user since
Tue Apr 23 2002 at 22:04:56 (21.9 years ago )
last seen
Fri Feb 4 2005 at 18:08:06 (19.1 years ago )
number of write-ups
48 - View firmware's writeups (feed)
level / experience
2 (Acolyte) / 496
specialties
Valves
school/company
ACME Valves Inc
motto
Professional Misanthropic Hermit
most recent writeup
August 31, 2004
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I had a plan for the weekend camping trip and it was coming together. There were going to be six adults and 2 kids, the kids being mine and my wife's. My brother and his girlfriend were coming and Josh and his girlfriend. Josh was a bit of a nut and a party animal. We had met him a couple of years ago through mutual friends and the group of us all got along quite well. Josh also was known to have a pistol and brought it along in these outing, ostensibly, in case a bear or moose showed up. The gun was good sized but I really doubt you could kill a moose or bear with it. However, the gun was a key item in the plan.

We all arrived on Friday evening at the campsite which was relatively isolated in Algonquin Park. We set up our three tents around a fire pit and there was a sandy beach a few hundred feet away. The beach was on a stream that flowed past. The stream was large enough for canoeing and connected 2 small lake together. Most of Friday evening was spent setting up the campsites and then we put the children to bed and sat around the fire drinking beer and talking into the night.

I could not go on any more. I was not going to succeed. I needed to provide for the kids and my ungrateful wife but it was so hard. The job was sheer pain in the neck. I was not getting along with my wife very well. All my old friends had disperse like leaves in the fall and I somehow had failed to develop new ones. The idea had been clear in my mind for about a year now and finally I felt I had a fool proof plan.

I was going to kill myself, but in a way that would totally bamboozle the authorities so that they would have to hand over the insurance money. Then the kids would have what they needed. Then I would not have to worry about it anymore.

Quietly I slipped out of the tent and over to where the vehicles were parked. I grabbed some leaves from a maple beside the parked car to prevent my fingerprints from being found on the door handles. I tried the door handle on Josh's car. The driver's side was locked but the passenger side wasn't. It took a moment to locate the gun in the glove compartment and then I closed the car back up as quietly as I could.

I pause to listen at the fringe of the campfire light, holding the gun gingerly between two maple leaves by the stock. No one is stirring. My hearbeat is in my head and ears, my footsteps are crunching loudly and clearly enough to wake everyone up as I grope my way into the forest to where I remember the stump to be.

I consider now walking out to the lake to provide a track of added confusion but then I realize that I forgot the other pair of shoes. Also, having stumbled and groped for 10 minutes to find the stump, I get worried that I would get hopelessly lost and not be able to go through with the plan before dawn and someone waking up.

I put the gun down on the stump and then proceed to sit down leaning my back against the stump. My breathing is rapid but laboured. I feel a little faint. My arms are shaking. I clasp my hands together and take a deep breath. "This is according to plan. Just relax and follow through. Everything will work out." I closed my eye for a moment. I grab 2 leaves off the ground and then reach around and pick the gun off the stump with the leaves between the gun and my fingers. I manipulate the leaves and the so that my finger is on the trigger. I start to shake again.

I bring the gun around to the back of my head, the barrel resting on the stump, level and pointing at a part of the back my head above my left ear. I imagine the moment and then let my hands drop, releasing the gun and slump forward. After a moment, I turn around and look at the gun. The leaves have scattered. Good.

I grab two more leaves and then take the gun and sit one more time at the stump. I turn the safety off. I get dizzy. I am almost there. After a couple of deep breaths, the vertigo passes. I put my leaf covered finger on the trigger and reach the gun around the back of my head and rest the barrel on the stump. Squeeze.

The bullet flies out of my open mouth. The scenery changes to a even drab green gray of trees and bushes. The campfire is overly bright to look at but does not seem to cast any light around it. Beyond a certain distance it is entirely black. I am standing. I don't know how I got up or whether I floated up. "It is done." I start walking towards the campsite, deciding that I should go say goodbye.

I stumble through the wood to the campsite and then walk to the entrance to our tent. The campfire is impossibly bright to look at yet it does not illuminate. I notice that the blackness is closer now. I must hurry. I open the tent. There is no one inside. "Yes, I must have departed." I go over to the spot where the children were sleeping and curl up and hug nothingness. "I love you. I love you. I am so sorry, but it is for the best. I have done the best that I can. Please forgive me." I want to cry but there is a low humming noise that I become aware of. I exit the tent.

There is a light up above. Like the campfire, it does not illuminate but I can look at it. It is a circle and the source of the low humming. It is growing larger as the blackness creeps ever closer. Slowly the horizons close in. Creeping, humming until I am able to touch them with my outstretched arms. The light is warm. I flows over me. I am finally engulfed.


Things that make you go hmmm...

The wife, kids and I had stopped at the local liquor store so my wife could get something for the weekend. I stayed in the car with the kids. This liquor store has parking down the side of the building and we were parked close to the door. I amuse myself by watching people go in and out while waiting. This one guy pulls up and has a cigarette that he had obviously just lit. Around where I live, you can't smoke in public places like stores. Unlike Montreal where I grew up where I can remember people would smoke in class and even in bookstores. But things have changed.

Where was I? Yes, this guy decides he wants to clip the end of the butt, or rather leave it somewhere while he goes into the store to get something for the weekend. So he looks around and decides to leave it sitting on the natural gas regulator for the building.

I am thinking, he didn't just do that, did he? My wife comes out of the store as he is going in and I ask her to check to see if there is a burning cigarette on the regulator. She puts it out, jumps in the car and we leave.

I suppose, that given certain bits of trivia I do not have the energy to look up at the moment, it could have been a perfectly safe situation to leave a burning cigarette on the natural gas regulator. How much natural gas is released to the atmosphere from a regulator? At what temperature does a cigarette burn? What is the ignition temperature of methane? These are things I do not know. But I would suggest that the guy couldn't have said one way or another either.

Another thing that intrigues me has to do with leveling sand or fine gravel as a base for paving stones. I have this idea that if you plunk down a bunch of sand and then run a straight board over it in random directions, it will even out the sand to within a certain tolerance which is dependent on how much sand you force the board to remove off an even surface.

After futzing around for 15 minutes. I decided that it just does not work that way.


The wierdest /msg I have received:

Cool Man Eddie says Yo, the entire node E2 Nuke Request, in which you have a writeup, was editor cooled. Your reward is knowing you're cooler than liquid nitrogen.

What exactly would someone cool the Nuke Request node for? I assume it wasn't because I used the term "mental masturbation".

Twelve Eggs

I begin this story by advising the reader that one of Frank's dozen eggs is in fact rotten. So with this in mind, let's see what Frank is up to on this Monday morning in May...

The alarm clock is the first sound Frank hears this morning. He fumbles for it with his left hand and after hitting several buttons manages to find the "off" one. He raises himself up to his hands and knees and as he does so, the covers fall off his bare back. Frank rolls off the bed to the far side and pulls over the curtains to see a partly cloudy sky in the early dawn redness. His east facing window looks out over some grassy parkland with forest beyond. The bay can be seen in the far horizon from here, the 4th and top floor of the apartment building.

He shakes himself and then scratches his ass through his boxers as he lumbers over to the bathroom. A shower, shave, towelling off and getting dressed into a pair of casual slacks and a plaid shirt and Frank is ready to face the day. Almost. Just to make breakfast out of a boiled egg is all that's left.

The one bedroom apartment has decent sized rooms and the kitchen has an eating area. The fridge is old and finicky and the door wiggles as Frank gets out his dozen eggs. It is a new dozen, which is a good omen and Frank selects an egg to put into a pot of boiling water. 5 minutes later, Frank is sitting at the small table in the eating area ready to eat his egg.

To be continued...