October 3, 2003

Doh! Burn!

So, recently at a party, Casey and I were discussing the "Binaca Gun" we'd made. You take a film canister and run some wires through the lid that lead back to a sparker. Then you put a shot or two of Binaca in the container, attach it to the lid, fire the sparker and watch the explosion send the canister across the room. Good fun.

Naturally, this led to the inevitable "Hey, you guys are like in the comic!" comments. Heh. too true. In fact, to be blatantly honest, Casey and I have done even more destructive things than shown in the comic. Many of the things we've done in the past haven't been put in to the comic for the simple reason that they would stretch the suspension of disbelief too far.

So, for those of you who were curious:

1) "Bat Tag" really existed, in a way. Though we would tag each other with whatever was handy. Basketballs, garbage can lids, cats, whatever.

2) We once bought a walkie-talkie headset and tried to up the range by running triple the designed voltage through it. The electronics were in the earpiece. After determining that it didn't really improve the range, I took the headset off, and approximately 1/2 second after I took it away from it's previous position of 1 inch from my ear, it exploded. The shrapnel from the detonating capacitor was found later as far away as down the hall and stuck in the ceiling. The noise from the explosion had both Casey and my ears ringing for minutes. If I had left that headest on my head for one more second, I'd be deaf in my right ear now.

3) Casey shot me in the head once. Though, in his defense, I have to point out that he was intending to shoot somebody else, and I suprised him.

4) While boffer-sword fighting once, I, well, "schmakked" Casey in the crotch by a lucky shot. These things happen, but what made this occasion special was that it was captured on video!

5) Four words: "Cross Country Water Skis." They worked, believe it or not. Though our dream of hiking across a lake was ruined when we realized that the muscle power required to operate them was beyond human capacity.

6) The hover disc was fun if you could keep your balance, but the leaf-blower powering it was kind of hard to start up.

[ed: Just because Andy has no upper body strength. I had no trouble with it]

7) Even Casey and I have enough self-preservation instincs not to try to implement our submarine ideas.

[ed: I have a picture somewhere of the two of us sitting in a cardboard mockup of our submarine cabin]

8) Cujo and Casey have a special relationship. By "special" I mean "hostile." Casey came to my house once and Cujo pissed on his stuff. The next time Casey came over, Cujo pissed on his stuff. The third time, Casey got wise, and draped his towel over a chair instead of leaving it on the floor. Cujo pulled the towel off the chair and pissed on it.

9) We had to sheepishly go to Casey's neighbor's house and ask if he could get our Sai out of his back yard.

10) That same neighbor was remarkably understanding about the arrows that penetrated the fence.

11) We made a binary "OR" gate out of K'NEX pieces. With a simple modification, it could be an "AND" gate. This was a success of sorts, but it fell short of our plan to make a K'NEX calculator.

12) With those same K'NEX pieces, we used every gear in the set to gear the motor down as far as we could just to see what kind of power we could get. Then we put that on top of a little rolling car thingey we threw together. The problem was that the "death gear," intended to help it climb over obstacles, would just eat whatever it touched.

[ed: Andy is remiss here in neglecting The Lurch Bug, a walking K'Nex vehicle. The legs had insufficient rigidity to lift the chassis in any number below six. The vehicle had six legs total. Thus, the only way for it to move was to plant all six legs, and "lurch" forward like a three-man rowing shell on dry land.]

Anyway, I could go on and on. But you get the idea.

-ATW

 



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