. And Indeed I do like me some free stuff. So I buzzed the lady and she told me to come pick it up.
It was only a few blocks away so I jumped in my JunkTruck and rattled on over to the address. It turned out to be some old Sanford home next to the historic district. When I went up to knock on the door I noticed there were stickers all over the door that said things like: "BEWARE OF JUSTIN" and "CAUTIION: JUSTIN LURKS WITHIN!" and a few others. I timidly used the little metal door knocker.
Some single-mother-ish looking woman who seemed to care more about tattoos then personal hygiene let me in the door. (OK
that was rude. It was a Sunday morning after all. Who looks good on a Sunday morning.) Over the couch there was a large banner sign that said something to the tune of 'LET'S HEAR IT FOR JUSTIN!' or something of the sort. Sitting on the couch wearing a pair of diapers and a stained t-shirt was a little boy that I am going to assume is Justin. He paid no attention to me; his eyes never left the television.
The lady led me into a small back room where the television lurked. The thing was so big it took up half of the room. She took a few moments to assure me everything worked fine on it
as if I was not going to take a free monster tv because of some minor blemish.
I could not get it up on the dolly I brought; it was just too cumbersome. So I ended up just pushing it across her wooden floor. To my horror it was leaving a long scrape on the floor behind it. However I wanted the tv bad enough the I decided to pretend I did not see it. Either the lady did not see it or did not care. I pushed it out past the back rooms to the front room where the Justin I had been warned of via stickers sat unmoving on the couch. He was a little bit weird.
Getting that tv into the tuck and then into my house by myself took some minor feats of strength
and I managed to scrape up the case some more. However
I was still immensely pleased with myself. The television came with a curse
however
I ended up loafing in front of it even more than usual.
Well
I cannot really blame it on the television. I was in a sort of hermit-like mood all weekend. Even though it was beautiful day out
I avoided the sunlight like gollumn and shrunk into a corner and hissed at it whenever it beamed in my way. Sometimes hermit weekends are good if you don't feel like dealing with anything outside.
I did find myself a spiffy thrift store find over the weekend. Lurking in a corner of a local thrift shop for a dollar was this air-brushed painting:
The old lady who run it up gave me a funny look
however I was delighted with my H.R. Geiger clone painting. I might even find a frame for it.
I posted a video of my demon possessed doll moving up on google video's. It will take a few days before some google staff reviewer looks at it and decides it's not porn. That must be a fun job; just looking at videos that people send in all day. Out of curiosity I looked at the statistics of a video I had put up of my cat licking his butt. Over 800 people had watched that video. Wow.
I need to figure out what I am doing for St' Paddy's day.
2026 Update
Ah, 2006—twenty years ago, and Ed is already dragging a free monster TV across some poor woman's floor.
Ah, 2006. A golden age when 'free TV' meant a back-breaking CRT the size of a small submarine, and you physically shoved your prize across a stranger's floor, scraping her wood while pretending the blemish didn't exist. Craigslist was a lawless land of 'free stuff' and door-knock warnings about Justin; now we all browse marketplace apps where half the items are scammers and the other half require a subscription to message. The television itself has vanished into a thin glowing pane on the wall, so nobody needs a dolly anymore. Google Video's human moderators—people paid to decide if your upload was porn—have been replaced by algorithms that dutifully file everything into oblivion. And eight hundred views on a cat licking its butt? That used to feel like fame. Now a cat video can generate enough views to fill a galaxy of Ed's living room, all without a human ever making eye contact. Even thrift stores have been picked clean by resellers; that dollar airbrushed painting would probably be listed as 'vintage surrealism' for a fortune. Some things never change, though: Ed still spent the sunny weekend hiding from sunlight like a grumpy little cave troll.
“2006 Ed, when you decided to pretend not to see that long scrape you were dragging across a stranger's wooden floor, did you at least mutter an apology to Justin on the way out—and was it worth turning yourself into the neighborhood's floor-ruining monster?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’ll confess I did not mutter a single apology to Justin. That kid was parked on that couch in his diaper, eyes glued to the screen like he was in a trance, and I don’t think he even knew I existed. I just grunted, pushed that monster through his living room, and made like a ghost out the door. The lady either didn’t notice the fresh trench I carved in her floor or was too polite to say anything, and I was too busy pretending I was invisible to bring it up. Am I the neighborhood’s floor-ruining monster now? Probably. Do I feel bad? Yeah, a little. But that TV was free, and it’s huge, and I’ve been loafing in front of it like a hermit ever since. So yeah, worth it, I guess. I’ll just avoid that block for the rest of my life.
