Burning Down The House

Some of you may recall me having a laugh at the expense of Ryan back in October, when he foolishly tried to dry a wet shirt by placing it on his kerosene heater. Well schadenfreude fans rejoice: the karma police have finally caught up with me (and no, I'm not referring to my performance at karaoke this past weekend that incited such comments as "go through puberty").

This morning, my alarm went off at 7:25 am, like it always does. I rolled over in bed and hit the snooze button, like I always do. As I started to sink back into the arms of sleep, I could feel my nostrils filling with the scent of burning popcorn like they alw-oh wait. That's when I sat bolt upright in bed and noticed that my room was full of smoke. After muttering a string of expletives and opening up all my windows to the frigid Aomori morn, I returned to my room and to the following sight.
Now, you must be asking yourself, how could a reasonably intelligent person allow such a thing to happen? Well, it's kind of a long story. My apartment, like most in Japan, has only one gas heater, located in my tatami living room. Since Japanese homes don't usually include either central heating or insulation, my bedroom (on the other side of the apartment) becomes completely uninhabitable during the winter months. To alleviate this problem, I purchased a small electric space-heater a few months ago. Any number of official JET pamphlets warned me that leaving such a device on overnight was a fire hazard but I figured that as long as I was extra careful, I would be able to use it to heat my bedroom at night.

Well, I've been using this thing all winter and let me tell you, it's made my life infinitely more comfortable. The only problem is that as it has become steadily colder, the heater has become less effective. That's when it hit me-I could make myself warmer by moving the heater closer to the bed! Now, before you point out what a stupid idea this was, let me remind you that when the inside of your house regularly drops down to about -6º C/20º F, any opportunity to make yourself warmer is generally seized with little thought. It's also possible that, as per the laws of kinetics, the cold temperatures have caused the neurons in my brain to fire more slowly.

Well, I had learned my lesson and by some extraordinary stroke of luck, had not died in the process. But there was still the small matter of the ruined throw. Let's zoom in for closer analysis:
Luckily, I was able to fix the throw the same way that I solve all of life's problems: by covering it up with duct tape. If you think I'm just being funny, I would recommend that you look up the current inhabitants of apartment number two at 5412 Woodlawn Ave. in Chicago, who may or may not have discovered that one of their bedroom walls is actually constructed out of duct tape and is merely painted to look like a wall.
The truth of the matter is that the throw was here when I moved in to the apartment, which means that it's property of the board of education which means that I will eventually have to replace it. However, until payday rolls around, this will have to do. Remember children: