He stole my company van. It took us three hours to track him down, only to find him loading up on cheap ice at the Chaldean grocery.

The internet connection at my office is down.
Since I host my own pictures, this means SafeTinspector Main Blog probably looks pretty silly right now.
Try using your imagination. It’ll probably be an improvement.

    The letter from the Franklin Mint hung limply in my hand, its complete lack of information almost offensive to me. Congratulations, it offered; but not explanations. Obviously it was a mistake, as I didn’t have the money nor the inclination to purchase anything above a 5 or maybe 6 inch Franklin Mint brand tchotchke^*, let alone 6 feet plus of what’s-in-the-box.
    I turned the page over several times in my hands, but even a second pass found no phone number or other information to explain why there was a six-and-a-half foot tall crate towering over my dusty living-room furniture. Still looking at G.A.Davis’s ‘congrats on your taste and budget’ message, I locked the front door by feel alone and then wandered into the kitchen. I’d need something to pry the thing open with and my generous assortment of “As Seen on TV!” tools were in the basement.
    Most of my tool purchases had seemed like really good ideas at the time; their enthusiastic television pitch-men demonstrated them quite effectively to their doe-eyed studio audiences. The improbable devices almost universally turned out to be badly engineered mash-ups of other tools, but who could possibly resist the siren call of combination screwdriver/wrenches, screwdriver/hammers, screwdriver/compasses, screwdriver/levelers, or that combination screwdriver/kegel-exerciser I’d ordered up drunk on one lonely evening?
    I wasn’t entirely sure where my ‘kegel’ was, but I was pretty sure mine would turn out to be just as flabby and out-of-shape as the rest of my muscles whenever I finally tracked it down. The British fellow on the infomercial seemed pretty sure my love life would improve if I worked it hard enough. Whatever. Laying next to it should be a fine screwdriver/crowbar, which would be just the ticket for Mr Big-Box out there in the living room.
    I stopped halfway through the kitchen and quickly fished my phone and the severed head of Boba Fett from beneath the table, setting them and the Franklin Mint letter on the tablecloth.
    Missed 6 calls, the phone blinked emphatically. Boba seemed sanguine in his current state and the letter had no discernible personality traits for me to anthropomorphosize against at the moment. 6 calls…
    Bananas! Didn’t he say he was from the Franklin Mint? I must’ve still been pretty tired for it not to have occurred to me sooner. I’d been so rude to him, but Gail had been pretty distracting, and I figured her presence made a good enough excuse for my lack of manners. I rubbed the tender skin of my shoulder through the crispy black hole on my bathrobe, remembering…
    ^*shudder^*! A vision of a happy teddy bear, fangs dripping with blood, furry arms warped and twisted with the movement of underlying leathery skin, flickered across my mind in pursuit of a frightened little man riding an ATV over miles and miles of nicotine skin patches. The bear leaped over my imagination and bit me in the crotch before I could banish the cute ursine carnivore from my mind.
    I darted an accusing glare at the now-cold coffee urn squatting massively on the counter next to the sink. It seemed smug for some reason.
    The industrial coffee pot, liberated from the brotherhood of Millwrights during my flight from the Furd factory, bound me to Gail, for better or worse. No, teddy, NO! I shrugged the shame and sudden guilty arousal off and, wrapping the remains of the robe tightly around my body, hurried past toward the back door and the stairs into the basement.
    At the bottom of the stairs the furnace effectively blocked my view of Chuck’s grotesque remains, though I knew his two pieces to be piled carefully in the corner behind it, probably still oozing strawberry goop. This lack of visibility was how I’d intended it, but I still felt a pang of longing and fought the urge to hurry around to his side so I could see his face again. I really had no plan for what to do with him next, I’d been driven this far by the message embossed upon his hanging tongue, imploring me to hide him. A low-level anger toward his murderer, Bruce, roiled beneath my skin, mere inches beneath my coffee, sex and cigarette stained bathrobe.
    Aside from some boxes, the aforementioned furnace and the laundry, my basement was wide-open, cool and quiet. I padded over to my world-weary laundry appliances and tossed the basket of Franken-tools from the floor onto the closed lid of the dryer. The coolness of the basement chilled my toes right through the Cookie Monster slippers as I dug through the mass of twisty steel and alloy gadgets, selecting not only the screwdriver/crowbar but also a screwdriver/hammer/can-opener for good measure.
    As I walked back toward the stairs, implements in hand, I heard the Macarena begin to beep its catchy dance rhythm from the kitchen table above and I doubled my pace in response. I called out “hey, Macarena” at the appropriate time–no one can deny Los Del Rio their due, after all.
    Throwing the tools onto the increasingly cluttered table, I grabbed the phone and pressed the button.
     “Uh,” I began smartly, “this is Joe.”
     “Glad I caught you, guy. This is Bruce.” and so it was. I froze on the spot, hand suddenly shaking. I reached across with my free hand and steadied my arm, head spinning.
     “You there? Hello? Joe?” it sounded like Bruce, but…there was a strange quality to his voice. Like he was happy. Chipper, even. What the fuck?
     “Bruce… Cornsley?”
     “Of course!” even in surprise he sounded uncharacteristically pleasant, continuing, “you ok, man?” Was that genuine concern I heard? This was Bruce, the man who had, only hours earlier, attempted to impale me on the business end of a kerosene powered fork-lift.
    That was right after he’d… smashed… Chuck right in front of me. Chuck was my best friend–no, he was my ONLY friend. Anger flashed up my body like an electric shock and the Nokia creaked unsteadily in my hand as my grip tightened, trying my best to crush the phone into the shape of a #2 pencil.
     I spoke through clenched teeth, “Where are you?” Twisting around painfully, I looking first over the sink and out the kitchen window and then out the back door porthole. I saw nothing but the wall of my neighbor’s house and my Furd Pinata respectively. “Show yourself.”
     “Show myself? I’m at work, man. You sound angry, was I interrupting something?”
     “As a matter of fact-” I began cleverly, only to be interrupted with,
     “We’ll talk tomorrow, of course.” I boggled. “Oh, yeah, the reason I’m calling is to tell you that you’re expected to return to work tomorrow at normal start-of-shift. That whole toxic emergency thing turned out to be that box of jelly donuts Chuck brought in.”
     “Uh…” my voice trailed off and my grip on the phone loosened as my confusion grew. I stared down at the two-dimensional Boba Fett head. As long as he stared up at me from the checkered tablecloth, I knew I wasn’t insane… Well, probably wasn’t insane, anyway.
     Happy Bruce continued, “Speaking of which, do you have Chuck’s cell phone number? I called his house but got no answer.”
     “No, actually, I don’t know if he ever had one. Er, Bruce, don’t you remember…um…” I wasn’t really sure how to continue. …crushing Chuck–who’s a robot, incidentally–and trying to kill me didn’t seem sufficiently delicate.
     “No? Too bad.” Bruce seemed disappointed. “I’ll try him again later. You guys are lucky you weren’t under that decal spool when the retaining bolt gave way. There’s going to be some questions about those donuts, though. What was he thinking, bringing food onto the line?” he continued in a hushed whisper, “the line stopped…”
     I sort-of gave up on the conversation at this point. Phone still pushed against my ear, I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and rubbed my forehead. My headache was coming back. A couple seconds of quiet, mutual breathing passed over the phone line before Bruce continued awkwardly,
     “Well, anyway… I gotta call the rest of the crew before I can finally go home, so I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. See you tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-channel, right?” Chuckling at himself and his very nearly clever pop-culture reference, Bruce hung up on me, leaving me with silence and wonder as my only companions. Well, other than my assortment of schizophrenic tools, the cardboard head of a Star Wars character and an ‘At-A-Boy’ form letter from G.A.Davis, that is.
    I held the phone out in front of me, looking at the display warily.
    Presently, the phone began ringing in my hand. I continued to stare, letting the Macarena play for a few seconds, and answered right before the end of the first chorus.
     “This is Joe.”
    There was a moment of silence followed by a click, then a woman’s pleasant voice spoke,
    ”Please hold while we connect your call to…”

* Precious metals excepted, of course. Also, any 6 inch item may optionally be substituted for no more than two novelty chess pieces. The “Heroes of Abusive Politics” Chess Set would make a fine choice. Everyone needs a Rumsfeld Rook!

I am not lying.

    Today, strange bee-like insects living in a hole in the ground pursued me and my lawnmower, assaulting me, stinging my hand, even intimidating me!*
    Its like a hate crime, but one in which the victimizer possesses a nervous system too primitive to really be capable of anything resembling what we refer to as ‘hate’. Even so, I felt violated, and through the curtain of tears I resolved to add it to my lengthy list of life’s little sodomies with which I will someday burden a trauma-proofed therapist.
    So it was that when Heather found me I was sitting cross-legged on the driveway next to the lawnmower, rocking gently and drawing ‘the bad things’ all over the concrete with some handy side-walk chalk I found.** The pictures were mostly made up of angry eyes and cereal bowls; it took quite a bit of incoherant sobbing and tearful dissemination for Heather to understand that the bee from “Honey Nut Cheerios” had bullied me all over the front lawn.
    This isn’t the first time, either. In the three years since we moved into our home we’ve had grasshoppers and beetles.
    Recently, I had a discussion with a long-time friend of mine who claims his spirit guide is The Monkey. If I ever get enough credulity to pursue that line of spirituality, I think I’ll take the Aardvaark in self defense. Or Flypaper.
    Won’t Rob be surprised when I show up with my spirit guide, and its a coiled strip of baited adhesive dangling from the ceiling?

* Pictures will be posted in due coarse. ..yes, I took some pictures of the damn bug-hovel.
** I found it abandoned in a box marked “Kristi’s Chalk” on my neighbor’s porch.
*** They tease our dog with promises of easy kills and quick, gorey mutilations only to pull the rug from under her stoked ego time and time again. Poor Tera (the dog).

    Yeah, its been hot, but I’m not so concerned at the moment. Air conditioning, plus no one–NO ONE–can force me to wear clothes in my own house; these FACs ensure my continued comfort…despite all the screaming. Sam, shush, your daddy is supposed to look this way.
    Earlier today, I drove along the freeways of Detroit looking as innocent as possible under the circumstances. I had a belly full of tacos* and a passenger compartment steaming sympathetically.
    There was a minivan; In the front passenger seat I noticed a teenage girl, feet completely naked. Lounging, her legs arced over the dashboard, soles pressed firmly against the glass and bathed in sunlight.

    …er,

    …. I wonder how that feels.

    I crave this. I lust for the experience. Why not me? Why can’t I know what it feels like? Tomorrow morning I’ll stage a re-enactment at an Eastward facing window in my home, and no one–NO ONE–can force me to wear clothes in my own house.

* Approximately four dollars worth of tacos went into the making of this experience.

    For the first time, I’m posting a SafeTune DIRECTLY here. on the main blog. You can also see it on SafeTunes as the ‘Newest’ SafeTune and also under the category of ‘Piano-Live’.

Full Left Hand, 01:56 Click on CD to Play or Download. Please let me know how you like it.	My Full Left Hand 8, August 2006 Yeah, so there’s these block chords, and they meet this dude who asks them for a doller. “I need it for gas,” says the dude. But, like, the block chords don’t believe him ’cause he smells like a distillery. Yeah, and so the block chords just hop back into their Ford Focus and drive away.

    I’m a problem solver and here’s a few solutions I’ve come up with for common problems you may face in your every-day lives. Feel free to take these ideas and run with them; I swear to Gosh I won’t hire a lawyer to sue you for infringing my intellectual property rights.

---

Plushtastic Internet Experience Enhancer!     Solving the age old problem of controlling internet use in a mixed household.
An RFID tag embedded in a licensed Disney character plush doll* is issued to each prospective internet user in your home. The doll must be continuously and repeatedly squeezed gently between your thighs in order for unfettered access to the internet to continue. If thigh pressure drops below a programmable minimum threshold, the voice of James Earl Jones will issue from your computer speakers and encourage you to “Squeeze HARDER; I’m James Earl Jones.”
Mannatm Food Delivery System     Are you a non-governmental organization seeking to feed a large displaced population, but you don’t feel that their current location is safe enough to risk actually visiting them in person? Try this unique solution.
This novel and completely original means of feeding refugees involves the nightly aerial bombardment of the affected populus with yeast, wheat, lecithin, preservatives and a light artesian mist**. Just sit back and watch as the grateful people get up early each morning to gather the bread-like foodstuffs from where it formed a yummy, light and fluffy blanket across the land overnight. Optionally, Mannatm can be enriched with iodine, iron, and various other essential nutrients and vitamins necessary to maintain the active lifestyle of a busy, fleeing population.
Insta-Ninja Training Pants     Ever have your years of exhaustive martial arts training go unused because you don’t have a pair of black pajamas when you need them?
Next time you feel the need to kill silently with asian flavor, don’t you fear to take action, take Insta-Ninja Training Pants and slaughter with satisfaction! A simple black pair of bikini briefs hide a highly compressed canister of non-toxic black skin pigment. Simply strip down to the underwear, remove the canister and spray on a nice, thick, rich and creamy batch of black Ninja-wear across your entire body. In no time you’ll look the part of the internationally feared friend of darkness and assassassassin extraordinaire you were born to be.

* Non-Princess characters only–anthropomorphic animal princesses exempted.
** artesian mist may originate from municipal water sources.