Strangely enough, the process of finalizing my dad's affairs and making all the necessary funeral arrangements was very good therapy. Between that and work, I didn't have a lot of time for grieving. The memorial and interment services were on Saturday and everything went swimmingly. There was a good turn out, lots of my father's old friends and some of mine. As I joked on Saturday with one of my friends, "It wouldn't be a Big Eagle event without the police" in reference to the visitor from a state penitentiary and her two well-armed escorts. Along with the guards, there was a small group of listless 20-somethings hanging around. Something tells me there were there more to see the person on vacation from prison than to pay respects to an 83yr old man that the probably never met. After a day of reminiscing and reconnecting with people I haven't seen in years, things had to be interrupted by one young couple in this out-of-place group. The girl was cute, early-mid 20's, and wearing a tight black mini-dress that is probably from a K-Mart Jwoww collection. Her gentleman friend, however, stole the show by arriving to a funeral at an episcopal church dressed in baggy pants, a baseball cap, and a sleeveless Faygo shirt. Unbelievable. A fucking Juggalo showed up to my dad's funeral.

Seriously, if it weren't for the Highlander rule, there would have been a violent expulsion from the venue for our young, disenfranchised friend.

And people wonder why I spend the holidays as an orphan hanging out with my friends' more well-adjusted families.

On April 22nd, 2012, my father, Luther Big Eagle Jr. lost his 83 year long battle with time.

It's been a long week, since I got the call last Monday from the home that he was ill. I guess though, I've known that it was coming for a while now. For the past few years when the number from the home came up on my phone, I always took a couple deep breathes before picking up, anticipating the worst. It hasn't been a good experience for anyone involved, especially him. You see, my Dad was, in his younger days, a hellraiser. All the stories I heard about him involved womanizing, drinking, getting shot at or stabbed, or talking his way out of jail for popping someone in the snout...because, of course, "they had it coming."
But my Dad was 50 when I was born, and for the most part, he had decided to settle down. He got married, had a little place in the country with a big garden, and a pasture with some cows and pigs. He was still never too far away from a glass of whiskey, but most of that happened in his workshop or just up the road at his little local tavern. By the time I really got to know who my Dad was, he was already an old man. I didn't see a lot of the turbulent, self-destructive years. The Dad I knew had already faced down the majority of his demons and even if they got ahold of him once in awhile, at the end of the day he came back around. He was troubled, but he tried.
That's why I forgave him a long time ago. He tried. It's more than you can say for a lot of people. And now that he's gone, the bad times don't seem so bad, but the good times seem so much better. It's been 15 years since I was out in a boat fishing with him, and I was never though outdoorsman he was, but it was always good to sit for an afternoon on the Columbia, watching those fishing poles and eating sandwiches. Sometimes we'd get our limit, but quite often we'd come back empty handed. He always called it "Fisherman's luck, a wet ass and a hungry gut."
I feel bad for my brothers and sisters, because they must have gotten him when he was young and impetuous. I'm not sure I'd be so fond of the younger version of him either.
But after all that, he ended up in a nursing home. I spent as much time as possible with him over the past few years, going down on weekends and holidays, but sometimes life gets in the way and you don't realize what your priorities should have been until it's too late. I'd go down and sit with him, maybe watch a game in the activity room, and wait for him to fall asleep. I never liked leaving while he was still up, because he never wanted me to go. Always wanted me to stick around for a few more minutes. Eventually though, he stopped talking, the dementia eventually took it away. He'd have some moments of clarity, but mostly silence. He got his point across though, he'd squeeze my hand or look over and sure enough, I'd stick around for a few more minutes. I missed that, and wanted something, anything, from him over the past week. But in his last days I never got any response from him, but the best I could do is sit with him and hold his hand and hope that somewhere in there he knew he wouldn't have to go through this alone.
Over the course of the week I made the commute from Seattle to Centralia every day. I usually called it a night around 8-9pm when they started turning out lights and turning off TVs around the home. I had company while I was there though. Brenda, while not a blood relation, might as well be, sat with me a couple nights and was always texting me when she wasn't there, checking in. The contact was welcomed, and probably needed. By the end of the week, it had become clear that he wasn't going to get better. They removed the feeding tube and brought in an oxygen mask. When the orderly came in and took out the machine that had been keeping my Dad alive for the past two years, it was another small step for me, but made by someone else, toward letting him go.
On Thursday, I packed up my things and headed back up for the evening. My friends had decided to head out bowling, and after initially saying I couldn't make it, I knew that I desperately needed to take my mind off of things. I had a few beers, bowled a couple bad games, and took a couple hours to step back and act like everything was fine.
Then the weekend came. I got there around noon on Saturday and brought my laptop. I spent the day, then the evening, and eventually the next day, watching movies, reading blogs, and listening to music. Being a techie, the WiFi was a great way to step out of the situation for a couple hours at a time. I'd watch a movie, then get up and go walk my dogs who'd been coming along with me most days and sleeping the back of my car. This went on for almost a full day. It was Sunday morning, around 5am and I had just finished catching up on Madmen. I said I love you and goodbye, as I had always done when leaving the room, and went out to stretch my legs and let the dogs out for a while.
I came back in a little after 6am on Sunday and rounded the corner and made my way down the hallway to my Dad's room. It was morning and the staff was getting breakfast ready and moving people around. The first thing I noticed when I went into the room was that it was silent. It hadn't been silent in that room since the previous Wednesday, when they had brought in the oxygen mask. The curtain around his bed was pulled further around than I had left it. I pulled the curtain and went to the side of the bed and although I already knew at that point, I went to look anyway. He had passed in his sleep not long before I came in. My phone was ringing in my pocket, it was the nurse calling me to let me know, but I let it go to voicemail. All that was left now was to squeeze his hand again and say goodbye one last time. It was for my own benefit though, as I needed to realize that it was his time and that everything else would go on.
I gathered my things and left the room. I stopped at the nurses station and let them know that I had already been in to see him and that I was aware. I told them I'd collect his things another day and walked out. I saw her voicemail appear on the phone, but I just deleted it. The drive home was a quicker than normal, but not necessarily as bad as I though it'd be. It's over an hour back home, but with a couple of dogs wanting to be in the back, then the front, then on my lap, it wasn't too bad. They were the best distraction. When I got back to Seattle, I dropped the dogs off at the apartment. I looked around, got some food, and considered going to sleep, but even though I had been awake for the better part of 24 hours, I wasn't tired. I could sit around in this apartment, alone, and let my mind get ahold of me, which is never a good thing. There were things to do, people to call, arrangements to be made, but it was Sunday, and a lot of that could wait. So, I went into the office. I had missed a lot of time the past week, leaving midday to beat traffic on the way down. Things had gone undone and emails had been unanswered. It was the perfect opportunity for me to shut off emotions and fixate on things. Before I knew it, the day had passed and they were going to lock up the building and after a day and a half, I was starting to feel the need to lay down.

It's been a day now, and I'm signing the papers and making the calls. Letting people know never gets easy. What is there to say? Even though I thought I had said my last goodbye Sunday morning, it feels like I'm doing it again with every small act during the process. Calling the funeral home, and the church, and signing the papers. Each one feels like another finger letting go, until it's done, and then what? I think this is something that falls under the purview of 'time heals all wounds'. Until time gets a move on though, just another day of acting like everything is okay, which I guess it is. It's okay, and it will get better.

Growing up I watched the WWF (before a spat with the World Wildlife Fund transformed them into WWE) every time I saw it in the TV Guide. It was a world as close to the mind of an 8yr old boy as you could imagine. There were heroes and villains, catch phrases and inconceivable costumes, and endless parade of mascots, managers, and ring girls. I remember the guys that were just there to lose to the stars like Koko B. Ware, The Junkyard Dog, and the Brooklyn Brawler. They'd march out with all the pomp and circumstance one can muster when you've got a pet parrot perched on your shoulder or a comically huge chain and padlock around your neck. All that time and effort into crafting a persona, only so they could lose to the Ultimate Warrior or Randy Savage. There were feuds and betrayals. Friends one day, enemies the next. I mean, what the fuck Shawn Michaels? Where would you be without Marty Jannetty? Regardless of how inherently stupid the whole production was, it was no worse than waiting every week to watch Airwolf or The Fall Guy.
Eventually though, you grow up. Watching greased up dudes with stringy hair and neon spandex starts being less of a draw when a boy hits high school. I watched the occasional Monday Night Raw throughout the nineties, and I saw Steve Austin and The Rock become the new superstars, with the aging pantheon moving over to WCW to let their careers coast into sad oblivion. And eventually, wrestling lined up to be another memory wiped clean by a weekend of binge drinking in my early twenties.

So, fast forward to tonight.

I'm looking over some 'recorded' programming and wondering what I should watch in my precious little time between work and sleep. I see Wrestlemania nestled in there with Castle and The Daily Show. I decide to give it a shot, because why not? My thoughts?

• They've taken all the idiocy of wrestling as I knew it and completely stripped it of it's hokey charm.
• Wow, they must spend a shit ton on pyrotechnics.
• The women of wrestling (or divas as they call them now) are hotter by several orders of magnitude than I remember. I guess I don't have much to go on, as I really only remember Miss Elizabeth.
• There doesn't seem to be much in the way of choreographed violence any more, just lots and lots of plain vanilla violence. In one match, The Undertaker and Triple H just beat each other with chairs for 30 minutes. Then The Undertaker pile-drove Triple H into unconsciousness and then they all hugged afterward. I'm confused.
• The rank and file wrestlers (the jobbers) all have personas that are bewildering as they're both flamboyant and ambiguous. I mean, there's no defined characters it seems, just stereotypes. There's slicked-back hair guy and hip-hop guy and the fat guy. Back in the day, it doesn't matter how low you are on the totem pole, you had a character and you fucking played it! Now it's just a miscellaneous grab bag of grinning douchebags.
• There are no "finishers" anymore. It used to be that a match would go on as long as it took for one wrestler to land his finishing move, then he rolled up the other guy and called it a night. When Jake the Snake landed a DDT on you, you fucking stayed on the mat. Nowadays, you can land your finisher 2, 3, 14 times, who cares? I watched Triple H pedigree The Undertaker twice and not put him down. Triple H kicked out after a fucking tombstone piledriver. That shit did not fucking happen twenty years ago. The Undertaker would tombstone or choke slam anyone, and I mean anyone, and they did not get up until the music stopped and the commercials started. It seems like the Rock can land a Rock Bottom slam and it might as well have been a run of the mill body slam. Just kick out and spring back up and dish out a clothesline like nothing happened.

That last point sticks with me though. In the heyday of the 80s and 90s, a finishing move meant something. It was the exclamation point at the end of your wrasslin' sentence. And finishers didn't need to be the most damaging moves either. I mean, Jake the Snake's DDT looked like it would cause an enormous amount of harm. If I did that to someone here in reality, it'd probably kill them. Best case scenario, concussion and chance of debilitating brain trauma. But Hulk Hogan's finisher was a leg drop. By the same standard, I'm fairly certain that while it'd hurt, just jumping up and dropping the back of my leg on someone would probably result in more damage to my ass than it would their face. But none of that mattered. Jake's DDT had the same effect as Hogan's leg drop. It meant the end of the match. Hogan would get up and do any one of his many gestures to the crowd and Jake would dump a small boa constrictor on his opponents prone body. But in watching tonight, it's all for naught. From a purely physiological standpoint, the pile driver looks like the most terrifying maneuver you could perform in a fight. You're dropping someone straight down on their head. Now, a real-world scenario for that is insane, because you'd never be able to land that on a struggling individual, but if you did...oh boy, if you did...your next move had better be to the hardware store for a shovel, because you just killed a dude. But not in today's WWE. A tombstone pile driver just means that you're dazed for about 4 seconds. Long enough for two seconds of a three second pinfall and a kickout. It's a travesty.

So here I am, way past my bed time and I'm seriously worked up about professional wrestling. Don't get me wrong though, I didn't enjoy it. I did, however, enjoy being angry with it. It has accomplished it's mission: to solidify the fact that things were better back in my day.

As a short addendum to my original post, I'd like to explain the title. You, dear reader, and I, are both normal human beings. We live, we love, we think. At the other end of that spectrum are Juggalos, who are living proof that the human race will eventually split into two distinct species, with one living in the light, creating and moving toward a brighter future. The other, slowly turning into a race of tattoo'd malt-liquor swilling morlocks, burrowing underground, only surfacing to throw hatchets at each other in a field somewhere in Michigan while doing death-defying amounts of drugs. In looking at the crowd shots of WWE, one can imagine a third race of hybrids. Like the terrible spawn of angel and demon, these creatures live normal lives during the day, but never let go of their idiotic and beastial roots. They tread the border between man and juggalo, at times part of both worlds and at times part of neither, they exist in a purgatory of bad nu-metal and oversized hockey shirts. Feel empathy and weep for them.

Conversation with calijanessa1@aol.com at 1/9/2012 9:48:47 AM on cbigeagle@gmail.com/ (jabber)

(9:48:47 AM) nadia wray: hi

So, being the social butterfly that I am, I ignore it and close the window.

Soon, however, she's there again, so I finally respond, as this could be someone I know and have just forgotten about.

Conversation with calijanessa1@aol.com at 1/9/2012 10:17:49 AM on cbigeagle@gmail.com/ (jabber)

(10:17:49 AM) nadia wray: hello?
(10:31:59 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: hi there
(10:32:06 AM) nadia wray: hey whats up? 23/F here. youu?
(10:32:59 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: i don't recognize your name, do we know each other?

23/F.
That's all I need to know, because 1) I'm at work and 2) I'm thirty-fucking-three and I'm just not that interested in trying to conjure any sort of game in a chat window. After I ask for a name, I get silence for a bit. A-HA! A stranger, I knew it!

Conversation with calijanessa1@aol.com at 1/9/2012 10:37:58 AM on cbigeagle@gmail.com/ (jabber)

(10:37:58 AM) nadia wray: ashley

Wha? I know a couple ashleys, but none of them 23 and involved in skeezy midday chats. I could spell this out, but my silence will do the work for me!

Conversation with calijanessa1@aol.com at 1/9/2012 10:58:50 AM on cbigeagle@gmail.com/ (jabber)

(10:59:28 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: do we know each other from somewhere?

Fine. Curiosity is creeping up on me. I mean, I've seen plenty of movies, I know about weird stuff like split personalities and Ambien-induced sleep-socializing. Maybe I do know this person. And it's not like my monitor faces my office window or anything, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing!

Conversation with calijanessa1@aol.com at 1/9/2012 10:59:36 AM on cbigeagle@gmail.com/ (jabber)

(10:59:36 AM) nadia wray: hmm. have we chattted before?
(10:59:54 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: i don't think so, you may have the wrong email address.
(11:00:03 AM) nadia wray: oh ok. l wasn't sure. anywayz.... whats up?
(11:01:13 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: well, currently working. don't really have the time to chat.
(11:01:23 AM) nadia wray: im Iikee so boreeddd.... there iss nothinggggg too do
(11:01:39 AM) nadia wray: ohhh waiit! i have a greatt idea. have u eveer watched a sexyy girI Iike me striip Iive on a cam before?
(11:04:09 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: oh, wow, i haven't gotten one of these chat requests in forever. i love what you do, it's great, and god knows cam girls are rad, but i'm not really into that any more. so, i'm going to go ahead and log off, and i wish you a pleasant day filled with many sexy chats and hopefully some valueable American Dollars.
(11:04:20 AM) nadia wray: wellIIl.... u couId watcch me strrip if u wouId Iike?
(11:04:48 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: that was a quick response. is this a bot?
(11:04:56 AM) nadia wray: Im not a freaking bot
(11:05:06 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: lol
(11:05:22 AM) nadia wray: yeah? okk weIl my cam is setuup through this webbsite so that i can't bee recorded so u have too signupp there.
(11:05:31 AM) nadia wray: it onIyy takes a minnute and it is freee. ok?
(11:07:54 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: nope, you're fishin' in an empty pond, but i'm sure there are plenty of other customers out there that don't have a windowed office 20 feet away from their HR director. have a wonderful day, ciao!
(11:08:10 AM) nadia wray: http://twurl.nl/yudz1w goo therre then up at thhe top of the paage cIlick on the goIldish JOIN FREE buttton.
(11:08:15 AM) nadia wray: k?
(11:09:26 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: i haven't turned down internet nudity this hard since that time i was IRCing at church.
(11:09:42 AM) nadia wray: also it doess askk for a creditt card but thats how thhey keep kids outt. it does nott charrge the card. ok?
(11:11:07 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: credit card? who the hell uses a credit card? have you seen the economy? i'm a libertarian, and as such, i believe it's out solemn duty as American citizens to adhere to cash for currency and gold and other precious minerals as investment.
(11:11:24 AM) nadia wray: ok baabe weIl hurrry up and when u gett Iogged in then u can vieew my cam andd we can havve some funnn!
(11:11:39 AM) nadia wray: i aIso have some toyys but u have to tiip me some goId or joiin me in privaate to see thosse.
(11:13:28 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: my Libertarian sensibilities give me plenty of moral leeway to watch girls get naked for cash, however, those same Libertarian sensibilities give me the wherewithall to only pay in cash. ones and twenties.
(11:13:38 AM) nadia wray: hey Iets taIk on there babee. my messengerr is messiing up.
(11:14:21 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: or gold bullion, but only where it's readily available, which is usually at a Dubai ATM.
(11:16:19 AM) cbigeagle@gmail.com/67105D76: i'm saddened by your lack of persistence. you almost had me, but then you gave up. kids today, where is your entrepreneurial spirit?

The moral of the story is, don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the troll that lives within you. A responsible employee would have closed that window and ignored it, not diving headlong into the sales pitch of some camgirl with a shitty auto-chat program. She was obviously controlling it though, and when she came back with "Im not a freaking bot", I have to admit that I put just a little trollface on and started wondering in which direction I could take this. I had a story about Ron Paul's quest to turn America into a bullet-ridden, anarchy-fueled, apocalyptic Randian wasteland, so I already had a bunch of bullshit libertarianism in my head.

I've also unblocked Nadia/Ashley. I can't wait for the next chat, because next time...I'll be chatting on my phone...from a camp...in the Colombian jungle...trying to get a message out to the American embassy. Will Nadia/Ashley save me? Or just steal my credit card number and give me a bad topless webcam dance?

When will I ever learn that Trader Joe's doesn't really work like a grocery store, or traditional retail business of any sort. It's more akin to an indoor farmer's market. Not the shitty little one's that you can also pop in and out of in a few minutes, no, I'm talking about the shitty big one's that are congested with aging hippies and vegans.

My quick trip for lunch took 20 minutes. 5 of which was spent in the most passive stand-off I've ever taken part in.

Upon arriving, I'm greeted with the usual suspects in the parking lot, aka: lots of Subaru Outbacks. And they're being driven as if the atmosphere had been replaced by sticky, viscous, organic clover honey. I have to pick my battles though, and laying on the horn while an aging deadhead gathers the brainpower to back a station wagon out of a parking space is not where I need to start a confrontation.

Finally, I'm parked. I enter the store, I know exactly where I'm going, and I'm still under the delusion that this trip will be different from every other trip to Trader Joe's. I assume nobody would be so absorbed in reading the ingredient list on a box of macaroni, making absolutely sure that this is really organic and not that faux, corporate "organic" that The Man shills at Safeway.

Oh, dear reader, how wrong, so very very wrong, I was.

This woman was there with a cart, buying cheese. A normal person would be sufficiently convinced that a foodstuff wasn't part of an evil Neo-conservative plot simply by dint of being sold at Trader Joe's. This woman, however, had to be sure. She wasn't old, wasn't wearing glasses, and I'm assuming (once again) that she was upwardly mobile and literate, if only because of her Seattlite uniform, making her a moving billboard for Columbia Sportswear and Northface. Regardless, she held that brick of cheese up to her face, almost close enough to take in the nutritional information using osmosis. While she studied the 2x2 inch tome, her cart blocked the sandwich I wanted. I came all the way out here for a Cubano wrap and god damn it, I'm going to get a fucking Cubano wrap.

The Gods ignored my silent pleas and seconds turned into many many seconds, which eventually turned into a minute, and then more than one minute. She has to know I'm here, at this point, I'm stalker-close to this chick and she couldn't give a shit about whatever I wanted, because she needed to check out this motherfucking cheese! I'm nearing the breaking point and I'm about to talk to a stranger. I don't want to talk to a stranger, and I go to great lengths so I don't have to talk to strangers, but here I am, and I'm fucking hungry, and this stranger and her stupid fucking cart are blocking me from my food. And then...

...she puts the cheese down and pushes her cart down to the meat section, purchasing nothing. Rage level - 7.2

Sandwich and salad procured. Victory is in sight. All I have to do is go buy my prize and then I'll put my tasty reward in my belly, enabling another few hours of bodily function.

I walk the long way around, avoiding the cluster of shoppers hovering over and inspecting the bread and make a turn at the wine isle. To my astonishment, there are 2 check out lines open. A store full of people and two people working registers. Rage level - 7.9

I get into what looks like the quickest moving line and, wait, what the fuck is that? Is that woman trying to write a check? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Okay, calm down, it might be 2012, but checks are still a viable method of payment, especially in a place like this. That check is a solemn promise between that person, her non-profit credit union, and Trader Joe's. It makes sense, because sometimes you don't have any cash (or canned goods for bartering), and I'd imagine a lot of folks here don't like credit cards. Rage level - 6.5...wait, no, 9.5, because that broad DID pay with a card and now she's meticulously recording her purchase in a ledger...AT THE REGISTER.

Nobody else seems to take issue with this though, and I'm left to be the lone insane guy that throws his shit on the ground and storms out in a flurry of profanity, unless I get my shit together and wait it out like a big boy.

The phone call is thankfully brief, and as far as I know, the email server is down. Not a good thing, but fixable, that's what backups are for. But I also quickly find out that I can't remote in either. The downward spiral steepens.
As I'm getting my things together and walking the dogs, I get another call from the box office, can't get into the ticketing software. Double fuck. It's holiday performance season, and things are busy, this is super not good. The dogs get a speed walk and a loveless goodbye as I race out the door.

Switch #5: 24 Ports of Fail.

I show up and see that the DNS server is kaput. Okay, that's easy, we have a spare. Wait, wut? The spare is disconnected too. Oh no. If I have to rebuild a DNS server, my morning repair gig has transmogriphied into a full day at the office. See ya December football. Major General Kittyman, your thirst for face wounds will have to be slaked at a later date.

Now I'm settling into troubleshooting mode, under the watchful eyes of the box office manager and executive director, so there was no pressure or anything. I'm making phone calls to the CTO, who's a telecommuter and we're trying to track down a network specialist. Finally, some of the testing pans out and I figure out the problem. It's a dead switch in the stack. Thanks, useless status lights, you really helped me out on this one. Also, that's called sarcasm. Fast forward to 6pm, and 9 hours later I'm heading home and the only game I'm going to get to watch is the Cowboys/Giants on Sunday Night Football. It was a decent game, but I can't stand either team. It was like watching a wrestling match between Snookie and Rick Perry. Hoping maybe it'll end in a tie so nobody wins and they'll both get an STD and we can all laugh at their shame.

The only image I could find of the TV. This model has been erased from history like Soviet dissidents.

Monday morning, proper, arrives. I'm naturally tired and skip the gym. I sleep in, but have plenty of time to get up, get the dogs walked, and get to my carpool buddy by 8am. At this point, I must mention the Sony television that is camped in the cargo area of my Xterra. I had picked it up from a friend's place Saturday with the intention of dropping it off at her mom's place the following weekend when I had some time and I was down to visit my father. Up until now, its sturdy plastic base had interacted just as expected with the tacky rubberized floor of the cargo area and everything had been just peachy, aside from a bit of noise as it creaked back and forth. Nothing I couldn't deal with. This morning, however, whatever was holding that TV down, be it gravity, friction, or the prayers of a million children, decided to release it's grasp on it and the damn thing came loose from it's moorings, defied every law of physics I could remember, and bounced around the cargo area and back seat like the damn thing was rolling on greased bearings. It slammed back and forth into the back of the seat, then into the rear hatch. I'm not driving aggressively, but this thing was flying about with the force of Thor's god damned hammer and actually broke the latch on the rear door (a repair bill I'm going to love to see when it gets here). During it's frenzied escape attempt, the plastic shell of the TV began to snap and crack, eventually shattering completely, sending shards of plastic about the entire passenger compartment. The TV continued it's mosh pit to hell as I pulled into a Bartell's parking lot, texted my carpool buddy to go ahead and drive herself in to work, and then got out to assess the damage. I opened the hatch, well, didn't really open as touch the hatch and it swung open on it's own, you know, because it's not really latched to anything anymore. The TV was in pieces, the tube and circuits were on one side of the cargo area, the plastic housing with the speakers and buttons was strewn across to the other side, and everywhere else that I could see was littered with sharp pieces of plastic and over a decade's worth of dust bunnies that had just been violently evicted from their home inside the television's case.

Watching it thrash around in the rear-view mirror was like being in the deer scene from Tommy Boy.

After looking at the carnage, I roll the TV screen-side down and check the voracity of the grip given by the rubberized flooring. Satisfied that the destruction will be limited, I get back behind the wheel, and scream obscenities at my windshield for 30 seconds. I have now vented enough rage to safely drive back to my apartment. I speak to the remains of the television, "This has gone too far. I'm going to end you." I pull into the complex and back up to the dumpsters. I get out, prop up the broken hatch, and get the a pair of dakine snowboarding gloves from one of the side pockets. They're not ideal protection, but it's better than bare skin. I take the time to vent some additional anger by pulling wires, breaking plastic, and snapping a circuit board in half before chucking them into the dumpster. It's not exactly eco-friendly, but at this point, it was the TV or my sanity. I approach the rear of the SUV, preparing myself for the largest piece, the picture tube. I bend at the knee, get a grip, and try to hoist the thing to a carry-able position. Impossible. I've reached an impass and come to a realization. The key to a Sony trinitron's excellent picture the fact that the CRT technology is powered by a piece of a neutron star. The tube of the 37" television is glued to the earth, or rather, the floor of the Xterra. My futile human muscles are no match for whatever alien technology lives within the tube. It moves on whim alone, and cares not for the wants and needs of man. I steel myself, get a solid grip, and call forth the strength of my ancestors, lifting the mass, and feeling as if I'm tearing spacetime in my attempt. The tube is free, dangling from my arms, and I can feel it pulling viciously at my very fucking skeleton as it tries to make its way to the ground. Rage is the only thing keeping it aloft as I take a few careful steps to the dumpster, boosted the thing with my knee and push it over the lip and into someone else's list of problems.
I have won the day, but at a cost. I clean out the back of the the SUV, sweeping plastic and dust into my hands and then into the dumpster. My adrenalin is subsiding and I'm beginning to hurt. My legs, arms, back, and hand are all on fire. It was too much for one man to do alone, and I'm sure I'll be paying this bill for weeks to come.

If I actually had a power ring, I would have flung the TV into the sun.

I'm removing my gloves, getting ready to put this chapter of my life behind me and something is caught on my right hand, and it stings like a viper. The gloves comes off and what's there, one final insult, one final injury from my foe. A 3/4" shard of plastic is wedged into the side of my knuckle, and blood is streaming from my hand. I wipe it up as best as I can and head into the house. I have issues with needles, and that mild phobia has carried over to this jagged shard of plastic. I look wistfully at the bottle of scotch on the refrigerator, envisioning a civil war-era soldier numbing himself before an amputation, but I gave up the drink, so this is going to be a very sobering experience in more ways than one. I get out my leatherman and grasp the visible end of the plastic, and slowly, pull it from my skin. I can see a little lump move under my knuckle skin as I pull it out, and I begin to feel a bit faint. An image of myself from a 3rd person perspective appears and I imagine fainting, and then waking up hours later in a pool of my own blood as my dogs both stare at me, wondering what new game this is supposed to be. I shake it off, yank out the plastic, and then find out yet another surprise...I'm out of bandaids.
So, tape and a paper towel is it, and I'm make my way into the office.

No 24 hour span has been as physically and emotionally draining as this past day. The only thing I have to look forward to is the gym tonight, where I plan on lifting weights until I stop hating an inanimate object. But that's a few hours off, and right now, I'm filled with terrible glee knowing that my nemesis is a the bottom of a steel box, waiting to be crushed, buried, and forgotten.

Fuck you, TV.