Monthly Archives: March 2018

die hard ghostbusters fans will take notice of symmetrical book stacking and say, “just like the philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947!” - yeah, that’s a line from the movie. i made a kamikaze trip to 1984 in springfield yesterday. i indulged myself and played old games like elevator action, omega race, sinistar, and mappy– and those were just the games in the basement! there was also the ghostbusters room where slimed books were stacked, threats were painted on the door, and a scary ghost appeared in the mirror if you rang for a desk attendant.michael geeding and his girlfriend reece showed up after i’d been there for a couple of hours, and we scored pretty good on our favorite games. i’ve known michael’s parents since high school, so he sort of feels like my own kid.

oh boy. here’s another page from 2 warps to neptune. as i was scrolling past a buck rogers night light & marc bolan pictures, i literally laughed out loud when i saw snoopy dressed like john travolta. i remember colorforms. i think my folks might have even got a box of them for me and my sister– not the disco set! i would have been too old to play with that one in 1978. i was too busy growing my hair over the top of my ears.

i was cleaning the lounge before mom & jim’s recent visit a couple of weeks ago, and found this book under the futon. i remember that it was an impulse buy at a local half price book store. there is a ton of space related metaphors & puns in this thing, but there’s also some insight: on page 18 the author claims that kirk “follows four guiding stars:
1) always say yes
2) awaken her passion
3) care for your exes
4) increase her self esteem”
aye captain!

thanks to chloé, kismet, and an 80′s songbook i heard an elton john tune that i never knew existed– chloe. it appears to be a fan favorite with 200 thumbs up and only 6 thumbs down on youtube. we watched the music video on my phone during a lull at homer’s. the morning was sufficiently twisted afterward.

while searching for old motel pics online i discovered 2 warps to neptune. it was a blog dedicated to: “Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek.” you know… nerdy stuff! in august 2016 the blogger for 2warpstoneptune.com told readers to check out his new website we are the mutants. it’s an online magazine that is “sifting the disregarded remains of the old world.” huh, just when i think the air couldn’t get any thinner out here in my search for all things weird, i bump into another geek like me.

a couple of days ago i went searching for the arcade sounds of my youth online. i just wanted to see if someone had a collection that i could listen to. it didn’t take long to find a youtube link that had sounded something like this. right now the link has 340 thumbs up, 4 thumbs down, and 39 comments including this one: “Whenever this plays, I can remember that arcade smell. Its like a mixture of Windex, cigarette smoke and burnt circuitry.”

after 12 years of following latitudes, longitudes, and hidden clues, i finally logged 200 geocaches. i jumped into the world of geocaching with both feet when my friends michael sweeney (above) and tim andersen asked if i wanted to go to monkey mountain, and i never looked back.  yeah, i’m madmaxheadroom. jenny & i found the most recent geocache behind a perkins restaurant on 87th street. we left a pill container from stoner drug, and swapped it for a tiny blue translucent stone.

round and round she goes, where she stops… well… this clock won’t stop until gravity does. hubert van hecke made a frameless clock out of bicycle parts for his son-in-law’s bike shop. “i had the idea for this particular type of clock with no frame and gears held by chains and gravity, many years ago,” said hecke. you can watch it keep time for 21 seconds here. more info can be found in the 2018 april/may issue of make magazine.

this is a radar lamp that jim huber gave me a few days ago. he found it while cleaning out part of his house and said, “dave you’re the the first person i thought of.” jim gave me his old coleman stove when jenny & i started tent camping. the radar lamp didn’t come with a battery, i drove to a hardware store in mission to get that. the original one probably ran out of juice around the time JFK was elected.

if you have a smart phone and a good geocaching app, there is way less prep time to go out and find treasures in your neighborhood. it took five minutes to find a tree with four trunks that resembled a fallen giraffe skydiver yesterday. when i opened the c:geo app on my android, i was only 453 feet away from it at south lake park. the map above shows all the geocaches within easy driving distance & i can pull it up on my phone anytime.