I’m building a time machine

If I had a time machine, all my problems would be solved.

That’s why I’m building a time machine in my garage.

To be fair, it’s actually my mom’s garage. But it’s kind of like mine, though, because I live over the garage. Think Kirk Cameron in Growing Pains, but less preachy. Also, my room is less a room in the traditional sense and more some stuff I put up on the roof of the garage. It’s cold in the winter and things tend to get wet when it rains, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.

But back to my time machine. It was designed by a well-respected design firm. And by “a well-respected design firm” I mean it was designed by a homeless guy outside the design firm’s office. But it’s cool, because if you’ve ever seen Good will Hunting you know that if you’re around something long enough you’re bound to learn about it. You also know that Matt Damon is the perfect man.

But I digress. I’m not sure what the homeless guy’s name is, so I just call him Hoss, but he’s very reliable. Whenever I need to have a meeting with him, he’s always there, usually sans pants.

Recently Hoss asked me for a progress report on my time machine and I told him that things were going well. I told him that because I’m a liar. Things aren’t going well at all. In fact, I’m way behind schedule. The problem isn’t so much that I’m not putting the work in to get it done – I spend close to 15 minutes a week on the damned thing – as much as I’m having trouble tracking down the parts.

I thought I’d found some plutonium on eBay, but I was unable to purchase it before the government took away my computer and arrested me for cavorting with known terrorists. First of all, cavorting sounds like a made-up word to me. Secondly, isn’t this America? If I want to buy a little plutonium from a dictator in a country I’ve never heard of I should be able to do so. This eroding of our civil liberties is getting out of hand. (I plan to touch on this in a later post.)

So no plutonium. Of course, fuel wouldn’t do me any good, anyway, because I don’t have an engine to fuel yet. Hoss and I had originally decided on building a jet engine from scratch, but stupid Auto Zone doesn’t carry jet engine compressors. So it was on to Plan B – the engine from a 1983 Chevette, and good luck finding one of those that works.

So my time machine is completely unusable and that’s too bad because I’ve got big plans for it. It’s kind of like when I went house shopping and I was looking at a house and the real estate agent laughed at me when I told her I was ready to make the purchase. Turns out she thought I was just a drifter looking for someplace to stay warm. She also didn’t like my payment plan which involved winning the lottery. She didn’t care that, based on my calculations (which I made up), I was sure to win some time in the next 27 years. She also didn’t seem to understand that I had already invited all my friends to the housewarming party.

Now here I am again … big plans and no way to execute them. All I want to do is form an army, go back to 1862 and beat the North and the South in the Civil War and form a new nation known simply as the United States of Awesome.

I’d bring my electric guitar, too, and I’d shred out some “Holy Diver” for everybody and get credit for writing it and make it our national anthem. And when Ronnie James Dio tries to release it in 100 years he can go fuck himself because I already recorded it and released it on the phonograph. That would also give me plenty of time to learn how to play guitar, which is good because right now I only know three chords – a C, a G and one I invented that I tentatively named a flying W. You have to play it while you hold the guitar behind your head. If you don’t, it sounds wrong and you look less awesome.

Of course, on top of all this, “the man’s” trying to hold me down. Hoss and I were talking about this just the other day. Building a time machine costs money and neither he nor I have any money. Neither of us has a “job”, per se, though he donates plasma regularly and I dabble in freelance architecture. I’m currently working on a building I hope to erect (pause for laughter because I said “erect”) a couple blocks over. It’s going to be 200 stories of solid steel and the windows will be made out of bulletproof glass and there will be gargoyles all over the place – maybe every other floor or so. I talked to a developer the other night and he told me I need to find some tenants if I really want to sell this to city council. He also said something about not knowing why a small suburb of 5,000 people would need a 200-story office building at the end of a residential street and I thought I heard something about years of schooling to become an architect, but I had pretty much stopped listening at that point.

So I’m working on lining up some tenants. My brother, Chad, is a lawyer, and he doesn’t really talk to me anymore, but I think he’d be interested. Also, my friend Barry is going to start an electronics company. He actually already started it and he finished building his first LCD TV the other day, so once he gets a buyer for that and really starts making money, he said I could block out a couple floors for him (but nothing too high because he’s afraid of heights). So things are looking good on that front. Once the money for my design starts rolling in, Hoss and I will be able to really get moving on this time machine.

But until then, I’m stuck in this holding pattern, staring at a bunch of useless parts and listening to my mom tell me to get that monstrosity out of her garage because she has to park her stupid Ford Taurus in there. As a certified time machine expert (I made the certificate myself) I can tell you this – the next Ford Taurus that goes back in time will be the first.