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January 1, 2003 modular To make my daughter's stay at the Alhambra as convenient and pleasant as possible, I went to Lowe's and purchased a shitload of "modular" furniture in which to place her girly bathroom items and her clothing.  When I bought modular, I thought I was buying something "retro" or, as Peggy Lipton might have said, "mod."  It turns out modular comes from the Greek, meaning "in a million poorly-drawn pieces."  When I opened the first of several boxes containing particle-board components, screws, nuts, dowels, washers, and thingies, I compared them to the items listed and drawn in the "Figs" and gave serious consideration to plunging my Phillips-head screwdriver into my left ventricle.  But I did not.  I did what any self-respecting, man-type father would do under the circumstances--I spent most of the holidays assembling the furniture while simultaneously weakening every blood vessel in my brain to the point where, if I sneeze, I will light up the sky with ruptured aneurisms. At one point in the project, as I stood on a step-ladder, noose around my neck, rope tied to a beam in the garage, I recalled with fondness a similar endeavor when I was married and the children were young.  I had decided to build a swingset and, in preparation for the assembly, smoked a joint and drank some beer.  Two weeks and thirty-six stitches later, I was able to step back and admire the fully-functioning printing press I had created from nothing more than swingset parts.  Just thinking about the smiling, somewhat confused faces of my children as they looked from their heavily bandaged father to the Rube Goldberg contraption in their backyard brought tears of joy to my eyes.  With renewed vigor (I had bolted my vim to the sliding-drawer assembly in Fig. 43), I stepped down from the ladder, removed the rope from around my neck, and completed the furniture project. Imagine my satisfaction when my daughter came into the kitchen for her morning coffee and told me how much she loves the way her modular chest-of-drawers includes a faucet with hot and cold running water.

©  2003 by the beastmaster