WITHOUT QUESTION, THIS IS THE COOLEST THING I'LL EVER OWN

.
Some time ago I became immensely preoccupied with procuring a mid-to-late 1980's style ghetto blaster/boombox for no particularly rational reason that I can recall, though it probably had something to do with all of the hair metal cassettes I had lying around my house (as faithful Good Rubbish readers will recall, those have already been put to mildly good use).

Well, the end fruit of my many labors came in the form of this fine object, which I procured from some guy on craigslist for $15.



As you can clearly see, my purchase is a fine (though slightly understated) example of late 80's boombox excess: It's very square, it has lots of buttons, and it's covered with a bunch of shiny chrome colored crap that serves no other purpose than being shiny (the speakers are also pretty robust for a stereo of this size, which is typical to the era). But the feature really sets this cube of thunder apart from the competition is this: Working light up equalizer bars.



Nice. Seriously nice.

Anyway, when I got this thing the cassette deck was mildly broken (it would sort of play cassettes, but the audio would come out sounding like it'd been run through 40 pillows), so I attempted to fix this troublesome component. Having no prior experience with audio equipment whatsoever, it should come as no surprise that I promptly broke the cassette deck while fumbling around with it. I blamed the GOP for what transpired, and by God I was right to do so.

Fortunately, this stereo came out right around when compact discs were starting to be available to consumers, so the fine people that manufactured this stereo put a couple of audio in jacks on the back of the box, supposedly in case someone wanted to plug a discman into it somewhere down the road. They probably never envisioned the advent of the Ipod, but then again neither did the Mormons, and look how silly they look now. That's right... think about it.



Though this wasn't a terribly creative modification, it did turn turn a pretty sweet boom box into an irrefutably awesome harbinger of audio doom, so I take some small measure of pride in it. All I did was affix an old leather Ipod case to one of the speakers with machine screws and nuts (I had to take apart the speaker without breaking it to put the nuts on from the inside, which was at least a mildly difficult task). After that I just bought a cheap Ipod cable to hook up with the red and white jacks on the back of my box, and basked in the glory of my non accomplishment:



Now all I need is 8 D-Cell batteries, a sturdy shoulder, and somewhere to strut to - tragically, those 3 elements rarely converge in my world. Oh, and you can stop squinting, the song being played is "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow, 'cause that's how I fuckin' roll.

My name is Enron McHanslaw, I deal in hot fire.