This won't maker any sense unless you have read the previous post.
Ok, the experiment is a bust. Yes it is true that I was able to create a profile that has got me zero hits. But what I was not expecting is that I feel like a complete liar and cheat...not cheat, a callous cheat.
Sure, Match picked out women I'd never consider and rated me as near matches. Really? Such a simplistic modeling. "I like movies, you like movies... aha a match..." But the gotcha was there were real matches and I felt badly that I went down this road.
Before you think I have lost my mind, yes, I realize that there is a big difference between being ONE of many returned results in a query AND NO FOLLOWUP and stringing some girl along and then rejecting her. I am just saying I liked a few of my matches and after a week have decided I don't like my Match.com game. I have a soul I guess after all.
One interesting side effect is that the diversity of women I got matches for was unexpected. I wonder what I would draw if I actually tried. Just not there yet.
For the record, the deal breaker was a 35 yr old gal that looked amazingly like a girl I dated 20 years ago. I am a total sucker for long hair and glasses: the "porn librarian" look. Sigh.
So I'll probably keep checking out the matches for a while, but my attitude is a lot more respectful. So I am now looking for new material again. This was way too easy.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Ross vs. Online Dating
Okay, let me start off with a preface: I am not looking for a woman on Match.Com. This is just an experiment to see what insane matches the cyber world would match me up with.
This idea came from an event several years ago where a friend of mine, his girlfriend and I invented the Match.Com game. Rules were simple: Invent any outrageous search criteria (say tallest lesbian over 75 years old) and the closest match won. We played our game for hours. It proved to me there is something for everyone up there. But I was curious about my luck.
Finally, I broke down when a female friend who had been looking on all the big sites threw out the notion that there were more women up on Match than men. A firm believer that the ratio of desperate men to women was about 100 to 1, I had to set up my own account to see if my theory held.
So Step 1, the Profile.
I wrote a profile that I was sure would completely decrease my odds of getting a hit. I described myself pretty much as I am and listed such high qualities in her as: not in prison currently and does not kill small animals (my Australian ex-boss would advocate a gal who DID kill small animals) but I digress. I was even bold enough to use a real photo of myself. But it was me holding a pink t-shirt that read “Are you tough enough?” A fitting profile picture. So the stage is set.
I confessed to my Match pal what I had done and she was all over me to share. I was reluctant at first, but finally I said “ok” and she went to search for me but I was not there. Odd, I had done all the stuff and it said that I was live. At this point I assumed my lack of being there was due to me being a cheap bastard and not paying for the service, so I could look but not “touch” as it were. But within minutes of her searching I propagated through the system.
Then sadly for me all my new searches took me to my friend. I felt this was some subtle Jedi mind trick. But after a rather frantic troubleshooting session I freed myself. I could search for whatever I wanted.
Now, I have to explain my pre-conceived notions about on-line dating. One on-line dates if one is desperate/lazy/crazy. I expected all three. Yes, intellectually, I knew there could be some edge cases where some sweet, normal chick was looking for love, but I highly doubted it.
Step 2, My First Trolling
She is: 25-35, tall, and athletic. Likes movies, long walks and playing cards. I am amusing myself now. My ideal is way more complex than that, but baby steps. Run the query… Ding, ding, ding! Let’s look at the winners. First gal is very hot. Looks like a model. I am starting to rethink my views on this dating thing. Haven’t tackled the problem of she’d never date me, but don’t care. She’s hot. So I look at all 6 posted pictures of her. Number 4 was the deal breaker. Crazy eyes. She was batshit nuts. I’ve seen this look before. I know this look. This look is the look of “I will make you beg for death by the time this is done…”
Gal #2 was less hot and less crazy, but very bland: romantic dinners, long walks, talking (oh good god) and her love of Jesus.
Gals #3, 4, 5 were frankly rat-women. Skinny, boney, and with big Ocelot eyes. Sort of Gollum-like if Gollum wore summer dresses and flip flops.
Gal #6 made me feel bad that I was not taking this seriously. She was nice enough looking and she clearly was being honest. Her profile read snarky and made me laugh. I almost thought about emailing her, but decided not to, because I felt she deserved a decent treatment… plus she lived in Everett, WA and I sure wasn’t going to date anybody that willingly lived in Everett. I might think about it if she was held captive by a crazed cult of ninjas and bears, but not willingly. I am a snob that way.
Just checked my email and Match has matched my profile up with twelve lucky winners.
Hmmn.
To be continued….
This idea came from an event several years ago where a friend of mine, his girlfriend and I invented the Match.Com game. Rules were simple: Invent any outrageous search criteria (say tallest lesbian over 75 years old) and the closest match won. We played our game for hours. It proved to me there is something for everyone up there. But I was curious about my luck.
Finally, I broke down when a female friend who had been looking on all the big sites threw out the notion that there were more women up on Match than men. A firm believer that the ratio of desperate men to women was about 100 to 1, I had to set up my own account to see if my theory held.
So Step 1, the Profile.
I wrote a profile that I was sure would completely decrease my odds of getting a hit. I described myself pretty much as I am and listed such high qualities in her as: not in prison currently and does not kill small animals (my Australian ex-boss would advocate a gal who DID kill small animals) but I digress. I was even bold enough to use a real photo of myself. But it was me holding a pink t-shirt that read “Are you tough enough?” A fitting profile picture. So the stage is set.
I confessed to my Match pal what I had done and she was all over me to share. I was reluctant at first, but finally I said “ok” and she went to search for me but I was not there. Odd, I had done all the stuff and it said that I was live. At this point I assumed my lack of being there was due to me being a cheap bastard and not paying for the service, so I could look but not “touch” as it were. But within minutes of her searching I propagated through the system.
Then sadly for me all my new searches took me to my friend. I felt this was some subtle Jedi mind trick. But after a rather frantic troubleshooting session I freed myself. I could search for whatever I wanted.
Now, I have to explain my pre-conceived notions about on-line dating. One on-line dates if one is desperate/lazy/crazy. I expected all three. Yes, intellectually, I knew there could be some edge cases where some sweet, normal chick was looking for love, but I highly doubted it.
Step 2, My First Trolling
She is: 25-35, tall, and athletic. Likes movies, long walks and playing cards. I am amusing myself now. My ideal is way more complex than that, but baby steps. Run the query… Ding, ding, ding! Let’s look at the winners. First gal is very hot. Looks like a model. I am starting to rethink my views on this dating thing. Haven’t tackled the problem of she’d never date me, but don’t care. She’s hot. So I look at all 6 posted pictures of her. Number 4 was the deal breaker. Crazy eyes. She was batshit nuts. I’ve seen this look before. I know this look. This look is the look of “I will make you beg for death by the time this is done…”
Gal #2 was less hot and less crazy, but very bland: romantic dinners, long walks, talking (oh good god) and her love of Jesus.
Gals #3, 4, 5 were frankly rat-women. Skinny, boney, and with big Ocelot eyes. Sort of Gollum-like if Gollum wore summer dresses and flip flops.
Gal #6 made me feel bad that I was not taking this seriously. She was nice enough looking and she clearly was being honest. Her profile read snarky and made me laugh. I almost thought about emailing her, but decided not to, because I felt she deserved a decent treatment… plus she lived in Everett, WA and I sure wasn’t going to date anybody that willingly lived in Everett. I might think about it if she was held captive by a crazed cult of ninjas and bears, but not willingly. I am a snob that way.
Just checked my email and Match has matched my profile up with twelve lucky winners.
Hmmn.
To be continued….
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Applied Chaotic Testing - Draft 1 work in progrss
To Joel as promised:
Applied Chaotic Testing:
How many times have you run a test pass for your product and bugs have slipped by that could have been caught if others had been testing as well? Big corporations can afford large teams or extended beta programs. The little guys are strapped for money and resources are stretched with no time.
How to get the maximum return on testing?
One way is to shake up the patterns we all fall into. Implement what I like to call "Applied Chaotic Testing". As much as one may feel they are being creative and representing their user base as domain experts, there are certain techniques that are ingrained in us that make our testing results measurable and predictable. We all know that is does not reflect real world usage. How many times has customer support reported issues that come from the field that when researched come from environments that could not be predicted? I remember my days in support taking a call from the field where the user was running an English version of our software in a Danish version of Windows 95 running from a Japanese version of Dr. DOS. Who does that? This was an excellent example of an "Applied Chaotic User". Another was from a heroic fellow that had no hands and was struggling to calibrate my company's touch screen with a pen in his teeth. Turned out to be the wrong version of the driver.
As a tester with 22 years in software testing, I have seen many unique testing methodologies introduced into the field: Unit testing, Systems testing, Exploratory Matrix testing, Moge-Warwick Centralized. Analysis, Certified Emulation testing, RGB testing, Lowest Common Denominator testing (LCDT), and Micro testing. But overall there is still a need to capture the majority of chaotic users.
Remember that an IQ of 100 is average, so this should be the goal when test planning. To increase the target zone, plan for 85 instead. Don't forget to factor in one-off anomalies like managers of companies in the Fortune 100 and the elderly.
Applying Applied Chaotic Testing:
At irregular intervals, an Applied Chaotic Tester will change his/her testing approach by doing the unexpected. A sample scenario might look something like this:
Test with the mouse in the left hand
Reconfigure your keyboard to be Chinese
Turn off the monitor and try using the software via a screen reader with the volume set low
Try testing on an operating system in a language you can't read. I find Arabic or Hebrew most effective given these languages are right to left.
Try testing under duress. Many users have deadlines that keep them awake extra longs hours. Try testing in sleep deprivation of 24 hour increments. Eating poorly also can create a source of duress. Try an entire build cycle eating nothing more than Hostess HoHos and drinking Red Bull.
Create a software configuration that is prone to random crashing. A great solution is to test on virus-ridden operating systems. A quick source of viruses is AOL or several shadier porn sites, but clear this with the IT department to ensure it does not conflict with company policies.
Get small children as beta testers. Be aware and sensitive to the fact that criticism on their performance can make them cry. Same guidline goes for ESL (English as a Second Language) students.
Ask (if possible) to sit in on your company's support center. Listen with a careful ear for customers with attention deficit disorder preferably from non-English speaking countries and/or the clinically diagnosed bi-polar because they will have the most challenging questions and having the most questionable scenarios. Ideally the tech will share these same qualities. Take many notes and as detailed steps as possible. Don't worry if you miss a few steps here and there. It just leads to better Applied Chaotic testing.
To sum up, Applied Chaotic Testing taps into the undiscovered country of random and unmeasurable use cases. Forgot how your software is suppose to be, or even should be, think of how it is.
Applied Chaotic Testing:
How many times have you run a test pass for your product and bugs have slipped by that could have been caught if others had been testing as well? Big corporations can afford large teams or extended beta programs. The little guys are strapped for money and resources are stretched with no time.
How to get the maximum return on testing?
One way is to shake up the patterns we all fall into. Implement what I like to call "Applied Chaotic Testing". As much as one may feel they are being creative and representing their user base as domain experts, there are certain techniques that are ingrained in us that make our testing results measurable and predictable. We all know that is does not reflect real world usage. How many times has customer support reported issues that come from the field that when researched come from environments that could not be predicted? I remember my days in support taking a call from the field where the user was running an English version of our software in a Danish version of Windows 95 running from a Japanese version of Dr. DOS. Who does that? This was an excellent example of an "Applied Chaotic User". Another was from a heroic fellow that had no hands and was struggling to calibrate my company's touch screen with a pen in his teeth. Turned out to be the wrong version of the driver.
As a tester with 22 years in software testing, I have seen many unique testing methodologies introduced into the field: Unit testing, Systems testing, Exploratory Matrix testing, Moge-Warwick Centralized. Analysis, Certified Emulation testing, RGB testing, Lowest Common Denominator testing (LCDT), and Micro testing. But overall there is still a need to capture the majority of chaotic users.
Remember that an IQ of 100 is average, so this should be the goal when test planning. To increase the target zone, plan for 85 instead. Don't forget to factor in one-off anomalies like managers of companies in the Fortune 100 and the elderly.
Applying Applied Chaotic Testing:
At irregular intervals, an Applied Chaotic Tester will change his/her testing approach by doing the unexpected. A sample scenario might look something like this:
Test with the mouse in the left hand
Reconfigure your keyboard to be Chinese
Turn off the monitor and try using the software via a screen reader with the volume set low
Try testing on an operating system in a language you can't read. I find Arabic or Hebrew most effective given these languages are right to left.
Try testing under duress. Many users have deadlines that keep them awake extra longs hours. Try testing in sleep deprivation of 24 hour increments. Eating poorly also can create a source of duress. Try an entire build cycle eating nothing more than Hostess HoHos and drinking Red Bull.
Create a software configuration that is prone to random crashing. A great solution is to test on virus-ridden operating systems. A quick source of viruses is AOL or several shadier porn sites, but clear this with the IT department to ensure it does not conflict with company policies.
Get small children as beta testers. Be aware and sensitive to the fact that criticism on their performance can make them cry. Same guidline goes for ESL (English as a Second Language) students.
Ask (if possible) to sit in on your company's support center. Listen with a careful ear for customers with attention deficit disorder preferably from non-English speaking countries and/or the clinically diagnosed bi-polar because they will have the most challenging questions and having the most questionable scenarios. Ideally the tech will share these same qualities. Take many notes and as detailed steps as possible. Don't worry if you miss a few steps here and there. It just leads to better Applied Chaotic testing.
To sum up, Applied Chaotic Testing taps into the undiscovered country of random and unmeasurable use cases. Forgot how your software is suppose to be, or even should be, think of how it is.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
K-Mart
"I'm going to Hell again. It was a perfect storm: an obnoxious woman, obnoxious children, a stoner cashier, a really loud security alarm and me being in a bad mood, forced to shop at K-Mart because my white shirt was ruined and I needed a fresh one quickly."
This was my Facebook posting today and since I've been very negligent of my small band of blog vultures, I throw you a scrap of meat.
So yesterday I went and saw the Hubble movie in 3D at the IMAX theatre in the Pacific Science Center and quite enjoyed it even though (for me) 3D has always been a challenge. Testing-wise my spatial ability is quite refined. In my mind, I "see" spatial relationships quite well, but as the man who walks into doors and bus signs, maybe no such bragging rights.
Well after the movie I wandered over to the Center house to indulge in a childhood favorite, a Frankfurter cheese dog and an Orange Julius. Go figure, I remember the combo being way more awesome than I found it yesterday. Of course, at that point in my life I thought Mac and Cheese was like ambrosia, the food of the gods.
So I have feasted and now it is time to return the truck to take myself away from the churn that is Downtown. As is life in Seattle, I walk out of the Center House and get maybe 50 yards and - whoosh! - torrential downpour. I take cover under an over hang on the Seattle Rep building. I wait, wait, wait, wait and wait some more. But I am in a good mood so I take in the Seattle ambiance and amuse myself at watching my fellow citizens scurry to and fro.
Finally, I am thinking it's time, even though it is still raining hard. So I stroll on. Now at this point, I should point out I am not wearing a jacket. I walk to the truck a few blocks away and by the time I get to the truck, I am soaked. As fate would have it by the time I get to the truck it has stopped raining. Had I waited five more minutes I would have been completely on a different vector yesterday.
So I pile into the Toyota and hit Highway 99 and go north. All is well, I am on my way to my friend's place for dinner and experimental drink mixology and a great board game called "Kill, Dr. Lucky" For people who like board games, think "Clue" in reverse with an hint of "Tag."
As I am driving, I look down and realize that the orange parking ticket receipt has run ink all over my white shirt. Had it been a red ticket, it would look like someone had shot me. Well I wasn't going on like this and had decided looping back home for a new shirt would take too long, I decided to stop at K-Mart which was right ahead of me. I started to think Dante: "Abandon all hope ye who enter..."
Now, I must stop and explain K-Mart as I understand it. It is not inherently evil. In fact I believe it serves a purpose. If nothing else, it is a humbler Wal-Mart. No one looks proud to be in K-Mart. You don't see land masses pushing carts slobbering for their next round of "good eats" or pregnant teenage girls with tattoos looking at maternity clothes with that sort of "I am proud to be an Ugly American" Wal-Mart mojo.
K-Mart I think has Target envy. At Target, even snobby white elitists will frequent Target for "the basic stuff, you know" and K-Mart tries to lure the same. But, the formula breaks down because that also can't ditch the double-wide crowd. Heh. I get two for one on that last line...
So back from my social statement and on to going to Hell.
So after cruising for a shirt I made my way to the check out line. By the way, one can get a 5x shirt there, and despite a certain Australian voice I hear in my head at times regarding husky sizes, it was a fricken tent and I felt tiny. I had off to get in line to pay my part continuing to support some 14-year old Mexican seamstress making in a year what I spent on a cheese dog and smoothie.
So here is where I start to get nasty, so for those with delicate sensibilities read no further.
First, on an individual basis there is no good or evil here on the traits I describe. "Single" "mother" of "five" "shopping" "to get a deal." In fact, normally my liberal knee-jerk reaction is to feel compassion and if she's hot enough, to wonder if she's dating. Kidding, sort of. It's the degree of hotness.
But this day the combination is a vile one. Let's start this with "hot". Not so much. Unless you have a thing for the Muppet "Miss Piggy" with bad hair. Or maybe a beach ball that has mutated stubby legs and hands with a dead-rat wig.
I am not ashamed to admit, that if I had an inner conflict about judging a book by it's cover, it faded the moment I heard this woman speak in a gibber-tongue that resembled some phonetic cousin of English. When one thinks that Ebonics flows like Shakespeare compared to this hooting and snorting language of the inbred white trash backwoods, one realizes that Miss Piggy is in the big city shopping at her version of Barney's New York.
At this point, dear reader, you must be wondering exactly what happened? Showtime.
Tranlating from Gibber to English for your ease of reading.
"What? No, that's not right. That was on sale. It's half off."
"What? No, that was on sale too."
"What? That was "Buy 2 and get one free..."
This went one for every item. Hmmn. One was actually on sale. During this exchange, the cashier was a cross between the bus driver on the "Simpson's" and Ted from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" kept saying in a stoned, lazy voice some version of "Whoa lady, I just scan stuff and take the money."
Annoying but finite.
Finally, Miss Porkchop Hill moves on to herd her pack of junior Yeti off to what I assume would be the YetiMobile when all of sudden when they near the door, the security alarm goes off.
Now in a normal store, the alarm is loud and draws attention. In a store where they are expecting shop-lifting, the alarm is deafening to the point I assume it is to daze and render the intended thief spasmodic (and taking those close to them down also). Ok, get it? LOUD!
So, what does the mother of the Yeti clan do? Stands there. Right next to the sensor. It was clear she expected a button to be pushed and she would be allowed to shamble on.
At K-Mart, not so much. So alarm and more alarm. People are yelling at her to move away from the door but she can't really hear well and basic directions would escape her on her best day (I am thinking the condom wrapper was too much for her).
I didn't see it, but I think Keanu Reeves little brother held up a Snicker's bar because she wanders back to him within hearing range and he tells her to move away from the sensor.
Now here is where it gets fun. She waddles back to her cart and with an effort of Hercules steers it away from the senors. Magic does not happen and it dawns on me one of the yeti is wearing clothing that is still tagged to set off the sensor. She's dressed the yeti in store clothing....
As I am realizing what is going on the Store Manager arrives and is playing catch up. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Piggly Wiggly does her best to deflect attention away for herself and starts bleating about how Keanu yelled at her.
Again translating from Gibber to the mother tongue...
"He yelled at me! He shouldn't yell at me. It was wrong of him!"
"I am never shopping here again!"
"You treat people wrong here!"
At this point my own transaction is complete and I have had enough.
So with her last proclamation of "wrong", I said:
"You know what else is wrong?"
I have everybody's attention. I make an overly-dramatic look at her children and turn back.
"Sex with baboons."
As I left I noticed Keanu gave me two thumbs up.
Poor Keanu. You couldn't pay me enough to do his job.
This was my Facebook posting today and since I've been very negligent of my small band of blog vultures, I throw you a scrap of meat.
So yesterday I went and saw the Hubble movie in 3D at the IMAX theatre in the Pacific Science Center and quite enjoyed it even though (for me) 3D has always been a challenge. Testing-wise my spatial ability is quite refined. In my mind, I "see" spatial relationships quite well, but as the man who walks into doors and bus signs, maybe no such bragging rights.
Well after the movie I wandered over to the Center house to indulge in a childhood favorite, a Frankfurter cheese dog and an Orange Julius. Go figure, I remember the combo being way more awesome than I found it yesterday. Of course, at that point in my life I thought Mac and Cheese was like ambrosia, the food of the gods.
So I have feasted and now it is time to return the truck to take myself away from the churn that is Downtown. As is life in Seattle, I walk out of the Center House and get maybe 50 yards and - whoosh! - torrential downpour. I take cover under an over hang on the Seattle Rep building. I wait, wait, wait, wait and wait some more. But I am in a good mood so I take in the Seattle ambiance and amuse myself at watching my fellow citizens scurry to and fro.
Finally, I am thinking it's time, even though it is still raining hard. So I stroll on. Now at this point, I should point out I am not wearing a jacket. I walk to the truck a few blocks away and by the time I get to the truck, I am soaked. As fate would have it by the time I get to the truck it has stopped raining. Had I waited five more minutes I would have been completely on a different vector yesterday.
So I pile into the Toyota and hit Highway 99 and go north. All is well, I am on my way to my friend's place for dinner and experimental drink mixology and a great board game called "Kill, Dr. Lucky" For people who like board games, think "Clue" in reverse with an hint of "Tag."
As I am driving, I look down and realize that the orange parking ticket receipt has run ink all over my white shirt. Had it been a red ticket, it would look like someone had shot me. Well I wasn't going on like this and had decided looping back home for a new shirt would take too long, I decided to stop at K-Mart which was right ahead of me. I started to think Dante: "Abandon all hope ye who enter..."
Now, I must stop and explain K-Mart as I understand it. It is not inherently evil. In fact I believe it serves a purpose. If nothing else, it is a humbler Wal-Mart. No one looks proud to be in K-Mart. You don't see land masses pushing carts slobbering for their next round of "good eats" or pregnant teenage girls with tattoos looking at maternity clothes with that sort of "I am proud to be an Ugly American" Wal-Mart mojo.
K-Mart I think has Target envy. At Target, even snobby white elitists will frequent Target for "the basic stuff, you know" and K-Mart tries to lure the same. But, the formula breaks down because that also can't ditch the double-wide crowd. Heh. I get two for one on that last line...
So back from my social statement and on to going to Hell.
So after cruising for a shirt I made my way to the check out line. By the way, one can get a 5x shirt there, and despite a certain Australian voice I hear in my head at times regarding husky sizes, it was a fricken tent and I felt tiny. I had off to get in line to pay my part continuing to support some 14-year old Mexican seamstress making in a year what I spent on a cheese dog and smoothie.
So here is where I start to get nasty, so for those with delicate sensibilities read no further.
First, on an individual basis there is no good or evil here on the traits I describe. "Single" "mother" of "five" "shopping" "to get a deal." In fact, normally my liberal knee-jerk reaction is to feel compassion and if she's hot enough, to wonder if she's dating. Kidding, sort of. It's the degree of hotness.
But this day the combination is a vile one. Let's start this with "hot". Not so much. Unless you have a thing for the Muppet "Miss Piggy" with bad hair. Or maybe a beach ball that has mutated stubby legs and hands with a dead-rat wig.
I am not ashamed to admit, that if I had an inner conflict about judging a book by it's cover, it faded the moment I heard this woman speak in a gibber-tongue that resembled some phonetic cousin of English. When one thinks that Ebonics flows like Shakespeare compared to this hooting and snorting language of the inbred white trash backwoods, one realizes that Miss Piggy is in the big city shopping at her version of Barney's New York.
At this point, dear reader, you must be wondering exactly what happened? Showtime.
Tranlating from Gibber to English for your ease of reading.
"What? No, that's not right. That was on sale. It's half off."
"What? No, that was on sale too."
"What? That was "Buy 2 and get one free..."
This went one for every item. Hmmn. One was actually on sale. During this exchange, the cashier was a cross between the bus driver on the "Simpson's" and Ted from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" kept saying in a stoned, lazy voice some version of "Whoa lady, I just scan stuff and take the money."
Annoying but finite.
Finally, Miss Porkchop Hill moves on to herd her pack of junior Yeti off to what I assume would be the YetiMobile when all of sudden when they near the door, the security alarm goes off.
Now in a normal store, the alarm is loud and draws attention. In a store where they are expecting shop-lifting, the alarm is deafening to the point I assume it is to daze and render the intended thief spasmodic (and taking those close to them down also). Ok, get it? LOUD!
So, what does the mother of the Yeti clan do? Stands there. Right next to the sensor. It was clear she expected a button to be pushed and she would be allowed to shamble on.
At K-Mart, not so much. So alarm and more alarm. People are yelling at her to move away from the door but she can't really hear well and basic directions would escape her on her best day (I am thinking the condom wrapper was too much for her).
I didn't see it, but I think Keanu Reeves little brother held up a Snicker's bar because she wanders back to him within hearing range and he tells her to move away from the sensor.
Now here is where it gets fun. She waddles back to her cart and with an effort of Hercules steers it away from the senors. Magic does not happen and it dawns on me one of the yeti is wearing clothing that is still tagged to set off the sensor. She's dressed the yeti in store clothing....
As I am realizing what is going on the Store Manager arrives and is playing catch up. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Piggly Wiggly does her best to deflect attention away for herself and starts bleating about how Keanu yelled at her.
Again translating from Gibber to the mother tongue...
"He yelled at me! He shouldn't yell at me. It was wrong of him!"
"I am never shopping here again!"
"You treat people wrong here!"
At this point my own transaction is complete and I have had enough.
So with her last proclamation of "wrong", I said:
"You know what else is wrong?"
I have everybody's attention. I make an overly-dramatic look at her children and turn back.
"Sex with baboons."
As I left I noticed Keanu gave me two thumbs up.
Poor Keanu. You couldn't pay me enough to do his job.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Return of the Spider Vixen
So I am thinking about Halloween that is coming up. I am in need of a costume and the failure of the Spider Vixen costume from last year haunts me still. So I was in JoAnne's Crafts, home of reject art teachers and scary crap that only old ladies and really, really, really gay men would like. I fall into none of the above. My friend was buying something fluffy. But the store makes "Hello Kitty" seem mild.
Well, I started to look at my choices. Nurse with fishnets, Swedish milkmaid with fishnets, an even better Spider Vixen outfit. Or at least larger. A flight attendant outfit, Casperina, the Sexy ghost. Or some random combination therein.
It is appropriate as I write this I am listening to the Rolling Stones:
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need...
There was a snake lady suit, a policeman's uniform (add a boom box and the imagined strip-o-gram will seriously hurt my co-workers), a female pirate costume (the mind reels on that one given a certain in-joke that uses "arrrggghhh!" liberally).
I just wish I had asked what exactly are "husky girl sizes." Sigh.
Well, I started to look at my choices. Nurse with fishnets, Swedish milkmaid with fishnets, an even better Spider Vixen outfit. Or at least larger. A flight attendant outfit, Casperina, the Sexy ghost. Or some random combination therein.
It is appropriate as I write this I am listening to the Rolling Stones:
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need...
There was a snake lady suit, a policeman's uniform (add a boom box and the imagined strip-o-gram will seriously hurt my co-workers), a female pirate costume (the mind reels on that one given a certain in-joke that uses "arrrggghhh!" liberally).
I just wish I had asked what exactly are "husky girl sizes." Sigh.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Traffic Rant
New blog finally! I was in need of something snarky to say. I am there now.
First off, to my ambulance chasing following (all 5 of you), this could have been about me pinning myself in the backseat and amusing the Sikh taxi driver, or my accident with the waffle batter, or my last breakdown with the truck. It could have been about my intense dislike of the Greenwood parade or why you should not pour the wrong fluids into your engine.
It could have been… but it isn’t.
My suffering can wait.
Instead I want to rant about others.
Other drivers. In fact maybe even you!
So really my rant goes something like this: Why are my fellow drivers retarded?
To frame this correctly, I am going to examine my drive to and from work. It is the same stupidity every day and I have actually developed a series of mind-teasers regarding what I see.
So bending a rule of good writing, I now refer to “you” as the driving retard, not my adoring reader, however I do not always consider the two mutually exclusive. So if “you” seems sort of “in your face” despite my reader’s innocence, it’s nothing personal, I’ve just lumped everyone together as vehicular bottom-feeders.
Let the rant begin…
Hey You!
Yes, you… on the cell phone… ever heard of Bluetooth? I see you! Is that call so important? I am sure it isn’t. Use the technology and quit trying to kill me because your goddamn wife is too lazy to get off of her bubbled ass and get into her soccer mom mobile and get the milk and bon-bons herself. No, really, that call to your best friend about whether she slept with the hot bartender – unimportant. As unimportant as you are. There is this law… Oh wait, that begs another question…
Seriously, why does the f-ing law apply to everybody BUT you? You wonder why I laugh and point at you while you are pulled over getting a ticket? It’s because the law applies to everyone AND you!
Ha!
You in your Mercedes SUV? Oh, it makes my heart sing when I see a person of self-imposed entitlement get a $242 speeding ticket shoved up their bum for being a complete a-hole. Next time you’re at El Goucho in the Pampas Room, swirling your glass of Robert Biale Monterosso Sonoma Zinfandel and nibbling on your not-so humanly created foie grois, please tell your equally obnoxious associates how you actually were doing 45 in a 20 mph zone and almost ran over a little old man with a walker because you have to get home because little Hayden has to get to her fencing class and then be rushed to her play date with the other six going on fourteen year-olds because you don’t want her to miss any socialization windows.
God, what I’d give to key your car.
But wait, my contempt is not limited to wanna-be aristocratic suburban white folk, oh no I have a much wider field of vision than that.
Hey you, the extreme sports skate/snowboarding goatee and mutton chop side burns flannel shirt wearing granola boy! Yeah I am talking about you too!
Riddle me this, Stephan…
Why do you have to bomb down the freeway at 85 and then slam on your brakes when you get up the traffic jam that you have clearly been able to see for a mile? Do the math (if you can, use your fingers AND toes if you need to), you save not one second! If you drive reasonable, you get there all the same. Oh and tailgating me, only makes me slam on my brakes to scare you to back off, I am not going to speed up because you are trying to make me think you are going to bully me and my P.O.S. truck. Don't you get the "I have no will to live" vibe come from my truck?
Why do you think that changing lanes in gridlock is so f-ing critical? Does going 6 mph, really make it go better than 5 mph. You are going NOWHERE. Chill out. And no, that car length in front of me is NOT an invitation for you to jump in. It is because I don’t want to rear-end the dumb ass in front of me, when some retard like you cuts him off.
By the way, you single-tasking, talking on the cell phone mofo, that turn signal thing really isn’t optional if you don’t want to have some a-hole in a P.O.S. truck like mine not hit you and crumple your little “save the planet” Prius. Especially when you are a dart-in-and-out of traffic punk. If you have any doubts, yes, the silver P.O.S. truck IS screwing with you and deliberately not letting you be the spastic you are.
But wait…there is more…
Hey you, the “I am nearly retired, get off my lawn you kids, stick up my ass, by God I am a Republican Tax Payer, driving my mustard yellow Hummer” I got some words for you too…
For starters, the fast lane is for people who drive the speed limit or somewhat faster, it’s commonly known as the “passing lane”. Despite you, it is not known as the “I have a small penis and drive a Hummer ten miles an hour slower than the speed limit because I can” lane. On that note, stay out of the HOV lanes, that’s a double crime against humanity: Going slow and acting like God’s chosen. Speaking of HOV lanes… Don’t get all pissy, but since you’ve just bypassed nearly an hour of gridlock by zooming up the HOV lanes. Don’t get all whacked when no one wants to let you in, we who have been sitting in traffic and try to nose your way in because you are in that big ol’ Hummer. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’ll let you hit me AND let you have the ticket for not yielding the right of way. Buy me a new truck please!
Oh, before I sign off, let me take a shot at some others…
To the jerk with the over-powered bass in his trunk... If I wanted to hear your rap music from 10 blocks away, I’ll download the album. Turn your crap down…
To the grandma who insists on turning left on a major arterial out of the gas station parking lot. Turn right again go around the block, it’s just as fast. You are wasting not only your time but mine.
To Mr. California, I understand taking u-turns wherever you feel like it is legal back home. You are not home, dumbass.
To the homeless guy on the side of the road. Yelling at me and demanding money doesn’t endear you to me. It makes me wish you’d get a real job, or go off into the forest and die.
To the holier than thou, carbon-foot print shrinking, bicyclists who are not bound by the laws of traffic because they are noble creatures like bald eagles and Bengal tigers, all I have to say is go ahead and ignore traffic laws and assert yourselves as if you have the same rights as both cars and pedestrians at the same time. Physical laws trump traffic laws every time and all I can say is my favorite law when dealing with you self-righteous pricks, is the law of tonnage (oh and Newton’s law about things in motion stay in motion until acted upon…).
But I have been saving my best vitriol for the over-the-hill, absolutely uncool leather bound clod on a motorcycle or as I will refer to them as…donor-cycles. Forgive me, my friend, but because you think you should do 90 mph and weave in and out of traffic, or zoom up between lanes of slow traffic, or even just idling, revving your engine like you are Thor, god of thunder, when you die doing your completely brain-dead antics, well I can’t help think it is proof of Darwin in action. One less of you…
Rant over.
I feel better.
Time to love my fellow humans… until I get behind the wheel again.
First off, to my ambulance chasing following (all 5 of you), this could have been about me pinning myself in the backseat and amusing the Sikh taxi driver, or my accident with the waffle batter, or my last breakdown with the truck. It could have been about my intense dislike of the Greenwood parade or why you should not pour the wrong fluids into your engine.
It could have been… but it isn’t.
My suffering can wait.
Instead I want to rant about others.
Other drivers. In fact maybe even you!
So really my rant goes something like this: Why are my fellow drivers retarded?
To frame this correctly, I am going to examine my drive to and from work. It is the same stupidity every day and I have actually developed a series of mind-teasers regarding what I see.
So bending a rule of good writing, I now refer to “you” as the driving retard, not my adoring reader, however I do not always consider the two mutually exclusive. So if “you” seems sort of “in your face” despite my reader’s innocence, it’s nothing personal, I’ve just lumped everyone together as vehicular bottom-feeders.
Let the rant begin…
Hey You!
Yes, you… on the cell phone… ever heard of Bluetooth? I see you! Is that call so important? I am sure it isn’t. Use the technology and quit trying to kill me because your goddamn wife is too lazy to get off of her bubbled ass and get into her soccer mom mobile and get the milk and bon-bons herself. No, really, that call to your best friend about whether she slept with the hot bartender – unimportant. As unimportant as you are. There is this law… Oh wait, that begs another question…
Seriously, why does the f-ing law apply to everybody BUT you? You wonder why I laugh and point at you while you are pulled over getting a ticket? It’s because the law applies to everyone AND you!
Ha!
You in your Mercedes SUV? Oh, it makes my heart sing when I see a person of self-imposed entitlement get a $242 speeding ticket shoved up their bum for being a complete a-hole. Next time you’re at El Goucho in the Pampas Room, swirling your glass of Robert Biale Monterosso Sonoma Zinfandel and nibbling on your not-so humanly created foie grois, please tell your equally obnoxious associates how you actually were doing 45 in a 20 mph zone and almost ran over a little old man with a walker because you have to get home because little Hayden has to get to her fencing class and then be rushed to her play date with the other six going on fourteen year-olds because you don’t want her to miss any socialization windows.
God, what I’d give to key your car.
But wait, my contempt is not limited to wanna-be aristocratic suburban white folk, oh no I have a much wider field of vision than that.
Hey you, the extreme sports skate/snowboarding goatee and mutton chop side burns flannel shirt wearing granola boy! Yeah I am talking about you too!
Riddle me this, Stephan…
Why do you have to bomb down the freeway at 85 and then slam on your brakes when you get up the traffic jam that you have clearly been able to see for a mile? Do the math (if you can, use your fingers AND toes if you need to), you save not one second! If you drive reasonable, you get there all the same. Oh and tailgating me, only makes me slam on my brakes to scare you to back off, I am not going to speed up because you are trying to make me think you are going to bully me and my P.O.S. truck. Don't you get the "I have no will to live" vibe come from my truck?
Why do you think that changing lanes in gridlock is so f-ing critical? Does going 6 mph, really make it go better than 5 mph. You are going NOWHERE. Chill out. And no, that car length in front of me is NOT an invitation for you to jump in. It is because I don’t want to rear-end the dumb ass in front of me, when some retard like you cuts him off.
By the way, you single-tasking, talking on the cell phone mofo, that turn signal thing really isn’t optional if you don’t want to have some a-hole in a P.O.S. truck like mine not hit you and crumple your little “save the planet” Prius. Especially when you are a dart-in-and-out of traffic punk. If you have any doubts, yes, the silver P.O.S. truck IS screwing with you and deliberately not letting you be the spastic you are.
But wait…there is more…
Hey you, the “I am nearly retired, get off my lawn you kids, stick up my ass, by God I am a Republican Tax Payer, driving my mustard yellow Hummer” I got some words for you too…
For starters, the fast lane is for people who drive the speed limit or somewhat faster, it’s commonly known as the “passing lane”. Despite you, it is not known as the “I have a small penis and drive a Hummer ten miles an hour slower than the speed limit because I can” lane. On that note, stay out of the HOV lanes, that’s a double crime against humanity: Going slow and acting like God’s chosen. Speaking of HOV lanes… Don’t get all pissy, but since you’ve just bypassed nearly an hour of gridlock by zooming up the HOV lanes. Don’t get all whacked when no one wants to let you in, we who have been sitting in traffic and try to nose your way in because you are in that big ol’ Hummer. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’ll let you hit me AND let you have the ticket for not yielding the right of way. Buy me a new truck please!
Oh, before I sign off, let me take a shot at some others…
To the jerk with the over-powered bass in his trunk... If I wanted to hear your rap music from 10 blocks away, I’ll download the album. Turn your crap down…
To the grandma who insists on turning left on a major arterial out of the gas station parking lot. Turn right again go around the block, it’s just as fast. You are wasting not only your time but mine.
To Mr. California, I understand taking u-turns wherever you feel like it is legal back home. You are not home, dumbass.
To the homeless guy on the side of the road. Yelling at me and demanding money doesn’t endear you to me. It makes me wish you’d get a real job, or go off into the forest and die.
To the holier than thou, carbon-foot print shrinking, bicyclists who are not bound by the laws of traffic because they are noble creatures like bald eagles and Bengal tigers, all I have to say is go ahead and ignore traffic laws and assert yourselves as if you have the same rights as both cars and pedestrians at the same time. Physical laws trump traffic laws every time and all I can say is my favorite law when dealing with you self-righteous pricks, is the law of tonnage (oh and Newton’s law about things in motion stay in motion until acted upon…).
But I have been saving my best vitriol for the over-the-hill, absolutely uncool leather bound clod on a motorcycle or as I will refer to them as…donor-cycles. Forgive me, my friend, but because you think you should do 90 mph and weave in and out of traffic, or zoom up between lanes of slow traffic, or even just idling, revving your engine like you are Thor, god of thunder, when you die doing your completely brain-dead antics, well I can’t help think it is proof of Darwin in action. One less of you…
Rant over.
I feel better.
Time to love my fellow humans… until I get behind the wheel again.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Okay, already!
Apologies to those whom I disappoint with a lack of blog. Joel, Ken, Melissa, etc. I needed some material. So from my Spokane trip, it’s the “How Did I Spend My Day” Show.
Day One:
So this morning starts out at about 6:30 am with some baboon in workman’s chothes working outside my hotel door dropping a ladder and banging away. I half expect to hear Jane Goodall narrating:
“See how Bobo makes his first attempts at using tools. He starts by mimicry but I believe he is actually learning to use the tools differently to yield best results after a while…”
Bite me Janey, it’s 6:30 am and if you want to see tools be used, check out the cranky primate without his latte, but with a .30 shotgun learning to use the tool differently to yield best results.
So my cousin and I finally get our act together and head out in her jeep which is totally tricked out with all the gadgets and joy that makes men love cars and we proceed into Spokane proper to collect my grandmother. Grandma insists on “Shari’s”. For those of you that have been to a Shari’s, I really don’t need to say more, but for those of you that have standards and/or feelings of elitism, let me paint a picture.
Imagine a place that looks identical no matter where in the world you may find the franchise. You could be in war-torn Iraq and go into a Shari’s and it would look exactly like a Shari’s from Iowa. Even more so than a Denny’s or a IHOP. Identical. I actually believe there is one Shari’s that is a nexus between dimensions and if you know the mystic words, you can travel anywhere. But I think I have to take back the identical label, because in Spokane, Shari’s is staffed by the un-dead.
“Would you like coffee, dearie, “ the She-Crypt-Keeper rasps and gurgles, as parts of her fall off.
Looking around the restaurant, one realizes that this is geezer central. Median age 120. I am sure this is the Spokane Retiree elephant graveyard and Gus, and Elmo are just waiting for the angels to take them to the “Monster Truck Rally” in the sky.
The menu has pictures of what the idealized version of the meal looks like. I find myself thinking the idealized version is sort of scary. Stuffed hash browns? WTF? Wait, I don’t want to know. But the interesting thing is the menu has been cut back quite a bit since I was last tormented by this ritual suicide. Guess the recession has other victims that GM and Morgan Stanley. Please Barack, do not bail out Shari’s.
So we go back to Grandma’s lair and do the gossipy family thing. Who’s sleeping with whom, when parole dates are coming up, etc. Then the Camel Killer calls. He wants to take Gram out for lunch. Part of me is torn. I’d like to tag along and see if he would be taking us all out to lunch, but I know since he is the world’s most stingy man (I once had to shame him by yelling out quite loudly in a restaurant that he forgot his tip), he’d be very unhappy to see me there and well, I also had no desire to listen to a one-sided conversation about himself and the fact he just discovered that Star Wars action figures can do the same job as a well placed gerbil. Ok, I am just being mean. To the gerbil.
Or God forbid, more tales of "Hospital Cop", his security gig at the local hospital. He once told me he was given the most heinous assignments because he lost his sense of smell in the Army. Don't wonder, just go with the flow.
Or how his girlfriend is bleeding him dry. Too much 99 cent store for her!
Or the series finale of Battlestar Galactica (which made me reel with how stupid I found it) and how humans sprang from the stars despite the fossil evidence. Reality it seems is subjective.
So I not only make an excuse for myself, but my other cousin who is sharing this little trek with me, that we need to “run errands”. My cousin is also relieved because she knows her peril. Plus she knows she’ll get a shot on Saturday which is the big party or what’s known as “Free Lunch On The Elderly” day. I think he will be doing a cameo and splitting before his brother, the born again White Supremist shows up. They don’t get along. I think it had something to do with CK being a dullard and his brother being a thug, but that’s just a guess.
Now this cousin I am traveling with is my favorite of the bunch because she has class and style and knows what to do with utensils. But she has siblings in Spokane and she was catching me up to speed. Apparently, her sister whom last I saw looked vaguely similar to beef jerky, has a new career as a “makeup consultant for Walgreens.” I am afraid this inspired me to want to go see this for myself. I wanted to watch her weave magic on the bovine cud chewers. What shade of mascara will attract the most mullets with El Caminos? My cousin who can match me pound for pound in derision and scorn would not indulge me, but we did laugh our asses off.
Getting back to the part with my cousin being able to use utensils, I think I should point out that she has a liberal definition of use. Numerous times, she has said to me, “I am going to so stick you with this fork…” I think she said it when I told her 15 year old niece who hadn’t seen her in the last decade and didn’t recognize her that my cousin just got out of the “joint” for killing a man. Truth is ol’cuz just can’t stomach Spokane, but why tell the truth when you can lie?
So more to come, but I gotcha something finally…
Day One:
So this morning starts out at about 6:30 am with some baboon in workman’s chothes working outside my hotel door dropping a ladder and banging away. I half expect to hear Jane Goodall narrating:
“See how Bobo makes his first attempts at using tools. He starts by mimicry but I believe he is actually learning to use the tools differently to yield best results after a while…”
Bite me Janey, it’s 6:30 am and if you want to see tools be used, check out the cranky primate without his latte, but with a .30 shotgun learning to use the tool differently to yield best results.
So my cousin and I finally get our act together and head out in her jeep which is totally tricked out with all the gadgets and joy that makes men love cars and we proceed into Spokane proper to collect my grandmother. Grandma insists on “Shari’s”. For those of you that have been to a Shari’s, I really don’t need to say more, but for those of you that have standards and/or feelings of elitism, let me paint a picture.
Imagine a place that looks identical no matter where in the world you may find the franchise. You could be in war-torn Iraq and go into a Shari’s and it would look exactly like a Shari’s from Iowa. Even more so than a Denny’s or a IHOP. Identical. I actually believe there is one Shari’s that is a nexus between dimensions and if you know the mystic words, you can travel anywhere. But I think I have to take back the identical label, because in Spokane, Shari’s is staffed by the un-dead.
“Would you like coffee, dearie, “ the She-Crypt-Keeper rasps and gurgles, as parts of her fall off.
Looking around the restaurant, one realizes that this is geezer central. Median age 120. I am sure this is the Spokane Retiree elephant graveyard and Gus, and Elmo are just waiting for the angels to take them to the “Monster Truck Rally” in the sky.
The menu has pictures of what the idealized version of the meal looks like. I find myself thinking the idealized version is sort of scary. Stuffed hash browns? WTF? Wait, I don’t want to know. But the interesting thing is the menu has been cut back quite a bit since I was last tormented by this ritual suicide. Guess the recession has other victims that GM and Morgan Stanley. Please Barack, do not bail out Shari’s.
So we go back to Grandma’s lair and do the gossipy family thing. Who’s sleeping with whom, when parole dates are coming up, etc. Then the Camel Killer calls. He wants to take Gram out for lunch. Part of me is torn. I’d like to tag along and see if he would be taking us all out to lunch, but I know since he is the world’s most stingy man (I once had to shame him by yelling out quite loudly in a restaurant that he forgot his tip), he’d be very unhappy to see me there and well, I also had no desire to listen to a one-sided conversation about himself and the fact he just discovered that Star Wars action figures can do the same job as a well placed gerbil. Ok, I am just being mean. To the gerbil.
Or God forbid, more tales of "Hospital Cop", his security gig at the local hospital. He once told me he was given the most heinous assignments because he lost his sense of smell in the Army. Don't wonder, just go with the flow.
Or how his girlfriend is bleeding him dry. Too much 99 cent store for her!
Or the series finale of Battlestar Galactica (which made me reel with how stupid I found it) and how humans sprang from the stars despite the fossil evidence. Reality it seems is subjective.
So I not only make an excuse for myself, but my other cousin who is sharing this little trek with me, that we need to “run errands”. My cousin is also relieved because she knows her peril. Plus she knows she’ll get a shot on Saturday which is the big party or what’s known as “Free Lunch On The Elderly” day. I think he will be doing a cameo and splitting before his brother, the born again White Supremist shows up. They don’t get along. I think it had something to do with CK being a dullard and his brother being a thug, but that’s just a guess.
Now this cousin I am traveling with is my favorite of the bunch because she has class and style and knows what to do with utensils. But she has siblings in Spokane and she was catching me up to speed. Apparently, her sister whom last I saw looked vaguely similar to beef jerky, has a new career as a “makeup consultant for Walgreens.” I am afraid this inspired me to want to go see this for myself. I wanted to watch her weave magic on the bovine cud chewers. What shade of mascara will attract the most mullets with El Caminos? My cousin who can match me pound for pound in derision and scorn would not indulge me, but we did laugh our asses off.
Getting back to the part with my cousin being able to use utensils, I think I should point out that she has a liberal definition of use. Numerous times, she has said to me, “I am going to so stick you with this fork…” I think she said it when I told her 15 year old niece who hadn’t seen her in the last decade and didn’t recognize her that my cousin just got out of the “joint” for killing a man. Truth is ol’cuz just can’t stomach Spokane, but why tell the truth when you can lie?
So more to come, but I gotcha something finally…
Monday, February 16, 2009
McDonald's and Darwin
Geez, blog writing is a bitch. Now I am getting dinged because I don't post pictures and my prose is too dense. Sigh.
So this is for Christine...
So it is 2003 and I've been out of work for a VERY long time and quite broke and unhappy. I have a few dollars cash that is all I have that is not tied up some which way and I decide go to McDonald's to buy the cheapest hamburger for lunch I can.
I am standing in line and miserable and whilst in line I become aware of these noxious yard monsters and their intensely awful house frau mother. What draws my attention is the puling of all three...
"Mommy, I want..." in a hellish chorus from the midget snot machines and a nasal whine from ol' ma as she confronts our order taker.
"Well I need a minute to decide..."
WTF?
"What have you been doing the last ten minutes of this grueling exercise of people herding?", I think to myself. But before I can answer the voice in my head, Hagatha starts in on the poor cashier.
"You know the shakes are a rip off? If you buy a large shake, the price per ounce is less than a small shake. What if I want a small shake? The price should be the same." Not content with our cashier's weak "if you insist" smile, Haggy presses her point.
"Don't you think?" A high pitched nasal assault that certainly has the local dog's ears bleeding.
"It's a total rip off. I can't believe it. I think that your company thinks we are all stupid. Don't you agree?"
Having stood in this line for at least ten minutes and being hungry and tired and broke, I step forward.
"Pardon me, but if you think you are being ripped off, perhaps you should order something else?" I say somewhat evenly despite my desire to bludgeon her with a "Happy Meal".
She turns slowly to me and sizes me up.
"Well, EXCUSE me, but if I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."
Shazam! She told me. My god, the internal bleeding!
"Well, EXCUSE me," I acidly replied, "if I was to give you my opinion. I would have to say, judging from you and your spawn, Charles Darwin was wrong."
She was taken off kilter, noticeably shocked by my obnoxious, but clearly educated insult. She then huffed, puffed and dragged her awful, loud and whiny children out of line. As I watched, I noticed the rest of the line did not disapprove.
I stepped up to place my measly burger order. The cashier looked at me smiling and she kind of mouthed the words "it's on the house."
I ate like a king that lunch. Or at lease like Mayor McCheese.
So this is for Christine...
So it is 2003 and I've been out of work for a VERY long time and quite broke and unhappy. I have a few dollars cash that is all I have that is not tied up some which way and I decide go to McDonald's to buy the cheapest hamburger for lunch I can.
I am standing in line and miserable and whilst in line I become aware of these noxious yard monsters and their intensely awful house frau mother. What draws my attention is the puling of all three...
"Mommy, I want..." in a hellish chorus from the midget snot machines and a nasal whine from ol' ma as she confronts our order taker.
"Well I need a minute to decide..."
WTF?
"What have you been doing the last ten minutes of this grueling exercise of people herding?", I think to myself. But before I can answer the voice in my head, Hagatha starts in on the poor cashier.
"You know the shakes are a rip off? If you buy a large shake, the price per ounce is less than a small shake. What if I want a small shake? The price should be the same." Not content with our cashier's weak "if you insist" smile, Haggy presses her point.
"Don't you think?" A high pitched nasal assault that certainly has the local dog's ears bleeding.
"It's a total rip off. I can't believe it. I think that your company thinks we are all stupid. Don't you agree?"
Having stood in this line for at least ten minutes and being hungry and tired and broke, I step forward.
"Pardon me, but if you think you are being ripped off, perhaps you should order something else?" I say somewhat evenly despite my desire to bludgeon her with a "Happy Meal".
She turns slowly to me and sizes me up.
"Well, EXCUSE me, but if I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."
Shazam! She told me. My god, the internal bleeding!
"Well, EXCUSE me," I acidly replied, "if I was to give you my opinion. I would have to say, judging from you and your spawn, Charles Darwin was wrong."
She was taken off kilter, noticeably shocked by my obnoxious, but clearly educated insult. She then huffed, puffed and dragged her awful, loud and whiny children out of line. As I watched, I noticed the rest of the line did not disapprove.
I stepped up to place my measly burger order. The cashier looked at me smiling and she kind of mouthed the words "it's on the house."
I ate like a king that lunch. Or at lease like Mayor McCheese.
Monday, February 2, 2009
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
A truly worthy blog for Joel.
So this is the twentieth anniversary of one of the best cautionary tales I have. Sometimes in the retelling, I break it into smaller portions, but for you, I give you the entirety. Some I remember, some of it I was told (you'll see why in a bit).
Setting The Stage
It is 1989 and I am 23 years old. I have been working as a computer lab assistant for a few years at Seattle Central Community College and have been a teacher's assistant for a woman who would be my friend for many years after, Pam.
Pam taught a desktop publishing course for the graphic designers and I was her flunky. I thought it was a grand way to meet hot graphic designers and I had a lot of fun. But there was this one weekend where things got a bit out of control.
Now those who know me today probably don't imagine me as a young, slender man, but I was. At 23, I would be in the best shape I ever was in, clocking in at a whopping 155 and wearing my 30x30 jeans. However, I was a bit of a lightweight in the drinking department (a skill I grew into as I grew). So this one weekend in May, there was a college function where my division was celebrating something or other. This was a Friday night and Saturday morning, Pam and I were giving a presentation in Tacoma to local printers and design houses on using our students as apprentices.
The College Event
So Friday night we are at this function, Pam, myself and this little Japanese woman named Jeanette.
There was boxed wine.
I had not eaten.
I awoke at 5:30am Saturday morning in my clothes at my mother's house.
This is what I am told happened. I even still have the scars, so I am sure it went down as I am told.
So apparently I had more than one glass of wine (I remember the one) and decided that after an hour or so of drunken mingling, I needed to liven up the joint a bit. This manifested itself in my declaring my undying school spirit to all in the room and crawling into the college president's lap as he sat in some chair, to give the stately African-American gentleman a kiss on the forehead and to try to enlist everyone in a round of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow". Pam at this point, decides to extricate me from this spectacle, apologizing profusely for my lack of sobriety.
Apparently I resist leaving, not having spread as much cheer as I wanted, so Jeanette, a martial arts girl puts the hurt on my wrist to coax me along. Somewhere along the line we meet Jack, Pam's other teaching assistant who is roped into stuffing me into Pam's brand new Thunderbird. Somewhere along the way I inform Pam that I am going to barf in her car and she whips it over to the side and commands me out of the car. So out I go, but unfortunatly for me, Pam has pulled alongside a rather steep embankment and not knowing any better, I step off into space and proceed to roll down the embankment full tilt only to stop having become wedged underneath a sports car that was parked at the base. I guess I was wedged pretty good, because I still wear the scars where I was drug out from under the car by my arms.
Not knowing what to do with me, they took me to my mom's house. My mom is cool. She doesn't freak or anything, but does get a little miffed when I crawl into her downstairs bathroom to pray to the porcelain gods and get myself wedged between the toilet and the wall and somehow rip the toilet out of place in my attempt to get free.
I have a dim memory my mom's voice telling me to just go to sleep.
The Next Day
So at 5:30 am I awake up myself again and feeling like death warmed over. Strangely I am so hung over that I am beyond hung over. I put myself together because I am supposed to be in Tacoma. I collect my car at the college and go to Tacoma to set up Pam's presentation for her with the A/V and computer equipment.
The look on Pam's face when she saw I was actually, not only alive, but functional was one I'll not forget. Absolute disbelief. But I got her stuff done. I don't stay but head back home to crash. I tell her that when she gets back to town, I'll collect the equipment.
She calls me on breaks to tell me how horrible it is going and how she is going nuts, because she has enlisted this student to help her and the student is a bit of a whack job. Being Seattle Central, student whack jobs are a dime a dozen, but this one, Skye is a major leaguer. She is what I'd call now O.C.D. meets A.D.D. A totally goofy, twitchy woman about 40 who you know is destined to turn into the little old lady with 87 cats. And she's a talker. A real motor mouth.
Well, late in the afternoon, Pam calls me and says we need to hookup down at McCormick's (her favorite bar) and I need to cheer her up. I say sure and head down. Well, what I didn't know was that on my way down, Pam would start chatting up this guy, Dr. Dave and was quite happy to go off with him. She just had one loose end: Skye. Now, Pam is no idiot, she was going to pawn Skye off on me to entertain.
So I walk in and am greeted to the sight of Pam chatting up this dude with her back literally to Skye and Skye tormenting the bartender, Fred (the coolest barkeep ever). Pam ignores me for the most part as Skye locks onto the fresh meat.
Yak, yak, yak... I am trying to get Pam's attention, but Skye won't stop. Fred senses my dismay and pours me a pint. I am just about to enjoy my pint when another nasty Skye-ism starts. Not only does she talk a lot, she sprays while doing it. My beer falls victim almost instantly. I am just staring at my beer in shock, when Fred smoothly takes it away and has a fresh one waiting. I move my beer further away, but in a really animated moment Skye is able to nail it again. Again Fred saves the day. This time I insert myself between the Spray Queen and my beer. After a few moments, Fred hands me a napkin. I tipped Fred big ever after.
Finally after being ignored by Pam and spit on by Skye, I demand Pam's keys so I can load my car with the school equipment and get the hell out of Dodge. I should note at this point, if you had not guessed, Skye was a bit bombed.
So Pam tells Skye to give me a hand. Skye trundles out after me and helps me load the car. As I close the trunk, Skye launches into some weird lecture on Seattle architecture, pointing out the various downtown buildings. I nod politely and she has me look up at one of the nearby buildings. As I am doing so, she spins me around, puts me in this anaconda hug and proceeds to literally suck my face. It was like French-kissing a squid. I managed to squirm free and say something to the effect of "I am not that kind of boy!" meaning I still had a will to live.
I quickly escaped, Pam went off with Dr. Dave and who the hell knows what happened to Skye. But she turned up later so it could not have been too bad.
Pam and I had many more adventures, but I was always able to get her to beg forgiveness by growling in a low tone "Dr. Dave".
So this is the twentieth anniversary of one of the best cautionary tales I have. Sometimes in the retelling, I break it into smaller portions, but for you, I give you the entirety. Some I remember, some of it I was told (you'll see why in a bit).
Setting The Stage
It is 1989 and I am 23 years old. I have been working as a computer lab assistant for a few years at Seattle Central Community College and have been a teacher's assistant for a woman who would be my friend for many years after, Pam.
Pam taught a desktop publishing course for the graphic designers and I was her flunky. I thought it was a grand way to meet hot graphic designers and I had a lot of fun. But there was this one weekend where things got a bit out of control.
Now those who know me today probably don't imagine me as a young, slender man, but I was. At 23, I would be in the best shape I ever was in, clocking in at a whopping 155 and wearing my 30x30 jeans. However, I was a bit of a lightweight in the drinking department (a skill I grew into as I grew). So this one weekend in May, there was a college function where my division was celebrating something or other. This was a Friday night and Saturday morning, Pam and I were giving a presentation in Tacoma to local printers and design houses on using our students as apprentices.
The College Event
So Friday night we are at this function, Pam, myself and this little Japanese woman named Jeanette.
There was boxed wine.
I had not eaten.
I awoke at 5:30am Saturday morning in my clothes at my mother's house.
This is what I am told happened. I even still have the scars, so I am sure it went down as I am told.
So apparently I had more than one glass of wine (I remember the one) and decided that after an hour or so of drunken mingling, I needed to liven up the joint a bit. This manifested itself in my declaring my undying school spirit to all in the room and crawling into the college president's lap as he sat in some chair, to give the stately African-American gentleman a kiss on the forehead and to try to enlist everyone in a round of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow". Pam at this point, decides to extricate me from this spectacle, apologizing profusely for my lack of sobriety.
Apparently I resist leaving, not having spread as much cheer as I wanted, so Jeanette, a martial arts girl puts the hurt on my wrist to coax me along. Somewhere along the line we meet Jack, Pam's other teaching assistant who is roped into stuffing me into Pam's brand new Thunderbird. Somewhere along the way I inform Pam that I am going to barf in her car and she whips it over to the side and commands me out of the car. So out I go, but unfortunatly for me, Pam has pulled alongside a rather steep embankment and not knowing any better, I step off into space and proceed to roll down the embankment full tilt only to stop having become wedged underneath a sports car that was parked at the base. I guess I was wedged pretty good, because I still wear the scars where I was drug out from under the car by my arms.
Not knowing what to do with me, they took me to my mom's house. My mom is cool. She doesn't freak or anything, but does get a little miffed when I crawl into her downstairs bathroom to pray to the porcelain gods and get myself wedged between the toilet and the wall and somehow rip the toilet out of place in my attempt to get free.
I have a dim memory my mom's voice telling me to just go to sleep.
The Next Day
So at 5:30 am I awake up myself again and feeling like death warmed over. Strangely I am so hung over that I am beyond hung over. I put myself together because I am supposed to be in Tacoma. I collect my car at the college and go to Tacoma to set up Pam's presentation for her with the A/V and computer equipment.
The look on Pam's face when she saw I was actually, not only alive, but functional was one I'll not forget. Absolute disbelief. But I got her stuff done. I don't stay but head back home to crash. I tell her that when she gets back to town, I'll collect the equipment.
She calls me on breaks to tell me how horrible it is going and how she is going nuts, because she has enlisted this student to help her and the student is a bit of a whack job. Being Seattle Central, student whack jobs are a dime a dozen, but this one, Skye is a major leaguer. She is what I'd call now O.C.D. meets A.D.D. A totally goofy, twitchy woman about 40 who you know is destined to turn into the little old lady with 87 cats. And she's a talker. A real motor mouth.
Well, late in the afternoon, Pam calls me and says we need to hookup down at McCormick's (her favorite bar) and I need to cheer her up. I say sure and head down. Well, what I didn't know was that on my way down, Pam would start chatting up this guy, Dr. Dave and was quite happy to go off with him. She just had one loose end: Skye. Now, Pam is no idiot, she was going to pawn Skye off on me to entertain.
So I walk in and am greeted to the sight of Pam chatting up this dude with her back literally to Skye and Skye tormenting the bartender, Fred (the coolest barkeep ever). Pam ignores me for the most part as Skye locks onto the fresh meat.
Yak, yak, yak... I am trying to get Pam's attention, but Skye won't stop. Fred senses my dismay and pours me a pint. I am just about to enjoy my pint when another nasty Skye-ism starts. Not only does she talk a lot, she sprays while doing it. My beer falls victim almost instantly. I am just staring at my beer in shock, when Fred smoothly takes it away and has a fresh one waiting. I move my beer further away, but in a really animated moment Skye is able to nail it again. Again Fred saves the day. This time I insert myself between the Spray Queen and my beer. After a few moments, Fred hands me a napkin. I tipped Fred big ever after.
Finally after being ignored by Pam and spit on by Skye, I demand Pam's keys so I can load my car with the school equipment and get the hell out of Dodge. I should note at this point, if you had not guessed, Skye was a bit bombed.
So Pam tells Skye to give me a hand. Skye trundles out after me and helps me load the car. As I close the trunk, Skye launches into some weird lecture on Seattle architecture, pointing out the various downtown buildings. I nod politely and she has me look up at one of the nearby buildings. As I am doing so, she spins me around, puts me in this anaconda hug and proceeds to literally suck my face. It was like French-kissing a squid. I managed to squirm free and say something to the effect of "I am not that kind of boy!" meaning I still had a will to live.
I quickly escaped, Pam went off with Dr. Dave and who the hell knows what happened to Skye. But she turned up later so it could not have been too bad.
Pam and I had many more adventures, but I was always able to get her to beg forgiveness by growling in a low tone "Dr. Dave".
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Why I Am Too Lazy To Be A Fanatic...
This blog has been deleted because the judges have voted it off the island as too boring.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Kimmi, Kimmi, Where Are You? Call Me, Baby!
A short, but somewhat humorous snippet...
So I have a dear friend who is under the weather and I'd been checking in on her daily with a text message so as not to wake her up. Well this is good and all and I was racking up good karma points until...
I typed in the wrong phone number into the phone for the text message. I was one digit off. Well I didn't realize I had done this and I sent off what would be a totally innocent message if you had the context and the receiver was the right person. But to a random stranger, well maybe not - without context.
Message was:
"Hey hon, how are you doing? Thinking of you..."
Well now the next morning while away from the phone I get a voice mail from the number I mistyped...
"Kimmi? Baby is that you? Oh I was so hoping you'd get back in touch..."
I ignored the message because I knew I wasn't Kimmi and well my desperate sounding drive-by text messaging victim was some dude.
Bored now.
Later that day the phone rings again and I miss it again. "Kimmi? Kimmi? C'mon, baby, pick up!"
Still bored now,
Even later, Mr. "Kimmi Doesn't Love Me Anymore" calls again. This time I pick up and feeling mischievous, lower my voice, "Hello?"
"Is Kimmi there?" says our lost soul.
Instead of telling him he had the wrong number, I simply say "No."
There is a long pause and then he hangs up.
Not so bored now.
I'm going to Hell.
So I have a dear friend who is under the weather and I'd been checking in on her daily with a text message so as not to wake her up. Well this is good and all and I was racking up good karma points until...
I typed in the wrong phone number into the phone for the text message. I was one digit off. Well I didn't realize I had done this and I sent off what would be a totally innocent message if you had the context and the receiver was the right person. But to a random stranger, well maybe not - without context.
Message was:
"Hey hon, how are you doing? Thinking of you..."
Well now the next morning while away from the phone I get a voice mail from the number I mistyped...
"Kimmi? Baby is that you? Oh I was so hoping you'd get back in touch..."
I ignored the message because I knew I wasn't Kimmi and well my desperate sounding drive-by text messaging victim was some dude.
Bored now.
Later that day the phone rings again and I miss it again. "Kimmi? Kimmi? C'mon, baby, pick up!"
Still bored now,
Even later, Mr. "Kimmi Doesn't Love Me Anymore" calls again. This time I pick up and feeling mischievous, lower my voice, "Hello?"
"Is Kimmi there?" says our lost soul.
Instead of telling him he had the wrong number, I simply say "No."
There is a long pause and then he hangs up.
Not so bored now.
I'm going to Hell.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Winter In Narnia 2008
So the plan was that I'd take two weeks off at Christmas and just putter around, doing a little of this a little of that. I knew I had several projects around the house that were in desperate need of getting done and the computer situation had gone completely cyber-jungle on me. So that was going to be the chores part of the holidays, but as rewards I would go out and visit friends, hit a few nice restaurants, fart about on the computer doing my facsimile of computer music or computer artwork, do the family thing and play Uncle Ross.
I would also take a day and hit the outdoor mall and casually finish my Christmas shopping taking in the the holiday ambiance watching the bustle and knowing that I was finally enjoying this holiday for once after long years of grinchiness.
Yeppers, that was the plan. How could I have guessed that Seattle would be hit with the snow storm of the half-century and that due to our collective snow preparedness, I would be reliving Stephen King's "The Shining" with a twist.
So first off, let me explain something now that comes into play a bit later. The house I live in has no central heating. If I get cold, which in a normal year is about three nights a year, I fire up the space heater in my office and my bedroom and just wear a thick sweater and I am good to go. Ok, so no heat going into the storm. Coincidently, this house has a bit of a history. In the Korean War, Seattle's north end city limit was 85th Street and I am at 97th, and this nice little house was one of the popular north end brothels. The layout of the house is very odd, but makes sense when you have that little factoid.
When the big cold hit, I fired up my meager space heaters and settled in. Winter in Seattle consists of snow for a day and then melting and rain. The weather site I use on the Internet hinted at worse, but really since it was calling for the storm on Wednesday and there was nothing, then I concluded they were wrong again. In this case they were a day early. But when it did hit, I found myself with two coolish rooms and the rest of the house a freezer. It was really intolerable to be anywhere but my office or bedroom. The restroom stops were cold reminders of when I used to ski. Nothing like putting bare butt on ice cold plastic. So when I actually had to leave one room, I scurried to the other room like a rat in a very cold maze. I actually left the orange juice out on the kitchen counter the night it hit 15 degrees only to have it mostly frozen the next morning.
So my house sits on a fairly steep hill, but not very far up the hill, so when it snows most of the time, I just muscle the truck out and get it on the main street at the bottom of the hill and I am good to go. Unfortunately this time was a little different. The truck's battery had gone flat.
The poor beastie needed a jump which was problematic because of the parking (no good access to the battery to jump off of another car). Given my super-intense phobia about jumping cars, this is actually okay with me. I had my chargers.
My car phobia comes from a time when I had no fear of electricity and jumping cars. I knew you could have some issue if you cross-connected and things like that, but my attitude at the time was retarded monkeys could do this kind of thing blindfolded, what harm could I come to? Lesson one for me: not all jumper cables are created equal. Some are absolute crap and well quite dangerous. Guess what kind I had? Lesson two: if you are going to jump a battery try jumping batteries that are not completely mismatched in power and size. Jumping a battery from a monster-sized Mercedes from the 70's to a tiny Toyota Celica (my darling "Car From Hell") is like mating a Newfoundland with a Scottish Terrier. Nothing good comes from it. It didn't help that I remembered some stupid tip that the jumper car should be running. So the Merc was kicking out even more electric fun. As I got out of the Celica after successfully jumping the car I got a rude surprise. Much to my shock and horror, I watched the black jumper cables quickly (and I mean seconds) go from black to dark gray, to lighter gray to ash color AND the leads start to glow red. I suspect that if I had not disconnected the cables as fast as I did, battery go boom. Strangely this has stuck with me since. But I am not afraid of slow charging battery chargers. Odd, huh?
So short story long, in theory I could get the truck going any time. Just needed to get out my trusty charger(s). Funny thing about chargers is they need to be charged. That requires you charge them with power and that requires a power cable. Yes, our hero has misplaced all of his cables and all his chargers are drained. This is starting to shape up to be a horrorfest. You know when you want to yell at the teenagers on screen, "Don't go make out in the van! There's a crazed axe-wielding killer waiting? Don't you know anything?" This was similar. "Why didn't you charge when you had the chance? Don't you know anything?"
So mobility impaired. I had the Lexus, but that was my last choice. Not a snow car.
So I am going to be indoors for a few days. Not a problem. I don't get cabin fever easily and had lots of unwatched DVDs and books to entertain me and being a computer whore, I can spend days zooming in and out of applications. Plus I could also chat with friends both on the cell and online. Plus that first day, I could do my online shopping for Christmas. The 18th. Yes, as you can see I am not very bright.
I had not done a lot of shopping online at Christmas and I had assumed 2-day shipping meant that the very second I hit the submit button, magic elves would whisk my order out of inventory and get it in the mail near the speed of light. Now the veterans of Christmas mailings are no doubt scoffing at my foolish, foolish naiveté. But when the email confirmations started to appear in my email that the package was just about to be sent at the same time I was actually expecting the package to arrive, all I can say I was glad I had the cover of bad weather when it came to explaining why most of the online gifts arrived late. I was even more grateful most of the people I was dealing with had the same line; "Sorry, UPS didn't make it."
Note to self: Online shop early.
So for the first four days I was set. In fact I was quite happy to have downtime and the excuse I couldn't go anywhere.
Then by about Day 5, I'd had enough. So I ventured out down the street to Fred Meyers to finish my Christmas shopping. Not quite the outdoor mall with ambiance, but it was better than a 7-Eleven “Post-it notes for everyone” Christmas. I also hit a nearby toy store, but it did not give me the joy of Toys 'r Us on Christmas Eve.
You see, the last several years I have had a holiday tradition of going to Toys 'R Us on Christmas Eve to witness the total carnage that out of control yard monsters can inflict in the Mecca of junior greed. It captures perfectly the spirit of the season my friend Wayland calls "Consuming for Christ". Ripped open packages litter isles and store employees wander the halls looking zombie-like and speechless pleading for someone to pop a cap in their brain to end the misery, As I write this, it occurs to me I really should make a Boxing Day jaunt to the store next year to see the after Christmas returns and bargain hunting. That could even be more apocalyptic. Hmmn. I'll have to make a note for 2009.
Now being quite used to hauling crap in cars, I had not taken into account that I would be walking up hill for about a half mile on ice and snow. My balance on a good day is is marginal. On the trek back there was sliding and swearing and gifts a' flyin'. Yes and since the main road had been somewhat cleared, there was dirty slushy snow that would be kicked up and flung by morons driving in the snowy part of the road not not the clear part. Again I curse the SUV owners. But after about an hour I made it home. Boy getting out was fun. I was so much more relaxed.
So Tuesday's big event was wrapping the presents. I have a bad habit of not wrapping gifts because, well, um, I am a single guy and well, I bribe others with my hopelessness usually - I am not trained well. Plus when I do wrap, it sort of looks like I am post doctorate of the Helen Keller Gift Wrapping Academy. But this year I would be better. So I got out the scissors and the paper. I scrounged up the Scotch tape only to realize I had about 6 inches left on the roll and no other gift tape. Was I going to go brave Snowmageddon just for tape? I tried other methods such as string and staples, but I drew the line at duct tape. Nothing says "I am a lame-ass" more than a thoughtful gift wrapped in duct tape.
So Christmas is approaching and several decisions were going to have to be made. I had an invitation to spend Christmas Eve with my friends Susan and Kevin. Kevin is a great cook and there would be great beer and wine, including my favorite beer of all time, the Belgium beer "Chimay Blue Label" and we'd watch DVDs and graze on gnosh and play with their dogs. I would crash there and have breakfast in the morning and we'd swap presents. Quite lovely. But I had to get there.
However, Union Hill in Redmond was not happening. It was closed they tell me, but with Greenwood somewhat treacherous, all bets were off.
Being alone on Christmas Eve was ok, if not a little lonely, but the next decision was Christmas itself. Since my mother was gone and my sister was on the east coast and my father had canceled his trip to Seattle, I had no immediate family, but I usually went to Wayland's moms for Christmas dinner and had been doing this for twenty years, so this was a tougher decision. I really wanted to go, but given she lived on Capital Hill (a very horrid area for snow) this was going to require me to resurrect my truck. So with the clock ticking, I set out to find the power cable for any charger to charge the truck. After giving up I hiked back down to Freddy's and bought yet another charger. Sigh... This was four or five now.
I got the charger home and opened it. WTF? It didn't come with a cable. It would take an extension cord. But I didn't know what bin or box I had sorted all these into. At one point, I had sorted all kinds of household things into bins for possible donation and abandoned the project and forgot the contents. Boy after several moves, you would think I'd be smarter.
Back into the snow to go down to Safeway. More slipping, more sliding. Finally a cable. Back home. So I charged up Mr. Battery Charger, but it was a very slow process. Eventually on Christmas day I brought life back to the Toyota and made my way to Capital Hill. It actually was quite an easy drive despite what I expected until I got to 19th Ave.
What should have been relatively clear was a giant icy-slushy rut-ridden joke of a street, But what can't be cured, must be endured so I proceeded to head down 19th. The snow was pretty wet and heavy and the ruts bounced the truck around like a lunar rover. I saw all these SUVs and little cars sliding and getting quite stuck. I needed to get a fair ways down the road, but after getting nearly stuck myself trying to yield the way to someone. I realized that I couldn't get any further and was just about to pull over and hike the rest of the way when lo and behold a plow comes along. Saved! I waited for Mr. Plow go by thinking that this was awesome. If he went all the way down 19th, I could just follow, This was where I got to experience first hand the city's absolute moronic mandates. As the plow past me by, I realized the the plow was leaving almost everything the way it was. Maybe it plowed a few inches off the top, but there was at least a foot of crap. So essentially he was making it just slightly less hard to drive this damn road. Still totally screwed up even after the plow.
Well I fought my way down and about a block away gave up. I walked it with my gifts.
So I did the second family thing. The nieces and nephews are all taller and one of them now stares down at me and says things like, "Play Mario Cart with me." only to be followed a while later with "You really suck at this, don't you?" I start to wax nostalgic for the old Commodore 64 days and he looks at me like I am speaking of ancient times. From his point of view I probably am.
Dinner and the gifts were fab, but I was fascinated with the social experiment of giving an 8 year old a computer and then telling him he can't build it until he gets home. I thought his little blood vessels were going to pop out of his neck at the stress. You could have fed the kid a bag of sugar and not got him as hyper.
I ended up crashing there for the night and the next day made the reverse trek in the same amount of snow, just slushier.
Not much else to say about my winter torment other than I ended up playing Cranium's Family Fun on New Year's Eve and had to stack a set of six diced sized blocks in a stack using only my elbows. You see where this goes...
I should have been drinking more, much more to be talked into that one...
And of this writing it is snowing...again.
I would also take a day and hit the outdoor mall and casually finish my Christmas shopping taking in the the holiday ambiance watching the bustle and knowing that I was finally enjoying this holiday for once after long years of grinchiness.
Yeppers, that was the plan. How could I have guessed that Seattle would be hit with the snow storm of the half-century and that due to our collective snow preparedness, I would be reliving Stephen King's "The Shining" with a twist.
So first off, let me explain something now that comes into play a bit later. The house I live in has no central heating. If I get cold, which in a normal year is about three nights a year, I fire up the space heater in my office and my bedroom and just wear a thick sweater and I am good to go. Ok, so no heat going into the storm. Coincidently, this house has a bit of a history. In the Korean War, Seattle's north end city limit was 85th Street and I am at 97th, and this nice little house was one of the popular north end brothels. The layout of the house is very odd, but makes sense when you have that little factoid.
When the big cold hit, I fired up my meager space heaters and settled in. Winter in Seattle consists of snow for a day and then melting and rain. The weather site I use on the Internet hinted at worse, but really since it was calling for the storm on Wednesday and there was nothing, then I concluded they were wrong again. In this case they were a day early. But when it did hit, I found myself with two coolish rooms and the rest of the house a freezer. It was really intolerable to be anywhere but my office or bedroom. The restroom stops were cold reminders of when I used to ski. Nothing like putting bare butt on ice cold plastic. So when I actually had to leave one room, I scurried to the other room like a rat in a very cold maze. I actually left the orange juice out on the kitchen counter the night it hit 15 degrees only to have it mostly frozen the next morning.
So my house sits on a fairly steep hill, but not very far up the hill, so when it snows most of the time, I just muscle the truck out and get it on the main street at the bottom of the hill and I am good to go. Unfortunately this time was a little different. The truck's battery had gone flat.
The poor beastie needed a jump which was problematic because of the parking (no good access to the battery to jump off of another car). Given my super-intense phobia about jumping cars, this is actually okay with me. I had my chargers.
My car phobia comes from a time when I had no fear of electricity and jumping cars. I knew you could have some issue if you cross-connected and things like that, but my attitude at the time was retarded monkeys could do this kind of thing blindfolded, what harm could I come to? Lesson one for me: not all jumper cables are created equal. Some are absolute crap and well quite dangerous. Guess what kind I had? Lesson two: if you are going to jump a battery try jumping batteries that are not completely mismatched in power and size. Jumping a battery from a monster-sized Mercedes from the 70's to a tiny Toyota Celica (my darling "Car From Hell") is like mating a Newfoundland with a Scottish Terrier. Nothing good comes from it. It didn't help that I remembered some stupid tip that the jumper car should be running. So the Merc was kicking out even more electric fun. As I got out of the Celica after successfully jumping the car I got a rude surprise. Much to my shock and horror, I watched the black jumper cables quickly (and I mean seconds) go from black to dark gray, to lighter gray to ash color AND the leads start to glow red. I suspect that if I had not disconnected the cables as fast as I did, battery go boom. Strangely this has stuck with me since. But I am not afraid of slow charging battery chargers. Odd, huh?
So short story long, in theory I could get the truck going any time. Just needed to get out my trusty charger(s). Funny thing about chargers is they need to be charged. That requires you charge them with power and that requires a power cable. Yes, our hero has misplaced all of his cables and all his chargers are drained. This is starting to shape up to be a horrorfest. You know when you want to yell at the teenagers on screen, "Don't go make out in the van! There's a crazed axe-wielding killer waiting? Don't you know anything?" This was similar. "Why didn't you charge when you had the chance? Don't you know anything?"
So mobility impaired. I had the Lexus, but that was my last choice. Not a snow car.
So I am going to be indoors for a few days. Not a problem. I don't get cabin fever easily and had lots of unwatched DVDs and books to entertain me and being a computer whore, I can spend days zooming in and out of applications. Plus I could also chat with friends both on the cell and online. Plus that first day, I could do my online shopping for Christmas. The 18th. Yes, as you can see I am not very bright.
I had not done a lot of shopping online at Christmas and I had assumed 2-day shipping meant that the very second I hit the submit button, magic elves would whisk my order out of inventory and get it in the mail near the speed of light. Now the veterans of Christmas mailings are no doubt scoffing at my foolish, foolish naiveté. But when the email confirmations started to appear in my email that the package was just about to be sent at the same time I was actually expecting the package to arrive, all I can say I was glad I had the cover of bad weather when it came to explaining why most of the online gifts arrived late. I was even more grateful most of the people I was dealing with had the same line; "Sorry, UPS didn't make it."
Note to self: Online shop early.
So for the first four days I was set. In fact I was quite happy to have downtime and the excuse I couldn't go anywhere.
Then by about Day 5, I'd had enough. So I ventured out down the street to Fred Meyers to finish my Christmas shopping. Not quite the outdoor mall with ambiance, but it was better than a 7-Eleven “Post-it notes for everyone” Christmas. I also hit a nearby toy store, but it did not give me the joy of Toys 'r Us on Christmas Eve.
You see, the last several years I have had a holiday tradition of going to Toys 'R Us on Christmas Eve to witness the total carnage that out of control yard monsters can inflict in the Mecca of junior greed. It captures perfectly the spirit of the season my friend Wayland calls "Consuming for Christ". Ripped open packages litter isles and store employees wander the halls looking zombie-like and speechless pleading for someone to pop a cap in their brain to end the misery, As I write this, it occurs to me I really should make a Boxing Day jaunt to the store next year to see the after Christmas returns and bargain hunting. That could even be more apocalyptic. Hmmn. I'll have to make a note for 2009.
Now being quite used to hauling crap in cars, I had not taken into account that I would be walking up hill for about a half mile on ice and snow. My balance on a good day is is marginal. On the trek back there was sliding and swearing and gifts a' flyin'. Yes and since the main road had been somewhat cleared, there was dirty slushy snow that would be kicked up and flung by morons driving in the snowy part of the road not not the clear part. Again I curse the SUV owners. But after about an hour I made it home. Boy getting out was fun. I was so much more relaxed.
So Tuesday's big event was wrapping the presents. I have a bad habit of not wrapping gifts because, well, um, I am a single guy and well, I bribe others with my hopelessness usually - I am not trained well. Plus when I do wrap, it sort of looks like I am post doctorate of the Helen Keller Gift Wrapping Academy. But this year I would be better. So I got out the scissors and the paper. I scrounged up the Scotch tape only to realize I had about 6 inches left on the roll and no other gift tape. Was I going to go brave Snowmageddon just for tape? I tried other methods such as string and staples, but I drew the line at duct tape. Nothing says "I am a lame-ass" more than a thoughtful gift wrapped in duct tape.
So Christmas is approaching and several decisions were going to have to be made. I had an invitation to spend Christmas Eve with my friends Susan and Kevin. Kevin is a great cook and there would be great beer and wine, including my favorite beer of all time, the Belgium beer "Chimay Blue Label" and we'd watch DVDs and graze on gnosh and play with their dogs. I would crash there and have breakfast in the morning and we'd swap presents. Quite lovely. But I had to get there.
However, Union Hill in Redmond was not happening. It was closed they tell me, but with Greenwood somewhat treacherous, all bets were off.
Being alone on Christmas Eve was ok, if not a little lonely, but the next decision was Christmas itself. Since my mother was gone and my sister was on the east coast and my father had canceled his trip to Seattle, I had no immediate family, but I usually went to Wayland's moms for Christmas dinner and had been doing this for twenty years, so this was a tougher decision. I really wanted to go, but given she lived on Capital Hill (a very horrid area for snow) this was going to require me to resurrect my truck. So with the clock ticking, I set out to find the power cable for any charger to charge the truck. After giving up I hiked back down to Freddy's and bought yet another charger. Sigh... This was four or five now.
I got the charger home and opened it. WTF? It didn't come with a cable. It would take an extension cord. But I didn't know what bin or box I had sorted all these into. At one point, I had sorted all kinds of household things into bins for possible donation and abandoned the project and forgot the contents. Boy after several moves, you would think I'd be smarter.
Back into the snow to go down to Safeway. More slipping, more sliding. Finally a cable. Back home. So I charged up Mr. Battery Charger, but it was a very slow process. Eventually on Christmas day I brought life back to the Toyota and made my way to Capital Hill. It actually was quite an easy drive despite what I expected until I got to 19th Ave.
What should have been relatively clear was a giant icy-slushy rut-ridden joke of a street, But what can't be cured, must be endured so I proceeded to head down 19th. The snow was pretty wet and heavy and the ruts bounced the truck around like a lunar rover. I saw all these SUVs and little cars sliding and getting quite stuck. I needed to get a fair ways down the road, but after getting nearly stuck myself trying to yield the way to someone. I realized that I couldn't get any further and was just about to pull over and hike the rest of the way when lo and behold a plow comes along. Saved! I waited for Mr. Plow go by thinking that this was awesome. If he went all the way down 19th, I could just follow, This was where I got to experience first hand the city's absolute moronic mandates. As the plow past me by, I realized the the plow was leaving almost everything the way it was. Maybe it plowed a few inches off the top, but there was at least a foot of crap. So essentially he was making it just slightly less hard to drive this damn road. Still totally screwed up even after the plow.
Well I fought my way down and about a block away gave up. I walked it with my gifts.
So I did the second family thing. The nieces and nephews are all taller and one of them now stares down at me and says things like, "Play Mario Cart with me." only to be followed a while later with "You really suck at this, don't you?" I start to wax nostalgic for the old Commodore 64 days and he looks at me like I am speaking of ancient times. From his point of view I probably am.
Dinner and the gifts were fab, but I was fascinated with the social experiment of giving an 8 year old a computer and then telling him he can't build it until he gets home. I thought his little blood vessels were going to pop out of his neck at the stress. You could have fed the kid a bag of sugar and not got him as hyper.
I ended up crashing there for the night and the next day made the reverse trek in the same amount of snow, just slushier.
Not much else to say about my winter torment other than I ended up playing Cranium's Family Fun on New Year's Eve and had to stack a set of six diced sized blocks in a stack using only my elbows. You see where this goes...
I should have been drinking more, much more to be talked into that one...
And of this writing it is snowing...again.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Car Gets Stolen - Part 3
So I am sitting in my newly recovered car and not happy. You see, the ignition is hanging from the steering column and I have no idea what to do. I am dripping wet and cold. I am out $110 and I know no one other than my sister in Bellignham I can call for help (and she's in classes). I think "rage" covers my mood. I cannot for the life of me imagine this day could get anymore botched than it was. Then I looked down at the gearshift and saw that indeed, the day could go even more bizarre.
Sitting next to my gearshift is, pardon the crudeness, a big, no huge pile of excrement.
A whopper. Huge. Gross. Beyond disgusting.
Something in me snapped. I was on the edge of a breakdown.
Not only had some bastard stolen my car, he had taken a dump in it. WTF?
So my spirit was dashed and my resolve was gone. I was lost. I sat there and despaired. But only for a few moments, because as my brain was un-shocking itself out of it's daze, it started to work the angles - literally. I thought to myself, given the interior of the car, how in the hell did Mr. Car Thief actually take the dump? I tried imagining myself doing this and no way did the angles work. More WTF? A dog perhaps? Big dog though. Still wasn't working for me.
A few moments pass and I realized that if I am going to get through this nightmarish day, I had to suck it up and deal. Working angles or not.
I did a quick priority list in my head and then started to execute to plan.
So I rummage in the back and find some papers that I can use to pick up the turd and chuck it out the door. Again, more WTF...
As I pick up the noxious waste, I realize both to my relief and absolute confusion, it is not real. It is a gag turd. A totally realistic, but very plastic gag turd. As I write this, I have no idea the how or the why of it, but gag turd it was. Okay one down, moving on.
I get out of the car and go into the office again to deal with the bimbette. I explain about the ignition and she says that "Billy Bob" or "Billy Joe" or some other "Deliverence" sounding name, could help me. She calls back and some portly yokel in denim overalls and a baseball hat motors out. We go look at the car.
He shrugs and says, "Why don'tcha just hot-wire it?"
I gape at him. "I don't know what they taught you in school, but I never had "Hot-wiring 101."
He spits his chew. "T'aint hard, you just get in and do this..." He proceeds to hot-wire the car. "That'll getcha back to Seattle." He looks at me like I am the stupidest city slicker he has ever met.
"Um, where is the nearest mechanic?" If Jethro thinks I am going to drive to Seattle in a recently stolen and now hot-wired car, he better switch up to a higher grade of malt liquor, clearly what he was drinking had him delusional.
"That'd be Roy's over on Something Street."
I thanked him and gingerly eased the car out of the lot. At one intersection, the car died and I had to re-hot-wire it. I was kind of pleased with myself, but also a little flummoxed because when in the hell would I ever need this new skill?
I got to the mechanic fine. Went in an told him my tale. He, out the the kindness of his heart and the grace of a true pro, puts me next in the queue, "We'll getcha fixed up and outta here in no time."
I sit and wait. As I am sitting and waiting, I listen to this guy do his thing. He is negotiating how to get some woman's car fixed on payments. I am shocked. He is like Mother Theresa of mechanics. He clearly owns the joint and is perhaps the nicest mechanic I had met, even today. Premium customer care. I'd bring my car to him in heartbeat going forward but I am tripped up by the fact I never plan on setting foot in Satan's backyard again.
Finally the car is done. Another $110. He takes the check no questions asked.
Yes, gentle reader, I am being lulled into a sense of the worst being over. But we know better, don't we?
So I am out of there. I hit I-5 going south and I am doing everything by the numbers. Best driving practices. No speeding, no recklessness. Just going to go home drop off the car and hit a bar and get blind, stinking drunk.
Five miles out of Bellingham, red and blue lights go off in my rear view mirror. I pull over and directions are blared at me over the bullhorn. Cop gets out of his car, gun drawn.
Next thing I know, I am legs spread, hands on the hood of the car. The cop is telling me I am under arrest for stealing the car. I respectfully wait until he is done telling me the computer has the car has stolen and I explain this is all a mistake and I can prove it. Well, the cop is sure he has got me and is very unresponsive to letting me explain my side of it. I finally convince him that the paperwork is in my coat pocket and if I can show it to him, it will explain everything. Very carefully, because I know he is completely ready to send me to Valhalla, I produce the paperwork. He looks it over and chuckles.
"Son," he says with a bit of a drawl, "do you know how many cars are stolen every year?"
I shrug meekly "Dunno, a lot?"
"Son," he continues, "do you know how many cars are recovered a year?"
Again meekly. "Dunno, not so many?"
"Son," he says with a bit of a grin, "do you know how many get stolen and recovered in less than 24 hours?"
I reply miserably, "Mine."
He hands me my paperwork and wishes me a nice day. If only my knees would quit knocking with the thought that the car could still have been hot-wired.
I drive back to Seattle and drop off the car, go to the bar and drink myself into a coma.
Epilogue
A few weeks have past and I get a call from my mother, whom I had been using as my permanent address.
"Ross, I think your car has been impounded." she said.
"Yeah," I told her, "that was a few weeks ago."
"No... I don't think so. This notice is dated a couple of days ago."
"Don't sweat it, Mom," I tell her. "It's just the system is slow."
Still unconvinced, she says, "If the car was in Bellingham, why is this notice from a towing lot in Madrona [a Seattle area]?"
That got my attention. I went down to the parking lot and the car was gone. I hadn't noticed because I had been bussing and hadn't needed to drive for a few days. Seems the Seattle cops were prowling the lot and ran my car plates that came up as a stolen car and they did me the favor of "recovering" it for me. Thankfully, Seattle at the time, didn't charge for the first five days of storage.
The first of many of "the Car From Hell" stories.
Sitting next to my gearshift is, pardon the crudeness, a big, no huge pile of excrement.
A whopper. Huge. Gross. Beyond disgusting.
Something in me snapped. I was on the edge of a breakdown.
Not only had some bastard stolen my car, he had taken a dump in it. WTF?
So my spirit was dashed and my resolve was gone. I was lost. I sat there and despaired. But only for a few moments, because as my brain was un-shocking itself out of it's daze, it started to work the angles - literally. I thought to myself, given the interior of the car, how in the hell did Mr. Car Thief actually take the dump? I tried imagining myself doing this and no way did the angles work. More WTF? A dog perhaps? Big dog though. Still wasn't working for me.
A few moments pass and I realized that if I am going to get through this nightmarish day, I had to suck it up and deal. Working angles or not.
I did a quick priority list in my head and then started to execute to plan.
So I rummage in the back and find some papers that I can use to pick up the turd and chuck it out the door. Again, more WTF...
As I pick up the noxious waste, I realize both to my relief and absolute confusion, it is not real. It is a gag turd. A totally realistic, but very plastic gag turd. As I write this, I have no idea the how or the why of it, but gag turd it was. Okay one down, moving on.
I get out of the car and go into the office again to deal with the bimbette. I explain about the ignition and she says that "Billy Bob" or "Billy Joe" or some other "Deliverence" sounding name, could help me. She calls back and some portly yokel in denim overalls and a baseball hat motors out. We go look at the car.
He shrugs and says, "Why don'tcha just hot-wire it?"
I gape at him. "I don't know what they taught you in school, but I never had "Hot-wiring 101."
He spits his chew. "T'aint hard, you just get in and do this..." He proceeds to hot-wire the car. "That'll getcha back to Seattle." He looks at me like I am the stupidest city slicker he has ever met.
"Um, where is the nearest mechanic?" If Jethro thinks I am going to drive to Seattle in a recently stolen and now hot-wired car, he better switch up to a higher grade of malt liquor, clearly what he was drinking had him delusional.
"That'd be Roy's over on Something Street."
I thanked him and gingerly eased the car out of the lot. At one intersection, the car died and I had to re-hot-wire it. I was kind of pleased with myself, but also a little flummoxed because when in the hell would I ever need this new skill?
I got to the mechanic fine. Went in an told him my tale. He, out the the kindness of his heart and the grace of a true pro, puts me next in the queue, "We'll getcha fixed up and outta here in no time."
I sit and wait. As I am sitting and waiting, I listen to this guy do his thing. He is negotiating how to get some woman's car fixed on payments. I am shocked. He is like Mother Theresa of mechanics. He clearly owns the joint and is perhaps the nicest mechanic I had met, even today. Premium customer care. I'd bring my car to him in heartbeat going forward but I am tripped up by the fact I never plan on setting foot in Satan's backyard again.
Finally the car is done. Another $110. He takes the check no questions asked.
Yes, gentle reader, I am being lulled into a sense of the worst being over. But we know better, don't we?
So I am out of there. I hit I-5 going south and I am doing everything by the numbers. Best driving practices. No speeding, no recklessness. Just going to go home drop off the car and hit a bar and get blind, stinking drunk.
Five miles out of Bellingham, red and blue lights go off in my rear view mirror. I pull over and directions are blared at me over the bullhorn. Cop gets out of his car, gun drawn.
Next thing I know, I am legs spread, hands on the hood of the car. The cop is telling me I am under arrest for stealing the car. I respectfully wait until he is done telling me the computer has the car has stolen and I explain this is all a mistake and I can prove it. Well, the cop is sure he has got me and is very unresponsive to letting me explain my side of it. I finally convince him that the paperwork is in my coat pocket and if I can show it to him, it will explain everything. Very carefully, because I know he is completely ready to send me to Valhalla, I produce the paperwork. He looks it over and chuckles.
"Son," he says with a bit of a drawl, "do you know how many cars are stolen every year?"
I shrug meekly "Dunno, a lot?"
"Son," he continues, "do you know how many cars are recovered a year?"
Again meekly. "Dunno, not so many?"
"Son," he says with a bit of a grin, "do you know how many get stolen and recovered in less than 24 hours?"
I reply miserably, "Mine."
He hands me my paperwork and wishes me a nice day. If only my knees would quit knocking with the thought that the car could still have been hot-wired.
I drive back to Seattle and drop off the car, go to the bar and drink myself into a coma.
Epilogue
A few weeks have past and I get a call from my mother, whom I had been using as my permanent address.
"Ross, I think your car has been impounded." she said.
"Yeah," I told her, "that was a few weeks ago."
"No... I don't think so. This notice is dated a couple of days ago."
"Don't sweat it, Mom," I tell her. "It's just the system is slow."
Still unconvinced, she says, "If the car was in Bellingham, why is this notice from a towing lot in Madrona [a Seattle area]?"
That got my attention. I went down to the parking lot and the car was gone. I hadn't noticed because I had been bussing and hadn't needed to drive for a few days. Seems the Seattle cops were prowling the lot and ran my car plates that came up as a stolen car and they did me the favor of "recovering" it for me. Thankfully, Seattle at the time, didn't charge for the first five days of storage.
The first of many of "the Car From Hell" stories.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Car Gets Stolen - Part 2
A technical point of clarification from Part 1, the car title had fully transferred but the cops had called my friend's parent's because I had no phone and they were the last known contact. So there, Wayland! Your memory is better than mine...
So the ride from Seattle to Bellingham was uneventful. I got to the bus station and my sister was there waiting for me to give me a ride to the police station.
"Hey, I hope this doesn't screw you up too much, " she said, "but I have a class in half an hour and I won't be able to stay."
"No problem," I reassure her, "I'll figure it all out and get the car and just head back. Not a problem."
Jinx.
I jinxed it right there.
So Bellingham is a smaller town and the cop shop reflected that. I'm not a cop fan, nor am I a cop hater. In fact mostly, my experience with cops have been about getting tickets. So when I go in I am surprised that this is like waiting at the dentist. The crowd is a little anxious, but resigned to it's collective fate. Finally I am called.
I go into a little office with four hugely piled on desks and people taking notes and typing stuff. It reminds me somewhat of "Hillstreet Blues" if the show was cast with people from rural America.
"Hi," said the cop I was assigned to. I sat down and told him my tale.
"Uh huh, uh huh," he said typing stuff into his IBM Selectric for his report.
"Well, seems easy enough," he finished. "All I need is your license, the police report and the car registration..."
I looked at him a little startled.
"Well, I have the first two, but the third is in the car," I tell him, thinking this sounded perfectly reasonable.
"Oh, well, I can't release the car to you."
"What?" My brain is locking up at this point. All this way and no Plan B.
"Wait a minute," I protest. Falling back to my previous cop experiences, "If you have my license and license plate number, you can run it on the computer to see if I own the car, right?"
He squinched his face, "Yeah, I suppose..."
"Well?" I shrug my shoulders. My options were limited. I should have brought doughnuts as incentive.
He walks over to the computer and after a few moments comes back satisfied.
I hand him over the i.d. and police report. He looks at both and then looks at me again.
"We've got another problem," he said somewhat sheepishly. "I can't release the car to you. The officer who filled out the police report in Seattle didn't sign it."
Officer Doughnut strikes again from afar. I close my eyes and count to ten.
"Surely," I soothed, "you don't think I have a stash of blank Seattle Stolen Car reports that I fill out and pass off to cops God knows where to get back eleven year old cars do you?"
Clearly this was a Miss Manners moment he has not planned for. He goes to talk to the dude in charge. He comes back.
"Now we don't normally do this," he says like he's just hooked me up with his supermodel sister, "but seeing as how you bussed up and all, we'll let this slide." I am both ticked and grateful that this copper is making the little people do the jig for him, but at least I can move on.
I put on my best "Gosh, what would I do without you, Officer?" mask and settle up the paperwork.
"Where is the car actually?" I asked assuming, like in the Rockford files, it'd be around back.
"Oh, yeah, you go out the door, walk down to Someplace Store on Something Street and go left until you come to Some Other Place Store and it's behind that."
"Thank you so much!" I gush.
So it is February. Cold and overcast. I set out on my little walk. Hmmn. Someplace Store is further than it sounded. So after many blocks, I reach Someplace Store and turn left. It is about this time that the Heavens open up and start dumping freezing rain. Within another few blocks I was soaked.
Even better, what the cop failed to tell me was that Some Other Place Store was actually across Belligham. I walked the breadth of Bellingham in the freezing rain.
I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
I get to Some Other Place Store finally and find the building behind it. Sure enough there is a lot and there is my baby. At last.
So I go into the lot's office and there behind the counter is a vapid, bubblegum snapping wench looking bored.
"I'm here to get my car," I tell her and I hand over all of the paperwork.
She looks it all over, types something in her computer and looks at me with her bovine eyes, "That'll be $110,"
"No f-ing way! What?"
She rolls her eyes, "Five day storage..." Like she is explaining to a toddler.
"Fine," I say. Make this pain end.
"Check ok?"
She nods. I fill it out and hand it to her.
"Sorry, hon, " she hands the check back, "local checks only."
At this point all I have on me is my checkbook and ATM card which I would have gladly embedded in her forehead.
"Where is the nearest ATM?" I ask through gritted teeth.
"Oh, I dunno. I think the nearest one is Someplace Store on Something Street."
"Not far from the cop station?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. Apparently ATMs are still a novelty in Bellingham in 1990.
So into the freezing rain I go. Every step I take I wish someone else dead. I get to the ATM, withdraw the money and trudge back to the lot. My mood is as foul as it gets. I am numb now I am so wet and cold. I get back to the lot and dripping water onto their floor I hand the woman there the money.
"Aw man," she says off-handedly, "Had I known you were walking, I coulda called the check in." She smiles as I feel myself want to lunge at and strangle her.
"Can I get the receipt, so I can get my car and go?"
"Here ya go, have a nice day!" She says. I look at her and if I had heat vision her head of bad, big hair would have been charred crispiness.
And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
I go out to the car and open it. Slide into the car seat and stick my key into the ignition. Turn the key as the sense of something is horribly wrong strikes me. For you see, I am now looking at the various wires and parts of my ignition dangling from the steering column. This car is going nowhere.
And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
So the ride from Seattle to Bellingham was uneventful. I got to the bus station and my sister was there waiting for me to give me a ride to the police station.
"Hey, I hope this doesn't screw you up too much, " she said, "but I have a class in half an hour and I won't be able to stay."
"No problem," I reassure her, "I'll figure it all out and get the car and just head back. Not a problem."
Jinx.
I jinxed it right there.
So Bellingham is a smaller town and the cop shop reflected that. I'm not a cop fan, nor am I a cop hater. In fact mostly, my experience with cops have been about getting tickets. So when I go in I am surprised that this is like waiting at the dentist. The crowd is a little anxious, but resigned to it's collective fate. Finally I am called.
I go into a little office with four hugely piled on desks and people taking notes and typing stuff. It reminds me somewhat of "Hillstreet Blues" if the show was cast with people from rural America.
"Hi," said the cop I was assigned to. I sat down and told him my tale.
"Uh huh, uh huh," he said typing stuff into his IBM Selectric for his report.
"Well, seems easy enough," he finished. "All I need is your license, the police report and the car registration..."
I looked at him a little startled.
"Well, I have the first two, but the third is in the car," I tell him, thinking this sounded perfectly reasonable.
"Oh, well, I can't release the car to you."
"What?" My brain is locking up at this point. All this way and no Plan B.
"Wait a minute," I protest. Falling back to my previous cop experiences, "If you have my license and license plate number, you can run it on the computer to see if I own the car, right?"
He squinched his face, "Yeah, I suppose..."
"Well?" I shrug my shoulders. My options were limited. I should have brought doughnuts as incentive.
He walks over to the computer and after a few moments comes back satisfied.
I hand him over the i.d. and police report. He looks at both and then looks at me again.
"We've got another problem," he said somewhat sheepishly. "I can't release the car to you. The officer who filled out the police report in Seattle didn't sign it."
Officer Doughnut strikes again from afar. I close my eyes and count to ten.
"Surely," I soothed, "you don't think I have a stash of blank Seattle Stolen Car reports that I fill out and pass off to cops God knows where to get back eleven year old cars do you?"
Clearly this was a Miss Manners moment he has not planned for. He goes to talk to the dude in charge. He comes back.
"Now we don't normally do this," he says like he's just hooked me up with his supermodel sister, "but seeing as how you bussed up and all, we'll let this slide." I am both ticked and grateful that this copper is making the little people do the jig for him, but at least I can move on.
I put on my best "Gosh, what would I do without you, Officer?" mask and settle up the paperwork.
"Where is the car actually?" I asked assuming, like in the Rockford files, it'd be around back.
"Oh, yeah, you go out the door, walk down to Someplace Store on Something Street and go left until you come to Some Other Place Store and it's behind that."
"Thank you so much!" I gush.
So it is February. Cold and overcast. I set out on my little walk. Hmmn. Someplace Store is further than it sounded. So after many blocks, I reach Someplace Store and turn left. It is about this time that the Heavens open up and start dumping freezing rain. Within another few blocks I was soaked.
Even better, what the cop failed to tell me was that Some Other Place Store was actually across Belligham. I walked the breadth of Bellingham in the freezing rain.
I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
I get to Some Other Place Store finally and find the building behind it. Sure enough there is a lot and there is my baby. At last.
So I go into the lot's office and there behind the counter is a vapid, bubblegum snapping wench looking bored.
"I'm here to get my car," I tell her and I hand over all of the paperwork.
She looks it all over, types something in her computer and looks at me with her bovine eyes, "That'll be $110,"
"No f-ing way! What?"
She rolls her eyes, "Five day storage..." Like she is explaining to a toddler.
"Fine," I say. Make this pain end.
"Check ok?"
She nods. I fill it out and hand it to her.
"Sorry, hon, " she hands the check back, "local checks only."
At this point all I have on me is my checkbook and ATM card which I would have gladly embedded in her forehead.
"Where is the nearest ATM?" I ask through gritted teeth.
"Oh, I dunno. I think the nearest one is Someplace Store on Something Street."
"Not far from the cop station?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. Apparently ATMs are still a novelty in Bellingham in 1990.
So into the freezing rain I go. Every step I take I wish someone else dead. I get to the ATM, withdraw the money and trudge back to the lot. My mood is as foul as it gets. I am numb now I am so wet and cold. I get back to the lot and dripping water onto their floor I hand the woman there the money.
"Aw man," she says off-handedly, "Had I known you were walking, I coulda called the check in." She smiles as I feel myself want to lunge at and strangle her.
"Can I get the receipt, so I can get my car and go?"
"Here ya go, have a nice day!" She says. I look at her and if I had heat vision her head of bad, big hair would have been charred crispiness.
And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
I go out to the car and open it. Slide into the car seat and stick my key into the ignition. Turn the key as the sense of something is horribly wrong strikes me. For you see, I am now looking at the various wires and parts of my ignition dangling from the steering column. This car is going nowhere.
And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.
Monday, December 15, 2008
The Car Gets Stolen - Part 1
Meh.
Ok, I get it already.
I have been chastised by my reader base (if a handful of people count as a base) that I am indulging too much in the snarky mockery of others ("smug" and "superior" were bandied around) and not staying true of heart to my blog, which is to explain why you should be happy you are not me. Even though I enjoy mocking others (as long as they are stupid and/or evil), I will rein it for the sake of the kinder folken and wallow in my own cautionary tales.
Clearly enough bad hasn't happened to me recently that I have enough energy to be cruel to others and I have been encouraged to look into my past for material to bring joy to others. I'll only snark regarding my own exploits.
In theory.
So, let me see... what can I write about?
How about the time my car got stolen?
This story is what I used to tell first dates to see if I could scare them off easily, or whether they had the "right stuff." You'll see why.
So to set the stage. It is early February, 1990, I have just moved into my Capital Hill apartment a few days earlier (not even a phone yet) and have my "new" used 1979 Toyota Celica (the "Car From Hell" as it will be to all in short time) purchased from my friend a few weeks earlier. Life is puttering along when suddenly a big, major snow storm hits Seattle. Pretty much shuts the town down for a week. We are talking snow drift quantities of snow in the parking lot. I'd have to shovel my car out and given the weather, I am perfectly happy to let it sit. This is winter in Narnia. Not the usual wussy inch or two of Seattle.
I live close enough to Aldus Corporation, where I am a software tester, that I can shuffle my way in on foot. Aldus is located in Pioneer Square and I am on the north side of the hill, so it is a bit of a walk, but do-able. So I shlepp into work.
After getting there, I am getting into the routine of things and I get a call from my friend whom I had bought the Toyota.
"Your car's been stolen and is in Bellingham, Washington," he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
He repeated his assertion.
"Naw, man," I scoff, "it's under like two feet of snow in the parking lot. The lot is an ice rink. There is no way it can be my car."
He went on to explain that the cops pulled over some guy driving my car and that since his parents hold the title (it was still being transferred to me), they got the call about 3 am letting them know the story. At this point, I am still unconvinced, but take down the contact number anyway. So I go home that night and visit the lot. All the cars were there with snow covering them and the lot a sheet of ice.
All the cars except for mine. To this day I have no idea how he got the car out.
So I go into work the next day and call the Bellingham cop who arrested the guy. Turns out that he's off-shift and I explain my deal to another cop who answers and he says don't sweat. All I need to do is come and collect the car. I do need to have a stolen car report filed in Seattle and bring identification. Not a problem I think and make arrangements to catch a bus up to Bellingham. My sister, who lives there can pick me up and she'll take me to the cop shop.
So the next day I shuffle back down to Aldus and during my lunch I walk up to the Municipal building (Cop Shop Central) and look at the directory for something like "Stolen Car Department", but alas no luck there. I ask a clerk and am told that I have to call "911" to report the car stolen. I am sort of confused because I think of "911" as something like life and death and well, my car is not a crisis. Annoying sure, but not an emergency. But clearly the Muni building is a non-starter. I head back to Aldus. I pass by a bakery and true to cliche there is a cop eating a doughnut in his prowl car. I walk up (probably a little too brazenly based on his rather "I have a gun" reaction) and after stepping back a few steps to appease him, explain my story.
"Sorry," he says, "you gotta call 911 so it can get into the system." He then rolls his window back up. I am stunned. Clearly the guy has the report and can fill it out on the spot for me. This 911 business is rather bizarre. I felt like the Riddler, from the old Batman show, "Riddle me this, Batman... When is a life and death emergency, not a life or death emergency? When it is a stolen car 90 miles away! Get it?" He looked at me bored.
"See you in ten minutes then, " I huff and stalk off back to Aldus. I make the call and sure enough this 911 thing is legit. I then go wait in the lobby. About ten minutes later, Officer Doughnut swaggers in.
"Oh, it's you?" He says somewhat un-engaged. "I thought you were a flake."
"Uh huh," I mumble. I then tell him the story. He decides this is best if we do this in his patrol car. So I find myself sitting in the back of the cop car and all my co-workers are streaming in and out of the building peering in and each registers "Hey, I know that guy..." in their faces as they pass. Yep, can't think of a better way to start rumors.
So he asks me a ton of questions about the car and where I live, etc. I tell him all the info and in the end he gives me a piece of pink NCR paper and wishes me good luck. "Thanks," I say and saunter back to work.
The next day I catch a bus to Bellingham, Little did I know this was only the warm up round.
Ok, I get it already.
I have been chastised by my reader base (if a handful of people count as a base) that I am indulging too much in the snarky mockery of others ("smug" and "superior" were bandied around) and not staying true of heart to my blog, which is to explain why you should be happy you are not me. Even though I enjoy mocking others (as long as they are stupid and/or evil), I will rein it for the sake of the kinder folken and wallow in my own cautionary tales.
Clearly enough bad hasn't happened to me recently that I have enough energy to be cruel to others and I have been encouraged to look into my past for material to bring joy to others. I'll only snark regarding my own exploits.
In theory.
So, let me see... what can I write about?
How about the time my car got stolen?
This story is what I used to tell first dates to see if I could scare them off easily, or whether they had the "right stuff." You'll see why.
So to set the stage. It is early February, 1990, I have just moved into my Capital Hill apartment a few days earlier (not even a phone yet) and have my "new" used 1979 Toyota Celica (the "Car From Hell" as it will be to all in short time) purchased from my friend a few weeks earlier. Life is puttering along when suddenly a big, major snow storm hits Seattle. Pretty much shuts the town down for a week. We are talking snow drift quantities of snow in the parking lot. I'd have to shovel my car out and given the weather, I am perfectly happy to let it sit. This is winter in Narnia. Not the usual wussy inch or two of Seattle.
I live close enough to Aldus Corporation, where I am a software tester, that I can shuffle my way in on foot. Aldus is located in Pioneer Square and I am on the north side of the hill, so it is a bit of a walk, but do-able. So I shlepp into work.
After getting there, I am getting into the routine of things and I get a call from my friend whom I had bought the Toyota.
"Your car's been stolen and is in Bellingham, Washington," he said.
"Huh?" I replied.
He repeated his assertion.
"Naw, man," I scoff, "it's under like two feet of snow in the parking lot. The lot is an ice rink. There is no way it can be my car."
He went on to explain that the cops pulled over some guy driving my car and that since his parents hold the title (it was still being transferred to me), they got the call about 3 am letting them know the story. At this point, I am still unconvinced, but take down the contact number anyway. So I go home that night and visit the lot. All the cars were there with snow covering them and the lot a sheet of ice.
All the cars except for mine. To this day I have no idea how he got the car out.
So I go into work the next day and call the Bellingham cop who arrested the guy. Turns out that he's off-shift and I explain my deal to another cop who answers and he says don't sweat. All I need to do is come and collect the car. I do need to have a stolen car report filed in Seattle and bring identification. Not a problem I think and make arrangements to catch a bus up to Bellingham. My sister, who lives there can pick me up and she'll take me to the cop shop.
So the next day I shuffle back down to Aldus and during my lunch I walk up to the Municipal building (Cop Shop Central) and look at the directory for something like "Stolen Car Department", but alas no luck there. I ask a clerk and am told that I have to call "911" to report the car stolen. I am sort of confused because I think of "911" as something like life and death and well, my car is not a crisis. Annoying sure, but not an emergency. But clearly the Muni building is a non-starter. I head back to Aldus. I pass by a bakery and true to cliche there is a cop eating a doughnut in his prowl car. I walk up (probably a little too brazenly based on his rather "I have a gun" reaction) and after stepping back a few steps to appease him, explain my story.
"Sorry," he says, "you gotta call 911 so it can get into the system." He then rolls his window back up. I am stunned. Clearly the guy has the report and can fill it out on the spot for me. This 911 business is rather bizarre. I felt like the Riddler, from the old Batman show, "Riddle me this, Batman... When is a life and death emergency, not a life or death emergency? When it is a stolen car 90 miles away! Get it?" He looked at me bored.
"See you in ten minutes then, " I huff and stalk off back to Aldus. I make the call and sure enough this 911 thing is legit. I then go wait in the lobby. About ten minutes later, Officer Doughnut swaggers in.
"Oh, it's you?" He says somewhat un-engaged. "I thought you were a flake."
"Uh huh," I mumble. I then tell him the story. He decides this is best if we do this in his patrol car. So I find myself sitting in the back of the cop car and all my co-workers are streaming in and out of the building peering in and each registers "Hey, I know that guy..." in their faces as they pass. Yep, can't think of a better way to start rumors.
So he asks me a ton of questions about the car and where I live, etc. I tell him all the info and in the end he gives me a piece of pink NCR paper and wishes me good luck. "Thanks," I say and saunter back to work.
The next day I catch a bus to Bellingham, Little did I know this was only the warm up round.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Snow in Seattle - Ha Ha Mr. Dumbass SUV!
Ok, so I am sitting here in my living room. I am looking out the window. I live on a hill. My hill is a sheet of ice. This morning's entertainment is called "Watch the Dumbass." I have counted no less than ten SUVs in this hour alone, attempt my modest little hill only to lock their precious little ABS brakes and slide like a sled down the hill. Did I mention the hill has a bend and a big building one can slide into?
What is it about Seattle drivers? Why are you so stupid? Oh, yeah. It's the SUV. I forgot. It makes you invunerable. But really people, truly? Can you not work the ice angle? Ice is slippery on a hill and I should think your first choice would be to try the level backways?
It's not like the ice was invisible in the daylight. I could see it. "Hmmn, that's ice", I thought as I looked at the ice. I watched people walking on it stumbling and yet, the SUVs who would be king kept a coming...
Those are the downhillers. Another flavor of car fun is the uphillers. Those dumb bastards who gun it up the hill only to get stuck spinning their wheels on the ice and for extra points sliding backwards.
Thus we come to my favorite sporting event: downhillers vs. the uphillers. Oh the time I am having! Ouch, there is a good one! A downhiller has just slammed and locked his brakes and is sliding right into an uphiller who has swerved to the right. The downhiller has gone sideways as the uphiller has hit ice and is slowly drifting backwards. Both are SUVs and both are men.
Isn't that cute? One has a dog.
They miss each other (no SUVs were harmed in the writing of this blog) but I am betting a change of pants is in order.
A few minutes have gone by. Oh, this one is not a SUV, it is a minivan! Even better. It's not even slowing down much. Umm. Major arterial ahead. Better brake. There you go. Ooops, that pesky ice. Into the arterial you go! But no traffic. Ouch, 15 seconds later and you would have met a Metro bus on intimate terms.
Ah, the hijinks! This was good watching. But now I must try it (need food). So I inch the car out and do all the right things and ease onto the dry road from my icy hill. I go and get food from the Safeway down the road and whattya know? The parking lot is a sheet of ice. I manuver around the cars in the lot that are spinning wheels and otherwise being dumbasses to find my spot.
I smirk to myself that if Seattle could learn to drive like me, we'd all be better off. As I am thinking this, I take about two steps from the car and both feet go out from under me and I go down on my ass in front of all the SUVs and minivans. I even see one fat guy point and laugh and he gets into his truck.
As I've always said: "The gods get even with those that gloat..."
What is it about Seattle drivers? Why are you so stupid? Oh, yeah. It's the SUV. I forgot. It makes you invunerable. But really people, truly? Can you not work the ice angle? Ice is slippery on a hill and I should think your first choice would be to try the level backways?
It's not like the ice was invisible in the daylight. I could see it. "Hmmn, that's ice", I thought as I looked at the ice. I watched people walking on it stumbling and yet, the SUVs who would be king kept a coming...
Those are the downhillers. Another flavor of car fun is the uphillers. Those dumb bastards who gun it up the hill only to get stuck spinning their wheels on the ice and for extra points sliding backwards.
Thus we come to my favorite sporting event: downhillers vs. the uphillers. Oh the time I am having! Ouch, there is a good one! A downhiller has just slammed and locked his brakes and is sliding right into an uphiller who has swerved to the right. The downhiller has gone sideways as the uphiller has hit ice and is slowly drifting backwards. Both are SUVs and both are men.
Isn't that cute? One has a dog.
They miss each other (no SUVs were harmed in the writing of this blog) but I am betting a change of pants is in order.
A few minutes have gone by. Oh, this one is not a SUV, it is a minivan! Even better. It's not even slowing down much. Umm. Major arterial ahead. Better brake. There you go. Ooops, that pesky ice. Into the arterial you go! But no traffic. Ouch, 15 seconds later and you would have met a Metro bus on intimate terms.
Ah, the hijinks! This was good watching. But now I must try it (need food). So I inch the car out and do all the right things and ease onto the dry road from my icy hill. I go and get food from the Safeway down the road and whattya know? The parking lot is a sheet of ice. I manuver around the cars in the lot that are spinning wheels and otherwise being dumbasses to find my spot.
I smirk to myself that if Seattle could learn to drive like me, we'd all be better off. As I am thinking this, I take about two steps from the car and both feet go out from under me and I go down on my ass in front of all the SUVs and minivans. I even see one fat guy point and laugh and he gets into his truck.
As I've always said: "The gods get even with those that gloat..."
Sunday, December 7, 2008
A Brief Reflection On Stupid Drivers
So Phil and I are coming back from Fry's Electronics (Mecca) and we're in the commuter lane zooming along when this Christmas tree goes flying by. Seems some dumbass strapped his tree to the top of his SUV like a moron and thought it would be a grand idea to do 75 in the commuter lane. So we watched as the tree bounced and rolled across three lanes of traffic causing cars to swerve and brake suddenly.
So here is the punchline - dumbass decides to exit and try to loop back and get his tree. Oh I would have paid money to see that rescue. I think the tree was definitely short of the shoulder and traffic was moving. Yeehah!
So here is the punchline - dumbass decides to exit and try to loop back and get his tree. Oh I would have paid money to see that rescue. I think the tree was definitely short of the shoulder and traffic was moving. Yeehah!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Thanksgiving Day Weekend At The Mall - Part 2
Previously on "Cautionary Tales":
"We give thanks on this Thanksgiving for all we have..."
"Wanna go to the mall?"
"It should be fine. Maybe a little crowded..."
"Look out, the minivan doesn't see us!"
"He's pointing to the ramp!"
"Up yours!"
"Now, Camden, don't walk in front of people..."
The Mall. A vast cavern of consumption and a portrait of civilization gone wrong. Young, old, stupid and slow mill through this mall. My friend and I separate as we each have our mission, His is to buy pans on sale and mine is a more dangerous cause for I am embarking on my quest to Verizon Wireless. There will be pain, there will be anger, there will be a reckoning because, well, you see, my phone is doing this blinky thing and it really annoys me.
I make my way to the directory to investigate the mall layout. As I approach there are these people staring blankly at the map muttering amongst themselves. They speak something not English and I dutifully wait for them to shuffle aside after grokking the magic concept of "You Are Here" and while I wait, I realize that, no, they are going to pitch camp at the directory and live out their days pointing at the pretty colored squares, speaking some eastern Eurpoean tongue and no doubt cursing the American interloper who just wants a non-blinky phone.
So I decide to wing it. Off I went. So having some sense that Verizon was close, I ambled along looking at the stores as I passed. Clothing, clothing, music, clothing, clothing, coffee, Victoria's Secret (oooooh shiny), toys, clothing, clothing. Hmmn. I sense a theme - clothing. I do pass a computer game shop, but one look inside and I see a sea of Melvins and I can't bring myself to stand hip-deep in overweight boy-men wearing "Hulk for president" t-shirts discussing which game console is better and could Wolverine kill Luke Skywalker with his adamantium claws if Luke had a light-saber. Sigh.
Then there was this store. A foul, unholy place. I don't even remember the name, but one look inside and I was mesmerized by the torture of the damned. This store that had only one purpose - the soul sucking corruption of tween and teen girls (10-19) and selling the affectations that turned normal girls into skanky, dim Hanna Montana's (I had to ask once - she is a fictitious pop-tart, who is played by a real pop-tart).
Purple, pink and glitter all swam before my eyes in a kaleidoscope of the worst of my junior high memories. It was awful. This was the womb of Mallrat girls. Ribbons and lip gloss were everywhere. T-shirts with rainbows and unicorns. The tackiest fake jewelry. Practice jewelry. Or training jewelry. This stuff no doubt lays the formula for a future time when little Timmy wants to get frisky.
Oh for a bookstore, or even something with manly tools. I forced myself on.
At this point, I want to say for the record, that nowhere in the Washington State driver's code does it state that baby strollers have the right of way. Yet, in this Audubon of a mall, all the maternals wield their carts of death with reckless abandon. Old people - they had full lives. People with lots of bags? Clip them and knock them off balance. Mallrats? Bowl them over. They are like rabbits anyway. Two $25 dollar gift cards to the Unholy Store and you've got a replacement.
It is not until one gets two entitled mommies with baby strollers, does one get a delicious game of Chicken. Neither gives as the gap narrows. The crowd looks on. Only at the very last possible moment does the smaller mommy slice away from collision with the bigger mommy. The laws of tonnage hold. A muffled "scuse me" from the loser as the bigger one smirks, "Pilates that, bitch!"
Well by this time I have ventured to the very heart of the mall, if heart is indeed the correct word. Center, perhaps? In this "heart" is a source of great entertainment for me. This is where the civilized shells are peeled away from homo sapiens and we are left at our most vile - The line to see Santa. This I am going to savor. In fact I regret there are no chairs to line up to watch the line. Hell, I'd buy coke and popcorn for this.
If the kid is not crying, the kid is hyper. If the kid is not hyper, the kid is bored. If the kid is not bored, the kid needs to go wee wee. If the kid wee wees, that is like a home run for me. I cheer, I do the wave. But if the kid holds it, they just complain and fidget, so there will be a home run at some point. The parents are there just as messed up. They want this year's picture to be better than last. It's always sad when one's distant great uncle Boris is grateful for the picture, but points out that he was unaware that little Timmy looked so much like his aunt Rita (the one the family compares her face to that of a sea bass).
Now Santa's little helpers are a desperate lot (listen/read David Saderis' essay about being an elf at Macy's for further reference) and they toy with the emotions of the line while Santa does his thing.
"What do you want to be little girl?" purrs the elf.
"I wanna be a doctor!" the girl beams with pride because her mommy, the Smith graduate stay-at-home told her she could be anything she wanted to be.
"How precious!" says the elf. "Not afraid of that pesky malpractice or easily contracted ebola, are ya! Next!"
I love this line. Especially when a mother/son duet has been standing in the line for what must be half the day passes in front of me. The boy huffs "This is stupid. Santa is stupid. I don't want my picture taken." The mother, who realizes how much quality shopping she could have been doing instead of standing in line to get a badly lit picture of her baby demon driving some old fart that much closer to a gun shop. "We’re almost there, honey." A total and complete lie. Then she resorts to bribery when he looks at her with hate. "I'll buy you" He makes a break for it. She grabs his arm and hisses at him like no one else can hear, "So help me, as God is my witness, I will beat your sorry ass and ground you until you qualify for medicare." This is nothing more than a blow-hard time out. He is not impressed. With extra-special venom, she hisses anew "I'll put the Wii on Craigslist, you little piece of crap." Whoohoo, score one for the mother. He folds like a napkin and submits to this heinous rite of passage.
I take it all in for a while and move on. More crowds, more evil. I finally arrive at Verizon Wireless. As I walk through the door I am greeted at the door by a cheery door-greeter. Kinda cute young blonde, but I know in less than four weeks, she'll be gray haired and eighty leaning against the door for support if I were to come back. I give her a courtesy nod.
Then as is the tradition in places such as these I scan for the head dullard. I know my luck will be to get the one with seeming brain damage, so I decide to cut out the middle steps and just seek him or her out. It doesn't take me long. I find him staring at his own hand somewhat mystified. I don't think I can find more dim.
"Excuse me, but I have a phone that is acting up..." I explain the problem. He stares at my phone in much the same way he stares at his hand. "Looks okay to me," says Forrest Gump.
"Don't you notice the blinky shimmer on the screen?" I say pointing it out.
"We don't fix phones, we swap 'em out. It'll cost you $50 for a swap."
"Say," I gasp, "the blinky went away..." I leave before he tries to sell me another phone.
To lick my wounds, I make my way to the Apple Store but once I get there, the goblin masses scare me away. It is a microcosm of the Mall itself. Instead, I gave up and find my friend. Strangely enough, only a few minutes away from the mall, it all starts to fade. Was it a dream? Auntie Em, Auntie Em!
"We give thanks on this Thanksgiving for all we have..."
"Wanna go to the mall?"
"It should be fine. Maybe a little crowded..."
"Look out, the minivan doesn't see us!"
"He's pointing to the ramp!"
"Up yours!"
"Now, Camden, don't walk in front of people..."
The Mall. A vast cavern of consumption and a portrait of civilization gone wrong. Young, old, stupid and slow mill through this mall. My friend and I separate as we each have our mission, His is to buy pans on sale and mine is a more dangerous cause for I am embarking on my quest to Verizon Wireless. There will be pain, there will be anger, there will be a reckoning because, well, you see, my phone is doing this blinky thing and it really annoys me.
I make my way to the directory to investigate the mall layout. As I approach there are these people staring blankly at the map muttering amongst themselves. They speak something not English and I dutifully wait for them to shuffle aside after grokking the magic concept of "You Are Here" and while I wait, I realize that, no, they are going to pitch camp at the directory and live out their days pointing at the pretty colored squares, speaking some eastern Eurpoean tongue and no doubt cursing the American interloper who just wants a non-blinky phone.
So I decide to wing it. Off I went. So having some sense that Verizon was close, I ambled along looking at the stores as I passed. Clothing, clothing, music, clothing, clothing, coffee, Victoria's Secret (oooooh shiny), toys, clothing, clothing. Hmmn. I sense a theme - clothing. I do pass a computer game shop, but one look inside and I see a sea of Melvins and I can't bring myself to stand hip-deep in overweight boy-men wearing "Hulk for president" t-shirts discussing which game console is better and could Wolverine kill Luke Skywalker with his adamantium claws if Luke had a light-saber. Sigh.
Then there was this store. A foul, unholy place. I don't even remember the name, but one look inside and I was mesmerized by the torture of the damned. This store that had only one purpose - the soul sucking corruption of tween and teen girls (10-19) and selling the affectations that turned normal girls into skanky, dim Hanna Montana's (I had to ask once - she is a fictitious pop-tart, who is played by a real pop-tart).
Purple, pink and glitter all swam before my eyes in a kaleidoscope of the worst of my junior high memories. It was awful. This was the womb of Mallrat girls. Ribbons and lip gloss were everywhere. T-shirts with rainbows and unicorns. The tackiest fake jewelry. Practice jewelry. Or training jewelry. This stuff no doubt lays the formula for a future time when little Timmy wants to get frisky.
Oh for a bookstore, or even something with manly tools. I forced myself on.
At this point, I want to say for the record, that nowhere in the Washington State driver's code does it state that baby strollers have the right of way. Yet, in this Audubon of a mall, all the maternals wield their carts of death with reckless abandon. Old people - they had full lives. People with lots of bags? Clip them and knock them off balance. Mallrats? Bowl them over. They are like rabbits anyway. Two $25 dollar gift cards to the Unholy Store and you've got a replacement.
It is not until one gets two entitled mommies with baby strollers, does one get a delicious game of Chicken. Neither gives as the gap narrows. The crowd looks on. Only at the very last possible moment does the smaller mommy slice away from collision with the bigger mommy. The laws of tonnage hold. A muffled "scuse me" from the loser as the bigger one smirks, "Pilates that, bitch!"
Well by this time I have ventured to the very heart of the mall, if heart is indeed the correct word. Center, perhaps? In this "heart" is a source of great entertainment for me. This is where the civilized shells are peeled away from homo sapiens and we are left at our most vile - The line to see Santa. This I am going to savor. In fact I regret there are no chairs to line up to watch the line. Hell, I'd buy coke and popcorn for this.
If the kid is not crying, the kid is hyper. If the kid is not hyper, the kid is bored. If the kid is not bored, the kid needs to go wee wee. If the kid wee wees, that is like a home run for me. I cheer, I do the wave. But if the kid holds it, they just complain and fidget, so there will be a home run at some point. The parents are there just as messed up. They want this year's picture to be better than last. It's always sad when one's distant great uncle Boris is grateful for the picture, but points out that he was unaware that little Timmy looked so much like his aunt Rita (the one the family compares her face to that of a sea bass).
Now Santa's little helpers are a desperate lot (listen/read David Saderis' essay about being an elf at Macy's for further reference) and they toy with the emotions of the line while Santa does his thing.
"What do you want to be little girl?" purrs the elf.
"I wanna be a doctor!" the girl beams with pride because her mommy, the Smith graduate stay-at-home told her she could be anything she wanted to be.
"How precious!" says the elf. "Not afraid of that pesky malpractice or easily contracted ebola, are ya! Next!"
I love this line. Especially when a mother/son duet has been standing in the line for what must be half the day passes in front of me. The boy huffs "This is stupid. Santa is stupid. I don't want my picture taken." The mother, who realizes how much quality shopping she could have been doing instead of standing in line to get a badly lit picture of her baby demon driving some old fart that much closer to a gun shop. "We’re almost there, honey." A total and complete lie. Then she resorts to bribery when he looks at her with hate. "I'll buy you
I take it all in for a while and move on. More crowds, more evil. I finally arrive at Verizon Wireless. As I walk through the door I am greeted at the door by a cheery door-greeter. Kinda cute young blonde, but I know in less than four weeks, she'll be gray haired and eighty leaning against the door for support if I were to come back. I give her a courtesy nod.
Then as is the tradition in places such as these I scan for the head dullard. I know my luck will be to get the one with seeming brain damage, so I decide to cut out the middle steps and just seek him or her out. It doesn't take me long. I find him staring at his own hand somewhat mystified. I don't think I can find more dim.
"Excuse me, but I have a phone that is acting up..." I explain the problem. He stares at my phone in much the same way he stares at his hand. "Looks okay to me," says Forrest Gump.
"Don't you notice the blinky shimmer on the screen?" I say pointing it out.
"We don't fix phones, we swap 'em out. It'll cost you $50 for a swap."
"Say," I gasp, "the blinky went away..." I leave before he tries to sell me another phone.
To lick my wounds, I make my way to the Apple Store but once I get there, the goblin masses scare me away. It is a microcosm of the Mall itself. Instead, I gave up and find my friend. Strangely enough, only a few minutes away from the mall, it all starts to fade. Was it a dream? Auntie Em, Auntie Em!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thanksgiving Day Weekend At The Mall - Part 1
It's like a card out of those personal board games that tries to get to your inner psyche. You know the ones, "Would you cheat on your wife/girlfriend for a million dollars (tax-free)", or "Would you rather be stupid and beautiful, or hideous and brilliant?" Only this card would read "Would you rather roll around in broken glass after drinking rat poison mixed with battery acid, or go to a mall Thanksgiving weekend?" Most sane people would take the drink and exercise. Me? I went to the mall.
Not just any mall. Not the nearby mall which I imagine I'll get caught at a few weeks later indulging in my Christmas Eve tradition of going to Toys R Us just before closing to see the devastation caused by the midget snot monsters and to watch the store staff wander the isles in the green aprons and Santa hats mutely pleading for a quick bullet to the skull.
No, nor is it the south end gang banger mall where I suspect Santa is packing and I am not talking a flask of Jack.
The mall I went to was the mall where the self-entitled and privileged go. In Seattle, we call it "Bell Square" short for "Bellevue Square" short for "I have more money than God and I drip bling and you don't..."
I hate Bellevue. I hate the people from Bellevue and for all appearance in both deed and song, they hate me back. Did I mention I was just tagging along to Bell Square because a friend had to go the weekend sale at William and Sonoma to buy pans? Don't ask, I don't pretend to understand.
Bellevue starts out as a place of over-compensation in everything. Trendy, spendy and totally unfriendly. I suspect it is a populace of men looking to ditch their bitchy women and women who are bitchy because their men are ogling the babysitter. I kid you not. My jailbait radar goes wild in Bellevue because the 16 year-olds look 21 and the 10 year olds look 16. I trust no woman in Bellevue unless I can see gray hair. Or, even safer, that broken and bitter look that only divorced women have.
First, let me point out that the closer you get to a mall, the more insane and dangerous the house fraus in minivans get. Turn signals? Ha! Right of way? Forget it. Mad Max would seem mild compared these horrid drivers. It is like driving in a sea of angry sheep. As we get cut off, I always debate whether they saw us and didn't care, or are the numbingly dumb. Then I remind myself the two are not mutually exclusive. So with zigging and sudden braking and swearing, the mall is near. Approaching the mall has all the joys of success as crossing the land of Mordor and escaping Orcs, just to find yourself in a more awful place - the parking garage.
By the time we get into the parking lot and garage, it has become apparent that this is a fight to the death. First thing is first, the parking attendants who are coming into their first real taste of power. They wave and posture and look really pissed. Well, I guess it beats asking if you want fries with that order, but I seriously doubt they know where the parking is, they are just trying to get you to the furthest spot possible from the mall.
Then there is the piranha parking. Let me set the stage. A man and/or woman approaches their car, notices the four or five cars jockeying to get into position up to three lanes away and they decide to move in absolute slow motion. They take minutes to load their car with their packages. I swear they take cell calls, re-arrange their cars, do make-up and any other noxious thing that consumes the minutes I have left to me on Earth. God forbid, there are small children. That can double the time. Car seats, placating the brat(s), and finding "Bonkie" for them so they don't scream all the way home and force the parents to drive into a telephone pole killing all in the car and taking out the homeless guy begging for money.
So while the leavers leave, there is the slow death dance of the arrivers. For starters, we've got the minivan closest to the spot. They have stopped dead-middle of the lane. No signal, no intent. Just stopped. Since we are behind them, we are stuck because there is not enough room to pass, nor can we make sense of what we see because the SloMos have yet to actually get their car lights set to reverse yet. So just about the time we are going to lay on the horn, we see the reverse lights come on and we think that we'll be going in a second, only to realize that some dumbass is coming down the isle the wrong way signaling for the soon (maybe) to be open spot. We stare hatefully because we know that the Minivan will take the spot and leave us with "Mr. Beamer" who thinks he can cheat his way in and who will then proceed to try to get around us even though it is not just us now, but two others that thought they could shark the spot. Fingers fly and horns honk. On to the next spot. We repeat variations on this behavior until we realize that with a little Jersey moxie, we too can cut off the guy in the Ford F-250 with the gun rack and get our parking spot.
The Mall itself.
Human words cannot describe it justly but I will try. It is a giant alien Petrie dish of everything I have come to hate in my life all in one place. The stuff of nightmare. Mallrats everywhere. Bubble-gum snapping, giggly stupid girls and the pouty poser boys that want to jump them and create future mallrats. When I make eye contact with these creatures, I am struck with the awesome emptiness in their heads and souls. They are the future. Kill me now.
Then there are the designer-dressed house fraus with the precious little "Berkely"s or "Hailey"s that will one day sign their parents nursing home papers with relief, bustling their evil spawn along. Extra points if the bobbins have matching outfits.
"Now, Camden, " Mommy chirps, "try not to walk in front of people..." as Camden toddles his way into much faster traffic. I think to myself "Now, Camden, walk in front of the really scary man wearing boots that will pretend not to see you and swing his extra heavy bag teaching you one of your first physics lessons. Did I write that? My bad...
Not just any mall. Not the nearby mall which I imagine I'll get caught at a few weeks later indulging in my Christmas Eve tradition of going to Toys R Us just before closing to see the devastation caused by the midget snot monsters and to watch the store staff wander the isles in the green aprons and Santa hats mutely pleading for a quick bullet to the skull.
No, nor is it the south end gang banger mall where I suspect Santa is packing and I am not talking a flask of Jack.
The mall I went to was the mall where the self-entitled and privileged go. In Seattle, we call it "Bell Square" short for "Bellevue Square" short for "I have more money than God and I drip bling and you don't..."
I hate Bellevue. I hate the people from Bellevue and for all appearance in both deed and song, they hate me back. Did I mention I was just tagging along to Bell Square because a friend had to go the weekend sale at William and Sonoma to buy pans? Don't ask, I don't pretend to understand.
Bellevue starts out as a place of over-compensation in everything. Trendy, spendy and totally unfriendly. I suspect it is a populace of men looking to ditch their bitchy women and women who are bitchy because their men are ogling the babysitter. I kid you not. My jailbait radar goes wild in Bellevue because the 16 year-olds look 21 and the 10 year olds look 16. I trust no woman in Bellevue unless I can see gray hair. Or, even safer, that broken and bitter look that only divorced women have.
First, let me point out that the closer you get to a mall, the more insane and dangerous the house fraus in minivans get. Turn signals? Ha! Right of way? Forget it. Mad Max would seem mild compared these horrid drivers. It is like driving in a sea of angry sheep. As we get cut off, I always debate whether they saw us and didn't care, or are the numbingly dumb. Then I remind myself the two are not mutually exclusive. So with zigging and sudden braking and swearing, the mall is near. Approaching the mall has all the joys of success as crossing the land of Mordor and escaping Orcs, just to find yourself in a more awful place - the parking garage.
By the time we get into the parking lot and garage, it has become apparent that this is a fight to the death. First thing is first, the parking attendants who are coming into their first real taste of power. They wave and posture and look really pissed. Well, I guess it beats asking if you want fries with that order, but I seriously doubt they know where the parking is, they are just trying to get you to the furthest spot possible from the mall.
Then there is the piranha parking. Let me set the stage. A man and/or woman approaches their car, notices the four or five cars jockeying to get into position up to three lanes away and they decide to move in absolute slow motion. They take minutes to load their car with their packages. I swear they take cell calls, re-arrange their cars, do make-up and any other noxious thing that consumes the minutes I have left to me on Earth. God forbid, there are small children. That can double the time. Car seats, placating the brat(s), and finding "Bonkie" for them so they don't scream all the way home and force the parents to drive into a telephone pole killing all in the car and taking out the homeless guy begging for money.
So while the leavers leave, there is the slow death dance of the arrivers. For starters, we've got the minivan closest to the spot. They have stopped dead-middle of the lane. No signal, no intent. Just stopped. Since we are behind them, we are stuck because there is not enough room to pass, nor can we make sense of what we see because the SloMos have yet to actually get their car lights set to reverse yet. So just about the time we are going to lay on the horn, we see the reverse lights come on and we think that we'll be going in a second, only to realize that some dumbass is coming down the isle the wrong way signaling for the soon (maybe) to be open spot. We stare hatefully because we know that the Minivan will take the spot and leave us with "Mr. Beamer" who thinks he can cheat his way in and who will then proceed to try to get around us even though it is not just us now, but two others that thought they could shark the spot. Fingers fly and horns honk. On to the next spot. We repeat variations on this behavior until we realize that with a little Jersey moxie, we too can cut off the guy in the Ford F-250 with the gun rack and get our parking spot.
The Mall itself.
Human words cannot describe it justly but I will try. It is a giant alien Petrie dish of everything I have come to hate in my life all in one place. The stuff of nightmare. Mallrats everywhere. Bubble-gum snapping, giggly stupid girls and the pouty poser boys that want to jump them and create future mallrats. When I make eye contact with these creatures, I am struck with the awesome emptiness in their heads and souls. They are the future. Kill me now.
Then there are the designer-dressed house fraus with the precious little "Berkely"s or "Hailey"s that will one day sign their parents nursing home papers with relief, bustling their evil spawn along. Extra points if the bobbins have matching outfits.
"Now, Camden, " Mommy chirps, "try not to walk in front of people..." as Camden toddles his way into much faster traffic. I think to myself "Now, Camden, walk in front of the really scary man wearing boots that will pretend not to see you and swing his extra heavy bag teaching you one of your first physics lessons. Did I write that? My bad...
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
How I met Kurt Cobain
So today the boys at work were cajoling me to keep at the blog to write down my previous exploits in "Worst Case Scenario Karma" by assembling a list of their favorites snippets. Apparently, I can't shut up because there was quite a list. A new member of the Hallway Gang (due to downsizing space, my colleagues and I work in a hallway) was actually quite concerned and taken aback that I was not martyred yet to St. Munch, the Patron Saint of Gravity. Exposed as he was to the glee in which the others did the old "no, even better, what about the time..." I wondered if he felt more disturbed by my tales, or the serious morale boost it gave the rest of the team.
In the meantime, I have resolved to tell a tale that I have not told at work before to give the cyber-vultures something new to add to the arsenal.
How I met Kurt Cobain.
So this goes way back to the eighties and the very cusp of the beginning of the grunge scene in Seattle. But to set this up right I need to go even further back. Back into the depths of Hell, I call High School. So I had this friend Dave. Dave and I were best friends and this was sort of the way it was. Neither of us was terribly popular and if you asked us at the time, we would have told you how glad we were for it. We had nothing but disdain for our fellow classmates, who were all posers and morons. We were not quite Columbine-ish, but had we trenchcoats...
Well Dave had a desire to write music and be in a band. I had a desire to be an artist of some kind but not having any musical talent whatsoever, I scratched "band" of the list. We were motivated by the same driving force - to get chicks.
So Dave, and I am not kidding you, was at the forefront of grunge. Not that anything springs out of thin air and it is all cultural evolution, I swear to you, he was doing the flannel shirt over a t-shirt, holes in his jeans and a well-developed stink-eye in '83-84 and was writing angry boy angst to low tech, four chord music by '86. I was there. He had the sound down. As Seattle bands started to congeal around this new (old) sound, Dave could sense the chick lottery coming. He had the look, he had the anger, he had a beat-up guitar and knew Howlin' Wolf and Husker Du cold. He eventually even had a band. He was just missing one ingredient to making the mega-jump into fame and winning the hottie-stakes. He couldn't sing. In a person that demands to write and sing his own music, the lack of singing was, shall we say, a detriment. God knows that for singing to be a deal breaker in the grunge scene it had to be bad.
It was.
It was so high pitched that it contrasted badly with the dark low grungy sound. Sort of Alvin and the Chipmunks do Pearl Jam.
So that's Dave. Now we go ahead a few years (still in the 80's but towards the end) and he calls me to tell me he is getting married. Wow, I think. Married? I didn't even know he was dating. He wanted me to meet the vision of loveliness and I happily agreed. So I swung by his place one afternoon to meet the gal and was she something. Jabba-the-hut something. Now I am not weight-phobic, this had more to do with her demeanor than looks, but I swear the light bounced off of her yellow, slimy skin and her huge tongue flicked menacingly as she chortled "Ho ho ho, Solo..." but memory does play tricks...
"What do you think?" he asked after she slithered away in her bathrobe that was being tasked way too unkindly for simple cotton.
"Well, Dave," I said repressing my gag reflex, "It's not what I think, that matters, it's how you feel."
"Well, you'll have to come to the wedding this Saturday."
"So soon?" I was somewhat surprised.
"Yeah, we're going a tad non-traditional. We're having it at midnight in Volunteer Park and then we are going to consummate the wedding on Bruce Lee's grave if we can find it."
Did I mention that I think drugs were starting to take a toll on Dave?
"Um, yeah. Count me in." Like Hell. I was going to be anywhere but there.
Sharing this story with several of my friends, they all demanded that I had to go. They just had to know how this would turn out. I invited them all to come with me, but they refused. I had to be the one, but no way would they be caught doing it.
So I resolved to go. Saturday night rolls around and I drive up to Volunteer Park and at the Main gate is Dave standing there.
I cannot believe what I am seeing.
Dave is dressed in a cowboy outfit that you'd get for a little kid, but adult sized. It was all red. Red hat, red picnic table cloth shirt, red jeans, a gun belt and boots with spurs. I was regretting folding to peer pressure, thinking it could only get worse.
He sees me and comes over. I roll down my window and we exchange "heys". He informs me that the wedding has moved down to his apartment due to potential rain. Guess the grave thing was off too. I think this might not be as bad as I feared. So off to the apartment I went.
I arrive and Jabba is there hosting a group of people I do not recognize. I make my way to the beer and start downing it as fast as I can.
Dave shows up after a bit and pulls me aside sheepishly and says he forgot the camera and would I sketch the wedding for him. Bombed as I am at this point, I am not sure I could tell you what end of a pencil was the drawing end, but I agreed.
I went around "drawing" things and people for a while. I drew a tray of color-sorted pills. I drew a mangy dog. I drew people who were more messed up than me. Then I got to this quiet, glaring guy.
"Hi, can I draw you?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked. I told him and he said okay.
"What's your name?" I asked making conversation as I sketched.
"Kurt"
"Cool, " I replied as I finished my scribble.
Then the "priest/reverend/transvestite" comes in looking a like cross between Heath Ledger's Joker and Holly GoLightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". The buzz was starting to overtake me. I don't remember much after this other than the first line of the ceremony "Life is like a trailer-hitch..."
I woke up in my car the next morning.
Sometime later (couple of years perhaps) I was watching MTV and saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and recognized the quiet, glaring dude, Kurt, from the wedding. I assume the chick he was with that night was Courtney Love, but it was blissfully dark in the apartment both inside and outside of my head
In the meantime, I have resolved to tell a tale that I have not told at work before to give the cyber-vultures something new to add to the arsenal.
How I met Kurt Cobain.
So this goes way back to the eighties and the very cusp of the beginning of the grunge scene in Seattle. But to set this up right I need to go even further back. Back into the depths of Hell, I call High School. So I had this friend Dave. Dave and I were best friends and this was sort of the way it was. Neither of us was terribly popular and if you asked us at the time, we would have told you how glad we were for it. We had nothing but disdain for our fellow classmates, who were all posers and morons. We were not quite Columbine-ish, but had we trenchcoats...
Well Dave had a desire to write music and be in a band. I had a desire to be an artist of some kind but not having any musical talent whatsoever, I scratched "band" of the list. We were motivated by the same driving force - to get chicks.
So Dave, and I am not kidding you, was at the forefront of grunge. Not that anything springs out of thin air and it is all cultural evolution, I swear to you, he was doing the flannel shirt over a t-shirt, holes in his jeans and a well-developed stink-eye in '83-84 and was writing angry boy angst to low tech, four chord music by '86. I was there. He had the sound down. As Seattle bands started to congeal around this new (old) sound, Dave could sense the chick lottery coming. He had the look, he had the anger, he had a beat-up guitar and knew Howlin' Wolf and Husker Du cold. He eventually even had a band. He was just missing one ingredient to making the mega-jump into fame and winning the hottie-stakes. He couldn't sing. In a person that demands to write and sing his own music, the lack of singing was, shall we say, a detriment. God knows that for singing to be a deal breaker in the grunge scene it had to be bad.
It was.
It was so high pitched that it contrasted badly with the dark low grungy sound. Sort of Alvin and the Chipmunks do Pearl Jam.
So that's Dave. Now we go ahead a few years (still in the 80's but towards the end) and he calls me to tell me he is getting married. Wow, I think. Married? I didn't even know he was dating. He wanted me to meet the vision of loveliness and I happily agreed. So I swung by his place one afternoon to meet the gal and was she something. Jabba-the-hut something. Now I am not weight-phobic, this had more to do with her demeanor than looks, but I swear the light bounced off of her yellow, slimy skin and her huge tongue flicked menacingly as she chortled "Ho ho ho, Solo..." but memory does play tricks...
"What do you think?" he asked after she slithered away in her bathrobe that was being tasked way too unkindly for simple cotton.
"Well, Dave," I said repressing my gag reflex, "It's not what I think, that matters, it's how you feel."
"Well, you'll have to come to the wedding this Saturday."
"So soon?" I was somewhat surprised.
"Yeah, we're going a tad non-traditional. We're having it at midnight in Volunteer Park and then we are going to consummate the wedding on Bruce Lee's grave if we can find it."
Did I mention that I think drugs were starting to take a toll on Dave?
"Um, yeah. Count me in." Like Hell. I was going to be anywhere but there.
Sharing this story with several of my friends, they all demanded that I had to go. They just had to know how this would turn out. I invited them all to come with me, but they refused. I had to be the one, but no way would they be caught doing it.
So I resolved to go. Saturday night rolls around and I drive up to Volunteer Park and at the Main gate is Dave standing there.
I cannot believe what I am seeing.
Dave is dressed in a cowboy outfit that you'd get for a little kid, but adult sized. It was all red. Red hat, red picnic table cloth shirt, red jeans, a gun belt and boots with spurs. I was regretting folding to peer pressure, thinking it could only get worse.
He sees me and comes over. I roll down my window and we exchange "heys". He informs me that the wedding has moved down to his apartment due to potential rain. Guess the grave thing was off too. I think this might not be as bad as I feared. So off to the apartment I went.
I arrive and Jabba is there hosting a group of people I do not recognize. I make my way to the beer and start downing it as fast as I can.
Dave shows up after a bit and pulls me aside sheepishly and says he forgot the camera and would I sketch the wedding for him. Bombed as I am at this point, I am not sure I could tell you what end of a pencil was the drawing end, but I agreed.
I went around "drawing" things and people for a while. I drew a tray of color-sorted pills. I drew a mangy dog. I drew people who were more messed up than me. Then I got to this quiet, glaring guy.
"Hi, can I draw you?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked. I told him and he said okay.
"What's your name?" I asked making conversation as I sketched.
"Kurt"
"Cool, " I replied as I finished my scribble.
Then the "priest/reverend/transvestite" comes in looking a like cross between Heath Ledger's Joker and Holly GoLightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". The buzz was starting to overtake me. I don't remember much after this other than the first line of the ceremony "Life is like a trailer-hitch..."
I woke up in my car the next morning.
Sometime later (couple of years perhaps) I was watching MTV and saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and recognized the quiet, glaring dude, Kurt, from the wedding. I assume the chick he was with that night was Courtney Love, but it was blissfully dark in the apartment both inside and outside of my head
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