potato cannons are soooooooooo passe

I'm sitting here in our lovely Eganville office - rather quiet - well, totally quiet - so I was surfing the web and I ran see this headline "teenager makes a homemade solar death ray" http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/homemade-solar-death-ray/1gla2uoo7?from=en-ca-hpquad that's the link if you're interested

Anyway it brought to mind Kris and Jamie's experiments with potato cannons - for those of you who don't know - a potato cannon fires off potatoes (and other sundry items) it is generally made out of plumbers PVC pipe and some sort of excellerent - such as aerosol furniture polish. in his day Jamie built some fine, FINE cannons - he would spend his last dollar (or mine) on some pvc piping.

Back then, I always kept a running grocery list on the fridge and Jamie would add "spray can of endust" to the list on a regular basis - took me a while to catch on to that, mind you - I THOUGHT, he and Kris were spraying the Endust on the floor so they could chase the cat and watch poor old Sandy scramble around on a highly polished patch of floor while they laughed thmselves silly. But, no the Endust generally for the potato cannon (although they did that with the cat too)

As for the potato cannon (or spud gun) Jamie did make some doozies - probably dangerous too, now that I think about it. I'm not sure what is so wonderful about loud noises and objects shooting into the air, but it was incredibly funny to Jamie and Kris - they would fire the cannon then giggle like girls as the potato splatted on a tree in the bush! hmmm

It all ended badly, though. Jamie was working at Home Depot when he told a young co-worker all about these potato cannons, The young fellow built one - a really freaking GOOD one, according to Jamie, and brought it into the store to show Jamie. Somewhat concerned (and probably totally impressed) Jamie told the kid to get it out of the store. Unfortunately it was discovered and Jamie was fired on Monday morning for not reporting a weapon on the premises. Home Depot takes these things very seriously - apparently their HR person was NOT from the Ottawa Valley where such potato cannons are well known as a hunt camp requirement.

anyway, back to my point (what was it????) oh yeah, this kid in the States has totally outdone Jamie's weenie potato cannon and built himself a solar death ray!! wow - he should try getting a job at Home Depot......