Saturday, November 06, 2021
Extreme doors of perception, Roanoke, Virginia edition
Bunny and I partook of a secondary road trip today, driving 275 miles to Roanoke, Virginia for our second visit to Black Dog Salvage. Unlike our last visit where the TV cast were out salvaging, this was an “open house” so they were there. Not that we saw much of them—we only saw one TV cast member but he was too busy to stop and chat (although he did say “Hello!”).
We did, however, get lost in a large hallway full of doors:
![[A hallway full of doors. No, really, they're stacked on each other] You might think there's a mystery behind every door, but no, it's no mystery—it's another door.](/2021/11/06/Doors1.jpg "You might think there's a mystery behind every door, but no, it's no mystery—it's another door.")
But don't say we weren't warned though:
![[Picture of a sign that says “MORE DOORS”] I wasn't kidding when I said there were more doors.](/2021/11/06/MoreDoors.jpg "I wasn't kidding when I said there were more doors.")
And yes, there were a lot of doors.
![[A picture of more stacked doors in the door corridor] But it's the type of place where you could expect “opening” a door might lead to some other world, but I'd rather not let in a despotic queen into our world.](/2021/11/06/Doors2.jpg "But it's the type of place where you could expect “opening” a door might lead to some other world, but I'd rather not let in a despotic queen into our world.")
We did manage to find a door that lead out.
Observations of a few oddities, this time on the Intarwebs
Two observations about previous post:
While at Black Dog Salvage Bunny took a picture of me standing next to a large slab of cherry wood (price—a cool $800, and that wasn't the most expensive slab of wood) and then we went on to get lost in the Hall of Doors.
Once we got back to Brevard, I started noticing online advertising for slabs of wood. I wish I was making that up, but no, I started receiving ads for slabs of wood. I'm hoping it was because Bunny and I watched a few wood working videos on Youtube and not because of a picture Bunny took of me.
But I'm not holding my breath.
I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine. While I was writing the previous entry, I used Duck Duck Go to search for the Black Dog Salvage Company website. The first link, I click, and I'm redirected directly to some spam pharmacy site wishing to extend my mortgage by 3″ (or 8cm for those Imperially challenged).
Hmmm, I thought, perhaps they let their domain expire.
Curious, I go back to a previous entry just to check the link there, and no, it goes to the Black Dog Salvage site.
Now I'm paranoid. I check the link on Duck Duck Go, and it's
https://www.blackdogsalvage.com/. I check the link on the Black Dog Salvage site I'm viewing, and it'shttps://www.blackdogsalvage.com/. It's the same text! I have no idea what to think! Perhaps some black arts to game the results in Duck Duck Go? I don't know.
Okay, I decided to dig a bit deeper into that last one. I used Google to search for “Black Dog Salvage,” clicked on the obvious result and … ended up at that same sketchy pharmacy site. Now I think that the Black Dog Salvage site has been hacked to redirect people to the sketchy pharmacy site when coming from a search engine, and not something wrong with Duck Duck Go or Google.
Sigh.
Notes on an overheard conversation at the Red House Inn
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Where did you get your take out food?”
“A Thai restaurant on east Main street called Love Eat Thai Kitchen. What do you have”
“We got this Mexican food from … oh … it has a weird name.”
“Yea, I think it's a Japanese place downtown.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, on Broad Street just south of Main.”
“That wouldn't happen to be ‘Quixote?’”
“Yes! That's the place!”
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")