A most un-exciting weekend for me. Shrug. They happen.
Friday night I picked up a copy of 'Mirror Mask' and watched it while munching on some nacho's. I liked it, it was not as great as I thought it was going to be because I thought the story line was a little week, but the special effects made up for it. I particularly found the sphinx cats to be amusing, although the floating giants sort of creeped me out.
Saturday I had to make a dump run. Alan had thrown a buncha shit in my truck, and I scraped up most of the floor in my bathroom and threw it in, and on the very top Alan and I muscled in the dead giant TV. I drove out to the dump in the sweltering weather. When I got to the dump the GateKeeper hailed me and asked what I was hauling. When I told her that I had a TV back there, she promptly told me they could not accept televisions and that I would have to take it to a different place across town. I grit my teeth at this because the television was on TOP of everything else, and I could not pull it out and dump my shit and then put it back on. So I turned around and drove away.
I briefly entertained the though of simply dumping it into some swampy turn of the St. Johns river. I imagined myself pushing it off and then gleefully clapping my hands as it bubbled it's way down into the murky water. I could not bring myself to do that, however. I am no tree hugging environmentalist, but dumping televisions into rivers is simply wrong. So, sweating and swearing I drove out to winter springs.
I am not really sure what this other dump place is for. Mostly recycling, I assume. It turns out it did not cost me anything to dump off a TV. So I drove my truck into the little underground recycling center. I was not sure what to do at first until I saw the big pile of computers, stereos and old televisions. They actually had some god stuff there and I almost loaded up a few things for my enjoyment. The concrete floor was amazingly clean for a place people dump off trash. I felt a little bad when I pushed the television off the back of my truck and some crushed tiles and other trash came tumbling out. There was no one there to help me unload and I was half afraid that once the tv hit the concrete floor the giant tube would burst. If that happened I would have probably left it there and jumped in my truck and made my getaway. However, it remained intact so I grunted and pushed it over with the other junk. So long giant TV, you served me well.
The next day I worked on the bathroom some more. I was having trouble getting that tub out. I crawled under the house to look at the piping to see if it was still attached. Turns out I had already broken that connection when I was ramming the tub with a big metal pole. However, I saw where the drain was hitting on the wood and realized I could get it out by lifting it along its side. It was not easy toget out... that sucker was heavy. Big old cast iron. If a bomb was going to hit the house I could probably hide under it. I grunt and muscled it out my back door, and with a mighty heave pushed it out. TO my horror it hit the door frame and for a second I thought it had knocked the entire frame out of it's socket. But all it did was leave a couple of little gashes. Nothing too bad. And thus the tub still sits in my backyard until next weekend when I go to the dump. Again.
I spent another hour or two sweeping up cramp that was under the tub. Remember, a possum had once lived under there. I was cleaning up the remains of it's nest along with chunks of tile and pink insulation. I also ripped out the toilet. This is what annoyed me the most because now I have to walk allll the way to the other side of my house to pee. And that sucks because I am one of those people who get up two or three times in the middle of the night to go pee. Yeah, I know, no one cares but me. I'll get used to it.
Finally I felt dirty and cruddy and decided I did not want to deal with that disgusting hole any more that day.
Later that night I did a little shopping. I had received in my e-mail a coupon from big lots. (I am signed up on their mailing list) The coupon was for twenty percent off my total purchase. However, it was only good for two hours on one day. I was originally not going to bother, but I decided I had nothing better to do so I wandered over there. The coupon would have been great if I was buying crappy big lots furniture or maybe picking up an A/C unit, but I really did not need anything. I ended up just buying some dry goods. Macaroni, spaghettios, all sorts of joyous manufactured and ultra-preserved foodstuffs.
Out of amusement I picked up a can of 'Vienna sausages'. I do not think I have had those since I was a kid. Pork, beef and chicken all ground up and bleached and placed in little tins. I ate them last night and they still tasted pretty disgusting. Remind me never to eat in Vienna. I like the little can they came in, though. I miss pudding coming in those little can. I do not like the plastic cups that pudding comes in these days. Don't ask me why. It's just not the same.
That pretty much covers my boring weekend. The fortune cookie lied to me.
2026 Update
Twenty years back, and Ed is sweating over a dead television, a cast-iron tub, and Vienna sausages.
Ah, 2006. A simpler, sweatier time when a television was a glass-and-lead monolith with a haunted tube that could burst, and the dump had a GateKeeper with firm opinions about electronics. Today you'd be hauling a flat panel that weighs less than a bag of cat litter, and there's an entire bureaucratic shrine of recycling rules to navigate—usually through a municipal website that makes you schedule an appointment like you're visiting a vampire. That two-hour Big Lots coupon sent by email feels like a fossil too: now the coupon lives in an app, knows where you are, and expires just for spite. Even the pudding can strikes me as poignant. Now pudding is plastic cups and sad little lids, and Vienna sausages are still some uncanny laboratory cube of meat. The whole world is recorded now, so if you'd tipped that TV into the St. Johns, someone would have livestreamed it before it finished bubbling. But I admire the fantasy, Ed. Some of us still push mental furniture into dark water.
“2006 Ed, when the GateKeeper made you haul that dead TV across town, did you spend the whole drive actually picturing the swamp bubbles, or was that just theater to keep yourself from screaming at the sun?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’ll tell you, it was a little of both, maybe more the second one. That sun was a bastard that day, and the sweat was running down my back like I’d pissed myself, and my truck smelled like old carpet and dead TV. So yes, I spent a good chunk of that drive picturing the swampy St. Johns, that big gray box sliding off the tailgate, and the bubbles coming up all greasy and satisfied. It was a nice fantasy, and it kept me from screaming at the sky or maybe at Alan, who was not there. But I knew I was never gonna do it. I’m too cheap to get caught, and honestly, I’d have felt bad for the turtles. So I drove to Winter Springs, grumbled, and dumped it legal. The bubbles were better in my head anyway.
