YaaaaCHOO

I replaced my cabin air filter and noticed the pleats were totally full of junk so I threw it on the parking lot upside down.

That’s about a half cup of used mountain.

Gee, the A/C system sure is stronger now. Guess I’ll be changing that more often in summer

Can’t trust you farther than this very short tape measure

you have no idea how many mosquito bites I got trying to capture the perfect long exposure of this with the strobes going off

I found this sitting in my drafts folder and it made me crack up laughing remembering how silly this was— it’s from months ago, likely when I was stuck in Princeton, Florida, needing to measure for the installation of something at A Beautiful Place Out in the Country. 

The store in question is likely the Florida City Walmart Supercenter.

I once formed this theory that this was basically the last tail end of all civilization after arriving there on the tail end of a session of battling Z-Bola and witnessing a late night bus pull up there and the passengers disembark to the tune of its engine shutting down with a long sigh and several dozen empty beer bottles being thrown one by one on the sidewalk.

I guess it’s finally come to this. Walked into a Miami location of a typical big box store that’s slowly losing all relevance to buy a tape measure. Got stopped at the front door by a security guard for a metal detector check.

Wait, what?

His detector never went off even after his forcibly and painfully whacking it into my steel jewelry and he waved me on.

I had to go find someone with a key to a locked cabinet for the tools. He arrived with a police officer in uniform who tailed me until I checked out. The police officer was annoyed with me going over to the grocery section to get a snack and yelled at me to go check out and leave instead.

The store had signs up indicating that they will soon cease accepting cash at their registers citing safety concerns, and will be reducing their operating hours to 9 AM-7 PM come summer. It seemed the no cash policy was already in place as a customer was arguing with the cashier over it. The cashier pulled out the empty drawer and showed it to the customer who was angrily shaking a $50 bill and didn’t seem to understand this meant that not only would they not accept cash, but even if they did, there’d be no change!

This is why we cannot have good things.

There may be a couple of things I miss about South Florida, but this was never one of them. As long as you don’t try to go to the Walmart in Redding, none of the retail stores here are sad warzones. Actually, the Redding Walmart is just a giant box full of sadness, gated off aisles, and locked cases from which you can buy nothing, and it’s a small miracle it hasn’t been closed down entirely. Nobody will miss it when it goes away.

that ‘satanic rock’ format is so popular amongst the 18-24 crowd

What you’ll find in most modern KMart stores

Sometimes it amazes me that K-Mart has lost relevance so quickly. I guess you could exchange anything in this with Walmart though, same difference. I should note that none of this necessarily matches my personal opinions, I’m just posting it as is.

Also I’d love to know what he’s referring to with Satanic rock on the radio, that’s a new format to me, but anyway—

The Anarchist’s Cookbook has always amused me as well in just what a load of hilarious crap it is. Almost nothing in it has any factual accuracy or would work for you in any positive way. It’s still amusing as heck just how long it’s been circulated, and I wonder if anyone’s tried to modernize it since?

From one of the versions of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, contributed by “Jolly Roger”:

Well, first off, one must realize the importance of K-Marts in society today. First off, K-Marts provide things cheaper to those who can’t afford to shop at higher quality stores. Although, all I ever see in there is minorities and Senior Citizens, and the poor people in our city. Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in there. But, once, I did. You see, once, after The Moon Roach and Havoc Chaos (Dear friends of mine) and I were exploring such fun things as rooftops, we came along a K-Mart. Amused, and cold for that matter, we wandered in. The Tension mounts. As we walked up to the entrance, we were nearly attacked by Youth Groups selling cheap cookies, and wheelchair sticken people selling American Flags. After laughing at these people, we entered. This is where the real fun begins… First, we wandered around the store, and turned on all the blue lights we could find. That really distracts and confuses the attendents…Fun to do… The first neat thing, is to go to the section of the store where they sell computers. Darkness engulfs the earth the day they find Apple Computers being sold there. Instead, lesser computers like the laughable C-64 can be found there…Turn it on, and make sure nobody’s looking…Then, once in Basic, type…

]10 PRINT “Fuck the world! Anarchy Rules!” (or something to that effect.)

]20 GOTO 10

and walk away. Also, set the sample radios in the store to a satanic rock station, and turn the radio off. Then, set the alarm for two minutes ahead of the time displayed there. Turn the volume up all the way, and walk away. After about two minutes, you will see the clerk feebly attempt to turn the radio down or off. It’s really neat to set ten or more radios to different stations, and walk away. One of my favorite things to do, is to get onto the intercom system of the store. Easier typed then done. First, check out the garden department. You say there’s no attendent there? Good. Sneak carefully over to the phone behind the cheap counter there, and pick it up. Dial the number corresponding to the item that says ‘PAGE’… And talk. You will note that your voice will echo all over the bowels of K-Mart. I would suggest announcing something on the lines of: “Anarchy rules!!”

Oops

At the entrance gate to one of my mountaintop sites I came across a pickup truck idling right before the gate with all the lights off. I got out next to it to unlock the gate and the truck kinda rustled a moment then the dome light eventually came on revealing a guy and a lady having hastily covered themselves up—-

Ooooooops, we have just experienced broadcast engineer induced coitus interruptus.

I managed to avoid laughing until I was well out of sight.

Come on man, there’s a much more secluded road you could have turned off on like 1/8 mile earlier.