Jenky Bookshelf- reposted with pics per Gina's reques

One morning last week as I was driving Rob to work, I noticed a bookshelf on the side of the road. For some reason all week someone had been leaving various items of furniture at the end of our street, (which butts up to Main Street right before the highway.) That day it was a tall, perfectly good bookshelf. Since we read constantly and Rob buys most of his books, I said we should pick it up. (We have piles of books all over the place and boxes in closets and the attic.) Rob hrmphed at my suggestion and I didn't think much more about it.

UNTIL, I picked him up that afternoon. He arrived at the car with a pile of particle boards he unceremoniously plopped into the back of the Subaru. He explained that a bookshelf at work had broken and his coworker only wanted the recovered, and perfectly fine, bottom half. So he was bringing the top half home for US to use.

What.

"So you're going to take the shitty, broken, particle board shelves, which have to be rebuilt, over the free, perfectly good, taller, more functional bookshelf that requires nothing?"
"Its been rained on."
"It rained two drops today."
"It'll be awesome, you'll see."

At home he tries to figure out a way to make this work, but the thing's shitty and broken and Rob's not the greatest at fixing things up. He thinks its a much better idea to work with what you have in a pathetic excuse for a tool BAG, than go to the hardware store to pick up... I don't know, wood screws, wood glue, anything.
The shelves are the kind with those prefab pegs to hold it together but 4 of the six of them are broken off IN the particle board. Hmmm tricky to fix without tools. I watch laughing at him for a while, then get bored and go off to write for a while. I look up and realize, he has been at this for TWO HOURS!

Prefab pegs


After two and a half hours, I see the finished project.
"We can put shoes on it."
I look quizzically at him.

It looks like and upside down pile of recovered particle board and he has shoved it under the counter next to another shelf that already serves this EXACT purpose. When I ask about this, I discover that the shelf is not sturdy enough to hold books. So much better than the original free and working bookshelf that would have held... hmmm... BOOKS.



I laugh for a few minutes at his blunder and bold tenacity in the face of logic and decide I like the bookshelf because its one of those quirky things he does.

Then two days later I get an email with a looping video clip of a guy lighting his own ball sack on fire with a lighter instead of waxing his hair of like a rational vain person does, and think, "What a fucking idiot. That guy's just waiting to join the Darwin awards." As much as I think Rob's bookshelf was a waste of time, he has WAY too much sense to ever be talked into doing something that stupid, much less on film.

This gets me thinking of a certain situation with some Carmax. When I was in high school, I began using Carmax instead of regular lip balm. I liked the tingly sensation and wondered to a friend if it would tingle on genitals or what. We decided to try and find someone willing to try it out for us. We asked around at party after party until finally a certain gentlemen goes for it. He spent the next ten minutes with balls aflame (figuratively) chasing us around the living room saying, "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU!" While we tried to run away while laughing hysterically.

Its amazing what people will do.