Some point, over a decade ago, Chief Oddball and a couple other friends were at my house, hanging out in my bedroom. Some time beforehand, one of those friends had given me a tiny cutout of Peter Tork’s head, taken from some magazine. Anyway, I was drinking a root beer, and at some point I spilled said beverage. Droplets of sugar water fell on the picture of Peter Tork, prompting me to scream out something along the lines of, “AAAAH! I spilled root beer on Peter Tork!”
Why do I mention this? 
Because, several days ago, something similar happened. I was sitting at my computer desk, with a tall, frosty glass of root beer next to me on my desk. I reached for the glass and — horror! — I knocked it over (mind you, this was a full glass of root beer I’d just poured). My desk (not to be confused with my computer desk, which is next to it) was immediately covered with root beer, and I went into panic mode. I immediately grabbed a load of towels from the linen closet and went to work. My wallet, my keys — and even a CD I had lying there — weren’t spared the wrath of the root beer. Even worse, some stuff not even on the desk was badly hit, as I found out once my panic had died down: both my sketchbook and every single page of a comic I had been dabbling with for the last several months were now brown and soaking wet. They had been sitting under my desk and had bore the full brunt of the root beer as it swept off the desktop.
Needless to say, I was crushed. But then something happened: I realized it could have been a lot worse.
You see, on the other side of the floor under my desk — opposite where the sketchbook had been — is a power strip. This power strip not only has my computer, monitor, and what not plugged into it, but also my cable modem — which supplies my house with not only internet access, but also cable television and telephone service. As soon as I realized this, my anger began to subside into an awkward form of relief — if I’d spilled the root beer in the other direction (and if the bookshelf on my desk had been set somewhat differently), there’s a good chance I might not be writing this post right now. If the worst that happened from my accident was a few soaked drawings and a sticky keyfob for the car — instead of potentially losing my PC, internet, phone and TV access — then maybe things weren’t so bad.
And then I thought about it further: despite my usual negative outlook on life, things have been going pretty decently for me lately. Not that I’m raking in the dough or any other indicator of “success” that I used to use as a measuring stick for happiness (when my outlook on life was even more negative), but things could certainly be a lot worse. I’ve got a roof over my head, a good family situation, and good friends; and though you’re not supposed to measure happiness by material possessions, I’ve got plenty of those to keep me entertained as well.
Speaking of those material possessions (and to go off on a bit of a tangent, I suppose), I’ve suddenly found myself snapping up DVDs — particularly anime DVDs — at a rate not seen in five or more years. For my birthday Reaper got me the first series box set of the anime Black Lagoon, and I liked it so much I ended up buying myself the second volume a couple of weeks later. Then, Chief Oddball sent me all three DVD box sets of The Venture Bros. as a belated birthday present, which I happily consumed over the course of a week (though, honestly, seeing so many naked penises in the third season set threw me off a bit at first). Then this past weekend, I made a trip up to the nearest Great Buy (Best Buy to you common folk) and nabbed me both season sets of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for the insanely low price of $95 combined (to put it in perspective, the second season set I bought retails for $99.99 on its own, and even Amazon has it priced at over $60 — I got it for $50).
In a weird aside, my trip to Best Buy may have also saved some cashier her job. As I mentioned, my total came to about $95; when I first handed her my money, she miscounted it, trying to give me $10 back. We both recounted to make sure, and sure enough she had counted incorrectly. Then she related to me that she was already on a sort-of probation for her till coming up $20 short at some point recently, and she thanked me profusely for helping her catch the error. I told her I knew all about the horrors of working a cash register in retail, so it was my pleasure.
So now I’m busy watching Ghost in the Shell and just relaxing (well, in addition to sporadically working on a SUPER SECRET PROJECT that I haven’t told Chief Oddball about yet. 😛 ). So, life is pretty good, I’d say.
(I feel compelled to point out this is my first post to this site in over a year. I always feel like I’m imposing on Chief Oddball and his epic posts with my meandering drivel, so I never post as much as I want to. But perhaps I’ll start posting a bit more from now on. 🙂
Edit: As a bonus, I seem to have borked the site layout. Woo hoo! Just like old times.)
“Now with more…Peter Tork!”
Holy shit, the whole comic got doused with Barqs? (Or Mug, or whatever it was?) That massively sucks. But you’re right; it’s a good thing it didn’t fall on the cable modem, or any of the other electronic equipment! Man, though…the comic! Does this mishap effectively put the kibosh on that project?
Speaking of projects, I’m really interested in what this up-and-coming “super secret project” thing is. I love surprises.
I noticed the weirdness with the “In Short” sidebar, and to be honest, I can’t for the life of me figure out what is happening. I don’t really care, either — I know it’s something with this post (because when I set it back to “draft” status, the sidebar was fine), and it only applies to the homepage, so as soon as the next post gets written, it will cease to be an issue. So I’m not going to worry about it. 🙂
Now that I’m finally back home, and almost caught up with everything, I’m going to get an email back to you on the awesommmme story comments — and then, of course, continuing work on said story itself, with an aim to wrap it (and the season) up before long! Woo hoo!
BTW, nice to have you posting on here again.
A&W, actually!
Yeah, like I said, it’s a huge relief nothing electronic got hit; and actually, I’m very lucky there — the root beer actually did spread to the other side of the desk a bit (over the general area of the power strip), but the huge bookcase on top of the desk was set so that there was no space between the edge of the desk and the edge of the bookshelf for the soda to seep through, while there was a big gap on the other side (which is how the comic and my sketch pad got doused). So yeah, I think this puts the kibosh on the comic, at least for the foreseeable future. And I guess I’ll have to make a trip to get a new sketchbook at some point. Meh.
Haha, yeah, I just started the “sooper seekrit project” last week, though progress has been slowed by me watching a zillion hours of DVDs (as mentioned in the post). Go Team Venture! (or should I say “John. Bonham. Rules”?)
As of the “In Short” box, I think it just doesn’t like me. 🙂 Maybe because I don’t have a “Groove-atar” like all the cool kids.