The Aerie
I'm not given over to believing in much, and certainly not omens.
Because I don't know what I'd make of these omens of the New Year...
The first omen was positive, I think. The tape player on my wife's
20-year-old boombox didn't work. For several days I resisted the urge
to crack that sucker open and try to fix it. Time and time again I've
opened up cheap electronic devices intending to fix them, only to end
up with a permanently broken electronic device. Or if I didn't break
it, the device worked no better but left behind a mysterious pile of
parts. What are these parts? How can this thing function without them?
Are they the appendix of parts, useless but destined to blow up and
kill the thing eventualy?
One time I tried to fix my Dad's ancient (and I mean truly ancient)
1977 vintage VHS VCR. This Soviet-style device is three feet wide, two
feet deep, and a foot high, and I use the present tense because when I
went over to clean out some of his stuff I saw that he still has it.
Note that it hasn't worked since the mid-Eighties.
Anyway, I was trying to fix it, and I broke off a capacitor. Now, I
don't recall what was wrong at the time, but the device was still
mostly functional: I was just trying to fix some small something
somewhere. Anyway, I snapped off an entire capacitor -- which in my
understanding of electronics should have meant that I permanently
broke a circuit and disabled something -- and yet the reassembled VCR
worked just as badly as it had before when I was done.
So that was why I resisted fixing the boombox. But, finally, I gave in
to temptation (and the desire to save $50 on a new cheap boombox), and
when I finally opened the case (being stymied for 20 minutes by one of
those recessed screws that look so obvious after you've found them but
hide in plain sight until then) a rubber band fell out.
Now, this is a vintage boombox, nearly as old as the VCR. My wife used
to listen to Andy Gibb on this thing before he died. The tape recorder
hasn't worked for almost the entire time. I open it up: a rubber belt
falls out. A few minutes of exploration, and one rubber band later,
and the tape recorder works once again.
I couldn't believe it either. Twenty years it's broken, and all it
needed was an ordinary rubber band to fix it.
So that's good, and I'm feeling pleased with myself.
Later I sit down to watch Men In Black II with the family. In one
scene, Agent K kicks an alien in the groin. The alien does not react.
He kicks the alien again. Still nothing.
Then Agent J yells "K! He's a Chinballsian!"
K pulls down the alien's turtleneck shirt, and briefly (this is PG-13
after all) reveals a pair of testicles hanging from the creature's
chin. One quick punch in the face, and the groaning alien slumps to
the floor.
I turned to my wife and said "Huh. That's the second show I've watched
today involving someone with his testicles hanging from his chin.
And it was. That was the second omen. Weird shit is coming my way, I
think. Earlier in the day I'd watched an episode of South Park called
"Freak Strike", in which all the deformed people who appear on daytime
talk shows went out on strike for higher wages. Swept up in this was
South Park's own Butters, who Eric Cartman had disguised as a "freak"
by gluing a fake pair of testicles to Butter's chin.
So, one good omen, and one decidedly odd omen. These things usually
come in threes (not that I believe in omens of course, oh no.) But I'm
waiting for the third omen to reveal the kind of year I should expect
from 2003.
And hopefully, there won't be any Chinballsians in it.
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Posted by Albatross at January 5, 2003 12:00 AM