Fantastic Adventures!

There I was, sitting at home with my flickering lamp.

"Damn that lamp. I don't know why it flickers so", thought I.

Wait; let me give you some background.

Three years ago, I bought my girlfriend a lamp for Christmas. Keep in mind, at this point in our relationship, I didn't realize that at Christmas, you were supposed to get romantic gifts for your special someone. M'lady had told me she wanted a lamp, and I took it upon myself to add "for Christmas" (try adding that to the end of fortune cookie fortunes!). Later on, though, I got her the appropriate "romantic" gifts: chocolates, flowers, miniature pigs having sex.

At any rate, Lampy, as I call it, had been giving us a good run; I had no reason to suspect that Lampy was the cause of the flickering. Naturally, I blamed his lightbulb. So I installed a new lightbulb.

Still flickering.

Well, you can read even in flickering light, so I grabbed Lampy by the scruff and started moving him to the table near where I read.

Then Lampy died.

He didn't die peacefully, like Ronald Reagan, or suddenly but painlessly, also like Ronald Reagan. Nope.

He exploded.

Let me tell you what happened. The lightbulb was flickering, so I picked up Lampy to move him, and then the lightbulb blackened; embers shot out of the top of the lamp, and, literally, a jet of flame, probably half a foot long, shot out of the light switch, while the lamp made a sound like a blender set to "putrify".

Freaking out, I started blowing on the flame. Amazingly, it worked; the flame went out. Then I ducked and started looking anxiously for the plug. The flame started shooting out again, the blender sound recommenced, and stood back up and blew out the flame again. Then, I grabbed the plug (encased in plastic, so it wouldn't electrocute me) and yanked it out.

The flame stopped, and was replaced by a placid smoke gurgling out of the lamp like a death knell (don't think about what that could possibly mean, as you'll be disappointed). Also, the enjoyable aroma of melted plastic filled up my apartment and, to be honest, my apartment complex.

Happily, the smoke detector didn't go off, so that was one less problem I'd have to deal with. Unhappily, the smoke detector didn't go off, so that's one more problem I'll have to deal with.

In the meantime, I looked back at Lampy's smoldering corpse. I grabbed him by the neck and dunked his head into the cold outside air, where he could smoke with some privacy. Eventually, I took him downstairs and put him in the dumpster area.

I lost a friend that day (my friend Brent died), as well as a lamp, but I got a good idea from all of this. When I'm nearing my end, I'm going to have one final surgery where the doctor takes out my appendix and replaces it with C4. Then, I'm going to get into a fight, lead with my appendix area, and blow up the place.



Brent didn't die.