Saturday, December 1, 2018

The Escapegoat

Dear Friends,

   The Hard Taco song for December is called, "Idiots Who Think They're Happy." Paul McCartney once sang, "Let's all get up and dance to a song that was the shit before your mother was born." He was referring to this song, because it is just that good.
   Don't tell my parents, but music recording hasn't exactly been a money-making venture. Keeping the Hard Taco website going costs about $5 a month, and sometimes I have to replace broken guitar strings. Fortunately, I replace them with other broken guitar strings, which doesn't cost much.
   But the real cost of having a home recording studio is the loss of potential income. As long as we're using the spare bedroom for music-making, we can't rent out the room to sleepy travelers. The idea of taking on boarders is tempting, but I don't like the idea of strangers sleeping in my house. Think about it this way. The average person swallows eight spiders/year during sleep. If I rent out my spare room to travelers, they'll probably swallow some of myspiders. Spiders that might otherwise have crawled into mymouth at a later date. I might not make it to my full quota of eight by New Year's, and that is not acceptable.
   So the solution is to rent out the extra bedroom, but only during the day. And the best way to do that is to turn it into an escape room. And just like every good escape room, the spare bedroom is already partially furnished and full of bric-a-brac. The only additional expenses that I anticipate are a combination lock and a goat. 
   The goat ties in with the theme of the room: EscapeGoat.  
   Hopefully, I can find a used goat that is well-mannered. (Petting zoo experience is preferred.) We'll put the guests and the goat in the room and lock the door with the combination lock. Then I will slip a piece of paper under the door that says, "The combination is... 32-4-31." The goat will know this is coming and will eat most of the paper before anyone gets a chance to read it. The guests will wrest the saliva-soaked note from the goat’s mouth only to realize that the animal swallowed the most important piece of information.
   "That stupid goat messed up our one chance to get out of the room," they will say to each other. At this point they will totally get the theme. People love themes!
   They will spend the rest of the allotted time looking around the room, trying to make sense of the bric-a-brac, but there won't be any other clues. Just some recording equipment and broken guitar strings. 
   And, of course, 8 suicidal spiders for each member of my household.

With warmest regards,
Zach