the blimp.....

[BJ_M]

Last week while traveling I stopped at a Zany Brainy store and saw that
they had a blimp for sale. It's called Airship Earth, and it's a great big
balloon with a map of the Earth on it, and two propellers hanging from the
bottom. You blow up the balloon with helium put batteries in it, and you
have a radio control indoor blimp I'd seen these things for sale in Sharper Image catalogs for $60-$75. At
Zany Brainy it was on clearance for $15. What a deal!
Last night my wife was playing tennis and it was just my daughter and I at
home. I bought a small helium tank from a party store, and last night we put
the blimp together.

Let me tell you, it's quite a blimp. It's huge. The balloon has like a 3
ft diameter.

We blew it up with the tank attached the gondola with the propellers, and
put in batteries.

Then we balanced the blimp for neutral buoyancy with this putty that came
with it, so it hangs in the air by itself neither rising nor falling.

It was easy and fun, and then I blew up another balloon and made Mickey
Mouse helium voices for my daughter.

My three year old girl loved it. We flew the blimp all over the house,
terrorized the dog, attacked the fish tank, and the controls were so easy my
daughter could fly.

Let's face it, blimps are fun.

Alas, the fun had to end and my daughter had to go to sleep. I left the
blimp floating in my office downstairs, my wife came home, and we went to
bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous.

At this point it is important to know that my house has central heating. I
have it configured to blow hot air out on the ground floor and take it in at
the second floor to take advantage of the fact that heat rises.

The blimp which was up until this moment a fun toy here embarked on a
career of evil. Using the artificial convection of my central heating, the
blimp stealthily departed my office. It moved silently through the living
and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then
entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully.

Running silently, and gliding six feet or so above the ground on invisible
and tiny air currents it approached the bed.

In spite of it's noiseless passage, or perhaps because of it, I awoke.
That doesn't really say it properly. Let me try again.

I awoke, the way you awake at 2:00 AM when your sleeping senses suddenly
tell you without reason that the forces of evil on converging on you.

That still doesn't do it. Let me try one more time.

I awoke the way you awake when you suddenly know that there is a large
levitating sinister presence hovering towards you with menacing intent
through the malignant darkness.

Now sometimes I do wake up in the middle of the night thinking that there
are large sinister and menacing things floating out of the darkness to do me
and mine evil. Usually I open my eyes, look and listen carefully, decide it
was a false alarm, and go back to sleep.

So, the fact that I awoke in such a manner was not all that unusual.

On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing
presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and
there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE
GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!

Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security
outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up
on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral
vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINISTER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE
coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my
body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my
bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from "restful sleep mode" to
HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart
went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster.

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and
science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our
alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and
monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of
time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when
the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.

When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you all
at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation.

Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable to
the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress (not
that I'd know what that sounds like,) and lept out of bed in my underwear.

I struck the approaching menace with all my strength and almost fell over
at the total lack of resistance that a helium balloon offers when you punch
the living shit out of it with all the strength that sudden middle of the
night terror produces.

It's trajectory took it straight into the ceiling fan which whipped it
about the room at terrifying velocity.

Seeking a weapon, I ripped the alarm clock out of its plug and hurled it
at the now High Velocity Menacing presence (breaking the clock and putting a
nice hole in the wall.)

Somehow at this moment I suddenly realized that I was fighting the blimp,
and not a monster. It might have been funny if I didn't truly and actually
feel like I was having a legitimate heart-attack.

On quivering legs I went to the bathroom and literally gagged into the
toilet while shaking uncontrollably with the shock of the reaction I'd had.

Unbelievably, both my wife and daughter had completely slept through the
incident. When I decided that I wasn't having a heart attack after all I
went back into the bedroom and found the blimp which had somehow survived
the incident.

I took it to the walk in closet and released it inside where it floated
around with the air currents released from the vents in there. I closed the
door, this sealing it in, and went back to bed. About 500 years later I fell
asleep.

***

At about 7 am my wife awoke. She had been playing tennis and wasn't aware
that we have assembled the blimp the previous evening, and that is was now
floating around the the walk-in closet that she approached.

The dynamic between the existing air currents of the closet and the
suction caused by opening the door was just enough to give the blimp the
appearance of an Evil Sinister Menace flying straight towards her.

This time the blimp did not survive the encounter, nor almost, did I, as I
had to explain to my very angry spouse what motivated me to hide an evil
lurking presence in the closet for her to find at 7 am.

I can order replacement balloons on the internet but I don't think I will.

Some blimps are better off dead.

unknown

[freak_in_cage_10k]

lol!!! teriffic story m8! well written!!! i have always wanted to mess around with those big blimp things but they are expensive here in the uk!!! i know EXACTLY what you mean about waking up and feeling something lurking over you- i cant say i have ever faced the feeling of sickness after the adrenaline pump but i know that if its serious then it isn;t fun!!!

when i was young i remember seeing a film about blimps and for some reason, i heard it as "pimps" so, for many years, whenever an old TV show or old war film came on which included a blimp (or an indianna jones film!) i would chirp in "oh, its a pimp" at which point my mother would try to convince me that it wasn;t called a pimp, but i refused to believe her, partly because she wasn't sure what it was called, partly because she couldn't tell me what a pimp was, just that a thing full of gas WASN'T it, but mainly because i was a stubbord 7 year old!!!

i have a similar story! One time i was lazing around in the back of the garden when i herd someone open the house door (from the front)- this struck me as odd, seeings as i didn;t expect my folkes or brother to return for at least 5 hours. i walked around to the front door and, although it was open, the door was open (i left it locked) but there was no car in the drive way!!!! at which point i thought "who the hell is in my house?" so i grabbed a weapon (which happened to be a stick we used as a cricket wicket and skulked around the house, kreeping into each room to try and beat the hell outta this thief (i was about 17 at the time). anyway, no one was on the first floor, at which point i herd a muffled voice upstairs. as i sneaked up the stairs (stepping in the perfect places not to make a noise) i realised the burglar was in the bathroom! i check the other rooms out first (making sure a second their couldn;t sneak up on me while i was beatin the hell outta the guy who was nicking all our shampoo) and then, as i got closer to the bathroom i herd the splashing of water, immidiatly thinking "this sick prat is flooding our bathroom as well as nicking everything!!!!" so, i got SERIOUSLY psyked up, stick in hand and tried 2 open the door, it was locked and so i preceeded to beat the livign hell outta the dorr, shouting at the theif inside, telling him what i was gonna do to him. just as i stepped back, about to take a run up at this door i herd a shit scared voice, remarkably similar to my brothers say "whos that?" it was at that point which i came down from "psyco killer" to "darn, i feel stupid", and my still terrified brother explained that mum & dad had dropped him off while they went straight off to a BBQ (explaining the lack of car in the drive)

to this day i feel stupid, and i kinda scared myself because i sure went nutts on that door!

[tenders]

LMAO... that was a great story!! i think we can all relate to that "middle of the night feeling". you should write a book!!!

[Ducatti20]

Oh my god...

[BJ_M]

LMAO... :) that was a great story!! i think we can all relate to that "middle of the night feeling". you should write a book!!! :jump:

i didnt write it -- author is (as marked above) , unknown ...

[jeex]

man. i want one of those blimps..

where can i get one?

[BJ_M]

http://www.hobbytron.net/blimp.html (smaller)

http://www.advertisingballoons.com/remote-control-blimps.htm 8'-30' blimps

[i_am_dave]

Remember when you used to line up you little army men and stage fake battles. Remember using Napalm (lighter fluid) on them?

Think of the possibilities if you used Hydrogen instead of Helium

Just kidding! Would be way to expensive!

[i_am_dave]

man. i want one of those blimps..

where can i get one?

I just made a trip to e-bay. Search for "RC blimp" there are a number of them beginning at around $15

I just might....

[tgpo]

That was funny stuff. I've never been attacked by a blimp at 3am, but I'm sure it wouldn't be a fun experience.