Spider Slayer

Note:

This was originally posted to a mailing list in 6/17/04.  The original was thought to be lost (a bunch of my friends and I all looked for it in our email archives), but versions of it showed up on some message boards since.  A couple of weeks ago I found some what I thought were long lost email archives and found it.  Here it is in its original form with a few minor edits for readability:

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Last night Jill, a friend of mine who is really creeped out by spiders stopped by and by coincidence when she was about to leave there was a spider about 3" across hunting on the top stoop in front of my front door.  I went after it but it ran off.

If any of my neighbors saw what happened later they probably thought I lost it.

After Jill left it was back on the steps, same spot, taunting me, insulting me, laughing at me. 

I'm not sure spider could see me but it was reacting to my shadow being cast by the lights on either side of the front door, running over the side of the concrete landing every time I blocked the light. I kept trying to get the thing but it was FAST. I even had the million candlepower spot light out, you know, the one that everyone keeps by the front door in case you need to flag down a low flying aircraft, to make sure that I could follow it over the side of the steps.

After a few minutes of this my feeble little brain came up with a bright idea "hey, carb cleaner kills most bugs” (they breath through their "skin" and the stuff coats them and suffocates them. Even if you don't get them well enough usually it will kill them later on). Spiders are bugs, well, sort of bugs, well not really, they aren't bugs, but it should work, right?

Well, what is one step better?  Think like a Mark, this is easy, or think like a great big retarded monkey.  Either will get you to the same place.

BURNING carb cleaner... huh, problem… I can't hold the million candle power light if I've got a lighter in one hand and can of liquid death in the second.  I won’t really be able to see the thing as it hides over the side of the steps. But wait, no problem.  If I light the carb cleaner I'll see the pesky beast, right?

Ahh, I love it when a plan comes together.…

Obviously, this kind of reasoning has put me among the great thinkers of our times. I have all my problems solved: this is the pure, glowing, brilliant fireball of genius. I grabbed the BIG can of B12 Chemtool (think super, extra heavy duty carb cleaner, it even has the word “super” on the label, you know that makes it better, if only the big can also had the word magnum on it all would be right with the world).

Well, I got up on the steps, looking down I thought I could see the shadow of a lump that was the spider on the side of the landing, and knowing from previous empirical data based on YEARS of CAREFUL testing that carb cleaner will shoot a 4-5' jet of flame… I took careful aim from a safe (always remember, safety first) distance back where the SPIDER couldn't hurt me, well not easily.

I lit the lighter... steadied my aim… and hit the nozzle…

At that instant I learned, I absolutely understood, exactly what was SUPER HEAVY DUTY about this B12 stuff. Instead of the normal and quite effective 4 foot jet of flames that carb cleaner gives you I got about an 8' long, 3' wide cone of flame which stuck to everything in it's path setting it on fire.

When this moment of sublime enlightenment happened I was standing with the thing at about shoulder level on the top step and the first thing I noticed was the wet ground around the bushes was on fire.
I was so surprised that I didn't even see if I actually got the spider.

Crap.  I need light, is the thing still alive? IT MIGHT BE STILL ALIVE, AND PISSED OFF... SHIT... I instinctively pull the trigger again... wait, dumb idea, that is what got me into this mess.

Too late... instinct and training took over. My fingers, being the efficient killing machines that they are overrode every reasonable thought that I ever had in my little walnut of a brain. FIRE!  That sucker was going to roast.

Burn in hell!!!

At that point it all caught up to me. I can't do this, not in the front yard, this just isn't smart.

(I actually ran this around in my head from a few different angles trying to figure out how to make it smart, in the mean time the flames were getting bigger, I was still spraying burning death all over the front yard)

I finally let go of the trigger... boxwoods... on fire. Front steps... they look like the entrance to hell, there were flames shooing up and framing every landing... wait, my wife’s cute little raccoon boot scraper/mud brush things on the steps, I HAVE TO SAVE THEM! I try put them out with my feet... um, now that's a real problem... that actually made them worse since my shoes are on fire.

After what was probably a minute of doing what probably looked like the funky chicken with flames shooting from my toes I finally got most of the flames extinguished.  The raccoons somehow kept bursting into flames which was impressive considering it was raining and they were soaked. When I finally got them out they were scattered in little bits around the steps.  Upside down.  Dead.

There was smoke everywhere. It looked like the aftermath scene in a war movie where they show the ruins of a town after getting firebombed, nothing but rubble, ashes and smoke.

Crap, the neighbors! I ran inside turned out the lights.  Lets pretend that didn't happen.

Do you think I got the spider?

Halloween: I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire…

Who’d of thunk it (who was it that used to say that? With my luck it was probably someone annoying that I don’t want anything to do with)? If I knew that there were so many superheroes in my neighborhood I would have felt much safer. With the exception of the four foot tall banana (who I believe was a 3-1/2’ tall hot dog last year, really freaked my dog out), it was almost like the Justice League and the institute from the X-men had exploded and it was raining superhearos…

So what did I do?

What else, played with power tools and fire… FIRE GOOD! (creepy laugh…)

It all started with a rather crappy day at work, which should have been over much sooner than it was. All I have to say about that is there are some people that being able to pass out a few of these products would save me a hell of a lot of time and not result an much less getting accomplished by them:


Anyway, the end result was that instead of the couple or more hours that I thought I’d have to carve my pumpkin, I was left with something more on the order of minutes.

Time to improvise… I grabbed the pumpkin, headed down to the basement, grabbed the sawzall and the cheap jigsaw that I didn’t like and went at it.

Let me tell you, it was magic, I’ve never carved a pumpkin so fast. I’m not joking, I had the top off in less then 5 seconds, and the whole thing was done, washed out and 2 candles in it in about 20 minutes, including some minor fine tuning using a large carving knife.

What do you think? Here are the results (this was shot with the lights out and a long exposure on the camera):


The amazing thing was that it wasn’t even that messy… I just took the air hose and blew all the pumpkin guts out of the saw and scooped all the seeds and stuff into a big bowl for cleaning and roasting later.

Speaking of roasting, I couldn’t help myself… I waited an hour or more after the last Trick-Or-Treater passed… I had the idea planted in my head and it was going to happen. My wife saw it coming, and was thinking either nothing will happen (I have no idea where she got that idea, something _always_ happens, it’s just a question of how big the mess is to clean up), and had the good sense to move her innocent, unmolested pumkin out of the way, and even put the dog on the leash in case she got curious (Oh, I forgot to tell you guys about trying to rewire the heating element in my wife’s towel warmer. Well, you can guess how that went, bare wires and electricity. I was surprised that she barked at it…)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. My jack-o-lantern was going to suffer a tragic accident… I mean come on, if you’re going to stick a candle in some pore sucker’s head and set him on fire you need to do it right, immolate the sucker, make black smoke shoot from his eyes, flames shoot 4’ into the sky, make the flames so bright that the lid of the pumpkin is glowing! (these were shot with all the lights on, after a few shots I sped up the exposure trying to catch the shapes in the flames making everything look artificially dark)












Ah, a flaming tribute to the great pumpkin! He was a good pumpkin...

I’ve got tons more pictures, a few really showing the shapes of the flames well (I've been looking for some good pictures for painting/drawing), but no, I’m not going to tell you how I did it, I don’t want to hear that someone was a dumbass and tried it and set their shorts or their house on fire (well, really, I do, and I’d probably laugh, but I’m not going to be the one that someone is going to say said it was a good idea…).

OTOH, I’m already hatching plans for next year… I think I can make it shoot green flames… huh, how about fireballs….
;-)