Brainwash

I went to Brainwash, a laundromat slash cafe slash venue, to see some music. There was a table by the door with 3 chairs occupied by 2 people. I asked if chair #3 was in use, and they said I could have it, so I did.

I didn't move it far from the table: just enough so it wasn't like I was sitting there. It turned out the whole section of tables was full of English people who had come to see the first band, who also happened to be English.

Eventually a 30sih woman came in and saw her friends who had just minutes before given me my chair. She walked over to them, stood in front of me, and started talking to them. But standing can be tiresome, so after a while she turned to me and asked if she could sit on my lap. I, being a normal human being, thought she was joking and said sure. She promptly took a seat on my lap and talked to her friends for another half hour until the band started playing, all the while saying nothing to me. For I was a chair, and people don't talk to chairs.

The last paragraph is untrue, but makes a good story. Then again, when going to things alone, there isn't anybody who's going to contradict me. Maybe if I make enough things up, people will start wanting to go places with me to see in person all the amazing things that happen to me. A plan! So if anyone asks you what I did tonight, tell them that I went to see some music and an English woman used me as a chair.

Child's Play

On they way home from a service call today I saw not one, but two inflatable bouncy castles. I hadn't seen one for more than a year, and I certainly had never seen one in the city.

The second one was just your average generic bouncy castle, but the first one was a top-of-the-line Rainbow Bright brand castle. I was really impressed, and I wish I had taken my camera with me.

You really have to plan ahead to get a bouncy castle in the city. Both were half on the sidewalk, and half in the street, but still contained within a parallel parking spot. It's a good thing those castles are enclosed, or there might be kids bouncing right out into traffic. That's quick way to ruin a birthday.

Don't let anyone tell you that raising a kid in the city will keep them from having a rich and full set of childhood experiences.

I HATE THAT COMPUTER!

I don't like the metal shop guy, and because I build for him a terrible possessed computer from the devil, he won't leave me alone! It's terrible! Go away metal shop guy! If only I had moved to Ohio. Sigh.

Observations on a Friday

First off, I seem to be attractive to VERY old women in nursing homes. A little old lady whose bed I was setting up asked me to help her look up a phone number. A nurse came in I handed the task off to her. When I started setting up the bed she realized I wasn't part of the nursing home staff and said, "I thought you were too good looking to work here." Creepy but nice.

Families of the recently deceased are surprisingly cheery. They seem tired, which is expected. But they are all smiles and small talk when I come get the mattress. I guess our mattresses are mostly used for people who have been sick for a while, so the family has had some time to prepare. Even so, I thought there would be more moping.

I'm not as un-photogenic nor as illiterate as I thought I was. Call me paranoid, but after two, 2!, full days of not hearing anything back from the two yahoo personal emails I sent, I was beginning to think I would go another 3 years with no girlfriend. (There is historical president for the 3 years dry spell.) That could still happen, but that time will at least be broken up by a date next Monday with the maybe-Goth* girl. Turns out she works for a Bio-Tech company and went to U.C. Davis, so she's probably not too Goth*. As long as I can manage to go an evening without saying anything too gross or stupid, it should go ok. Then again I've been exposed to a lot of dead people mattress jokes of late, and my filter has never worked that well.

Any gems of wisdom?

*My spellchecker insists that Goth* should be capitalized. Is Goth* a proper name? A forgotten but non-the-less important figure from history?

Screw Home Cooking

I have finally earned the title, "World's Worst Cook." I'd been working on it for quite some time, but hadn't ever reached it until today.

I can make maybe four dishes, and not all of them come out well. My chicken tends to be dry; My pork chops, reminiscent of hockey pucks. Oddly enough my Salmon comes out okay, but I've only made that once, so it may have been a fluke. (No pun intended.) And my Macaroni and Cheese tends to be undercooked.

Now undercooked is really just me not having enough patience. I'll dip my fork into the noodles and take out a Sponge Bob or a Patrick and invariable burn my tongue while testing their squishiness. They are never quite squishy. Today I decided that I would write an email while they boiled, thereby taking patience out of the game. Mac and Cheese 2, Me 0. I overcooked it.

Overcooked is perhaps an understatement. I boiled it to death. There was hardly even any water to drain out, and Bob and Patrick were enormous and disintegrating. Worst of all, some of the noodles were burned to the bottom of the pan. I hope soaking takes care of that. Otherwise I may have boiled the pan to death as well.

Very fitting is the sign that hangs over the doorway to my kitchen. My Grandmother cross-stitched it for me, and it reads: "Screw Home Cooking." Truer words have never been stitched.

Two Portions of Day

The first portion of my day is getting a little too frequent. After delivering a Mattress in Napa, I discovered my pocket contained more empty space than I'm comfortable with. Sure enough, sitting next to my book, in the little bin between the front seats of my van, were my keys. Unfortunately, this van has much smaller spaces between the ceiling and the metal screen. I guess I'm challenging myself.

I learn from my mistakes (ok, not enough to keep track of my keys) so I tried the same thing I tried last time: Hook a bungee cord around the door handle and pull. It was much harder this time, being as I could only fit up to my forearm through the screen space, but I did it. I hooked, and I pulled, and the door stayed locked. I guess Astros don't unlock that way.

A new plan was in order. This time I took my small metal-tipped bungee cord and bent one hook out a little. Then I hooked the other end around my full-sized, plastic-ended bungee. I pushed this setup, half my palm, and all of my fingers through the space in the middle of the screen, right over the bin. It took quite a bit of casting, which is hard when you can only use your fingers, but I finally hooked my keys and pulled them up through the crack.

I NEVER lock my keys in my car, and I've locked them in my van twice in a month. I may reach my innovation limit soon and resort to calling AAA.

The second portion of interest was tonight at 8:30 when my sister called. Apparently she's going to be a backup singer for Lyle Lovett when he comes to Eugene, which is my sister's city of residence. I mean, it's Lyle Lovett, but on the other hand, it's Lyle Lovett. Hmm, typing doesn't convey the sentiment. I'm not a big Lyle fan, but he's definitely famous and he married Julia Roberts. When you weigh both sides, it comes out pretty cool.

P.S. My previous post was post #69. Kinky.

Here's $20 for Love

I did it. I took the plunge and signed up for Yahoo Personals for a month. I was getting a lot of Icebreakers, Yahoo's free note system. I think I have 9 so far, but only 1 from anyone I'd like to email, and now I've emailed her. We'll see how it goes.

I have gotten some weird ones though. I'm 25, extremely non-religious, a non-smoker, 5'10", and 25 years old. In my personal I list that I would like someone who is shorter than me, between the ages of 21 and 26, a non-smoker, and not too religious. My two most recent Icebreakers were from a 30 year old Evangelical Christian woman, and from a freakishly tall, 18 year old, frequent smoker. I'm not sure that anyone is actually reading my ad. They may just be drawn in by my ravishing good looks. Actually, it's probably my metal cows. They're pretty cute.

I'll let you know if I get any replies, or if they were just after my cows. I mean, why take the guy if you can get the cows for free?

A Day at the Beach

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a clothing optional beach. We chose the clothing optional kind not because of any need on our part to get naked, but because it would be less crowded. In fact, there were three of us who didn't even take off our shirts, although one was a girl. None the less, she didn't swimsuit up either.

When guys picture nude beaches, they think of a coastline covered with hot naked ladies, all tan and lying on their backs. But for the most part, nude beaches are actually full of aging and portly men. Balls-to-the-beach, sandy-assed naked dudes. Well, not totally naked. Most were wearing hats and sunglasses. There was also one guy wearing only a sweatshirt. The hat is odd, but the sweatshirt makes no sense at all.

On the bright side, there were some attractive topless women at the beach as well, some with friends, some with their boyfriends. There were two such couples that were taking a few too many liberties with the nakedness. The two couples were separated by probably two hours, but both did the same thing: Namely making out and feeling each other up in front of dog and everybody.

Turns out, the dog wasn't going to take it. We brought with us George, a friend's dog. George took it upon himself to be the Love Police, and when he saw a couple lying on top of one-another we would walk up to them and lick whomever was on top's forehead. Having your forehead licked by a strange dog must really kill the mood, because it cooled things off for a good 15-20 minutes.

The Roof is On Fire

Ok people. If you want to fill your lungs with tar, work up a nice case of emphysema, and reduce the resale value of your car by smoking, go right ahead. If it doesn't effect me, I don't care. However, today it was effecting me.

Cars, because they are designed with cancer in mind, come with ashtrays. Ashtrays are where cigarettes go to die. They are not supposed to go out the window on 80E near Dixon, nor on 113N near Davis. Especially when it's exceptionally windy. Especially when it is bone-ass dry. Especially when the freeway is surrounded on all sides, and divided by long dry grass. Lets try to suppress the retardedness.

On my way to Davis I was held up in traffic by a brush fire on 80E in the center divide. Traffic was slow for a bit, but it looked like it only burned 20 feet or so of shrubbery. (Knee!) However, when I got to Davis, then tried to leave again, I couldn't because the freeway exits were all closed due to the huge clouds of billowing smoke and sparks sent shooting across the street by the 25mph winds. So far at least 1 building has burned down. I hope they get it put out soon.

I feel safe living in San Francisco where there are no plants.

Won't You Be My Neighbor

I have new neighbors upstairs, and I hate them already. Granted, they are MUCH better than Gonzo and Bitch were, but then again, both Piranha Man and Spanky are/were better than the dreaded G&B.

(I was trying to figure out if I've ever mentioned Spanky here, but I seem to have no way of searching my past entries. At the risk of redundancy, I shall explain who he was: Spanky was a house DJ who lived directly above me. Part of my problem with him was that I would be trying to sleep but couldn't, because of the constant thump, thump, thump of his house beats coming through my ceiling. While irritating, it didn't earn him the name Spanky. What did was the summer evening when all of us fire escape neighbors had our windows open. I was trying to sleep and Spanky was upstairs getting busy. I heard the headboard up against the wall, whack, whack, whack, whack, and Spanky making happy Spanky noises. Then silence. Then the sound of hand on ass: smack, smack, smack. A female's voice, "Ow! Gently!" From that point on he was known as Spanky.)

The new neighbors, who shall remain nicknameless for the time being, are irritating in a new and creative way. It's two women and two very small dogs, all of whom have shrill but loud voices. The woman whose room is nearest the fire escape likes to call the dogs to her, then yell at them to get off the bed. She can do this for nearly an hour before the dog pees on the bed, no doubt in protest of the stupidity of the game. She doesn't like having her bed peed on, so she yells at the dog some more and shuts him out of the room. At this point she starts to sing. (This is the stage she is in now.) Her voice falls into that special range of not being bad enough to be funny, ala Piranha Man, but not quite good enough to want to listen to.

So Singy McDog Urine (I'll come up with something better eventually) has taken over the role of most annoying neighbor. After G&B left, it was re-occupied by Piranha Man with his falling asleep in front of the TV and snoring. I tried to solve the TV portion by climbing in his window one day after I was sure he was not home, and trying to program my bed-side universal remote to turn off his TV. Alas, my remote wasn't compatible. (I ask you, who buys a Portland brand TV?) So I instead solved all my evening sound problems by aiming a fan at my head before going to sleep. Low for quite noises, Medium for singing, and Hi for techno.

One day I will own a house with twice the normal insulation and A/C, at least in my bedroom. Or perhaps I can find the Cone of Silence from Get Smart on eBay and sleep in that. Whatever works.

So-So Day

Today started off poorly. Yesterday I did a delivery for a Medicare patient which required 20 odd pages of forms to be filled out and signed. I did this delivery on my way home, so I didn't give the paperwork to my boss until this morning, at which point I noticed the stack was only 3 pages high. Not good. So I took a new packet with me so I could make arrangements to meet with the family again so they could sign the missing pages.

Off to Sacramento. On my way there a dragonfly got stuck on my windshield wiper, and his tail exploded on my windshield. I don't know how many people have had dragonfly goo on their windows, but let me tell you, there's a lot of it. I mean, the portion of fly flapping around on the wiper blade was the size of a hummingbird, and there was still enough left to make it hard to see until I ran the window squirter.

Visibility taken care of, I went to pick up a large and heavy hospital bed. I found the bed, chose a door and exited. Unfortunately, I have no sense of direction inside buildings, and I chose the back door, not the front door, near which my van was parked. So I had to herd a rather ornery bed on casters for about a block, at one point only barely avoiding a collision with an SUV.

With the bed strapped safely into the van, I went to get my Medicare packet signed. The signing went smoothly, but when I got back to the van, I noticed my keys were on the dashboard and the doors were locked. What to do? Luckily, the back doors were unlocked. Unluckily, there is a perforated metal divider between the front seats and the rear of the van. But it turns out that I can just barely fit one arm and my head through the space between the divider and the door post. Attempt #1 to pull the handle and unlock the door was a failure. My arm wasn't long enough to reach. And, to add misery to defeat, there was a brief moment when I though I'd gotten my head stuck. After pushing back the panic, I moved my body a little higher and freed my head. Attempt #2 was a success, and involved my arm and head back through the space, but this time aided by a bungee cord in the role of handle hook.

All that brings us to 1pm, so I was understandably worried about the next 4-7 hours. (I'm never sure when I'll get off.) Thankfully the rest of the day was fine, and I type this unscathed but tired.

Sights and Sounds

I've seen and heard some interesting things this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If I were a better writer I would convey them with in concise paragraphs, elegantly connected with smooth and motivating transitions. But I'm not, so I'm going to make a list.

1) Too many noises: There are two people out there making their own sound effects. Sort of. I'll explain. The first was a girl I was sitting across from at a Korean barbeque place. She REALLY liked the food. Some people say "mmm, this is good," for the benefit of the chef or for their fellow eaters. Very few do the same thing repeatedly over the entire course of the dinner. "Mmm, this beef is good. MMmm. mmMMM. Oh, mmm, yummy. Ummmimmm." No one was mmming back. She was simply making yum noises for her own benefit.

The other person was a guy that entered the men's room the same time I did today. "Oooh oooh oooh," as he enters the bathroom. "Errr oh," as he tries to get his pants unziped. "Aaaaaahhhhhhh," as he empties his bladder. Then while he was washing his hands he made an impressive and wide ranging display of throat clearing noises. Then, splashing some water on his face, he left the bathroom with a conclusive, "yeeeaaaaahhhhh."

2) Camouflage: These was a man driving a Saturn on 80E who was wearing a blue and white Hawaiian print shirt. His seats were also wearing blue and white Hawaiian print. I could see his arms, legs, and head, but his torso blended perfectly with the seats.

3) Day care: In what should have been a display window of one of the House-O-Crap stores on Mission street, there was a mostly blocked off and fairly well hidden play room. Inside was a small child, probably 6 or 7, watching the smallest TV I've ever seen, and working on a puzzle on a little red plastic table, and sitting on a little blue plastic chair. He was hidden from the street by fabric which had been hung inside the windows, and hidden from the interior of the store by some fabric hung from the ceiling and a display of shoes (which included the ever popular Air Jumper brand.) I guess it's as good a place as any to leave your child if you need to be minding the store, making sure nobody walks off with a luminous, rotating colorful spiral-backed, wall-hanging of Jesus. ($9.99)

4) Last and probably least, I was driving on 80W behind a Little Caesar’s box truck. I haven't seen a Little Caesar’s Pizza in probably 10 years. If there are indeed Little Caesar’s locations in business, their numbers are probably low enough that they could easily be supplied by a guy on a moped.

Panel of Experts

I feel like I need a panel of experts with me at all times to help me get back into the dating pool. Not that I was ever a confidant social swimmer, but I really feel like I should be asking people advice this time. I'm still dependant on my relationship water-wings.

For instance, there's the whole personals thing. Should I spend $20 to send out an email? Is it a waste of money to send someone an email whose pictures indicate a level of gothness I might not be able to deal with? (But which I also find masochistically attractive.) Should I just stick to the free, but for some reason (at least it seems to me) more risky craigslist.org personals? Should I try to meet real people face to face like a normal human being?

Also, there's this girl who works at the Subway near the depot, out of which my mattress delivering is based. We kind of smiled at each other the first week. Never said anything more than what I wanted on my sandwich, and I ate there every day. (Not actually because of her, just because I like subway and am boring.) So week number 2 rolls around, and I go in for my daily sandwich, and she has her hair all done up and she's wearing waaaay too much makeup, and she keeps walking out from behind the counter to do things like put 4 ice cubes in an otherwise empty cup, and smiling at me. What does this mean? Does she want me to ask for her number? Does it mean she has a photo shoot after work and is working on a recipe that requires exactly 4 frozen blocks of water?

I also need someone to help me not say stupid stuff, and to compliment more effectively and often. When I first started going out with Kristin, I regaled her with a tale about me throwing up with such force in the toilet that a little bit got in my eye. That's not a good story to tell a prospective girlfriend. It's a wonder she stuck it out as long as she did. And saying things like, "Hey cute pants" don't convey that I think the person is cute. It conveys that I think their pants are cute, which generally I don't. I don't know cute pants from non-cute pants, I just know that someone looks nice. What I need to say is, "you look nice." But phrases like that are much to advanced and sensible for me.

All this is to say that I don't want to keep my cycle of 2-3 years between girlfriends. It's not a good cycle, and I refuse to continue it. Unless I can't help it, in which I case I'll just deal.

TGINWTGWCTTMFLA

Thank goodness I'm not with the guy who came to train me from LA right now.

I've been driving around with this guy all week under the auspice that he's going to teach me how to deliver medicinal inflatable mattresses. I've pretty much got it down, and had it down before he got here, and I'm glad he's gone home. It wasn't that he was a bad guy, but he got to be a little much by the end of the week. For some reason he decided it would be funny to insinuate that I'm gay several times a minute for the entire time we were together. For the most part I'm not offended by that kind of thing, with the caveat that it isn't constant and never ending. I mean, if someone called you a garbanzo every 15 seconds for a week, I think I would start to get offended by the end.

With that said, last weekend my roommate and I were trying to guess how many people thought we were gay. He took me to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate my newly minted job, just the two of us. The wait was 55 to 75 minutes, so we went across the street to shop for shoes for him. He tried some on, and we discussed their pros and cons: heel size, shininess, pointiness. Then we went back to the restaurant, ate our dinners, and shared a piece of cheesecake. We live in San Francisco. We were building quite a case.

The case against: I was wearing cheap, non-stylish, baggy jeans. My hair was un-styled and fluffy. My roommate was dressed equally un-stylishly and had a little tiara of cowlick hair from having his sunglasses on his head all day. We both checked out the waitresses. (I think the Cheesecake Factory's hiring policy has an attractiveness minimum.)

Next week I can happily go back to questioning my sexuality insofar as it relates to my fear of dating and meeting people. I am perhaps an anti-people-I-don't-know-sexual. Speaking of which, what's consensus on online personals? Do they work? Are they worth $20?

Bathroom Music

I've discovered that my electric shaver doesn't carry a tune nearly as well as my electric toothbrush does. It's fun to hum REM's King of Birds in harmony to bushing my teeth. But when I tried the same thing with the shaver, it just didn't sound good. I guess some grooming implements are just more musically inclined than others.

You see what happens when I don't have much of a band left?

Weight Watchers

A lot of people seem to be on the South Beach Diet of late. I've even been asked to be a SB diet partner, but the other person was kind of drunk. Also, I hadn't necessarily mentioned that I wanted to lose weight, so the proposition could have been seen as insulting.

That's not to say I don't want to lose weight. I do. I just don't want to eat well or exercise. I'm trying the power of positive thought. Once in while you read about somebody curing their cancer by thinking "leave now, tumor!" I've been thinking "be gone, fat!" It doesn't seem to be working, it's still huddled around my middle.

Which is, I guess, a fairly good place for fat to be. I don't have a round face and my ankles don't spill out over my shoes. For the most part, my fat is kept out of my head by gravity, and out of my legs by the fact that my boxer shorts are too small. This makes for a nice, hidable, centralized fat - a readily stashable love handles, boobs, and gut.

"Move it along, fat! You are not wanted around these parts."

Seriously People

Our bassist left tonight. SpiralKid is now a very small band. A band that has still never played as show. It's a good thing I have a job driving mattresses around. Without it, I don't know how I would maintain my sunny disposition.

This is SpiralKid

I'm probably the only person on Earth who hasn't seen This is Spinaltap all the way through. Be that as it may, I have seen enough of it via clips and references that I know Spinaltap had trouble keeping drummers. My band seems to have the same problem, except with both drummers and bassists, and ours don’t explode.

To tell you the truth, our bassist is fairly stable, and we've had him for quite a while. It's just that we went through probably 8 bassists before we found him, all in quick succession. Our drummers last longer, but still leave. Drummer #1 got a job with the SETI project with NASA, and went to go do that in the mountains someplace. Drummer #2 has just left because he had 2 other projects and is looking for a job. Out of a 4 person band, the lead guitarist and I are the only original members.

Every time somebody leaves, we have to relearn the songs with the replacement player. Ergo, we will NEVER play a show. So all those who would like to see SpiralKid songs performed, please come to my living room. Doors open after work and a shower, admission is free (price does not include shower). 18 and over please, and it wouldn't hurt if you were hot and female (with a great personality to match.)

No Fly Zone
(DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!)

It's a little hot today, so I opened my sliding glass door. While it's nice to have the breeze, the Mission District has all these smaller-than-house flies, but larger-than-fruit flies that come in and fly in little circles around my face. Because I'm bored, lonely, and a little strange, I tried to figure out some way to kill them.

Plan A: I have neither a fly swatter, bug spray, nor one of those cool tennis racquet shaped bug zapper things. What I do have though, are batteries, wire, and a lot of capacitors. So I tried to build a swingable bug zapper. After about an hour of tinkering, I figured out how to get some good amperage at 9V, but I only had enough wire to spread it across 1" X 1' strip. It's hard to hit a small nimble fly with something so small, and in my case something so opaque. (I strung the wires across a cardboard box lid with the middle cut out. So there was enough cardboard around the edge that it was hard to see through the middle and keep my eye on the fly.) That didn't work, on to Plan B.

Plan B: Fly-sized flame thrower. It's a little hard to aim, but very effective. When a fly takes a fireball to the face, the fly goes down. The idea is this: Hold a lighter in one hand, flame-on. In the other hand, aim a can of Binaca over the flame and away from yourself. When I fly comes in range, give it a blast of breath-freshening fire. At first I tried following them around, shooting flames hither and yon while they darted out of the way. Eventually I found it more effective to sit on the couch and wait for a fly to come circle in front of me. It took a little practice, but eventually I shot them all down.

Success: My apartment is insect free, and my living room has minty-fresh breath.

Stupid Companies

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I did fairly well in a class where we designed and simulated a basic computer processor in VHDL. All this, and yet I can't seem to get a job where I use a computer. The closest I've come is having a job selling computers. Not the same thing.

The news I alluded to a few posts ago was that I had one job offer, and one job lead that I was hoping would turn into an offer. The company who had extended me the offer had even delayed my start date so I could go on a second interview for this better job. The better job told me they would get back to me by the end of this week. What they meant was that they would get back to me at the very last little tiny smidgen of week. They called me today at 5:55pm to tell me that they had gone with another candidate. So ends a 3 day bout of intense stress over where I would be working on Monday.

On the bright side, I do have a job which will give me medical benefits, so I'll be able to go to have a check-up for the first time in many, many years. On the down side, this job doesn't have a whole lot of room for advancement. But we'll see. Who knows, maybe delivering inflatable mattresses to hospice patients will turn out to be a dream come true. One can only hope.

Also, perhaps this blog will be less about posture and large cups, and more about morbid experiences with the terminally ill. I wish I was making this up.

Elvis Rides the Bus

There is an interesting guy who rides the 27 bus from time to time. He looks like an old, puffy, and slightly ill Elvis impersonator. He has huge dyed-black, bushy mutton chop side burns, and terrible hair. The hair is also dyed black, but it's a wig. A really bad, possibly home-made Elvis inspired pompadour, which doesn't quite match the texture of the mutton chops. His wig looks like it's only living on his head temporarily until it can find someplace better to be. It isn't getting along with his sideburns, and some one is going to have to leave.

His other interesting aspect is his use of the bus. He uses a walker, so it takes him a good 2 or 3 minutes to get on the bus and get himself settled into a seat. When he gets off, it takes him another 2 or 3 minutes to unwedge himself from the seat, and hobble down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Seeing as it takes him so long to get on and off the bus, and how much trouble he has with the stairs, why does he only ride the bus 2 blocks? I've seen him twice in the past week, and he's gone the same distance from the same stops both times.

Cuppa

Some fast food places have larger cup sizes than others. For instance, the largest Subway cup is not nearly as big as the largest MacDonald's cup. So when I went to In & Out today, I couldn't remember where their cups fall in the thimble-to-bucket continuum. I guessed, incorrectly, that they had some of the smaller cups in the business. So I ordered an extra large 7-Up with no ice, and a double double with cheese. They gave me my burger in a small box, and my 7-Up in a paper vat. It was much too big to fit all the way into my cup holder. Luckily I could cram the bottom half inch of the cup far enough into the holder that it didn't jump onto the floor on my way home.

A vat of pop wouldn't have been a bad thing back when I was drinking (literally) a gallon of Coke a day. But I've cut down considerably since then, and it took me a good 3 hours to finish my 7-Up. By the end it was a tad warm and tasted a bit cuppy. It's a good thing I'm disgusting and don't care what temperature my drink is.

[Some may think this is an awfully lame post with which to break a week's worth of silence. And those people would think right. I may have actual news soon, and then I write it out here. But until then, you'll just have to make do with boring babblings on my posture and adventures with abnormally large drink containers.]

Missing Link

I caught a glimpse of my posture today in the window of Anthropology (How fitting), and discovered that I don't walk to my full evolutionary potential. My neck cranes out from my shoulders. I've know about this, and I don't think I can fix it. It's just the way my neck works. However, today my shoulders were hunched forward, and my neck was craned out to the limit. My walking posture is straight out of the Mesolithic era.

I don't know was the cause is. Self esteem? Lack of exercise? Am I Cro-Magnon? I'm good with computers and my brow ridge is only slightly pronounced, so I'm guessing it's a combination of choices 1 and 2. Ugh.

Go See It

I just went to see Control Room. It's a documentary following people from Al Jazeera from March to May (or thereabouts) at CentCom during the Iraq War. (Or at least during the part before we declared victory.)

Until hearing about the movie I didn't really have any way to rebut the notion that Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden. After seeing the movie I gained a huge respect for the people that work there and for their point of view. You really see that they are just journalists with a point of view, not really an agenda.

Whether you were for or against the war, it's a good movie to see. It really brings out a different perspective. Go see it.

Baby Wipes are Awesome

I've had this disgusting tar stuff on the front of my car since I went to LA two or so months ago. I tried to clean it off with several different things including a car wash, soap and water, and my fingernail. Today, before going to Kragen to ask what I could get tar off with, I decided to try the ever present in my trunk baby wipes. They worked great. They aren't even the fancy ones, the wipes I used were Safeway Select. So rock on baby wipes, rock on.

Profiles and Interviews

I like these profile things that people seem to have on their blogs. I didn't want to change the format on mine, because I didn't want to figure out how to put comments and tracking back in. So I just stuck a link to my profile in the corner there under my picture. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

I've changed my mind on the interviewing thing. It's actually more like being interviewed by the phone company. They give you a big window during which you have to wait at home, and then they don't call. I sent an email and I guess I'm getting called today. We'll see.

I also did a little IT work today. I was referred to a transmission repair shop by a pervious client. So I popped down there, ran an antivirus program and an anti-spyware program, and went home. It's nice to make money by sitting around watching programs run. I didn't fix a thing, but since the virus scan didn't find any viruses, the transmission guy was a happy camper.

If my phone interview goes well, assuming it goes at all, I'll consider today an overall success.

We'll Call You

I have a phone interview today to be a webcast technician. I got an email Friday saying that they would call me sometime between 12pm and 4pm. It's like I'm being interviewed by a cable company.

Three Sheets to the Wind

I finally changed my sheets tonight. That sounds kind of gross, which is accurate. I don't wash my sheets very often. However, tonight I mean that I swapped my flannel sheets for some regular cotton ones.

It was hot here today, and remains both hot and smoky in my room. (The smoke is from Piranha Man, his open window, and the fact that the wind blows from his apartment into mine.) Being as hot as it was, I decided that since I was washing my sheets anyway, maybe I should try the cotton ones on my bed. I guess I survived 4 years at Davis with flannel sheets, and people there regularly burst into flame in the summer time. Then again, why just survive when there's the option of luxuriating in the cool crisp cotton sheets of summer. And that is what I'm going to do. So there. Try and stop me.

(Some reading this may know that I suck something fierce at spelling. To those, it is interesting to note that I managed to spell luxuriating correctly without the aid of my trusty spell check. However my flannel sheets contained just one N.)

Awake

It's Saturday, and I've been awake since 9am. To a lot of people that's normal, but I've been known to sleep until noon and beyond. And It's not like I went to bed early. I went to sleep at around 3am.

The problem is that I keep having Kristin related dreams. Some with her in them, some with someone like her. Some are good, some are bad. Either way I wake up feeling depressed about it.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what my subconscious is telling me. I've had dreams where Puddy from Seinfeld tells me that "these guns are fuzzy like underwear. If these are the only weapons we have to work with, we're in for trouble." Who knows what that means? I think in this case it's pretty straight forward: I miss her.

Driving a Van

I remember saying a while back, when I had just lost my first (and best) metalworking job, that perhaps one can't have a job, band, and girlfriend all at the same time. I went along not having a job but having a girlfriend from January until this month. And now all of a sudden, no girlfriend and the jobs start rolling in. I had a phone interview today, and I should have a real interview by the end of the week, or perhaps by the beginning of next. So I'll either get this job, or start dating someone. I'm always up for a date, but the job will give me insurance. So if I get a choice, I'll choose the job.

The job is driving medical equipment around the Bay Area. I guess I get various equipment, put it in the van, and hang out until they want some of it someplace. So I drive there, tell them how to use it, and then hang out some more until someone wants something else, or until someone wants me to pick something up. If I get low on equipment or full of used equipment, I drive back to the office and swap stuff out. I think it will work out well. I like driving, I don't mind traffic, and I want both money and benefits. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Bike of Death

Today I decided I would try to take my bike for a ride. I was sort of surprised I was able to get the locks off, since I hadn't unlocked the thing for probably 2 years.

I think it needs some repairs. Both the front and rear wheels aren't very true. I know what happened to the front wheel: I ran head-on into an idiot who wasn't looking where he was going and swerved in front of me. We ran into each other front wheel to front wheel. Being roughly the same mass and traveling and roughly the same speed, we both went over our handlebars, and collided helmet to helmet in the air, then crashed down into a big heap on our bikes. I was late for a math test, so I wobbled off toward class and the other guy wobbled off toward the dorms. Ever since then, my front wheel has a noticeable side-to-side wobble.

So the front wheel was maimed in 1999. I have no idea what happened to the back wheel, but it doesn't ago around well either. It's as if it's partially flat on one side, and then has the side-to-side wobble as well. Front and back wobbles make stopping exciting, because when the wobbly bit gets to the brake pads, the brakes grab extra hard. In addition, the back wheel is made of steel, and is therefore all rusty and makes a terrible honking noise when I try to stop. With the front wobble, the back wobble, and the rust-on-brake pad noise, it sounds like I'm tying to ride a tortured, but oddly rhythmic, dying goose.

I also don't have a helmet. I wonder how much it would cost for a helmet and goose-to-bike conversion.

Better Days

Today was a much better day. I didn't have to deal with work. (Apart from a sparse 10 minutes where I just pointed out the locations of the various software CDs.) I also had band practice, which is always fun. (We are sounding much better, and our new drummer is learning the songs well. Maybe one day we'll have a show.) And the coup de gras, I found a beagle in my garage.

I went down to the garage to see if my bike was a huge pile of rust, and if spraying WD-40 over everything but the brakes would fix it, and I heard howling. I opened the door and a little beagle came trotting over to me howling away in her harness, sans leash. I hadn't previously seen a beagle in my building, so I took her up to my apartment and fashioned a leash out of a belt and carabineer so I could walk her up the street and see if anyone recognized her. No one did. So then I asked around in my building. Also no luck. At this point I did what I should have done in the first place, which is look at her collar and call the chip-tag phone number. I did, and the owner promptly came and got her. She was fun while she lasted.

I do enjoy fuzzy things in my apartment. I miss having a pet. I miss Babe the Beagle.

Totally Week You Guys

What a terrible week. There's the relationship thing, and then there's the work thing. Since I already explained the relationship thing, in this post I'll explain how and why I started and ended a job this week.

My first issue was with some computers I built. I feel comfortable saying that I'm pretty good with computers. I guess the four computers I was working with weren't comfortable with me saying that. They hated me and refused to cooperate. When I finally got them to (mostly) cooperate, I had to move each computer to several different locations, set it up, shut it down, and move it again. I wonder if I was on candid camera.

My next issue was the boss-employee relations. The boss is aggressive, intimidating, and very matter of fact. He makes me feel uncomfortable, unintelligent, and his constant indoor smoking gives me a headache. He likes to give job assignments like cleaning up the desk when the desk is covered with his personal paperwork. I don't know where any of that stuff goes.

Then there was the lamp. I hate this lamp. It's cursed, or maybe I'm cursed. It's this fluorescent desk lamp with a magnifying glass in the middle. It didn't turn on when he set me to fixing it, and it doesn't turn on now that it's my last day. There are only so many pieces in a lamp, and I replaced and/or tested all of them. It just refuses to function. But apparently it's not going in trash because the boss once pulled a steel splinter out of somebody's eye with it. He’s sentimental.

The final straw was the alarm. Today I went to lunch, and when I got back I was to continue painting my desk white. On my way to lunch, boss man said that we would be out getting some stuff, and that I was to unlock the door and turn off the alarm with the code: 45 45 45. So when I came back from lunch, I opened the door, and typed in 45 45 45. Keeps beeping. 45 45 45. Still beeping. Why isn't it stopping? 45! 45! 45! Now the siren is going off. Sirens are LOUD. PAINFULLY LOUD! 45454545454545!!!! Cancel. Motion off. None of these buttons do anything! So I sat in my car, outside and away from the siren, until the landlord came by, and tried to turn off the alarm. He couldn't do it either. So I sat in my car some more, until the boss came back, and told me the code was 45 45. He punches in the code. Nothing happens. Again, nothing happens. So he rips the siren off the wall. Ah, why did I think of that? Why wouldn't it turn off when he typed in the right code? Why did he tell me an extra 45?

Most importantly, why did all this happen this week? I wonder if my arm will fall off or my car will explode tomorrow. I think this week needs a capper. Maybe I'll get a steel splinter in my eye.

Haibreakupkus

I often become
just a friend. But not after
six months of dating.

I’m not so sure that
I will become her pal now.
I don’t feel friendly.

No Sleep. Bum. 'Till Breakfast. Bum Bum.

I hate getting broken up with. Not that I’ve had that much experience. Ok, this is the first time it's ever happened. But with my new found experience I can safely say that I hate being broken up with.

The first stage is worrying that something is wrong. Why isn't she being affectionate? Why does she say that she wants to be "alone" but still hangs out with her friends? Where did the I-love-you's go?

Stage two is worrying that something is up. “I think she may break up with me. That would explain the weirdness. I think I won't sleep for two days.”

Stage three sucks. Stage three is when I get an email that says the relationship is being reassessed, and I get it at work so I have to just think about it for 8 hours: no escape or outlet for my worries. The email ends with an "I want to talk to you when you get off work." - never a good sign.

Stage four sucks worse than stage three. It's waiting for the call. It's calling to see what happened to the call. It’s being called back because she's too busy to break up with me right now, she's hanging out with friends.

Two hours later stage 5 hits. It's pretty simple: a phone call break up.

Stage 6: Move all x-girlfriend related paraphernalia into a box in the closet.

Stage 7: More not sleeping. Being sad. Lots of sad insomnia.

I hate being broken up with.

Boom!

Yesterday was a cold, cloudy, and windy 4th of July. This is not to say that it wasn't fun, it's just to say that it was cold and not very fireworky.

A bunch of us went down to the Marina to sit on the grass and watch the fireworks, which were to be launched about a mile down the shore. Our first problem was that we got there at 7:30ish, and the fireworks started at 9ish. We had food, drink, and things to talk about, but it was a tad cloudy and the wind was picking up. So by the time 9ish came, we were all pretty cold.

When the fireworks did start, it actually took 5 or so minutes of discussion to figure out if they had actually started. It had gotten so cloudy, that the fireworks would shoot up into the air and disappear. Then sparks would come down from the clouds a few seconds later. So while I imagine people right near the launch site saw up, boom, and down, we only saw up and down. Although sometimes a big one would go up and the clouds would glow various colors.

We were not, however, totally without the boom portion of festivities. People brought some really nice high-flying big-booming fireworks from home, which they let off over the field. So those were nice, if not a little sparse. I don’t know where people got such nice fireworks, and why the 9,000,000 cops didn’t do anything about the people lighting them off.

The quote of the evening was as follows:

"Hey look! It's a pregnant guy."
"No, I think he's just Indian."

[The first part was commenting on the otherwise fairly skinny man's very protruding potbelly. The second part was someone thinking the first part was about the man's native garb, which did look slightly like maternity wear when combined with the belly.]

Job?

I may have gotten a job. It may be in a metal shop, and I may be the only employee.

I met this guy via the Mom Network - "the most aggressive job hunting network in the history of the world." Kristin's Mom was talking to this guy on a plane who had a metal shop in San Francisco. She said she knew me, and that I was looking for work and used to work in a metal shop. So on Tuesday I'm going to start a 2 week trial period employment thinger. It's just the owner working there now, so I will be the only employee. We have to see if we like each other, and if we do, then I will have more permanent employment.

If it works out, I will probably go to New York with him to install this door. That would be really cool, as I've never been there. However, I did get very used to reading and watching TV while the government paid me to lackadaisically look for work. I guess in the back of my mind, I knew it had to end some time. Oh well.

Letter Snippet

I thought in honor of Kristin being home, although still not feeling well, I would publish a small portion of one of my written-in-advance letters.

Here's part of one from Father's Day.

[Today I went to] Napa to visit the various available dads. My Dad came down for both Father’s Day and for my Grandpa’s birthday. So that was pretty fun. Both my cousins were there, as well as Sebastian, Ward and Beth’s pug. He is affectionately called Bebo. I’m not sure why he’s called Bebo, but that’s what they call him. Who am I to argue?

At dinner, a green olive (the kind with the pimento inside) fell off the table. Bebo grabbed it and ran to the middle of the living room. Ward got up to take it away from him, and for some reason, instead of just swallowing it like a normal dog would do, he held the olive in his teeth and barked at Ward to go away. His little jowls hung down around the olive tight enough so that it made an excellent seal, and when he barked he shot the pimento through the air and into Uncle Ed’s wine glass. Then, knowing he was all amazinged out, Bebo swallowed the olive. These are exactly the kind of things that should happen on reality shows, but don’t.

My real Father's Day wasn't nearly as exciting as the fake one contained in my fake letter. But what can you do?

Oddly Awake

Strangely enough, it's 4:00 AM, and I'm still very much awake. I woke up at 9:45 AM, which is much earlier than I was expecting to wake up. I didn't get to bed until 3:00 AM the night before, so I should be much more tired than I am. I also seem to have neglected to eat dinner, and breakfast. All I’ve eaten today is a 6 inch sub, 1 large drink, 1 16oz Arizona green tea, and the last few gulps of my orange pineapple guava juice. That’s it: my whole day's worth of eats.

Perhaps I'm a perpetual motion machine. Perhaps it's just a combination of having a really good band practice and being relieved that Kristin is safe at home. The world may never know because now I’m going to bed.

Coming Home

I don't have to worry about Kristin being sick anymore, because she's coming home. She'll be back the USA, land of the mostly microbe free drinking water and reliable medical care. I shall be much relieved when get to see her away from the vastly unpleasant El Salvador.

I tried to call her several times tonight. I got through the first time fine, but when I called back the front desk guy wouldn't patch me through. I have no idea why he wouldn't patch me through because he didn't speak English, and I don't speak Spanish. So I would slowly ask for "sitio dos diez por favor." (Thanks to Babelfish) Then he would say something very fast and full of Spanish. Then I would say, "okay por favor" and hang up. It was only after I'd called 3 times over the course of about a half hour that I realized I was saying, "okay please." After the third call, I waited an hour in hopes that the line would become un-busy, or that someone else would start answering the phone. When I did call back it was the same guy, but I got through fine. Although he almost faked me out by saying something that had the word "no" in it. He was probably telling me never to attempt Spanish again.

A Whole Lotta Day

I'm exhausted from a mostly good, but extremely tiring day. Today I:

-Got a tentative job at a metal shop at which I may do metal work, a website, and computer construction. All shall be discussed and decided in the coming weeks. If all goes well, I'll get to go to New York to install a big metal door. I've never been there, but I would sure like to go.

-Carried big, thick sheets of glass around, set them in huge aluminum shoes, poured pour stone around them, and climbed around on some rickety-ass scaffolding. Actually, apart from the scaffolding bit, I've been doing this one all week, but today was the last day of it.

-Discovered via a phone call from her mother, that my girlfriend has an intestinal parasite and is in the hospital in El Salvador. (First she was in El Salvador, and then got the parasite. She was not flown to a hospital in El Salvador after contracting it here. That would be dumb.) So I'm worried about her despite reports that she's doing much better and will be fine.

-Went to an excellent concert where Mike Doughty’s Band headlined, and where Keaton Simons opened the show. Doughty was great, as I was sure he would be, and despite not being in my usual musical genre of choice, Keaton Simons was good as well. I shall not mention the middle band other than to say they were distinctly middling.

-Wrote a blog entry.

-Went to bed.

People in Cars Are Dumb

Today I saw a retarded piece of driving, inspired by a retarded bit of traffic.

As I was getting on to a very backed up freeway, there was a woman in a small white station wagon that was trying to escape the traffic jam. She had tried to drive up the embankment and onto the onramp in hopes of weaving through oncoming traffic to get back to the side roads. But in trying to do this, she had high-centered her car on the embankment, and was now sitting immobile in her car, perpendicular to everyone getting on the freeway, talking animatedly on her cell phone. Just to rub it in, a land rover effortlessly did what she what she was trying to do when she got her car stuck. I guess SUVs do have a purpose.

Her valiant escape attempt was caused by the afore mentioned retarded bit of traffic (RBOT). The RBOT was a result of a sweeping line of flares that started in the far left lane and that arced all the way over to the right lane, leaving only the exit lane free. Everyone merged from 4 lanes to 1 exit lane, and drove thusly for a quarter mile. Then there was another sweeping line of flares positioned exactly the same way. 2 sets of flares and no accidents or police presence gets people suspicious, so at the second line of flares everyone merged back to fill up the 4 lanes, some people driving right over the still burning flares.

There was no reason for the flares, which means there was no reason for the traffic, which means there was no reason for the lady to get her self stuck by trying to drive up the side of a freeway onramp. Then again, there aren't many reasons for driving the wrong way up a freeway onramp.

Bowling for Bozos

This Friday a bunch of went bowling in Colma, land of the dead. According to Stuff Magazine, "Colma is home to 1,100 living people. And 1.5 million dead ones." Colma has many, many graveyards, a small population, and a 24-hour bowling alley.

This bowling alley has, among other things, 25$/hr games, a twitchy employee with Grease-the-Musical Hair in front and a ponytail in back, free socks, and TVs over every lane to play animations that make fun of you when you get gutter-balls. The screen also tells you whose turn it is, and what the scores are. By far the best part of the screen is that it tells you how fast your last bowl was. Since I suck at bowling, Amos and I decided to go for the land speed bowling record.

Amos is quite a bit taller than I am and he doesn't sit on the couch all day. So I was pretty sure we was going to win. He made a good effort, but in the end, to everyone's surprise, I won. His best was 20.8 miles per hour, while my best was a blistering 21.13 miles per hour. My previous best (and my actual best frame in terms of speed and score) was the strike I threw at 20.78 miles per hour. And to top it all of, on the second game I bowled a 107.

Now for the blog posting's title namesake. Bowling next to us was a number of dancing obsessed teens. (There were two Justin Timberlake look-a-likes in the bowling alley that night. One was in this group.) Before every shot, they would dance along to the music like some R&B video, except set in a bowling alley. There were lots of kicks and fancy turns, and at one point one of them did the worm. They also spiced up the game by bowling with 2 balls at once (1 ball stayed in the gutter for a half hour) and with 2 people at once (both balls made it safely behind the gate).

This is not to say that trying to bowl as fast as you can awesome-tastic, and maybe my lack of ability to move my hands and feet at the same time colors my opinion, but I feel that dancing and bowling don't mix. I suck at, but still like bowling. I suck at, and greatly dislike dancing. So dancing can just keep its distance from my bowling. I make this decree as the land speed bowling champion of the land of the dead.

Too Much Writing

Part of the reason I haven't posted anything in quite a while was the afore mentioned trip to LA. The other part of the reason for not posting was that I was trying to write 31 letters for Kristin to read while she's in El Salvador.

It was much harder than I thought it was going to be to write 31 letters. Each letter is about a page long, so there’s the shear volume of the writing weighing me down. Then to cap it off, all these letters are written as if I was writing them in the coming month, so I had to make up all my news and daily happenings. While some of the letter contained the dull and ordinary, some contained: encounters with homeless men selling gigantic stuffed giraffes, flaming cinnamon bears, flaming mustache hair, and Iraqi politics.

As a result of writing all these letters, my brain is tired. I'm surprised by how much writing takes out of me. I'm genuinely pooped. And it's only 9:15pm.

Home Sweet Home

Wow. How's this for a long time between posts? I win the award for laziest blogger.

I just got back from LA. I drove down to pick up my roommate who rode the Aids Lifecycle. For those not in the know, everyone on the ride has to raise $2500. Then they ride their bikes (pedal bikes mind you) from San Francisco to Los Angeles over 7 Days. It's pretty ridiculous.

But so is LA. I can believe how weird and not city like LA is. It's all freeways and strip malls. You can tell when you are leaving one city and entering another, because it all looks exactly the same.

We ate dinner down there at an In and Out Burger attached to a (non-strip, but indoor) mall. I had a 6 hour drive ahead of me, but after eating, I was dreading the walk back through the mall. It was the longest mall I've ever seen. It just kept going, and going, and going, and there were only 2 directories in the whole place. It probably took us 20 to 30 minutes to find the In and Out, and we may not have if we hadn't met up at the last minute with someone who had been there before.

Beyond the strip mall ugliness is the air and driving ugliness. It was round about 90 degrees yesterday and the sky was blue. But only if you were looking straight up. As I moved my head down toward the horizon, the sky went from blue, to blue-grey, to grey-blue, to grey. Things that weren't very far away were hazy. Yuck.

Finally, everyone in LA drives like they are the only one on the road. This is not to say that every car in San Francisco is piloted by Mrs. Manners, but these people just assume they have the right of way in ALL situations. Apart from the numerous freeway near-hits, the most blatant stupidity was the guy driving an El Camino out of the parking lot of a gas station. He just drove right out into the very busy street I was on without stopping or checking to see if there was room. (There wasn't any.) Am actually not sure how he managed not to hit anyone. Maybe he drives like that because it's a magic car.

I'm glad I live in San Francisco.

The Hiccup Questions Answered

Did my hiccups go away? Yes. Did they take their sweet time in doing so? Most definitely.

I noticed after my first little meal that eating seemed to make the hiccups go away for a short while. So later on I had some toast, which did the trick for about a half hour. But sure enough, the hiccups came back. Luckily I really like toast, so I had some more. And while toast part II was scrumptious, the hiccups didn't go away. So from that point I hiccupped straight on through 'til 11:45pm.

I did try several other things to get rid of them. Among them:

-Drinking water out of the far side of the glass. (This involves bending way forward and drinking from the top of your mouth. This is also an excellent way to fill your nose with water.)
-Holding my breath and swallowing a big gulp of air. (This is a good way to burp and hiccup at the same time.)
-Drinking water through a paper towel. (This is a fine way of wasting a paper towel.)
-Kristin trying to scare me. (This didn't work because Kristin is far too cute to be scary.)

In the end, it was best to read Harry Potter and wait for the hiccups to leave of their own accord.

When I told my Dad about my bout with hiccups, he said that my uncle once had the hiccups for 4 days and had to go to the hospital. I'm glad I only heard about this after I was done. I imagine hiccups and panic attacks are a bad mix.

Olive Juice in the Land Down Under

I hate my god damn hiccups! I never get hiccups. Apart from a brief but lovely 45 minutes, I've had hiccups since about 3 o'clock. That's 3 hours and 45 minutes of hiccups! ARGGG!

Lots of people get hiccups, and don't complain about them because they are used to them. I, on the other hand, NEVER get hiccups. What I usually get is hiccup. Yep. Sometimes after a big meal, I will hiccup once, or on rare occasions, twice, and that will be the end of it. It has been years and years and years since I've had hiccups last for more than 30 seconds.

According to the National Organization of Rare Disorders, Inc. (NORD) on their chronic hiccups page, "Hiccups are caused by irritation of nerves or the brain medullary centers that control the muscles used in breathing, especially in the diaphragm." So it doesn't make any sense that any of the wife's tale hiccup remedies will work: Holding your breath and swallowing. Holding your breath and sipping water, drinking water through a paper towel, injecting your diaphragm with Botox. Actually, the last one might work, but I don't have any Botox. Even so, I've tried them all (apart from the Botox bit) and I still have them.

Even worse, I've started getting double hiccups. I'll hiccup twice in rapid succession, like my diaphragm is pretending to be a heart wearing a big lung hat. Bum bum. Bum bum. This does not please me in the slightest.

About an hour ago I got a little hungry and ate some turkey lunchmeat in which I had rolled some black olives. This was not only satisfying, but also seemed to make my hiccups go away. It was well worth the half-a-can of olive juice I spilled on the crotch of my pants. Until 15 minutes ago. Now it was not worth it, because I still have my god damn hiccups! And my pants smell like olives.

Driving, Leukemia, and a Denim-clad Chihuahua

People need to post to their blogs more often. What am I supposed to read if there aren't any new posts? The newspaper? Books? Magazines? Be serious people. [He says in his first post since Tuesday.]

On Friday I went to traffic school. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be; but it definitely had its odd/disturbing moments.

The first oddity of traffic school is the name. Mine was Comedy Traffic School. But they all have weird names like that. Nu Tech Traffic School. Lettuce Amuse U Traffic School. Cheap-4-Less Traffic School. Odddely Speeeled Lame-Name Traffic School. I guess since there are 1,000,005 traffic schools they have to come up with different names, but couldn't they be less weird? They all made me hesitant to sign up. What's wrong with Ed's Traffic School? Or Acme Traffic School? Something that doesn't make me go into it dreading 8 hours of somebody failing to be funny.

The rest of the oddities all had to do with the class itself. When the teacher was asking why those of us* who raised our hands don't wear our seat belts, one guy had this to say: "I have leukemia, so I won't survive so much as a cut or bruise. It would just be more convenient if I died in an accident." Makes sense to me. He also drives a motorcycle and smokes. I'll bet when no one is looking he runs with scissors.

The only other weirdo worth mentioning was a girl who brought her Chihuahua to the last 4 hours of class in a black, nylon, zipper-topped bag. She said that she couldn't leave it at home for too long. She put the bag on the floor, and to better conceal the squirming, she put her jean jacket on top of the bag. To the dog's credit, it was superbly behaved. I guess Chihuahuas aren't claustrophobic. If I were zipped into a nylon bag on the floor with a jacket over me, I think I might freak out a little. Then again, I can be left alone for more than 8 hours at a time.

* By us, I mean we the students. And by we the students, I mean not me. I always wear my seatbelt.

Stop Biting You Fool!

Tonight I tried to eat a pepperoncini. Tried and failed. I started to take a bite and a little jet of pepperoncini juice shot across the table. At this point a wiser man would have put the pepper down, but I am not a wise man. I thought, "a little juice came out. It's probably empty now." It wasn't.

I took a much bigger bite and a jet of pepperoncini juice went all over the table, the money, the chair across the table from me, and worst of all, up my left nostril. When my teeth finally cleared the backside of the beast the rest of the pepperoncini's vast juice reservoir dumped all over my side of the table. I think the Punchline Comedy Club, who was kind enough to give me 10 free tickets, will never smell the same again. Even if it does, I won't notice since all smells taken in through the left side of my nose are overpowered my essence of pepperoncini - the most juice pepperoncini that ever existed.

Days of Chunder

Here are some things I've learned today:

1) Second hand smoke is bad for me. Sitting in a big cloud of it for 15 minutes today gave me a HUGE headache, and then made be chunder in the bushes.

2) Good Frickin' Chicken serves some good frickin' chicken. In addition, they bring you your drink and give you free refills. Also, the chicken comes with this flat bread and garlic spread stuff which are both really good.

3) My voice goes away a little after talking on the phone for 3 hours straight.

4) People who stay standing on their bicycles at intersetions are usually on fixed gear bikes.

5) If you type math into your Google bar, or into the Google search page, it gives you the answer. It's going to be both my spellchecker and calculator. Google is awsome.

6) Illegal mp3 downloads are becoming harder and harder to come by.

I'm not sure if this last one is becuase the record companies are succeding in making people not share music, or because the music I download seems to be unreleased in the US, and no one in the UK uses Kazaa. I wonder if there is a popular file sharing program in the UK that I don't know about. Time to do some googling.

Zork and Drums

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Or maybe it wasn't either. I guess what I'm saying here is that I got both good and bad news today.

The good: Kristin gave me a laptop that had been sitting around in the textiles room at SF State since sometime around 1987. I'm not sure if that's true, but that's the copyright date on the laptop’s manual. It's a Toshiba T1100 Plus, which according to the manual, is state of the art and ways under 10 pounds. It has 256KB of ram, and 2 3.5'' disk drives. Actually, I think my laptop circa 1999 weighs about the same as my new DOS beastie. I've been looking around on the internet for ZORK. I think I've found it, so I have to see if I can write to non-Double-Density disks. The T1100 Plus doesn't even have a hard drive. It's awesome.

The bad: Sanj, the drummer for SpiralKid, my band, has just gotten a job on the SETI project. One might remember SETI from the movie "Contact" staring Jodie Foster. Perhaps he'll go walking on a beach after falling through a huge alien produced machine, and a blurry representation of his father will tell him he should come back and play drums for us so we can finally play show. Was that reference too much of a long-shot?

What will become of SpiralKid? Will ZORK run? Do I have the latest version of DOS? Can a blog get dorkier than this one has become? All this and more will be revealed in the coming installments of

...

Don't Read This, It's Not Good

TiVo? No

The message has been sent. I am a "Top Candidate" but they are finalizing a deal with a better, perhaps Topper, Candidate. But if that falls through, then they will "let me know." There are so many "quotation marks" in that intro.

On the bright side, I seem to be doing some freelance computer fixing and metal installation. All of which should come in handy after unemployment runs out. There also seems to be an upsurge in jobs which might be a good fit for me. All I have to do is apply for them. Easier said than done. I hate to write cover letters, I despise making phone calls, and I can't eat much before interviews for fear of upsetting my over-sensitive innards. But the quest for money never dies, and so I shall stress onward until I too have enough money so that I don't have to work anymore.

When is retirement? 65? 40 more years doesn't seem like enough time to come up with a life savings if I want to buy anything. I guess the money grows a lot faster when you get a job that pays more than 13$/hour. My goal is to one day have a yearly salary that matches that of a teacher. That would be the life.

A Lovely and Fruitful Evening

Or not. I started it out with a monotonous dinner of green beans and almonds, which I made myself, and which were, as a result, not very good. But I had a lot of them and they were in a bowl. I guess those can be counted as positives.

I followed dinner with going to see Muse, or try to. I had 4 people lined up to see them with me, and it ended up just being me. I hate organizing these things. Actually, if you count up the total number of people who didn't see Muse tonight, that number would be 5. There were no advanced tickets, so I waited in line from 7:30 until 9 (when the doors where supposed to open) until 10 (when the doors where supposed to open (again)) until 11:45 when the police came and made us go home. The club security guard kept saying no one was getting in, and yet the line kept moving forward. He didn't have much credibility until the Police came. So that was cold and boring.

On the way back to my car they where sandblasting the sidewalk, so now I have sand in my eyes. To cap it all off, I have a great big headache, I smell like a cigarette from all the smokers in line, and Piranha man has fallen asleep in front of his TV. And now someone is buzzing my buzzer. Hmm, it seems to be a drunken, mustachioed man who is looking for someone named Robert. I think I'm not going to let him in.

I need to get this night over with.

Miscellaneous

There were a lot of sleep paraphernalia out last night. In the 8 blocks between my and Kristin's house I saw 2 mattresses, 1 box spring, and 1 pillow. They were fairly evenly distributed along 21st street, and seemingly unrelated. Things are often offered to the street. I know on the few occasions when I've tried to clean out my room, I will leave stuff on the street for a few hours. Then whatever the street doesn't want I give to the goodwill or throw away. It's a good system.

Today I took advantage of being unemployed and it being the first Tuesday of the month and went to see the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art free of charge. It was pretty cool. I had only seen it once before, and only for 45 minutes due to some flaky invitationing. Among the highlights where two busts, one made of chocolate and the other of soap, some big aluminum dream people sculptures, a very realistic looking, and as a result disturbing miniature naked man under a sweater sculpture, and last but not least, a larger than life-size anime style girl sculpture with huge breasts where "squirting" blue milk from one nipple, around her back, and into the other nipple. I guess it was a comment on the disturbingly sexual aspects of anime, but I mostly just though it was weird. But weird often interesting and therefore good.

Tomorrow I go to traffic court and try to get my fine reduced from 400$ to 50$.

Adult Content

I was sitting on the toilet yesterday, and felt a tickle on my ass. I jumped up and spun around, and the tickle jumped down into my boxer shorts, which where at about knee level. I danced around until a medium sized mosquito hawk flew up from my undergarment and landed on my towel. I cursed it, squished it, and flushed it.

We have ants that come visit my bathroom from time to time, so I have always worried that something like that will happen, but no amount of fearing the unlikely prepared me for the real deal. Bug-Ass go-time. With the combination of the running into the door and amphibious insects, I think I'm just going to avoid the bathroom from now on.

Burst Into Flame

It's hot. Well, hot for a San Francisco: 91. Ok, it WAS 91, now it's cooler, but still too hot to sleep on flannel sheets. I should probably get some non-flannel sheets. And it's only April. We still have real summer, and then Indian summer to look forward to. I really should get some non-flannel sheets.

I walked to and from Kristin's house tonight. It was weird to see everyone out on the street. No on has AC here, so when it gets hot inside, it stays that way. Everyone was sitting in their lawn chairs on the sidewalk. It felt very community oriented, except I don't speak Spanish, so I couldn't really be too involved with the community.

On the way home at midnight the city was weird as well. It was super quiet. I could hear my own footsteps from time to time, and I like to think I have some pretty quiet footsteps. I accidentally sneak up on people all the time. It was just hot and quite for the whole 15 minute walk. It felt kind of movie-like. But then again, I might just watch too many movies, and it should have just felt life-like.

Constants

I always run into the bathroom door at night. Always. I know that if Amos has used the bathroom, he closes the door. Even with this knowledge, I can't bring myself to either turn on the light so I can see, or feel around in the dark to see if the door is closed before walking through. So every night the same thing happens: I walk out of my dark room, into the dark hallway, thump myself into the closed door, jump back in surprise, open the door, do what I need to do, and then explicitly leave the door open on the way out. I'm only smart at the end.

I can't seem to learn to spell without the aid of spell check either. I guess some things are fundamentally unlearnable for me.

Phones

Since I'm already nerding it up by posting on my blog, let's go full force by talking about my battle with Kristin's phones. Her house is split into 3 units: basement apartment, middle floor apartment, and the upstairs apartment where she lives. It used to be a regular house and so all the units share a single power, gas, and water meter. But everyone needs their own phone, so there are 3 phone boxes. However, there are roughly 1000 wires running in and around those 3 boxes. One of the jacks in the house quit working for no reason, so I set out to fix it. The odd thing about it is that it is a lone ranger kind of jack, which is not attached to the phone system of the rest of the house. The phone cable goes right out through the wall, over the house, and into the rat's nest. Why would they do this? It must have been another line at some point, but then why would it quit working all random style? And why are there several Ethernet cables strung about in the rats nest? It's like someone was trying to network the neighborhood. Who wired these things? Is there a map someplace?

TiVo

For those of you that I don't talk to on a regular basis (I think there is maybe one person who fits that description), my TiVo interview went well (I hope). I answered all their questions to (what I think) was their satisfaction. I hope to hear something after they are done interviewing in 2-3 weeks.

As a side note, 2 out of my 4 interviewers had poppy seeds in their teeth. Luckily I checked my teeth in the mirror before going in, so I at least had one point over them dental hygienically. Although they got company barbeque hamburgers for lunch, and I ate at MacDonald's. So they get a point over me gastrointestinally. 1-1. Even.

Cast of Characters

In the previous post I referred to many of my neighbors without too much explanation of who they are. So here is said explanation.

Gonzo and Bitch: These two are the couple that lives upstairs and across the fire escape from me. I’m not sure if Gonzo actually lives there, but he’s over quiet a bit. G and B have a mercurial relationship. It goes from singing duets to silly music, where each one has his or her own part worked out, to screaming at each other and shaking the building. I think Gonzo’s name is actually Gonzo, but I have no idea what Bitch’s real name is. In fact, just recently Gonzo, Bitch, and a new player, Jessica were fighting up stairs, and Jessica called Bitch, Bitch as well. So, on second thought, perhaps her name is Bitch.

Their fights are both violent and really, amazingly stupid. They each pick their arguing sentence and then yell it at the other person over and over. Neither changes the sentence for a good 5-10 minutes. After the allotted time has passed, then they pick a new sentence and yell that for the next 5-10 minutes, on at infinitum or until someone storms out.

Piranha Man: PM lives on my floor and across the fire escape. He is so named for one of his many TV comments. He once said, and I quote, “Piranha tank? I would not jump into a piranha tank. They would not eat … they would eat me.” I love how he goofed in the middle. (The recording was done once to see what gems I could get on tape. That was one of them.)

Anyhow, he goes on like that all the time. He says things like “The Mayflower? That’s ok.” Who knows what that means? And once he was on the phone and went on a cliché bender. “I’m just a simple boy from the farm.” “I’ll never go down that road again.” “I knew he was too good to be true.”

And so, in a nutshell, these are my neighbors. At least the weird ones. I have plenty of nice ones too, but they aren’t that much fun to write about.

Sing It Child!

I’m surprised at how unabashed my neighbors are when their windows are open. I guess your apartment feels like someplace safe, someplace where no one will hear you scream … out Sweet Home Alabama at the top of your lungs. I do this too; I play the guitar and sing. But I also sing on the way from my car to my apartment, and in the store, and when someone is talking to me. As far as I can tell, no one else in my building sings in public. They restrict themselves to singing at top volume in their apartments with their windows open.

It’s really not private. I have to wonder: Do they know I can hear them? Gonzo and Bitch were singing a duet today. Gonzo sounds like a long time smoker with a Mexican accent version of Special Ed from Crank Yankers, and Bitch just sounds shrill.

Piranha Man is always singing to himself. He’ll really break into song if he’s been drinking. (I’m kind of assuming about the drinking here, but he kind of slurs and mumbles. Gonzo, oddly enough, sings when he’s sober. He fights with Bitch when he/they are drunk. Again with the assuming and the slurring.)

To further distance myself from my neighbors, I also want to point out that I restrict my public outbursts to music. Gonzo and Bitch loudly and physically argue with the windows open. Piranha Man comments on whatever he happens to be watching on TV, talks on the phone, and has even been known to diddle himself with not only the window open, but with the shades partway up. I tell you, seeing that was a most unpleasant way to start my day. I leave my shades down 24/7 now.

Have I ever explained who these people are? If not, I shall do so in the next post.

Hire Me

Yikes. I have an interview tomorrow. I’m both excited and scared to death. The interview is with TiVo, which I gather is a fun place to work. And I do love my TiVo, so there is already some company loyalty. In addition, the job is a good one as far as growth opportunities are concerned. It would be nice to finally start a career.

The scared to death part of it comes from the having to not only talk to strangers, but having to get those strangers to like me enough that they want to pay me to come work for them. I don’t even like asking where things are in the store.

On the bright side, I really truly believe I can do the job well. So if I can just convince the fine people at TiVo of the same thing, I should be all set. Maybe I should bring them some cookies or something.

Hot Rod

My apartment building has a garage that everyone shares. There are two entrances, and it extends beyond the building, leaving one space directly behind the middle of the building which is big enough for a car, but which is hard to get if all the real spots are taken. As a result, the owners of the building use it to store stuff like a big, dead pickup and piles of trash. Well, today along with their pile of trash, they have parked their Ford Festiva. I hadn’t noticed up until today just how awesome their particular Festiva is. It has a spoiler. A SPOILER!!!

In my experience, most vehicles, even people-powered vehicles like bikes and skateboards, need spoilers more than a Festiva does. Festivas have little tiny wheels. They have little tiny engines. They are little tiny cars. They have trouble going 70mph.

A Festiva engine has 63 hp. To give you an idea of the scale, my underpowered, 4-cylinder Camry has 108hp, the Model T from 1932 had 65hp, and the Festiva has 63hp. What I’m getting at here is that the Festiva isn’t in much danger of its rear wheels coming off the ground in racing situations. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the ridiculous contraption.



Oh, and as a second bit of weirdness, the car is parked perpendicularly to the other cars in the garage. Maybe it’s parked thusly to best showcase its awesomeness.

Hang Up and Ride

Lots of people don’t like it when drivers talk on their cell phones while driving. If it’s going to make you swerve, then I’m not a big fan either, but I do it, so I don’t really have any right to point fingers. However, there is another group of cell phone users, which I do feel I should point a finger at: bicyclists.

Twice tonight I had to be very mindful of people riding their bikes and talking on the phone. One was using his right hand to hold phone (which restricts his braking ability to the front wheel) and swerving around while trying to ride up a steep hill on Hill (kind of confusing, Hill Street being such a hilly street). Hill is not a wide street, but you can get two cars passing with ample room to spare. But it turns out that one guy on a bike, talking on the phone, takes up about as much space as a car and a half.

The second guy was using his left hand for the phone, but holding it to his right ear, which was making him wobbly. He was a little better than Guy #1 in that he wasn’t swerving. I was mostly worried that he was going to fall off and land under my tires.

The worst offender in this genre was about a month ago. A guy came zipping along, through a red light, talking on a phone, with NO hands on the handlebars. I give him a lifespan of about 10 or 15 more minutes.

I’m all for watching out for, and being respectful to, bicyclists. It’s important not to drive in their lane, and to watch for them when you make a turn. But it’s hard to keep feeling respectful and vigilant when they glare at you after you almost hit them as they are running a red light, through a blind intersection, going nearly 30Mph.

Notivation

Aren’t people supposed to have some motivation? Where is mine? Was I born without it? Did I loose it in a tragic couch incident?

I can’t sleep, so I wake up late, which makes it harder to go to sleep, which makes me stay up later, which makes me wake up later, which makes my sleep time cyclical. Eventually I will wake up at midnight and go to bed at 4pm. I want to put a stop to all this sleeping/not sleeping nonsense, but I can’t even motivate myself to get out of bed when my alarm goes off.

When I finally pry myself out of bed, it’s noon, and I stumble over to the couch and stare at the TV. I’m don’t even have the motivation to actively watch at this point. I just stare for a while, and then take a shower. After the shower I can muster the strength to really watch the TV.

So one can imagine how hard it is to get me to apply for jobs, something that both takes effort and that I vastly dislike. Maybe I could sign up to be the focus of a reality show that makes people feel better about themselves. It could be called “Couch Potating with Mike.” I really don’t do anything all day. My biggest news of the day is that my next Safeway sandwich is free. Hot damn! I’ve paid my 7 sandwich dues, and now it’s time to reap my 8th-sandwhich-free reward.

Maybe I’ll look for a job now. Or, more likely, I’ll look at the free stuff listings, read some haikus, and then watch some more TV.

Long Time no Write

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote something. I guess I’ll just give some snippets of what I’ve been up to. And, since I’ve been reading the haiku forum on craigslist.org, I think the snippets will be in 575.

Had job interview
I thought it went pretty well
I get the job? No

Went downtown for my
Red light courtroom appearance
Turns out it’s next month

More cover letters
And more resumes go forth
But still no one calls

Money is better
With unemployment again
Damn Best Buy to hell

Still not good at sleep
I’m awake for the whole night
But sleep in the day

Jorbs
(The R is on purpose. It’s a Homestar reference.)

I’ve been thinking about jobs again because so many interests are out to take away my money, and no one seems to want to give me any to make up for it.

My car is the first of many players out to kill my bank account. In preparation for my trip to Oregon last weekend I got new tires (mine where kind of bald), got my oil changed, and had a rattle investigated. The tires cost $330, and the oil change/rattle investigation cost $440. The rattle turned out to be something in my timing belt, so while it sucked monetarily to fix, it was probably for the best.

On my way to Oregon I also got a speeding ticket. I guess that wasn’t my car’s fault, but I’m still not happy about it. Still in the car talking my money vain, after returning from my trip I discovered a photo-enforcement red-light-running ticket in my pile of mail. The red light ticket is $360. For those of you keeping track that’s $1050, plus the fine for the speeding, which is as of now, still unknown.

Two other key players in my anti-money conspiracy are the EDD and Best Buy. EDD has been paying me my unemployment benefits up until this week. They’ve stopped now because they asked Best Buy if I had been laid off and Best Buy said that no I hadn’t, and that I still work there. There are several problems with this. 1) I never told the EDD I had been laid off from best buy. I was laid off from Lavezzo Designs, which employed me after I quit working at Best Buy. 2) I quit working at Best Buy in August. If I still work there, I’ve been missing out on a lot of money.

So here are the future options I’ve been considering:

-Going back to get a masters in something. I’m not sure about which subject. Electrical Engineering? Nuclear Engineering? Something that will instantly get me a job when I’m done. Any ideas?

-Selling used books out of a rolly suitcase at, or near the airport. It seems like one could make money that way considering the price of the in-airport bookstores as long as I didn’t get myself arrested.

-Busking.

The last two don’t seem like they have big earning potential, and the first one involves spending more money that I have and moving away from everything fun. So seriously, there’s a comment section so you readers can tell me how to be independently wealty. Use it.

Salty

It’s nice to know the public is so comfortable with me. Or conversely, perhaps it’s unsettling to know that I’m invisible. I was walking from Kristin’s house to my car when I passed a guy who was picking his nose. He was really going for it: digging way up in there to find a tasty little nugget. I guess he found it, because after inspecting his archeological treasure, he ate it.

Yum.

Even Cold November Rain

Instead of going to sleep, which is what I really should be doing, I’m going to write about graffiti. The graffiti in question was spray painted in large black letters on the side of the Beauty Bar on 19th and Mission here, in my fair city, San Francisco (or Fran, for short.)



I took that picture after my girlfriend, Kristin, (or Knife, for short) saw the quality verbiage and pointed it out to me. The reason she wanted a picture is because of the graffiti’s apparent lack of grammar. Or, failing that, it’s missing word(s). It needs a "looks like," or a "needs," or perhaps a "is not a complete sentence on its own."

So I took this picture and, being the huge computer nerd that I am, did an in-quotes google search for the text of the graffiti. Among the 51 results are a couple references to a song called "This Is What Your Face (Bicyclist)," and one called "This Is What Your Face (November Rain)." According to the website, both, um, songs(?) fall into the genre of Noise/Paincore.

Noise/Paincore seems to be really loud, unpleasant, tuneless, rhythmless (or crappy, for short) noise. These two noise tracks, available on Gynormis 5’s album "Girls Don’t Fight Back," somehow inspired the graffiti. Also, according to the website, Gynormis 5 did a 25 minute dance show in front of the Beauty Bar. Maybe it was permanent spraypaint advertising. An excellent idea if they had followed it with a web address, and aren't worried about being blamed for it. I’m willing to bet that most people just think the person who wrote it is dumb.

I know what the back-story is, and I still think the person who wrote it is dumb.

Got Job?

I’m thinking about jobs today. I moved to the bay area right when the economy crapped out, so the enthusiastic job prognostication of all my engineering teachers didn’t even come close to coming true. Post B.S. in Electrical Engineering, I’ve been a temp worker, an employee of The Gap and Best Buy, a valet (very briefly), and a metalworker. Currently I’m unemployed.

Being a metal worker was by far the most fun. I didn’t have to dress up for work, there where no customers, I got to build things, and best of all, I got to set things on fire on a regular basis. If I could find a job that incorporated all those aspects again, I would be a very happy camper. But as I set out on about my 6th week of unemployment I’m not nearly so picky. However, I am still trying with all my might to avoid retail.

In my search for jobs I’ve applied to a vast variety: Toy Designer, Computer Help Desk, Quality Assurance, Private Investigator/Decoy (I’m not sure about the decoy aspect), Entry Level Firmware Engineer, Computer Tech/Sales (which is retail, but the store seemed nice), Production Assistant for Tech TV, and Gallery Assistant. There are actually more than that, but you get the drift.

I hate applying for jobs. You spend time looking for them, typing up a cover letter, making sure you didn’t accidentally spell your name wrong, sending out your resumé, and then hearing nothing. It’s a huge void. I’ve heard back from exactly two submissions. The first was Tech TV, which actually gave me a phone interview. It was a good start, or so I thought, but I haven’t heard a peep since. The second was the Toy Designer position, which was at least nice enough to send me an automated email saying they got my info. Most places don’t even do that. Does anyone know how to get into the field of being independently wealthy? Or how about setting things on fire for money? I have an excellent picture of a flaming sink to sell.

For many a birthday or a passing of 11:11 I would wish to be in a band, have a girlfriend, and have a job. I had them all for roughly 30 seconds. It was a nice 30 seconds, but I guess two out of three isn't too bad.

McEtiquette

Don’t yell at the drive through system. You don’t have to do it. If you speak at a regular conversational volume, the person at the register will understand that you want your coke with extra ice and your burgers pickle-free. I know this because I take it upon myself to speak to the drive through speaker/microphone as I would if I were talking to a person standing next to my car. My voice is quiet enough that some phones will filter me out because they think I’m background noise, and yet, I still get my burgers and drinks just the way I want them.

Today I went to get an ice cream. After I was done ordering a guy in a minivan pulled up to the ordering console. I drove around the corner of the building to pay, and the guy behind me was yelling his order so loud the girl behind the register could have just listened out the window. It was as if he thought the drive through was at the airport on a busy runway. The only distractions were the sound of cars idling (quiet), the scuffling of the grease-addict pigeons, (fairly quiet), and a sign that says don’t feed the homeless, (Completely silent). Order from others, as you would have others order from you.

Killing Me Softly with Its Song

Websites don’t need music. I guess some do - maybe a band’s website, or a page dedicated to MIDI files - but most do not. I have just been to a website which explains some key phrases in American Sign Language (ASL). While I understand what the song is trying to say, I don’t need to hear "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" while I’m trying to figure out if a certain sign means “I love you.” I imagine it doesn’t do the deaf any good either. It also insures that I will never aim that particular sign at the person who made that page.

My best guess is that the page in question was designed circa ’98 when everyone and their mother had a website. [My website is www.spiralkid.com and my mom’s is www.pattykadel.com.] I’ve seen web pages with MIDI music in them, and they are almost always annoying. However, they usually come with an off button, and that makes them better. Now no one uses MIDI and everyone has a blog. Get with the times people. Start an ASL blog.