So let me just start by saying that voting today while listening to the song “Mrs. Officer” by Lil’ Wayne made me love my country. I mean…really? I can do that? I don’t know why I found this so fascinatingly odd and cool. But the old lady next to me, who may or may not have been dying IN her mini-booth, looked like she was mortified that I was listening to music on a “future-device” while voting.  Change is a brewin’ ma’am…change is a BREWIN’. Also, thanks for voting, I respect your tenacity, as I’m sure being 900 years old makes it challenging to move/eat food/do anything really, let alone vote. So hey, HIGH five! Unless you voted for proposition 8. Then I hate you. Side note: I found it entirely alarming/hilarious that they quietly threw in Measure K on the SF ballot decriminalizing prostitution, and people are more outspoken and have a larger problem with same-sex marriages. Really? Where is the sign that is for people NOT being hookers? Isn’t this kind of a bigger problem than people who like each other getting married, right-wingers? Anywho.

Moving on from the political diatribe..

So I almost killed everyone in my apartment complex last night. With a duraflame. Let me explain.

It’s chilly in San Francisco right now. You know, cold in a “everyone in California is a big whambulance about weather that isn’t actually cold but yet they bitch about it” kind of way. Nonetheless, I love to complain so I’ll argue that it’s been cold.

So I got home and thought about my options. We have a fireplace at Chateau Ghetto, one of its only perks (well this was considered a perk until last night, when it became a “stupid”). Chateau Ghetto also came with gunfire, people dying outside on Fillmore St. seemingly every 4 minutes, and poor water pressure that in turn makes you feel like you are bathing with a very small squirt gun that is out of water WAY too fast. So obviously, when they said all of this, then told me that it comes with a fireplace, I of course said “WHERE DO I SIGN!” Hey, the last place I lived in SF, my landlord lived in the WALL and was a registered sex offender, so the apartment with the fireplace that came with NOT a registered sex offender seemed like a step in the right direction. Or a marathon in the right direction.

Back to the point: I looked in our lovely little fireplace, which i’ve used not once, and found a duraflame with no paper jacket on it. A naked duraflame, if you will. A sad, lonely, naked duraflame. Looking as though he was cowering in there with a British accent, saying, “please sir, do be kind and put a flame to me!” Yes, this is how I imagined him. So I thought, you know what duraflame? Today is your lucky day. I’m gonna romance the fuck out of myself with a nice fire while I enjoy monday night football. Let’s do this.

Fast forward to the beginning of Drew challenging himself to see how many poor decisions he can make in a row. So to start, I decide to find the nearest magazine and just start basically tearing out pages in it to light underneath the naked lil’ guy. If you are wondering, yes, ink smells great when you burn it (great = poopookaka). At this point, I light them and decide that I’d like some wine, so I’m going to leave the apartment unattended to go to Safeway down the street. I know, right? Who does that? Why didn’t I just turn the stove on full blast and leave it open, and the set of knives on a rope and pulley system that shoot forward when you open the front door? It’s like I was subconsciously trying to make my own Final Destination scene. (wouldn’t it be cool to die that way though? be honest, you’ve thought about it…)

When I get back, it turns out the duraflame is not going up the chimney, but rather into the house. So that’s cool. I decide to point a fan directly at the flame directing the smoke towards the window (which, last time I checked, is how wildfires spread…keeping score yet?), which then just blows smoke all over the apartment. It turns out you can’t just tell the smoke to go out the window, it doesn’t listen. At this point, my roommate gets home and basically just starts cracking up, as it smells like I went camping in the living room. Now here’s the kicker: I decided I wanted to nip this in the bud before it just got smoke in the living room slowly all night, and I wanted to put out the fire. I have gone back through my logic from here on out for a while now, and I’m not sure how I passed any course from the third grade on at this point. I decide (get this) to SOAK A BATH TOWEL and throw it on the fire. In a very small fireplace. What? And go figure…smoke pours into the apartment. So I panic. And in that panic, I decide the next best idea is to open my front door and let it seep out into my building hallway, so that everyone else can enjoy the fun I’m having. Which in turn sets off the building’s fire alarm. Which in turn sounds like a national terror alert siren. Which in turn turns on a strobe light. Which in turn locks the elevators. And calls the fire department. Wow.

I go out to the hallway, and EVERYONE is there staring me down. Kind of like Kevin’s uncle in Home Alone (“looook what you diiiid you litttttle JERK“). And better yet, people are honestly acting like it’s the apocalypse. Dogs and cats in in their travel kennels being run down the hall by terrified owners. So obviously, i’m feeling pretty good about myself. I run down to the street, and phew…THREE fire trucks have come. With twelve firefighters…gearing up like this is the final scene of backdraft or something. People are frantically asking me what happened, and I keep trying to explain that I’m just not that intelligent, but in all honesty I don’t need the national guard in my apartment. Nobody listens, and instead this apparently translates to them that they need giant axes (side note again: why the axe? are you going to stab the fire to death? moving on). The best is when they get to my apartment…charge in to find…a wet towel on a duraflame. Needless to say, they did nothing and just left…basically stating to me that they just prefer that I do kill myself this way rather than help at all, because I have proven myself a weak link in the evolutionary chain.

Just to finish off the story, the smoke of course keeps billowing in because…I didn’t remove the wet towel and just decided to ride it out? Wow…again. At this point, I decide to not have the fire department come again…and go BACK to Safeway…this time procuring 7 boxes of baking soda (it’s all I could think of) to pour all over my fireplace. So basically…

Everyone at Safeway thinks I’m going on some huge bender and presumably getting drunk classy styles with a bottle of pinot noir while cutting MAYBE 9 pounds of Colombian grade cocaine, the fire department and 800 other people hate me, and I can’t make a fire from a DURAFLAME at the age of 26. All in all, I’d say that’s doing pretty well for yourself in one night.

Have I mentioned that it was a duraflame? And that I WASN’T on drugs, which is really sad? The best part of the night, though, was when all was said and done. The roommate and I are sitting there, in awe of my epic tour de retard…and he looks at me and says, “Welp. At least you’ve got something to blog about now.”

Well said, Chris. Well said.

Song of the day is by MGMT. They are everyone’s “hey have you heard of those guys?” band in advertising, and everyone acts like they are cooler than you because they found them first. But I found them before you. Because I’m in advertising. And who really cares…the band is just ridiculously good. Enjoy…this song is addicting. And hey, if you need someone to build you a fire, ladies…

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