{"id":37,"date":"2008-02-22T10:54:48","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T15:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=37"},"modified":"2018-10-31T15:04:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T19:04:46","slug":"fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"Fire!"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend reports that he valiantly fought back an electrical fire in his living room. <\/span>Good thing he works at home, because it was some weird short behind the couch or something. <\/span>If, like me, he was a slave at a fuck-you job for 10 hours a day, more with the commute, he\u2019d probably be sleeping on my couch right now and crying about all of his burned up comic books. <\/span>All while I perched in the rocking chair, drinking obsessively, and stared at him with increasing horror as it dawned on me that he wasn\u2019t planning to leave anytime soon.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always feared a house fire. <\/span>As long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been consumed by the fear that all my stuff would burn up. <\/span>As a kid, I used to look at my Lego town on the big 12X12 table in the basement and think, oh, my beautiful Legotown, you\u2019re gonna melt away when the flames come to destroy everything I love.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In college, I was convinced that some stupid shitheel was going to burn the dorms down and my rare, collectible Nazi books would burn up along with my expensive scotch. <\/span>A shot a day helps the doctor freak out! <\/span>Heil Hitler!<\/p>\n

When I moved into my first apartment, after college, it was a sure thing that now, with all my precious things in one place, I would wake up to roaring flames. <\/span>After that apartment, I took rooms at the back of my grandparent\u2019s sprawling ranch house. <\/span>Even a rational person would fear fire in that tinderbox. <\/span>Certainly, anybody who came in to service anything \u2013 electrician, plumber, exterminator \u2013 asked my grandfather if his valuables were fireproofed because, Jesus, old man.<\/p>\n

Then I moved into an upscale apartment in <\/st1>Silver Spring<\/st1>, MD<\/st1> and, in between sparring with my idiot landlord and having brain surgery, I couldn\u2019t help but notice all the fire suppressant stuff that had been included in the construction of the new building. <\/span>After fearing fire for my whole life, I now knew the true face of fear \u2013 sprinklers. <\/span>These fucking torture devices dipping out of the ceiling. <\/span>All it takes is some weird little problem in the pipes and \u2013 bang \u2013 everything is soaked down and destroyed. <\/span>Every night I dreamed of my computer \u2013 loaded with sacred porn and stolen movies \u2013 getting shorted out by misfiring sprinklers. <\/span>When I left for work, I duct-taped garbage bags around the sprinklers in my bedroom in case there was a fire and they went off, or just malfunctioned.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s utterly useless, I know. <\/span>But, still. <\/span>I found myself fearing damage from the sprinklers more than a raging inferno. <\/span>At least, with a fire, I could do the noble thing and die with all my stuff.<\/p>\n

I love my stuff so much.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m now in a new apartment, which is ranked as \u201cC-Level Housing\u201d by the lovely people at A Major Apartment Shopper\u2019s Guide. <\/span>You can read about my adventures here in the retarded GS forums<\/a>. <\/span>Overall, I love the place. <\/span>It\u2019s huge, well-lit, and my neighbors are all dark and evil criminals or anti-social monsters. <\/span>Perfect. <\/span>Because, really, the answer to \u201cGood morning\u201d should always be \u201cfuck off.\u201d <\/span>And what the fuck is with trying to engage me in conversation? <\/span>At my upscale apartment in downtown Silver Spring<\/st1>, everyone was all, let\u2019s talk, let\u2019s bond, we\u2019re all white people together, amen, George Bush. <\/span>I feel dirty whenever people I don\u2019t know try and talk to me. <\/span>If you\u2019re a girl \u2013 pretty or ugly \u2013 then shut up and just start blowing me. <\/span>If you\u2019re a guy, then get someone to bury you cheap and I\u2019ll split the expense and visit your grave.<\/p>\n

So now I\u2019m in a place where people leave me the fuck alone, where I can pass out on the living room floor in peace, and where there are no wicked sprinklers set to short circuit and start spraying water over my favorite porn. <\/span>There\u2019s only one thing that should spray around my porn!<\/p>\n

But, then, my friend has his little incident. <\/span>He was working at his computer, probably playing some deeply depressing online game, when he says he smelled something burning. <\/span>Of course, his reaction was to ignore it. <\/span>Then it got too strong to ignore, and he ventured out to where his couch and an entire wall of his living room was engulfed in flames.<\/p>\n

Unlike me, he remained calm and went for the fire extinguisher. <\/span>All okay, just a lost couch and a bunch of smoke damage. <\/span>Me? <\/span>I would have gone to save my stuff, first. <\/span>I would have been throwing everything of value into carpet bags and tossing them out the window. <\/span>Screaming, and beating my chest, and crying out hysterically like a true damsel in distress. Then, if unable to backup everything to my external hard drive fast enough, I would have thrown myself atop my computer and waited for the sweet kiss of death. <\/span>He posted pictures of his newly remodeled home in the forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This weekend, I plan to pick up a fire extinguisher. <\/span>And, by that, I mean steal one from my day job. <\/span>Then I\u2019m going to take it all through the apartment with me. <\/span>I\u2019ll shower with it and sleep with it and, this summer, when the deck chairs start to heat up, I\u2019ll be blasting them with the extinguisher every hour while screaming about the Fire God. <\/span>That\u2019s not acting on paranoia. <\/span>I\u2019m just going to do that because it\u2019ll upset the neighbors and I really like letting off fire extinguishers. <\/span>I\u2019ve loved doing that since junior high. <\/span>I did that once in a classroom during detention and, of course, the whole place filled with white mist. <\/span>Then I tried to pretend like everything was absolutely normal when the teacher came in. <\/span><\/p>\n

And how do you explain all the white stuff? <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about sir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend reports that he valiantly fought back an electrical fire in his living room. Good thing he works at home, because it was some weird short behind the couch or something. If, like me, he was a slave at …<\/p>\n

Fire!<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[246,236],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-fire","tag-paranoia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}