certain-insect - Tumblr blog

[certain-insect]

they're like angels

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If I was a mouse and was given a cookie I would totally want a glass of milk as well. I've always thought this. That is what's called a relatable protagonist.

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eminem the building is crumbling i dont think we'll make it out

gay eminem on 9/11: that plane just flew into a lower floor/id like to suck a man just once more

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his name is ice maker

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i'm not the praying sort, but i'll probably always have a soft spot for the astronaut's prayer

[certain-insect]

anglerfish 

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the human brain literally needs the color green (grass, leafs) to like self-calibrate and not go insane i sincerely believe this

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[certain-insect]

On my tombstone they will carve, IT NEVER GOT ECONOBOX ENOUGH FOR ME. I was a slave to those small engines, those dizzying peaky horsepower numbers lower than the fuel economy sticker, those Macpherson Struts. I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. But mopeds? That was a bridge too far, or so I thought.

My accountant Roy saunters into the office, and he tells me that he just found five hundred bucks under the couch cushions in the breakroom and we should go buy mopeds. He impresses upon me the value of my investment in what he defines as motorized art, the alloy steeds spoken of in legend. In the parking lot, I ante up on the deal by popping the clips on my Subaru’s door card and extracting a further five hundred dollars, preserved minty-fresh by the vapour barrier.

As if on cue, the college radio station’s federally-mandated afternoon cultural appreciation programming, consisting entirely of artisanal banjo music, filled the speakers and our hearts with a sense of rural adventure. Together, we departed for the countryside, barging through covered bridges in full opposite lock.

“How many cylinders has it got?” I ask the swarthy man as he sneezed into his handkerchief, and rubbed his moly-greased paws on his hay-covered overalls.

“Got maybe one, I wager. I got it off one of them college boys came out here to protest the sour gas wells. Ambulance left it behind.”

I considered the moped carefully. It was a gently dented ‘71 Kreidler Florett, and it leaked oil and fuel in such quantities I had no doubt the paramedics had performed triage at the scene and slotted it into “already gone.”

“You boys aren’t college educated, are you?”

His line of questioning was interrupted by the stuffing of money down his denim neckhole. I was a moped owner. I was a motorcyclist. I was one of the Nicest People that you would meet, if you were driving a Honda at the time.

Weeks later, Roy tentatively rapped on the front door of my house. He was concerned. I hadn’t turned up to work for weeks. Did I have an accident learning to ride a motorcycle? I opened the door, just a crack, not wanting him to see my deep shame, but he shoved it open, knocking me onto my ass.

The scene that unfolded before him was one of horror. Every available surface in the house was occupied by mopeds, or moped parts. He turned and stared at me, his face white with disbelief.

“They’re just so small,” I whimpered. “I ran out of room in the garage and I just had to keep saving them they were so lonely, I don’t know what to do.”

As always, my intrepid accountant had a good idea of how to spend my money. Weeks later, our series of vintage moped rent-a-racer events had flourished and America was rediscovering its love of the two-stroke. We were both richer than we could imagine, but the greatly soaring demand for mopeds had raised the price of our junk into the stratosphere.

I rode home on the Kreidler, wondering where it had all gone so wrong. At the lights, I looked up to witness an enormous billboard, advertising the triumphant and flashy return of the Honda CT90. You asked for it, the ad copy roared, and here it is.

Yes. I asked for it.

Note: This is the 3000th entry on this tumblr. I can't believe it's lasted this long, and I'm a little humbled that people seem to be really enjoying it. In honour of the anniversary, this is my all-time favourite post (check out the best of tag for more, or enjoy a random post from the collection) and I'm taking the night off, rather than writing a new one. New shitbox posts resume tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

[certain-insect]

technology is becoming too powerful

[certain-insect]

this is the guy they made video games for. literally nobody else

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the wii still feels like the height of technology to me. like it feels like a mystical thing to use

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Things have gotten so bad in North American life that sea shanties have become popular again. That’s right, the music sung by folks dying of scurvy in a cantankerous wooden bathtub about to plunge to the bottom of the ocean. The reason why is pretty simple. Everyone wants to have cool adventures, and make friends, and not be at a fucking desk. I ask: have you considered bus collecting?

A bus is basically the same thing as a tall sailing ship. You’ve got the large, unwieldy bulk, the single pilot, and the group of people vomiting in the back, doing every drug in sight, and wondering if a seagull tastes good. The only difference is that a used long-distance hauling bus is cheap; less than the cost of your average shitbox sedan. And look at what you get with it! Lots of big tires, lots of seats, a very large engine full of things to fiddle with, an extremely long runs of wiring for the packrats to eat. Is it broken? Even better! You can live in it, far more comfortably than your average decrepit Plymouth Fury or half-in-the-bag Asuna Sunfire.

Sure, there are downsides to bus ownership. For one thing, everyone you know is going to want you to give them a lift along with 60 of their closest friends. You won’t be able to merge onto the highway very quickly, or find parking downtown. The fascists in law enforcement will often want you to have ridiculous things like “an inspection,” “working lights,” or “a drivers’ license,” and fixate on it because you’re big, shiny, and can’t pull away from their cruisers very quickly even if you are a halfway decent driver. Small problems compared to the ability to wear a dorky bus-driver hat and open and close the passenger entry door with that cool lever thing.

All this is to say that you should join me down at the industrial equipment auction this weekend coming up. There’s a lot of low-mileage prison buses hitting the block, and I think if we work the crowd together, we can really convince the other bidders that there was a grisly murder in one of them. While they’re busy bidding up that one, we can scoop up the others super cheap, or at least cheaper than a seaworthy boat made out of fucking trees.

[certain-insect]

I hate bright ass fucking LED headlights or whatever the hell they are