Death of a Dyson

Crystal:

A few years ago, I bought a Dyson. A Dyson Animal, not the ball, but the older version. Anyway, I bought it from Woot. You ever check out Woot? It’s pretty cool, they have one deal per day and when it’s sold out that’s it. Instead of paying close to $500 for said Dyson, I paid about $280. I thought it was a great deal. Sadly, the Dyson never really worked correctly. But that didn’t bother me too much, I mean it worked in the sense that it sucked things off the floor, but if you tried to use the extension, things got weird. It never wanted to retract back into its home and inevitably there would be a struggle to get the hose back where it belonged. But like I said, it was cheap and basically did its job.

Jonathan:

“Basically did its job”, my ass. Let me clarify a couple things. One important fact was left out about that piece-of-shit Dyson. Yes it was only $280 instead of $500, but that’s because it was a REFURBISHED Dyson. What’s wrong with a refurbished Dyson, you may ask? After all, it’s much cheaper than a new one. Well, nothing’s wrong aside from the fact that the machine didn’t work the FIRST time it was sold. What a scam! Here’s how it probably went down:

Big Company Guy 1: ‘Hey guys, we sold a piece of shit to somebody and they returned it.’

Big Company Guy 2: ‘Here’s an idea…let’s put a band-aid on it, call it ‘refurbished’, and sell it again at a ‘discount’ with no warranty or return options.’

Big Company Guy 1: ‘Great idea BCG 2! Not only will we relieve ourselves of the burden of disposing of this junk pile, we’ll also get somebody else to pay for it! Shit, we should run for office!’

Big Company Guy 2: ‘Yes indeed BCG 1. Ass-raping the pocketbooks of the public…consumerism and politics at its finest!’

So…it was refurbished. AND it never worked correctly, from day one! You had to jump on this purple monster and ride it like a foaming mad rodeo bull in order to get the damn cleaner head to engage. No joke. And it didn’t matter one bit if you managed to stay on for eight seconds…hell, it took four times that long just to get the thing to engage. Come to think of it, I could be a five-time bull riding champion with all the practice I’ve already had. Cheyenne, here I come! And that’s just the cleaner head; don’t get me started about that bullshit hose attachment. So to say it ‘basically did its job’ is more generous than Gandhi. It turned on. Let’s leave it at that.

Crystal:

A couple weeks ago it met its demise. 

Jonathan:

Yep.

Crystal:

I was in the bathroom when I heard the sounds of an altercation. But there was only one voice. Jonathan’s voice. No one was talking back so I thought perhaps one of our fur kids had done something bad. I opened the bathroom door, headed out of our bedroom and entered the hallway only to see Bella hunkered down, ears back, inching her way down the hallway…backwards. There wasn’t a cat in sight. I continued down the hallway, into the living room, and, like the blood trail at a murder scene, saw a trail of dirt leading to the back patio. Well this is interesting, I thought. I slid the door open and ventured outside. There, at the bottom of the hill, lay my Dyson. 

Jonathan:

Disclaimer: I’m not proud that I let that vacuum get to me…but it is pretty funny that, over the years, an inanimate object could take on its own nemesis-like personality that ultimately led to the ensuing backyard beatdown.

Crystal does most of the vacuuming around here. Not because I’m some sort of Mad Men-era misogynistic asshole, but because she actually likes it. Just like she loves laundry. Seriously. I’ve never seen someone get so excited about doing laundry. You’d think someone who grew up working in her parents’ dry cleaners would hate laundry. Not Crystal. 

I mention this because you may wonder, if she loves vacuuming, why was I vacuuming in the first place. Well, to be honest, I like vacuuming too…not as much as Crystal, mind you, but there’s something very satisfying about it, especially on hardwood floors, where you can see the evil forces of the little dirt and fur armies who’ve arrayed against you get sucked into oblivion. 

So there I was thinking ‘ooh…I’m going to suck up all this pet dander while Crystal is indisposed’. That’s pretty much where it went south. 

The obligatory vacuum bull ride did not result in a working vacuum this time. In fact, that purple bitch sat there laughing at me. Well, if the bull ride doesn’t work, it’s usually a hose issue. So I tried the hose. Then another ride. Then another hose. Then yet another ride. Nothing. Oh it turned on…but that’s it. Fuck. This. Dyson. 

One more try with the hose then. This time I put a little something extra behind it. By something extra I mean raising this thing in the air like a post-hole digger and slamming it down on the ground to try to get the hose to go back in. Very delicate work here. It was at the bottom of one of these vacuum slams that the evil purple bastard decided ‘now’s a great time to work’. That’s when the hose buried itself fully into it’s housing. The only problem? My little finger was now firmly lodged between the hose and that housing. 

And that was the final straw. Now it was personal. It was time for this worthless trash heap to meet its demise, dashed to bits on the rocks below.

Crystal:

I don’t know exactly what transpired at the bottom of that hill. I did not witness it. In such cases as these, it is sometimes best to simply wait things out. I got comfortable on the couch, and a few minutes later saw Jonathan walk by the living room, dragging the decimated carcass of the vacuum by its cord in one hand, baseball bat in the other, like a caveman returning home after a long and grueling hunt. He came in and said, “I’m going to Costco to buy a new vacuum”, grabbed his keys and disappeared into the garage. 

Jonathan:

I’ll tell you what transpired at the bottom of that hill. Comeuppance. 

I’m not going to get into much more detail than that, because the grizzly facts could scar our fragile readers’ minds. Let’s just say I did my best Sgt. Donny Donowitz impression and went full Bear Jew on that vacuum. (If you don’t know what that means, then you’ve missed out on one of the finer cinematic offerings of the last five years.) 

Crystal:

Well shit. I’m starving! Can’t we eat first? I followed him into the garage and said, “You don’t have to go right now!” But it was too late. The truck roared to life and he pulled out of the driveway.

Jonathan:

Rather calmly I might add. The roaring is due to the V8.

Crystal:

Yes, no peeling of rubber occurred. I went back into the kitchen, stared longingly at the bread and cheese we’d brought home for dinner, and resigned myself to waiting. 

Jonathan:

This is newly introduced information. I had no idea you were that hungry. Sorry babe. 

Crystal:

That’s okay babe. I could’ve eaten something if I was THAT hungry. But I was pretty hungry. LOL

About an hour later he returned. He brought one box into the house and went back into the garage, only to return with a second box. He’d bought not one, but two new Dysons! One pink and one purple. I was shocked. After all, he’d hated the first Dyson.

Jonathan:

These were NEW Dysons with full warranties. Let them ‘refurbish’ this one if it breaks and sell it to some other unlucky bastard.

Crystal:

I looked at the boxes then looked at him quizzically, and in the most sad, defeated tone I’d ever heard from him, he said, “You have to pick which color you want.”

Jonathan:

Well it is HER vacuum after all. Why should I pick which color…plus the pink does look pretty badass.

Crystal:

I almost laughed. It was too cute. After all that, he was concerned about which color I’d prefer! Since the previous Dyson had been purple, I decided to go with the pink one instead. Bad karma with the purple.

Bella approves.

Jonathan:

Purple can kiss my ass.

Crystal:

“Where is the old one?” I asked. He led me to the side of the house where the dismantled Dyson lay. “I took a bat to it,” he admitted. I nodded, imagining the scene from Office Space where they go postal on the printer. “We should recreate that so we can get some pictures for the blog!” I told him.

And so, we tossed the Dyson back down the hill, retrieved the bat, and staged a Civil War style reenactment for your enjoyment.

Jonathan:

Yep.

Lag that would make Rory McIlroy proud…now if only I could transfer that to the golf course! 

Contact.

Poof!

 

Spock: Hooman emotions are illogical.