Cuckoo for Caca

Caca: (n) excrement, poop, crap.  Random crap to be more specific.  Woot! Bag of Crap to be even more specific.   During the June 24th Woot!Off, I was drawn to my browser by the warbling alarm of my Wootalizer.  What could it be?  Another product has sold out?  No, it was not.  It was the ever elusive Bag of Random Crap!  I gazed at the “I want one!” button and it peered back into my soul like the burning gaze of Sauron.  I saw in its single golden eye the same fear that would take the heart of me.  A day may come when my internet connection fails, when I forsake my friends and break all bonds of fellowship and not click that button, but it was not this day.  An hour of woes and shattered shields and “Page loading” messages, when the servers of Woot! come crashing down!  But it was not this day!  This day I clicked… and waited… and entered my CVV code… and waited…! (you get the picture)  By all that you hold dear on this good Internets, I bid you Buy It!, Men (and Women) of the Woot!

So anyway, I got one.  This is my fifth bag of crap.  I received an email last week, informing me that it would be arriving on Tuesday, July 6th.  Bolstered by the hopes and dreams that I would get something like this, I imagined truck loads and truck loads of goodies being delivered to my front porch.  What I didn’t expect was that it would arrive three days early on Saturday.  My 8 YO met Dan The Mailman at the end of the driveway and Dan The Mailman delivered unto him a cardboard box with Woot! printed on the side.  My wife groaned.  My boys, a much happier lot when I buy stuff, exclaimed, “Wudyaget? Wudyaget?”

We didn’t even wait to take it inside.  Wielding my utility knife as if it were Andúril itself, we opened the box right in garage.  Packing materials flew as we tore into the box to see what mysterious contents it would yield.  Finally our treasures were visible, they were… you guessed it…crap.

6 YO: “I want the monkey!”

8 YO: “I want the case!”

The contents of my Woot! Bag of Crap were:

• One Disney My*Style Pirates of the Caribbean Carabineer Case (valued at $18.75)
• Two High School Musical Twin Bell Alarm Clocks (valued at $11.89 each)
• Two 2010 Would You Rather? desktop calendars (valued at $10.95 each)
• One Woot! Monkey with blue camo Woot! cape (priceless)

I don’t know what drives me to try to purchase the bag of crap every time it appears.  It may be that I want to land one of those sweet deals, like a Wii or Blu-ray player.  It could also be that I hope for something I would actually use.  I know it has something to do with proving to my wife that it isn’t just flushing $8 down the toilet.  But mostly I think it is playing the game.  Trying to get one is hard, there can be no hesitation, there can be no network latency.  You have to click as soon as it pops up or you have no chance.  Even then, your chances are still slim.  If you have to sign in or dig through your wallet for you credit card CVV code, don’t waste your time, they are already sold out.  Out of the five that I have purchased, only two have been during a Woot!Off or appeared at 1 AM ET with no warning.  For the other three, I expected them, because Woot! has posted them Christmas morning for the last four years.

While we are on the subject of crap, A/C is still broken and I am still sweating my arse off.  It reached a sweltering 92 in my living room and arms-sticking-to-my-desk 88 in the basement.  It is much cooler now, thanks to my father-in-law, who made a trip down from Pennsylvania with two additional air conditioners in tow.  One was another portable A/C unit that found a home in the baby’s room and the other, a window unit, which quickly got installed in the dinning room window so as not to be visible from the street.  My wife informed me that window units are illegal according to our Gestapo Home Association.  Home owners have been known to disappear in the middle of the night when such an egregious crime against taste has been perpetrated in our hood.  Tomorrow I will set about camouflaging it with shrubbery and flowers to avoid being “taken in for aesthetic rehabilitation.”

I also got to sign away my first born’s college fund in order to pay for the new unit that will be installed sometime in early December (just kidding, on July 20th).  Fortunately for him, I worked out a deal with the installers where they are going to leave the old unit in the garage.  My 8 YO can turn the skills he learns while rebuilding the broken A/C and furnace into a future in HVAC maintenance and repair.  There is obviously good money in this trade.  And he will get to exact his revenge on some poor sucker later in life and strip him of his child’s chance at a college education.  Just kidding, just kidding.  Dan the A/C Man, if you are reading this, I mean no disrespect.  Please feel free to clean your boots with the tears I shed while begging at your feet for an earlier install date. (just kidding, I didn’t really cry, you see, the sweat got in my eyes and they started to water and well, yeah sure it looked like crying, and the wailing and moaning was just cuz it stung like a bitch, well, think what you want)