Electronic Wasteland

I've been through like 4 vacuums. I went from a dustbuster which I used for a long time to vacuum my whole apartment all hunched over like a lunatic. Then I got the terrible Dirt Devil the worst vacuum ever in the history of everything. Then I got a 'cordless vacuum'. I got the bright idea that this would be cool. I can vacuum all willy nilly without having to worry about a cord! Well, I fried that one when I moved to Brooklyn. I mixed up the charger plugs and plugged a 12v into it instead of 9v or something. I left the room and came back like 5 minutes later and the vacuum was sizzling and making a weird smell. I yanked the plug out of the wall and listened to it continue to make noise for like 20 seconds. Bracing myself for the explosion. No explosion.

Then I went onto some overstock cheapy website and bought me a refurbished Fantom vacuum for $80. It looked like this kinda. I bought it because it had a clear glass container on the front where it makes a big cyclone of dust. I thought that would be cool to watch. Like excitement over seeing stuff that I sucked up all swirling around.

Anyway, I get this industrial sized vac and from the very beginning the cyclone never really worked quite right. I'd be vacuuming and the cyclone would stop spinning and just sort of die down. Even though the vacuum was still on. So I'd slap it upside the head and the cyclone would get going again.  So the other day that happens and I get sort of pissed at it and I give it a real whack. And I heard something pop on the inside. Like an electronic pop. And then it sort of revved and then smoke started pouring out of it from like underneath. I yanked the plug out of the wall and stare at this frickin thing pouring out like asbestos smoke or whatever in my apartment. It smelled awful.

So I moved it out into the hallway outside my front door. I live on the top floor so I have that space all to myself. It's now my electronic graveyard. Out there is the burnt out wireless vac. My old coff-ay maker. My Tote-Vision mini-tv that one day just went black. My Coby boombox that I got for the bathroom that couldn't pick up a single radio station. My canon printer that I got for $40 that permajammed. My old scanner. And soon to join em will be this frickin VCR I just got off eBay. (Yes I figured out how to open it and cleared out all the peanuts but I still can't get the frickin thing to record.)

Why I can't just bring all this stuff down to the curb is another story altogether...

ok bye!

tOdd