Word of the day: flamethrower

fl’ame.thr’ow*er: n. tool that you go out and buy when you have an ice or winter-basement-leakage problem because you think ‘Flamethrower! That sounds powerful and hot’ and you visualize the ice pouring off in buckets of steaming melted water, ‘that’ll do the trick’, only to get it home and realize it’s about as good as getting your face down and breathing on the ice, but now you bought it and you should use it and you still have this ice or winter-basement-leakage problem to deal with so you’ve got to do something and you don’t want to admit defeat and you’re not sure if you are an idiot for imagining that it might work like you imagined it to work in the first place, and if you give up then everyone would know that you had naively imagined that it would work much better cause you obviously wouldn’t have given up it if it worked like you imagined and otherwise why would you have bought something that you imagined would be so much work that you would give up, so besides you are going to enjoy it while you do it cause it makes you feel powerful to stand there throwing flames like some kind of otherwordly weaponry like out of the Super Mario Brothers movie. -person who throws flames.

Needless to say, the flamethrower was something of a waste of money if you judge it on a purely functional needs based criteria. But the interesting psychological side of it is something of an amusing form of entertainment. I suppose your reaction to this situation depends on which viewpoint you take. I like that my job requires me to go out and throw flames until the rain soaks through my sweater. The rain gave me an excuse to go inside when the power thing got old, and the power thing was fun for a while. I must admit that I was terrified of the thing but didn’t want to admit that so I took the flamethrower when the dad handed it to me and clearly when I saw that I had nothing to worry about the fear disappeared and was replaced by a quiet sense of power and competency. That and I got to spend time outside (it not being that cold and the flamethrower keeping off the chill) and away from the desk. So maybe I enjoyed it more than most would.

We’re quick to assume that everyone thinks the same thing.
We’re quick to assume that no one thinks the same.
Only to find that everyone thinks the same thing.
Only to find that no one thinks the same.

It’s a lovely little spaceship
It’s a lovely little thing
It’s a lovely little spaceship
It can hug and dance and sing
It’s a lovely little spaceship
I can come and I can go
It’s a lovely little spaceship
But it makes me feel alone

We’re all breathing in the same air
One big breath around the earth
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
Been sharing air each breath since birth