The Sixth Light

Well the rapture has come and gone, and I think most of us are still here. That doesn't mean that Saturday was without it's apocalyptic undertones...

(Note: I've got more pictures to add, but you'll have to wait for that)

I woke up from a nap on Saturday to realize that I had missed my second opportunity to indulge on some BBQ (Thank again Angeleana for Friday, sorry I flaked). I was wandering around the studio with Wes when good ol' Jonny D asked for a little help cleaning up. I could have shrugged him off and gone back to playing video games, but I was well rested and felt like I should try to be somewhat productive, oh how I was wrong.

The cool thing is that there are fiber optic wire behind logo and
lettering that gives an awesome effect when functioning properly.

After a little vacuuming and trash gathering I notice that our Rainier light was in a less than desirable location. I took the initiative and moved it across the room where it would not only be near an outlet but also be able to cast its glorious aurora over the great room. I plugged the light in and switched the switch to the on position. Begin Armageddon. You see when I switched that little switch not only did the Rainier light not illuminate but all the power in the unit went dead. No big deal right? Just flip the breaker and continue on. Not so easy. Apparently this Rainier light has spent some time dealing in the dark arts and when it gained access to power it sent some sort of surge through the system killing the power for 3 blocks.

A slight panic set in. In the three years of its operation the studio has never lost power. Even when everyone else lost power. We didn't even know where to start. My first instinct was, "don't worry, it'll come back in a few minutes. This can't take that long to fix." So Jonny and I started wandering about to see if we could figure out how large of an outage we were dealing with. TKim got back from the store and started to help us find flash lights and candles. Finally we decided that it was lighter outside and that we should just kick in on the tracks for a while.

There were a couple of conversations with neighboring businesses and random contemporaries, each person giving their own account of the situation. I held my tongue about the Rainier light. I didn't need to draw any unnecessary attention to myself. This is when Wes started to freak out a bit. He couldn't understand why we were spending so much time on the street corner. Neither could I for that matter and suggested that we all go to a bar. I stumbled in the darkness for a bit, getting the dog up in his room and searching for a few items I might need, when JW arrived on the scene. He was all worked up from his trip home to Olympia and I'm not sure exactly how it all worked out but we ended up drinking faux-Jager bombs.

Now the plan was to go to West 5, a nice little cocktail bar in the West Seattle Junction. West Seattle and SODO couldn't be closer, but because of numerous construction projects they seem an eternity apart. In the chaos of closed road, detours and general conversational merriment we got off track and ended up north on the viaduct. The Owl was packed with Sounders fans so we dipped down to the waterfront and popped into Red Robin. I don't usually consider restaurants when I'm looking for a bar, however it was exactly what we were looking for, empty. After a couple margaritas we headed out hoping to return to a fully illuminated space.

We wouldn't be so lucky. Now multiple trucks were arriving on the scene. They all seemed to think that it was only a short matter of time before we'd be back up and running so instead of running off to hide in White Center we busted out the candles in full force and decided to wait it out. Let it be known that it is extremely difficult to light a space with 30 foot ceilings with just candles. The greatest idea that we had was to rig up a mic stand with a flash light pointed at the disco ball. Yes, even when we don't have power, we still get down with the disco.

Soon enough it was officially late night and still no power. Jonny and I drank all the beer. And all the whiskey. And all the Scotch. TKim went to bed and we couldn't buy more beer for another 2 hours. So it went the way it always does - Absinthe. Oh yes, the green fairy. Now anyone who has a bit of respect for Absinthe knows better than to take chugs straight off the bottle, Jonny is not one of these people. I however decided that I should mix mine with apple juice. Not my best idea, but not my worst either. The conversation slammed against the silent walls. I should point out at this point that never have I experienced silence like this before. Now I've been into caves and heard the sound of nothing before, however it's supposed to be silent there, it's not supposed to be silent in the middle of SODO. It made the whole situation very eerie and borderline scary at times. Who was to say that Dracula hadn't decided to drop in? Or that a group of ravenous zombies wasn't just down the hall slowly making their way towards us? Live together, die alone.

Rambling words

Now it was just past 6 am. We were back from the Shell with more beer. There was no telling how long this binge could go on for. And then...light. Not for us, but near us. The building had power. Then one of our lights had power. Finally it was all back up and running. It's this slow progression that has convinced me that the Rainier light was the cause. This led us to only one reasonable explanation.

25 years ago Rainier Brewery, in a collaborative effort with the CIA and Department of Defense, developed a way to take out entire blocks simply by pressing a button. Only five of these were made, or so it was thought. Shortly after the initial release the FBI found out about the lights uncanny ability and they quickly moved to contain the problem. They found "all" five of the signs: one in Tacoma, one in Hillsboro, one in Butte, one in Forks and finally one in St Croix being used by some children there as third base marker. After bringing the five signs together the FBI smashed them to bits, put them in a bucket, filled it with cement and dropped in the Pacific ocean not far from Wake Island. However there were six lights. I'm a little concerned. It's only a matter of time until the FBI finds us, or even worse the CIA or DoD. Needless to say I'm going to be finding a new place for the light. It's not safe here anymore.

There are three morals to this story. #1 Never, I repeat NEVER plug in the Rainier light. #2 When strange things happen create even stranger explanations for them, because you're probably right. #3 It's a far better idea to sleep through a late night power outage than to drink through it.