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