I have entered into a period of my life at which fiscal responsibility is of paramount importance.  So of course I bought a $35 skull-shaped interactive lightning-shooting plasma lamp with no warranty last night from Spencer’s.

This is possibly the best decision I have ever made in my life.  Aside from the massive coolness evident in the pictures below, it has the added feature of actually being possessed.  Consider the following:

1.  It is impossible to photograph.  Those photos you see below?  They were yielded from a Google image search.  Something goes wrong every single time I try to snap a shot of my product in action — you cannot see the sublimely excellent rainbow lightning shooting from its base to the inner circumference of the glass skull. It just shows a whitish, otherworldly flare!  Like angel fire!  Or the wrath of Abbadon!  Or anything, ever, in a J.J. Abrams movie!
2. The MOMENT after I attempted these photos, the battery light on my digital camera flashed and the entire device went dead.  COINCIDENCE?
3. EVERY time I turn it on, my computer malfunctions.  I SWEAR I am not making this up.  Whenever the lamp is activated, I lose all control of my cursor, which simply leaps and twitches and shudders around my screen like a terrified jitterbug.  (That is a real species, right?)

Anyway, I cannot articulate how wicked this thing is.  It’s a damn fine product.  Like any plasma lamp, when you touch it, the caged lightning shoots to the point where your hands make contact with its surface.  [EDIT: “wicked” is early 80’s slang for something that is very, very good, and very, very impressive.]

This product will be an outstanding muse for a horror writer who hasn’t published or posted anything in a very long time.  (I know you people have been totally cool about that.  Would you believe I have a bunch of handwritten short stories that I just need to typeset and submit?  There’s a really cool time travel story!)

It also has an “audio” function which is kind of a mystery to me … apparently this is a function in which only sound activates the lightning?  I switched that on, then clapped a few times, but nothing happened.  I was perplexed.  (The third photo below illustrates me being perplexed.)  Then I just began shouting random words at it.  I started with “NATE WADE!!!”  I have no idea why; apparently there’s some free association thing going on there that I can’t explain.

Still no luck.  I consulted the packaging but found its instructions sparse.  They reminded me that this product indeed has a “Sound Responsive Mode,” but says little of help beyond that.  Then the box exhorts me repeatedly to “GET THE PARTY STARTED,” but those are redundant instructions, because, Christ, I do that every time I breathe.

Tonight I am going to blast Slipknot’s “Psychosocial” to find out if that will do the trick.  I figure that’s just the song to placate an angry ghost.  I’ll also replace the batteries in my camera, and this time try to shoot video.

Unless my camera now is just too demonically damaged.  We’ll see.