4.18.2009

Ceiling Fans

Today I ventured out to the home depot store and purchased an industrial sized ceiling fan. The fan blades themselves stretched a ten foot circumference. It came in many boxes and pieces, making assembly a labyrinth of springs, gears, and wires.

Once installed and powered up the great blades made big bellied whooshes. Whoosh Whoosh the fan said. My room became a clutter of trash like a band of chickens had just swept through. If chickens feather’s were made of beer bottles and laundry.

It was a marvel of the modern ceiling fan. If there was a ceiling fan magazine this one most certainly would have been on the front cover.

New Ceiling Fan

Rocks Your World

Picks Up Your Baby

Like a Particle in the Air

To get a better appreciation for the fan I stood on a chair and let my head of hairs just barley nick the blades current. What a rush I thought and called my best friend Jeremy to explain the new discovery.

What a fan he said.

Check this out. I put my head near it again. This is a rush

He did the same. What a rush we said.

Jeremy went out and bought a fan and had trouble installing it. It was the number of boxes that it came in that made it so overwhelming. Maybe six or seven in all.

Christ almighty I just want to install the fucking thing he said.

I stared at my fan, in trance at the power of metal blades running circles and told him it was worth it.

I installed handle bars where the blades meet the engine’s housing. I let it swing me around til I threw up in a corner of my room. What a rush I thought and told Jeremy about the upgrades available for the fan.

There was the handle bar, glowing stars, a swing (illegal in parts of Florida), a stirrer for any industrial stirring you may need, lasers for ground effects, a kaleidoscope mod, a net to catch flies and a bowling ball attached to a string--designed for cat burglars.

I had everything except for the bowling ball because I had no intention on ever leaving the fan’s sight. Jeremy said attachments are for wiener gnomes. I stood in the laser beams projecting live images of whales and oceans beneath my feet and said, by God then I am a wiener gnome, Jeremy. I did not bother asking what a wiener gnome was.

One afternoon the fan’s motor’s housing was beginning to lose its hold to the ceiling, just enough to thump an annoying batting noise in its rotation. I turned off the fan for the first time in three weeks and thought to inspect it with techniques my grandfather taught me during the civil war.

I called Jeremy to see if he would help trouble shoot this thing but I only heard the newly installed fan, the blades whoosh whooshing behind his speech like loud wind inside a doughnut mountain. What a rush he said, lots of horses of power.

I can fix this thing I thought. I thought back to advice Grandpa had given me, nodding in his chair, gibbering southern speak like a grumbling child, "Keep your musket off my land and my girlfriend and I’ll keep my girlfriend and my land away from your musket."

Thanks, Grandpa. I decided to bang the life back into the fan. I hit it with a hammer. Nothing. I hit it two more times. Nothing. Of course, throw the hammer into the blades. I turned the fan on and wielded the hammer into the blades. The hammer clanked in between the blades and drove itself into a wall. Nothing.

I decided it’d take more than a few hits with a flower sized hammer to get the thing to work. I retrieved a sledge hammer from my mother’s kitchen and went to work. Easy does it. Violent swings the sledge hammer against the metal Tyrannosaurus.

After a few good whacks the fan hung dramatically from one lone red chord connected to a hole in the ceiling. Wires from the motor stuck out, wrapping themselves around the housing unit, curled out like little slithers of electric life. The fan itself was cool and calm like every good powered down machine should be.


I stood and watched it in silence. Fan you will be fixed. I gave it one good thrust with the ol’ sledge hammer. The great metal construction split from the red chord, landing heavy on my chest. One of the blades, warm from the engine, inched down my leg, shaving my skin to bone in a clean peel. Fine peel. What a rush.

God damnit. God damn you fan. I screamed like a dying banshee. I used my muscles to remove the fan but I was no match for the great machine. It laid on me like the weight of some great planet. Scream like a dying banshee.

There's no answer at Jeremy's beacuse Jeremy is listening to his new fan whoosh whoosh.

Scream like a banshee I say again. What a rush. Scream like a dying banshee.

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