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Can there really be a happy Columbus Day?

Happy belated Columbus day! Anyone? Did everyone have a good one? Anyone? Anyone there? Is anyone there at all? I’ve been walking around the office this morning asking everyone I run into if they had a good Columbus Day. And all I get in response are variations of the standard grunt. No one seems to have a committed meaningful response. It’s almost, almost as if no one even celebrates it.

So apparently, as I see it, the story goes like this: some Italian dude sailed across some ocean, ran into some land, thinking it was some other land, sees a bunch of red-skinned people running out into the water to greet him and bring him gifts, whereupon he decides they would make good slaves, and sets about to slaughtering most of them, and therefore, some five hundred years later, our kids don’t have to go to school on that day. Have I got it about right?

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  • Reading time:5 mins read

Four Wake-ups ‘Til Florida

It’s finally here, friends: that time of year when we leave for the Big Penis. That’s right, the continental fallus we like to call “Florida”. My red-haired wife and I have gone every year for the last three years. This will make our fourth trip together. And the only difference between this trip and the previous three years is that we aren’t taking the kids. I figure they’re old enough to stay at home and take care of themselves.

My buddy Christian is in town from Omaha, and has been staying with us since Saturday. So he’s gonna hang in the house until we get back. Works out perfectly. You see, I like having someone stay in my house so I won’t feel bad about leaving the fridge plugged in and the air conditioner running.

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  • Post category:travel diary
  • Reading time:3 mins read

SpaceBrew in Hibernation Mode

Good morning, SpaceBrewers! Just a quick note to let you all know that we’re coming into the winter season here at the Brew. It sort of lines up with the winter season the weather patterns follow. But what that means is that we spend less time in front of the computers and more time in front of a fireplace, or wrapped in the stinky, rotting carcass of a Tauntaun.

In the end, and in the interest of sparing you all from minutae and random hogwashical white noise, we will be cutting back our writing to once a week apiece. I’ll be writing on Mondays, Haycomet will write on Wednesdays, and we’ll continue to write our award-winning collaborative column, Bacon Talk, on Fridays. So just basically cutting out Tuesdays and Thursdays gives us, well, something like two days we can relax.

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  • Reading time:2 mins read

Pusher Robot No Longer Moves Air

Part 2 of the Shover Robot Saga

After many calls to my father-in-law, I am now a certified Master Electrician. I’m also a certified Master Air Conditioner Repair technician. Siege is now also certified in these departments. So when I left you at the end of the last column, my air conditioner was not turning on and my microwave was out. It works fine, it just has that extra feature now that my red-haired wife found to be pretty shocking. Our new status here is this: my microwave is still out, my water heater is out, but my air conditioner is blowing cold mountain air, fresh from the Rockies.

I won’t go into details about how we got to that status, but – wait. Who am I kidding? Of course I will. That’s what I do here. I called an air conditioner company here in SpaceTown, and the dude told me I had either blown a fuse or a transformer on the air handler. I know how much a fuse is. But how much does a transformer cost? And I don’t mean one of the gay autobot types, but rather a Decepticon, like Megatron, Shockwave or Thundercracker. “Well we charge about 200 bucks for it.” Whew! You guys are proud of them puppies! I wasn’t happy about that, but I was determined to find out what was wrong myself. And not pay someone else to come out here and fix this shit for me. I like to be handy, you know. Just ask my red-haired wife how handy I get under the covers. :perv: Oh wait. That’s handsy…

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  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:6 mins read

I’m not a vegetable thief.

I went to the doctor last week because of a sinus cold. While I was there I asked him if he- –wait no, it was a she. A hot doctor lady who looks kind of like a librarian, but you can tell she’s hot. Like that one in Road House. Anyway, I asked her if she could look at my plumbing, because I had a couple of tiny red spots on it. So I dropped my drawers and she quickly rolled back in her chair and said something about my having her peas. Whose peas?

Here are some sample peas.Now my girlfriend was standing in the room with me. Well, she was sitting in the girlfriend chair over there. I looked back at her with a frown. My girlfriend doesn’t have any ‘peas’ that I know of. So the doctor couldn’t have been talking about hers. I asked her what she meant. She replied, “I think you might have her peas. Let’s take some blood and we’ll test you out.” She left the room quickly, hair blowing behind her like she was riding a white stallion into a milky orange sunset.

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How I Plan to Solve the Global Warming Crisis

Global Warming is an issue I don’t take very lightly. I take it extremely seriously. I have, therefore, been working on developing some hard-hitting plans to help our great planet get out of this catastrophe. Some of my solutions may sound silly out of context, but in reality, I think they would really work. Like for instance, since you never hear people complaining about living in Hawaii, I figured we could move a couple of the continents (or build a new one out of dirt from the Sahara desert by dumping it into the ocean near Hawaii) down to around that area. See? That shit is genius. And it solves three problems at once. Number one, it makes a normally cold place like Antarctica really warm and beautiful. Number two, it helps with over-population. Because right now no one wants to live there except people of Eskimo descent. But a lot more people could move down there into that great big space if it was right on the equator. It’s like putting plywood in your attic so you can start using it as a room. And number three, well… Actually I don’t have a third reason. But I bet you can come up with one.

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  • Post category:science
  • Reading time:5 mins read

Time for a New Orleans

Yeah, I’d just like to give a quick shout out to all our neighboring countries who’ve jumped right in to help us in this time of crisis. What’s up, Canada? Hey Mexico – how you doing? Hey Germany, how’s it hangin? Remember all them boats full of supplies and food and medicine and doctors and clothes and toys and blankets we sent in the wake of the tsunami last Christmas? Yeah. What’s up?

I’d also like to see some interior congregation of goods and services offering. I’d like to see a hotel chain like Hilton offer up ten thousand rooms all over the country – at cost – for some of the million families to stay in for a while. I’d like to see a Luby’s chain open up and say, “What’s up, New Orleansers, come in here and grab a hot cajun meal.” I’d like to see a Wal Mart or a Ross Dress For Less say, “Hey, chiefs, come in here and get some dry clothes.” I’d like to see gas prices hop up over four dollars a gallon so the oil industry doesn’t have to suffer.

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Day One

Today was the day. The first day of February, 2004. I woke up about eight-thirty and let the dogs out. Heather went to the bathroom, and asked if I wanted to go to church today. I said, “Yeah, as long as you feel like it.” She agreed, and said it might be the last time we get to go for a while. With the dogs out back, I lay back down for a while, and Heather came out of the bathroom and said, “Honey, I think my water broke.” We did the tests though, and it hadn’t.

Heather got in the shower to get ready, and then sat on the edge of the tub to shave her legs. I was drifting off again, rather nicely. It was about nine at this point. And a muffled yell through the bathroom door awakened me. “Brian! Brian!” I got up and ran in there. “Brian, my water broke!” I looked in the tub. Indeed it had. My mind got in Let’s Go gear, throwing things together and getting dressed. During this madness I managed to make it to a phone and call my mom to let her know, “The water is broken.” As it turns out, it was a good thing that I had called her, because she wasn’t freaking out like I was, and had a mind to call the hospital and get us a room.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

A Welcome Rain

It would seem that all life has come to a standstill in this drab parsed land we call the flats. There are no trees, just dust. No water lets, just empty, dry barren dirt that once flourished with green effervescence. The cracked thirsty earth stretches as far as my weak eyes can see, and without the full strength of the sun, this distance is spanned twice over by the sounds of the howling wind. Clinging to my thread-bare bag and its dwindling contents of basic sustenance, I grit my teeth against the dry wind, my lips chapped and burning, and my eyes fiery red from the dry dust. Ahead lies what looks to be a tower, but only its silhouette present against the dark red sun. My feet like broken pendulums, I trudge up the rocky trail, shadowed by the dark, lurking precipices high above. I can see only that which is just ahead of me now, and it’s finally getting dark.

The sounds of the wind seem to be backing down ever so slightly. As I glimpse at the trek that lies ahead, the sun says its final words and melts beyond the desert landscape, big as a world in the sky. With darkness rolling in, all sound and motion suddenly ceases. I can hear nothing now but my dry raspy breath, and the beating of my tired heart.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read