A rather uneventful weekend for me. Friday night I hung out with my friend S and we wandered downtown a bit and had a drink or two. I managed to bash my finger pretty good while sitting out side of some bar called 'The Matador'. They have little tables out front, and in front of the table is one of those roping-off devices that is used to maneuver humans elsewhere. In the past these things used to be fancy velvet ropes, but these days it's a nylon strip of material that stretches outside of the pole. Well, my side of the table was poking out ever so slightly out of the roped off area, so when various humans came meandering down the sidewalk they would inadvertently invade my personal space. Annoyed, I thought I would stretch out the barrier tape a little more to cover my exposed area. This proved to be a bit of a mistake for when I moved the pole over a few inches, the other end of the nylon barrier popped off and came whipping back towards me to smash itself nicely into one of my fingers. It hit right where my nail meets flesh and left a mildly bloody mess in its wake. It does not hurt today, but it's rather ugly to look at. A bit likes a zombie finger.
We also had some guy ask us if the Matador was a gay bar. We originally saw some guy wandering down the street by himself. He looked and was dressed like a photograph of someone that comes in a wallet you just bought. He paused a moment for an elaborate cigarette lighting ritual with a match that looked purely for S's benefit. It was such an act of 'dude, you try too hard' that S and I started sniggering when he walked past us. I went inside to pay off my tab, and when I came out the guy was talking to S. Apparently he wanted to go inside, but he was worried it might be a gay bar. To be honest, the dude looked gay. Only guido's and gay men spend that much time spiking their hair. Wanting to be on our way I finally said to the dude 'Oh, don't be such a homophobe! Get in there and mingle!'. To my alarm he started laughing, and then wanted to shake my hand, and for a moment there I was afraid he was going to follow us around. To my relief he wandered away.
I spent the weekend working on my bathroom. Sometimes going to get the material and hauling it out to the truck and then back to my house is more tiresome than the actual construction work. On my first trip to Lowes I made off with six slabs on concrete board and a couple boxes of small tiles for the inside of the shower. I managed to get all the concrete board up on Saturday. Sunday I went back to Lowes for drywall, wood and a fart fan.
Fart fans seem to run in prices from twenty dollars all the way up to the hundreds. The fancy fart fans have lights and heaters and claim to be 'whisper' quiet. I bought a cheap fart fan. For a while I was not even sure if I needed a fart fan. The bathroom I am working on is fairly well ventilated with a decent sized window. And if it comes down to clearing out the farts, well, I live by myself. People rarely complain about the smell of their own farts. I decided I probably needed one to keep humidity or mold spores down or something. However, I was not going to spend more than twenty bucks for a fart fan.
I heard a rumor that cartoon network was going to show the entire Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie on television. Since it was April fools, I was doubtful, but flipped it on. Sure enough, they did show the entire movie...in a little postage-stamp sized box in the corner of the screen while the regular shows are playing.
2026 Update
Dialing back nineteen years to watch Ed debut his zombie finger and a homophobe’s matchstick ritual.
Reading this, I feel the world creaking under my hooves. The outdoor bar rope-and-pole setup has mostly been replaced by retractable belt stanchions, so nobody gets whipped by a rogue nylon strip unless they’re truly cursed. Ed hauled concrete board and drywall from Lowes in a truck; now we order custom pallets through an app and silently blame the delivery guy when it arrives a day late. The humble fart fan has evolved far beyond twenty bucks: it now has WiFi, a phone app, and a “whisper” setting so high-tech it apologizes for existing. Watching a whole movie in a postage-stamp box on Cartoon Network? That’s basically streaming on a laptop, except now the box is the entire screen and the buffering is the new villain. And the biggest shift of all: that guy’s elaborate cigarette-lighting routine would now be performed directly into a phone camera for an audience of strangers, and we would all pretend not to watch. Ed’s zombie finger was at least analog, which is more than I can say for the modern world’s entire personality.
“2007 Ed, when you stretched that barrier pole and watched the nylon strip lash your finger, did you pause to think, “this is what I get for trying to fix public space,” or did you immediately blame the bar, the sidewalk, and the entire concept of outdoor seating?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I'd like to say I had some grand moment of clarity, but no. I mostly blames myself, though not in any noble way. It was more like, “You idiot, you touched the roping thing and now your finger looks like ground beef.” I didn't blame the bar or the sidewalk, they were just doing their job. The sidewalk was flat and the bar was serving drinks, so really the only jackass in the equation was me and my sudden urge to fix public space for strangers who weren't even bothered. That's the thing about me, I see something slightly inconvenient and think I'm the unofficial mayor of the universe. The nylon strip reminded me real quick that I ain't. And then the finger got ugly and I got to explain it to S all night, which was its own punishment. So yeah, first thought was “this is what I get,” followed closely by “ow.”
