{"id":19072,"date":"2013-03-17T09:28:23","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T14:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19072"},"modified":"2013-03-17T09:33:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T14:33:14","slug":"my-biggest-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19072","title":{"rendered":"My Biggest Fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

splash_pain.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I can feel it coming. It’s been working its way to the front of my skull all morning. It’s a nice quiet Saturday morning, and I’ve been playing Tomb Raider since before dawn. I’ve been having a good time, but for the last couple of hours I’ve known that a headache was coming. My neck is feeling tense, and I’m starting to see dots of light in front of my eyes. <\/p>\n

By noon the pain has worked its way out of my frontal lobe and pierced the back of my eyeballs, spreading like the implacable roots of a great tree. The base of my skull is afflicted with a strange spectral pain that moves when I grope to find the source. I turn the game off. I like to keep myself distracted when these things show up, but the pain from looking at the screen is too much for me. This is going to be a bad one. Certainly not the worst I’ve ever had<\/a>. Not by a long stretch. But it’s bad.<\/p>\n

Maybe I can fall asleep? It’s the middle of the day, but the alternative is to sit here with nothing to do but savor the agony. I pop some painkillers and shuffle off to the bedroom. The painkillers never do anything for it, but without the pills the whole process feels incomplete. Not taking pills feels like not saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes. <\/p>\n

There are only two things that soothe these migraines: Something cool on my face, and white noise. I don’t know why I like them so much. They don’t make it stop hurting or anything. My theory is that the sensory noise kind of drowns out the pain a bit. When a headache gets bad, all I want to do is lay in a dark room with ice on my face and a fan blowing. <\/p>\n

In the bedroom, I pull the blinds and turn on the box fan.<\/p>\n

sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf<\/em><\/p>\n

Arg. Damn it! I turn the fan back off.<\/p>\n

The bedroom is dark. I’ve got an ice pack. But it’s dead silent in here. I need<\/em> some white noise. Heather bought this box fan during the move. We unboxed it and threw away the receipt while we were moving stuff from the old place to the new, even though we hadn’t used it yet. I don’t remember why. It’s just one of the many confusing things that happened when we were moving our life from point A to point B.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until we’d been here for a couple of days that I discovered that the fan is a crime against engineering. In the center of the front grill is a circle of plastic, about the size of an American nickel<\/a>. On the backside of this circle – facing the hub of the fan – is a little protruding knob of plastic. When the blades spin, the hub rubs violently against this knob. This makes the entire fan wobble slightly from the friction. Instead of the low whisper of white noise, this fan makes a steady knocking and grinding sound. It’s like the sound of a an off-balance clothes washer mixed with the sound of a car dragging an axle. It’s possibly the least relaxing sound you could make with this voltage. The thing is completely defective, either designed by an idiot or assembled by a sadist.<\/p>\n

This is a simple mechanical problem. Sure, I’m addle-brained by this point, but I should be able to work it out. I turn the fan back on.<\/p>\n

sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf<\/em><\/p>\n

My eyes are half closed by this point. Visual input hurts. Still, I can see this stupid, pointless knob on the back of the grill. I suppose I could get a screwdriver and take the grill off the fan. I dislike that solution for safety reasons, and I’m not in the mood to fumble with screws right now. I grab the cheap plastic grill and pull on it. Just a gentle tug is all it takes to get the knob to stop touching the blade. Suddenly the knocking stops.<\/p>\n

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh<\/em><\/p>\n

Ahhh. That feels so good. <\/p>\n

I let go of the grill.<\/p>\n

sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf<\/em><\/p>\n

Grrr. So the sound stops, but only as long as I’m gently pulling on the front of it. This is silly. We’re probably talking about just a tiny bit of overlap. Maybe a millimeter or so. I just need to keep that knob a small distance away and everything will be wonderful. I give a good, hard yank on the grill. It’s made of cheap, bendable, injection-mold type plastic, typical Wal-Mart trash. The sound stops.<\/p>\n

I stand up. The grill seems to be slightly warped now. Assuming it doesn’t bend back, this ought to keep it quiet. I stagger over to the bed, put the cold on my face, and close my eyes. The raging headache is muffled in a sea of numbing cold and artificial wind. It’s the middle of the day, but I can feel myself getting drowsy. My mind begins to drift off into randomness, just waiting for the onset of<\/p>\n

sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf sh-bwaf<\/em><\/p>\n

I am now very awake and very pissed off that this infuriating piece of shit has chosen this moment to begin tormenting me. I know what I’m going to do. I am going to destroy this fan. It’s not a mature thing to do, but this is how I’ve chosen to vent my rage and indignation. I grab the still-running fan with both hands and drive my knee right into the center of the grill. This is tactically unsound, but I’m not really thinking straight. <\/p>\n

I expect to hear a crunch of plastic, or perhaps for the fan to begin banging even worse after being bent or otherwise knocked off balance. Instead the impact is followed by a little chatter of plastic, like someone rolling a D20 across a wood table. <\/p>\n

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh<\/em><\/p>\n

The atavistic blow has perfectly, surgically extracted the source of my frustration. The nickel-sized circle of plastic snapped free, leaving a small hole in the center of the grill. It was held in place by six rungs of plastic, all of which broke cleanly at the same time and at the same length. The fan has taken no other damage and is now working perfectly.<\/p>\n

Amazed, I fall into bed, sleep for three hours, and wake up feeling just fine. <\/p>\n

How is your weekend going?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can feel it coming. It’s been working its way to the front of my skull all morning. It’s a nice quiet Saturday morning, and I’ve been playing Tomb Raider since before dawn. I’ve been having a good time, but for the last couple of hours I’ve known that a headache was coming. My neck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[288],"class_list":["post-19072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-this-just-happened"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}