2012-03-07: I Told Ya, Stay Outta My Shed!

[Nosy Neighbordroid]

Discussion thread for I Told Ya, Stay Outta My Shed!

[taltamir]

monsterist?

[Viking-Sensei]

I just now noticed what the actual name for this comic was. Kudos, Poe.

[taltamir]

I just now noticed what the actual name for this comic was. Kudos, Poe.

mind explaining?

[Imp-Chan]

I just now noticed what the actual name for this comic was. Kudos, Poe.

mind explaining?

While cleaning out Poe's dad's property this past week, Viking-Sensei and I decided to clean out a rusty old metal shed. It contained, among other things, a Radio Flyer in working if superficially rusty condition... and two barrels of unstable explosives. We spent the next couple of hours making friends with the state police, the FBI, the local police, the fire marshall and fire department, and the local swat team. No one knew exactly how to deal with it or whose jurisdiction it was, but ultimately the swat team took it away to set it on fire at their practice range. I asked for video, but do not think I'll get any.

Fortunately, the state policeman was also our neighbor, and he was well aware of Poe's father's, er... eccentricities. He was able to reassure his friend from the FBI that domestic terrorism is also far, far from anything I would ever even consider participating in, and that Charlie had probably kept it around for aggressive self-defense purposes,* so we remained blissfully out of jail.

This comic went up before any of that actually happened, but the timing was still excellent.

^-^'

* I think this is probably accurate, but I am also glad that neither Viking-Sensei nor I mentioned the suspicious sections of pipe we had found. I'm sure if he'd followed through on assembly Charlie wouldn't have thought of them as pipe bombs so much as booby traps, anyways.

[Labrat]

Huh. Poe's dad was Burt Gummer.

[taltamir]

Poe's dad sounds AWESOME.

Also thanks for explaining. And shame you didn't get the video.

[Imp-Chan]

I admit that my respect for Charlie has grown as I've been packing away his life. We disagreed on a number of topics and I had good reason to find him kinda creepy while alive, but there were also things he did well. He invented some tools, practiced a sustainable and apparently healthy diet without the fuss and drama usually associated with that lifestyle, took the time to read a bizarre collection of books, and documented pretty much his entire life with photographs (including many parts I would much rather not have seen). He practically never threw anything away, leading to a lot of redundancy and clutter, but very little waste (at least not until I started clearing things out). When he fixed things, he did so in one of two ways... with an ingeniously simple and effective but utterly inelegant temporary fix, or with total overkill. At one point he decided to reinforce the structure of his house (which needed it)... the contractor I spoke to said he had never seen so many steel jacks used in one space and he had no reason to suspect any structural issues would ever strike again. Meanwhile, Charlie the master plumber by trade had fixed his backed up kitchen sink by removing the drain and setting a bucket under it, and was storing his socks in a grocery bag with the handles held through a milk crate shelving unit by a popsicle stick. The milk crates had been carefully and tidily wired together for stability, I had to hunt down good snips and spend some quality time with a pair of pliers to get them apart.

^-^'