Just your run of the mill arsonist...

I burst from the bed this morning humming "it's friiiiday, the gamble friday, fun day, best day, all for me...." that bad sort of singing that little kids do while bopping along because it makes perfectly good sense and sound to them.

Went to work, fired up my normal list of things to engage, in their normal engagable order, sat for three minutes and wondered when I'd have a smoke break.

At about the five minute mark, it seemed overdue.

When I came back inside I smelled something, but as my office dates back to Bedrock and produces a multitude of odd smells, I didn't think much of it.

The smell was getting worse so I turned off my foot heater thinking a piece of plastic had been sucked in, it scent was strong of a melting "something." Bosslady's Daughter came over and frowned instantly.

"What IS that?"
"I don't know!" large eyes.
"Man, that's toxic." and she went on her way, leaving me to breathe my chemical death.

Opened the front door and removed the heater, scolding it for producing the stench. The smell hours later though had not dissapated so I IM'd Moon to shake an ass over and give a sniff since her nostrils are highly trained instruments. She too frowned, but neither could put our finger on it.

Lungs throat and eyeballs began to hurt and we wondered if agent orange was pumping into the building. Think Labyrinth, The Bog of Eternal Stench. I can still smell it.

Since they work at the other end of the building, I was alone in the front line trenches. Sometime after lunch, I couldn't take it anymore and got to sniffing madly and it was then I saw it.

I yelped out to Moon "HELP!" She appeared faster than a rocket knowing help from me isn't my usual demand for attention.

"Oh my god."
"What do we do????"
"I'm not touching that."
"Well I'm not fucking touching it!"

She left and reappeared with Bosslady's Daughter and the GrandMaster. I'm not sure if they were to be our salvation or just two more people refusing to touch the shit. At this point, you are probably thinking I found a dead critter. No.

What in fact was rapidly happening was the act of me burning the fucking place to the ground.

No, not true. My desk was. I would say it was me had I asked, or paid the desk to do this. I'm guessing it would not have been long before that thing caught fire and shot sparks and flames big enough to blow me outside. It was literally melting into shapes in seconds.

Bosslady's Daughter turned off the lights. I do not know why, and thought it was silly but she was doing more than I was - flapping and howling, screeching "FIRE FIRE FIRE!" offering no help to the situation whatsoever.

Unplug it right? Well we had two people already refusing to touch it, one of them flailing about in circles, one turning off the lights and the last one staring blankly and saying "what's happening?"

Romper Room!

GrandMaster tried to unplug it, but my 50 million pound desk was installed less than an inch from the outlet. I never thought he'd get it, but he did.

It wasn't overloaded, I think just old. And to think, we were all blaming the innocent heater which is now banned to the stock room for a while. I had some other shit planned for the friday entry, but almost turning ones' place of work into an unemployment check sorta trumped other ideas.

-DM