Useless Link Post Spam

Man, I usually hate it when people do a whole new blog post just to put in a single link to something they think is cool.

Especially now, since I do all my blog following through feeds, so those little posts can combine to take up so much space. There is nothing so disappointing as seeing your favorite blog has updated, only to click over and instead of content, it's a hyperlink.

But screw it, I love this link enough to give it my full attention.

http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr

I have spent approximately 8 hours over 2 days playing with this thing and I'm not even remotely bored with it yet. there are so many color combinations available, and they're all so pretty. It's fascinating.

Or maybe I'm just a huge dork for colors and pictures.

Whatever, it's awesome, and anyone who doesn't like it is a Communist, there I said it.

Wherein I Fall Back into Television

So I really thought that I was finally over TV.

I mean, yeah I still watch some things, but after a summer where I didn't need to turn on the set unless it was to watch Project Runway, I had been actively considering dropping my cable, and just relying on Hulu and streaming video to get me through the fall season.

And then said fall season started, and I became the ultra couch potato that is my birthright and my destiny.

So, I now present a rundown of all my television thoughts, as fast as I can get them down.

• How I Met Your Mother: My most anticipated anything, as per usual, but this was a decidedly low key start. I'm a little over Sarah Chalke at this point - not that it's her fault, but the shortened season last year has left her character completely devoid of any real personality. That said, she made huge inroads into my heart with her dissection of Star Wars there at the end. "Good idea, Bear," indeed.
  
  And I almost don't want to talk about the Barney subplot, because then I might let it slip that I've watched this scene (where he explains that he doesn't want to be Robin's boyfriend) approximately 95 times in the past 7 days. Seriously, the crush is out of control. But whatever. It's a good start to the season.
  
  
• Chuck: I didn't watch this show for much of last season after that terrifyingly bad second episode. But then I came back for a bit because of my unrelenting girl-crush on Rachel Bilson, and it was markedly better. And then I watched the preview of the second season premiere on Hulu last week, and I was incredibly entertained. I'm picking this one up for the whole season, I think.
  
  
• Heroes: Aaaaaand I'm out. I suffered through the last season of dreck in the hopes that we could right all that went wrong, that the strike really was that affecting to the quality of the show. And then I watched the season premiere and every single person on the show developed super powers, while no one developed any better acting powers. I'm so over this show, it's not even funny. Although I'll probably still retain some of it by osmosis, since Frank is still a watcher.
  
  
• Fringe: I was unabashedly onboard for the terrible pilot, but every week that goes by, I'm less and less enthused. Everyone knows I've been wishing for an X-Files spiritual successor, but so far this is just not doing it for me. Which is weird. You know I love me some Pacey, and Denethor is pretty hilariously awesome, but on the whole, I kinda wish that I was doing something else while I'm watching this show. Maybe it'll get better.
  
  
• America's Next Top Model: Most shocking development of this entire Fall Season? I made it through only 15 minutes of one episode of what used to be a staple show for me, before I turned it off, and haven't looked back since. I don't know what happened there, but it's dead to me. Sorry Tyra.
  
  
• Project Runway: As terrible as this whole season has been, I still really love this show. I think it helps that my two favorite designers have made it all the way to the end for once (unless you count the super unfortunate early exit of my boy Wesley. *sigh*). It's been pretty uneven all season long, and the quality of designs have been horribly lacking on occasion, but I love all the drama, and I have an actual interest in the outcome (as opposed to last year when I all I cared about was whether or not Jillian would reveal her true robot form at the final elimination, Terminator style).
  
  Also: Team Leanne all the way.
  
  
• Ugly Betty: 1) I am disappointed by the reboot of the season, basically tossing out most of the last year and turning Alexis into the dumbest thing this side of a palm tree. 2) But as much as I hate to admit it, I sorta love the shakeups. The new magazine, the new apartment, bringing in the "only gay for Jamie" guy from 30 Rock (Which, by the way, was the best thing that came out of television last season, hands down. Unless you count that other scene from 30 Rock where Tina Fey eats an entire sub sandwich onscreen in 20 seconds. Or Alec Baldwin's therapy role playing session. Okay, I really need to write up a separate post about how much I love 30 Rock. We're supposed to be talking Ugly Betty). I'm cautiously optimistic about the future. 3)More Mark and Amanda, dammit! Give the people what they want.
  
  
• The Office: There are no words for how much I loved the first episode this season. I was dreading another hour long episode (as last year they just dragged on and on) but this was perfectly paced, hilarious, and actually felt almost a little tight, like it was cut for length. That's some great writing there. (And I'm not even going to talk about the Jim and Pam thing. You think my little Barney disclosure up there was embarrassing? You have no idea.) Easily my front runner for best start of the season.
  
  
• Survivor: It always takes a while for the season to set itself, so I'll give it a pass for now, except to say that I'm really starting to hate Jeff Probst. I mean, how wildly unprofessional was that council where he forced a leadership vote? Quit directly involving yourself in the coolest part of each year (the natural shakeout of the initial alliances). I do love the location, though, so maybe there is some promise here.
  
  
• It's Always Funny In Philadelphia: Y'all, this show is so good. I don't know really how to explain it. I'm consistently shocked that it doesn't just collapse in on itself, week after week. I mean, Danny DeVito has a starring role! It defies all logic. But sweet damn, we're two episodes into the season, and I've already got three new favorite moments for the series. (In case you were wondering what they are: Charlie, Mac, and Dennis shirtless for the loan officer in the bank lobby, Dee attacking her sandwich like a bird, and "Wildcard, Bitches!")
  
  
• Simpsons: About as lackluster as you can get, but they got three solid laughs out of me, which is about 2 more than the entirety of last season, so color me potentially hopeful for this year.
  
  
• Amazing Race: How long have I been looking forward to this? Apparently so long that I completely forgot that it started yesterday. Man, I'm falling apart. Also, why in God's name does CBS only have like 15 2-minute snippets of the show on their website? And why do they each take individually 5 minutes to load? Oh well, my impressions will have to wait until next week when I can properly remember to watch things. I do like the looks of this cast, though.

Recap

Best Episode of the Week:
The Office - Weight Loss

Best Line of the Week:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - "Wildcard, Bitches!"

Best Line of the Week That's Apparently Funny Only to Jason and No One Else, Because He's a Sucker For Continuity:
The Office: "Cryogenics! Beer Me Five."

Best Moment of the Week:
The Office - Jim & Pam's Rest stop Moment in the Rain
Runners Up:
How I Met Your Mother - Barney on Boyfriends
Project Runway - Leanne's Hip-Hop Walk Down the Runway
Survivor - Gay Charlie's Super Unhealthy and Hilarious Man Crush on Pretty Haired (and Straight) Doctor Marcus

Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Unexpected Laughs:
Chuck - Morgan's Beyond Thunderdome Method of Determining Promotions

Most Disappointing:
Heroes - Mohinder steals the plot of The Fly and destroys my love forever.

Most Anticipated:
Dirty Sexy Money & Pushing Daisies both start this week

Most In Need of a Life:
Yeah, I know.

Your Consumer Whore Report for September

Have a huge pile of disposable income that you need to get rid of really fast?

If so, today's your lucky day because I just happen to have a huge pile of things that you should really want to buy. I know that I do.

1. Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Absolutely awesome new album from Amanda Palmer, i.e. the voice of The Dresden Dolls. When you buy the preorder right now, you get a free electronic download of the whole CD and a couple of bonus tracks, so there's instant gratification for your purchase that will come later in the month. It's like two purchases in one! It also helps that I love the entire album with reckless abandon, now that I've had a couple of days to listen to it a few times. It's weird that I picked up The Dresden Dolls because of Amanda's association with Regina Spektor, since I can't think of two more opposite types of piano girl singers. There's no polish with Palmer, but the emotion she packs into her songs overcomes any limitation you might expect.
   
   
2. Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi - I'm pretty sure I've gone over (at length) my love for the Old Man's War series, and for that matter my general love of Scalzi's writing (see Elsewhere links for his blog). This latest installment is more of the same, following a parallel storyline to the last book in the series (Last Colony) that fills in a lot of the blanks from that book, while telling a compelling story on its own. I have my list of quibbles with the book, almost all centering around Scalzi's skirting of some serious action scenes towards the end of the novel, but on the whole it's a great companion to the series, with an entirely unique voice. I dug it a lot. Now I just wish I had hard cover copies of the original trilogy, because now my collection looks a little lopsided on the bookshelf.
   
   
3. Dallas is about to receive an embarrassment of riches in terms of live music this fall. Just off the top of my head in the next two months: The Swell Season (AKA:the girl and the guy from that awesome movie Once), The Fratellis (my absolute favorite new band I heard this year), Ben Folds (on his new album tour), A new Hotel Cafe Tour (with Ingrid Michaelson again AND Meiko), Sara Bareilles (doing her own show this time), and Kings of Leon (with We Are Scientists(!!), the real reason I want to go to that show).
   
   I can't even fathom how much money it would take to see even half the shows I want to. And this is after Steel Train cancelled their Dallas stop.
   
   
4. In the video game world, Spore came out this week, and it's taking every willpower molecule in my body to not run to the store right now. I have spent far, far, far too much of my freetime just playing with their creature creator (which you can download for free. Because the first hit is always a giveaway. Then when you're hooked, that's where they get you. It's like cocaine, in a way). I'm dreadfully afraid that owning the full game would ensure I didn't see the light of day for until November.

And you know what? I'm just gonna stop right there because I'm practically drooling over all of these purchases that I want to make, and listing anymore is going to drive me right over the edge into poor consumer choices that you make when the industry you're employed in is folding like a bad hand in poker.

But don't let that stop you. Shop, my peoples, shop!

A Week and a Half in Review

Short form posting is the style of the season. Mostly because I'm basically drowning in work, and have less than zero interest in typing on a computer when I'm not being paid to these days.

Last Sunday Night: While out at a bar, was accosted by a drag queen, who attempted to make out with me twice. After derailing said attempts, had to spend close to 30 minutes additionally derailing the boyfriend from defending my honor by attacking the drag queen with a broken and/or rusty beer bottle. Why is my life so complicated? (Also: marks the 4th time in 2 years that a drag queen has propositioned me. Does this just happen to people all the time and I'm just not aware of it? Because I'm never around queens, and yet that's a shockingly high number to me.)

Last Wednesday: While indulging in my one hour of TV a week during the summer (Project Runway), I decided that I should also indulge myself food-wise, since I've brought my lunch to work every day for 2 weeks. I got one of these, and then proceeded to eat the entire thing. I've worked out 3 different times since then, and I can still feel the weight around my waist. Never again, I say. I'm practically sweating out the grease to this day.

Saturday: A successful running of Frank's birthday extravaganza. Which included me making an awesome display of birthday punch, which was full of ingredients, and was delicious. (I also then OD'ed on the stuff the next day, since primarily the ingredients I mentioned were variations on concentrated sugar, and subsequently felt the extraordinary pain that is an epic sugar crash). We also learned that: Jason only needs one margarita and 5 shots of rum to become completely drunk, which is a sad, sad thing, but still very fun. Oh, and I'll say it again: there is no game that is more fun with a group of people than Apples to Apples.

Sunday and also Monday: Refer above to the sugar crash item, which occupied most of my day. But additionally, our hot water disappeared entirely. Apparently I've traded out the Truck of Malfunction (TOM) for the Condo of Malfunction (COM), which is a much less cool acronym. So yeah, two days without a shower, I don't think I've ever been as happy as I am right now about the fact that I work alone in my office. Because seriously, if I can smell myself, you know that it's trouble.

Words of Warning

Because I am terrible at blogging nowadays, I present a bullet style list of warnings that I wish I had read prior to the last 5 days. It would have saved me a ton of grief.

• Just because an elevator door is shiny and reflective like a mirror, that does not mean that you should actually use it as a mirror to get a close-up examination of that weird spot on your nose. Because if you're not paying attention and the door opens up while you're doing so, you may terrify the harmless people who are attempting to board the elevator and are instead confronted by your giant face right at the door.
  
  
• (But really, if instead you're one of those harmless people, how's about you leave some space for people who are on the elevator to get out, hm? I'm not saying that you deserved a huge helping of Jason-face right up close and personal, but I refuse to take all the blame.)
  
  
• There is a key and vital difference between the phrase "virtually free" and the word free. Focus on that difference before signing anything, or spending a lot of time with a salesman using such phrases. Because they are trying to rip you off.
  
  
• If you're having fun at a bar people-watching, particularly the one guy who is hitting on the female bouncer in an hilarious/depressing manner, be very careful to watch yourself. Because you never know when said guy is going to choke on his drink due to a vigorous bout of dancing and be compelled to spit on the sidewalk, coincidentally right where your unguarded foot may be. Alternately, ignoring all the rest of the above, just never wear flip-flops to a bar.
  
  
• Also, maybe you should go get a tetanus shot. And an STD test. Because seriously, gross.
  

Raindrops from the Ceiling

It seems like I sure do complain about my apartment a lot, doesn't it? I swear, every third post nowadays has me whining about something going wrong over there. Really it's not too bad, I love the square footage, I've gotten used to the strange layout, and I really love the fake wood floors.

But today I want to talk about the fact that our air conditioner is totally trying to drive me insane.

It's not that it doesn't work - well okay, it sort of is that it doesn't work, since it doesn't actually circulate air all the way into my bathroom at the far side of my house, which makes relieving yourself a weirdly sweaty experience. Wait, that went to a strange place.

Regroup: It's not that the air conditioner doesn't work, it's just that it gathers condensation very easily. In order to combat this condensation, there is an overflow pipe that drains out under the house, and as a backup there's a secondary overflow that hangs directly over the kitchen sink, just in case the pipe isn't getting the job done. Usually this just means that at the height of summer we may have a little water dripping into the sink. It's mildly annoying, but nothing I can't handle.

This summer though, something is seriously wrong with the overflow pipe, which has resulted in a near constant stream of water splashing into our sink. It's loud. And unending. And it gets everywhere, as the splash radius is out of control. Then, not only was the water using the secondary pipe over the sink, the water even started leaking out of the corner of the access panel to the air conditioner.

Have you heard of water torture, where your interrogators drip water on your forehead slowly forever until you go mad? This is how I feel, except it's not so much on my forehead as it is an unending irregular beat on the linoleum floor and steel sink in my kitchen. Constantly, the drip-tink-drip-drip-splash-drip-tink-splash. Forever. Even when the air conditioner is off.

Finally unable to take it anymore, we had the landlord bring out a handyman to flush the pipes in order to get the insanity to stop. When he opened the panel to a huge rush of water that flooded the kitchen, I held little hope that he would affect much change. But I will give him credit, after blowing out the pipes, there is much less dripping and it's eliminated all but the sink pipe problem, which is reduced.

Still, it haunts me.

Thus, I have fashioned the most awesome piece of in-house ingenuity that has ever been created. It's a washing machine hose that covers the pipe opening and then snakes down along the wall to the side of the sink, where the water harmlessly dribbles down the drain, without a single sound.

Sure, it looks like the most ghetto, half-assed thing in the world. And hangs down terribly awkwardly, completely dominating your field of vision when you walk into the room. And at night in the darkness and shadow of the light filtered from the living room, it may look like a huge tentacled monster about to pounce on your head. (I said it "may" look like that, not that that exact train of thought went through my head. And it especially did not do so two nights ago, to the point where I actually shrieked and did a sort of crouch-and-roll in the kitchen at 1:00 AM. Ahem.)

Oh, and also, I had no good way to attach the hose to the pipe, and thus have rigged up an elaborate device to hold it in place. Which is made up of at least: a nail hammered into the ceiling, several lengths of nylon string, a paperclip, and a surprisingly large amount of sticky tack adhesive gum.

But whatever. Let's focus on the fact that I no longer have to deal with the constant drip-drip-dripping.

You've all read the Tell-Tale Heart, you know how this whole thing would have ended without my contraption.

Groundbreaking Belligerent & Numerous Olympic Coverage

Okay, so the title's a bit hyperbolic.

Because seriously, I don't know why, but I just have no interest whatsoever in the summer Olympics this year. I tried at first - saw parts of that wild and crazy opening ceremony, then sort of listened in when they were breaking down when which events would happen. And I was totally into it when they showed the early badminton rounds right there on one of the major stations. It definitely revived my lifelong (or since senior year of college) dream of becoming a world-renowned badminton player, but very quickly my interest in the rest of games evaporated. Mostly under piles of sports I couldn't care less about, and touching human interest stories that, as the great Kent Brockman so eloquently once put it, 'pull at the heartstrings and fog the mind.'

AND THEN, once I had already renounced the games, there was that horrible thing with the weightlifter and the destroyed arm (don't go looking for it, I beg you), which I managed to see despite only turning on a TV once this week (and to watch Project Runway, at that). Why the news broadcast that is shown in my office lobby felt the need to give us a slow-mo replay of that is completely beyond my comprehension. But thanks MSNBC. I'm glad that rather than finding out what the Dow was at, I got to view the utter destruction of a man's elbow. That was swell.

Anyways, to recap: not only did I not care about the Olympics, I was actively disgusted with them.

But leave it to network TV to pull out all the stops in finding a way to pique my interest again:

NBC challenge - Guess the Olympic swimmer based on his abs.

Well played NBC. Well played.

Counting Down From 100

Apropos to the height of summer (when you're most likely to find yourself outdoors without a shirt on) I had been looking for a new exercise program that I could get into without killing myself, and/or incurring the cost of a gym membership.

I was ready to despair and start pricing out exactly how many years of debt I would accrue by signing up with various local gyms, until I ran across this lovely website, One Hundred Push Ups. It completes me in every exercisable way possible.

1. Takes almost no time whatsoever
   
2. Can be done in the privacy of your own bedroom
3. Is simple to do
4. Has measurable results that are quick and easily recognizable
5. Did I mention that it takes practically no time at all?

It's not a program designed to do much of anything really, except get you good at doing push ups, and in the meantime give you a nice upper body. And hot damn, it really works. I'm all the way into week 5, and may actually reach the expressed goal of 100 consecutive push ups in a single round. Which is absolutely insane, considering when I started I could only do about 31 before collapsing into a sweaty heap.

It has the benefits of exercising without, y'know, actually exercising longer than 10 minutes every other day. Which is pretty sweet. And it's gotten me to the point where I feel like I can move on to a full-on exercise program without potentially dying halfway through.

I completely forget what the point of this post was at this point, so I guess this is just a shill post: Go exercise. And if you're like me and don't want to, just do this thing. It's easy and awesome.

(Side note: still not going outdoors without my shirt on, though. People around The Village are way too attractive. Bums me out. Also, still wildly pale as they haven't fixed the pool in my complex yet. Maybe next summer.)

Oxymoron and Vehicle Bands

So last night we went to see The Hush Sound over at The Door (what used to be The Gypsy Tea Room). I was a little worried at first. A) It's a Monday night concert, B) I've never heard of any of the opening bands except in passing, and C) I really don't know how well The Hush Sound would actually sound in concert, as their albums are full of super produced songs.

Surprisingly, though, it was a pretty great show. Full details below the cut (along with a couple of youtube videos).


So there were 4 bands up for the show: The Morning Light, Steel Train, The Cab, and The Hush Sound.

First band was supposed to go on at 7:30, so we figured it would be at least a couple of hours before The Hush Sound. But since I love going to gape at the potential horror that is opening bands, we got there before 8:00, with enough time to catch most of The Morning Light's set to start off the night.

I, uh, would like to follow the old adage about one's inability to say nice things, but I feel like some comment is in order. Umm, the drummer was really energetic, which was fun. And the lead singer got to use a tamborine, which he obviously enjoyed. So good for them.

Okay, it wasn't great - kinda like a Taking Back Sunday sort of vibe, crossed with some Death Cab, only not quite in tune, and not quite able to nail down the art of alternating between scream-singing and regular singing. But at least they were quick.

The delightfully named Steel Train was next, and I'm not even going to pretend to be objective here - I loooooved this set. I had never heard of these people before, but from the very first second the lead singer started up with his crazy eyes, they had me hooked. I am not kidding in the slightest. Dude looked about 2 degrees from just murdering everyone in the crowd, but damn if they didn't put on one of the best opening sets I've ever seen. Polished, musical, a little crazy, I was all the way onboard. And then there was the Mamma Mia singalong section which lost me for a moment, but their closer got me right back on track with enough heavy drums to shake the foundations of my brain. Complete love.

Then things got weird.

So, supposedly The Cab is next. Which I have heard of before, but in my mind I had associated a whiny emo band with this name. Instead we get an afro-ed Christian Siriano look-alike playing an acoustic guitar and an oily longhaired dude in a wifebeater, singing random warbling songs, interspersed with nsync covers. I swear to God, it was like the most unexpected thing.

Mostly because it turns out that they kind of are a whiny emo band (okay, less whiny than most, they aren't that bad) but they were missing half their members and all of the band part.

Whatever, it was weird, but not horrible. The guitarist was actually a shockingly great player with some nice pitch, and the Timberlake-wannabe had a pretty good voice, while doing hand gestures to mimic the lyrics he was singing. If questioned at gunpoint, I would admit that it was actually kind of entertaining. And when the guy behind us yelled "Do Sexyback!" I about lost my shit. Good times.

And then there was The Hush Sound. Who were actually really good, despite a bit of soundcheck issues (I swear the lead mic was too quiet by at least half). They're fun, and pretty energetic despite obviously being crazy exhausted. Various highlights:

• The drummer nearly killing himself with a microphone in the first song by being the most hyper drummer in the history of bands. I thought he was going to rattle the flimsy stage into pieces with his hopping and bopping around.
• The completely out of left field cover of Back in the USSR, which is just a great song in general.
• The attempt at bandmember banter, where the lead girl was obviously far too tired to care, and just stopped to stare at the bass player for 20 seconds rather than give a response to his zinger. I don't know if it was supposed to be, but it was damn hilarious.
  
• Oh, and the cover of the Jackson 5's Want You Back. A good night for covers (the nsync excepted) all around.

A few of videos from the night:

The weird Mamma Mia Interlude from Steel Train:


The Cab(ish) - I'll Run:


The Hush Sound and Steel Train doing I Want You Back:

There are Worse Things than Consumer Weekends

Jason Finance Watch for August

Things Bought:

• New wireless mouse, complete with scrollwheel and magical laser tracking
• DVDs of Cloverfield and X-2, on super sale at Best Buy
  
• New full size memory foam mattress pad for bed, replacing previous pad that was only for a twin (and also gross and ancient)
  
• New 500 thread count sheet set for bed to enhance new pad (and replace the jersey knit sheets that were suffocating me at night)
  
• New down comforter to enhance new sheet set
• Tickets to go see The Hush Sound at The Door tonight (!!)
  
• Insurance for my car for the next 6 months (also entitled: Holy Shit, Insurance is Expensive)
  

Things Not Bought:

• New wireless keyboard to replace my still working wired one
• DVD of A Bug's Life, which was only on $5 off sale
  
• New pillows to go with abovementioned bed set
• New duvet cover for same
• New bedskirt to prevent clashing
  
• Tickets to see Ben Folds in October at the Palladium
• The oil change for my car that was scheduled for last Friday
• A dog

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the balance struck, between buying and not buying. Particularly since I didn't spend any of my non-essentials budget in July, so if you rollover that amount into this month, I still can be considered on budget.

And also, my bed is now so awesome, it's hard to fathom. And I did it without resorting to spending scads of money on a whole new mattress (which I also really wanted to buy).

Woo consumerism!

Filler Friday

An amalgamation of the things rattling through my head today:

• So, my mouse died two days ago. I should clarify that to be a computer mouse, not a pet mouse that I might have had, or one that was living in my house against my will. I guess 6 years is an appropriate lifespan for a mouse, but I still miss it. Particularly since I went to three different stores and couldn't find a single mouse that was of comparable quality that did not cost over $60 dollars.
  
  Instead, I had to resort to online shopping, and due to shipping times I have spent the last 2 days using my backup mouse (AKA, the original Dell mouse that came with my boss's 1994 desktop computer, which I have in my closet for some reason.) Do you remember what mice were like in 1994? It's terrifying. I will never take my scroll wheel for granted again.
  
  
• In that Fergie song Glamorous, the line is "After the Grammys, I like to go out with my family/Sipping, reminiscing on days when I had a Mustang."
  
  It's not "when I had a mustache," as I had so remembered it in my mind. I don't know why this bothers me, but it does. Also, I'm not sure which part bothers me more - that I remembered it wrong in the first place, or the fact that I never questioned why she used to have a mustache.
  
  . . . I don't know, leave me alone, I'm tired.
  
  
• I went to the automated car wash yesterday because my Jaguar looked like it had been through a sandstorm, after the last mini-rainstorm we had that knocked the remaining pollen from that devil tree outside my apartment. In line in front of me was a truck that had one of those huge bike mounts attached to the back. When the flailing wheels of scrubbers tried to clean the back gate of the truck, the left flailer got lodged in the mount, and in retaliation for this, the entire machine attempted to drag the truck off the track and into the shadowy recesses to the side. Eventually the flailer was dislodged without destroying itself or eating the truck, so normally this wouldn't even be a story worth relating.
  
  But apparently the owner of said truck must have had some super deep seated fear of automated car washes, because he absolutely lost his shit when the machine got stuck and started pulling against the truck. Not like angry losing it, like scared losing it - huge terrified look on his face as if a T-Rex was gnawing on the back end of the car, what looked like a shriek of horror, and then randomly slamming his hands down on his horn. As if maybe the mechanical cleaning device would be all "Oh, a loud noise, I should stop what I'm doing."
  
  It was definitely the strangest thing I've seen in at least 5 days.
  
  
• So I've been rewatching the third season of How I Met Your Mother (because I have absolutely no life, and scheduled TV is junk right now) and it's so strange. It's got to be the most wildly uneven single season of TV I've ever seen, short of the 5th season of Buffy. Some utterly garbage episodes, immediately beside others that qualify as some of the best in the whole series. I think the strike worked really hard against them, but I'm still not sure if that's a sufficient excuse. But anyways, the real thing I want to talk about is how shockingly sad the whole Barney/Ted breakup thing is over those last few episodes of the season. It was actually kind of moving, which is just super weird. So help me if Neil Patrick Harris does not win that Emmy.
  
  
• Oh, and in conjunction with that, have I recently mentioned my ungodly crush on the NPH? Because damn. And it's just been further increased by the whole Dr. Horrible Sing-along Blog thing, in which he is just too perfect for words, and is also terribly cute, and is also the saddest thing I've seen since Atonement.
  
  I refuse to get suckered in by Joss Whedon ever again. I have a little post-it now right next to my computer. It reads "Don't trust Whedon when love is involved. It's going to end horribly and you're going to cry." And then there's a little picture I drew of a sad faced beaver next to a tombstone.
  

Write What You Know

Man, I had this whole thing planned out, where I could write an entry that would combine two stories that I wanted to tell into one, and it would be interesting and compelling. (yeah, right, but let's let me have my delusion how 'bout?)

Instead I'm going to whine about health care for a little while and then call it a day.

Because sweet damn, I have the most ungodly headache going on, and it's been like this for 36 hours straight. My allergies have apparently taken to just lying in wait for 3-4 month periods, before deciding to mount a full on hostile takeover of my entire body for a quick, if utterly crushing, 3 or 4 day allergy-fest. I don't think I've had a single sinus related headache since February, and now suddenly I can't even get a bright light in my peripheral vision, for the fear that it will send me off on an epic sneezing adventure that will continue until my body quite literally shuts down from the spikes of pain between my eyes (This happened twice yesterday. Why my office has such blinding lights is complete beyond me).

Now normally, I would just go to the doctor for an allergy shot, as I used to find a $55 expense a completely reasonable trade off for the ability to become a functional member of society again. But due to the restructuring of my employment, I'm now on an individual health care plan. Which is a very cute way of saying that I have absolutely no coverage for anything that is not a life threatening hospital visit.

So what used to be $55 is now more like $347, and that's assuming it's just an allergy attack and not actually a sinus infection, the thought of which I immediately banish. Lab costs are a thing invented by the devil to sap both my will to live and any potential that I had of actually getting to buy a new bed before the end of the year.

But anyways, on to the real whining!

Why, in God's name, is it so expensive to see a doctor? Or more helpfully, why is it impossible to get regular health coverage as a singular person that doesn't cost more than $500 a month? It's not like I'm a health risk. I go to the doctor approximately twice a year, and both times it's for this allergy shot. The only hospital visit I've ever had was 2 years ago (the whole epic trial that was my little finger's battle with sharp dishes). There's no one out there who's willing to take on that little liability for less than $6,144 (the reigning champ for lowest HMO bid I got from 11 different insurance companies)?

My mind, it boggles. Or it would boggle, if it could do anything but throb wildly with pain.

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Ugh. But we shall think positive thoughts. Maybe tomorrow this will have all resolved itself and we can get back to the original plan of this totally being my month.

Angry Torch-wielding Homeowners

In my apartment complex's never-ending quest to annoy me to the point of madness, they have hit upon the best way to drive me from happiness to rage faster than I believed possible. Namely, the entrance gate immediately outside my building has started malfunctioning.

But wait, malfunctioning doesn't quite cover it. What's it called when you think something is maliciously not working on purpose? Sabotage.

Yes, that's it. I think the gate is actively trying to sabotage my happiness. Because sometimes it works. I push the little button on my keyring, and the gate magically slides open. This happens approximately once in every 5 attempts, just enough for me to keep trying it, even though it probably won't. To make things worse, there's no rhyme or reason to when it will open. Sometimes in the mornings, the keyring won't work, but if I get my car all the way up to the gate to leave, it will start opening. Other mornings, the keyring works from all the way at my front door (rarely). Then the next time I try it (like this morning) not only does the keyring not work, getting up right next to the gate won't trigger the opening either, and I have to drive all the way around to the main gate.

Repeat those same options for every other time of the day (coming home from work, coming home late after a movie, leaving in the afternoon to go on an ice cream run, etc.) and vary the responses completely at random, and you start to get the idea of the roulette wheel that has become my attempts to leave or enter my apartment complex. But again, the randomness seems to have a darker edge - it's more likely not to work when I'm particularly late, or in a bad mood, or generally exhausted. And the time it's most likely to not work at all? When I'm in an okay mood, but just need one more thing to push me right into an official bad mood. This gate is sentient, and it's vicious.

"Well Jason," you say. "Why not just use the main gate all the time then? Why subject yourself to torture at the hands of an evil incarnate mechanical fence when there is a reasonable alternative right there available?"

Because, blog person, the other option (the main gate) is very far away. Like, several dozen feet. And if I want to let someone into the main gate, it involves putting on shoes (and probably clothes too, since I'm pretty brief with outfits in my house, since it's 100s of degrees in Texas right now) and actually walking those feet myself, to get in keyring range of said gate. Plus, there are stairs involved! 6 of them! Alternatively, if I go to let someone into the gate by my building, the most I have to walk is the 10 feet into my living room (clothing optional).

And if I'm the one going in or out, I have to traverse the Speed Bumps of Inappropriate Size and Placement, AKA the driveway that wraps around my building. Seriously, I have never met speed bumps so poorly constructed and placed in my life. They look like they were built by 8 year-olds playing with modeling clay - little snakes across the drive that vary in height and texture. I care way too much about the underside of my beautiful car than I care to admit, but even I will allow that I'll do everything in my power to avoid ever driving over those things, up to and including throwing a little temper tantrum inside my car and scaring the kids next door.

But yeah, I'm not the only one who has this really powerful anger towards the capriciously mean gate - all my neighbors have been slowly simmering with their rage, and they're just about to boil over. Yesterday, when I got home I tried to come in the near gate, but it wouldn't open. My next door neighbor was immediately behind me in the drive coming in, and thus he had to back up directly into traffic in order for us to get to the main gate. After a very near crash with a DART bus making a questionably illegal left turn, he made it home, but upon getting out of his car he unleashed a string of obscenities that was impressive even to me, a person who conjugates new forms of the word fuck daily.

When you combine this latest problem with the lack of gas for 4 months earlier this year, the interruption of mail for 4 days last week, and the continued closure of the apartment pool due to lack of working pump, I can practically feel the rage of my neighbors seeping through the walls. Because did I already mention the heat? You don't deprive people of their only source of cool water when you can fry an egg on the concrete outside their front door. A gate that thwarts you at every turn is the last straw that may very well break our collective camel's back, to twist a metaphor beyond recognition.

I'm just waiting for the night when a mob of angry homeowners comes a'knocking, rousing me to come join them on their quest to overthrow the homeowners association president who lives at the top of the hill.

Why else would I have this pitchfork lying next to the front door?

On Being Less Crazy

So lately, I'm always nervous.

And this isn't one of those 'always' modifiers that is hyperbolic - I'm quite literally nervous every second of every day. Even in my sleep, my teeth are grinding themselves down into little flat cubes while my brain works overtime. So much so that I'm actively considering getting a mouth guard to rescue them. Except I'm too poor to get a fancy fitted one from a dentist, so I'm talking about one that you would normally see attached to a football helmet. I'm still all manners of classy, you see.

The cause of all this paralyzing nervousness is mostly job related. Once upon a time, the mortgage industry was stressful and full of very high maintenance people but it was always guaranteed to be there, all solid and professional. I mean, people always need houses, right? Heh, yeaahhhhh, not so much.

Now, in the past 4 months, I have had three separate scares wherein my office was closing, and I had about 10 days to find new employment in an industry that is downsizing so wildly that my contacts portfolio is now 1/8 the size it was 6 months ago. Each one of these announcements was eventually rescinded in the face of hopefulness for the future, but not before I had personally spent enough money on Tums to keep the antacid industry solvent for at least the rest of the decade. The fact that I still have my same job is a good testament to the tenacity of the people in our office, but also is a sign that we're more than a little insane (see also: the unholy tic that I've developed in my lower left eyelid).

In any case, though, I keep a vigilant watch over the job market, on the odd chance that I can jump to a more stable ship. One less likely to cause a psychotic break, for instance. Or maybe one that didn't toy with my emotions like a sadistic game of musical chairs.

But it's weird how exhausting just the idea of job hunting can be. I mean, my tribulations with the application process are well documented (probably on this blog, for that matter), but in my mind, I remember it mostly as a lot of embarrassing but funny little anecdotes. In the new harsh reality of today, I'm no better at interviews now than back then, only I've developed the nervous tic of calling everyone in the world Sir, like I'm goddamn Marcie from Peanuts.

This is not my beautiful post-college life.

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All that said, though, I'm moving on. I'm employed for a least another month, and I fully resolve to be less of a basket case this month. I'm going back to the old ways - blogging in my spare time, rather than rocking back and forth in a little ball on my bed, going out for drinks in the afternoon instead of trolling Monster.com for alternate careers that don't involve a collapsing housing market and the cannibalization of the banking industry. Socializing with real, live, humans!

This will be my month, dammit. I will be fun. And willful. And confident. And possibly (probably) very drunk for most of it.

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Although I do wish I had picked a less offensively hot month to be mine. It's gotta be like, 107 degrees outside right now. Even if I had a mouth guard, it would probably be a little puddle of plastic by now.

See?!

Finally, something that's sort of a positive.

Totally my month.

Watch out, world.

No Good, Terrible, Bad Days

I was in the worst mood.

I had just spent 9 completely unproductive hours in the office and all I had to show for it were three new paper cuts, 2 new bills that I hadn't realized would be due, and a splitting headache to boot.

When I got home and found my apartment smelling terrible due to a lack of kitchen cleaning, I was about ready to lose it. But I was feeling just put-upon enough that my righteous indignation carried me all the way through a really thorough cleaning of the whole apartment.

Afterward I was still in a funk and riding that same wave of adrenaline, so I decided to work out too. I ran through a Tae bo routine (because I live at least 8 years behind the rest of the world at all times) and then powered through a whole bunch of weightlifting until I was just completely exhausted, and just about dripping with sweat.

Finally I sort of felt my anger at the day melting away. All I wanted to do was crash and watch the last new movie I had from Blockbuster - The Assassination Jesse James Blah Blah Etc and Whatnot. I figured if there was ever going to be a time when I was willing to sit through a 3 hour period drama about the Old West, it would be right then - when I could barely raise an arm, let alone turn get off the couch and turn off a DVD player in disgust.

Except that, once I had toweled off the majority of my sweat and grabbed the DVD envelope, it turned out that they had sent me the wrong disc. Instead of The Assassination of Brad Pitt by One of those Affleck Boys, I had Disc Two of Ellen DeGeneres Here and Now.

Man, I was so steamed. Not that I really have anything against Ellen, but still, when you're expecting hot guys in cowboy hats and you get a lesbian doing stand-up, it's a tough blow to roll with. Really, it was just the whole day and that was the last straw. But I think I was still really pumped up on all the testosterone from the workout, because rather than just collapsing on the couch for a good cry (as my normal response would be) without thinking, I gathered up all my DVD's and bolted for my car to Blockbuster. I was going to find something there that I really wanted to watch and somehow salvage this terrible day.

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I entered Blockbuster with an air of restrained fury and was determined to find a movie and get out in under 10 minutes. When the guy at the checkout counter faltered in the middle of his routine greeting, I probably should have realized things would never be that smooth:

"Hi! Welcome to Blo-*ahem*"

Instead I assumed that maybe my withering glance in his direction had shocked him into silence. About 3 minutes later, though, I caught a quick glance of myself in the reflection of a window, and understood that it was probably my appearance that had shut him up. It also explained the little twitch of a laughing smile he repressed too.

Because in my mini-fury, I had forgotten that I was still in my workout outfit - super small black running shorts, XXXL muscle tee that hung off my shoulders so far that it revealed better than half my chest, and my hair standing straight into the air about 10 inches, from being held back in a headband for an hour.

Whatever. I didn't care, I've got a fine self body image, and I made peace with my hair months ago. I grab my movie (The Descent - I want to see some cave-dwelling monsters get their skulls crushed in. Still very full of testosterone.) and get in line. There were only two other people ahead of me, and they were both high school girls. At first they were giggling and messing around with the various impulse items in the line. As I came up in line they fell into a hushed series of whispers. I tried to tune out as much of their antics as possible, and focused on the rack of candy to my side.

Just visualizing getting home, watching some mindless horror, and putting this horrible day behind me--

"Hey," says Girl #1. They've both turned to stare at me.
"Uh, me?" I look up from the bag of Pixi Sticks I am reading and trying to talk myself out of buying and look around to make sure I'm not blocking someone they know.
"Yeah, you," she saids giggling, punctuating her 'you' with an index finger to my shoulder.
("Is she picking a fight with me?" I start to wonder.)
"What's your name?" She cocks her head to one side and just her hip to the opposing side.
"Uh, Jason." I start praying in my head that this is not going where I think it's going.
"Oh, cool. Jaaason." She draws my name out and smiles. Maybe she's just drunk. Or high.
"I'm Brie. This is Candice. What'cha renting? The Descent? That looks scary. I really like scary movies. But only if I have someone to hold on to." By the end of this rambling line of thought, she's officially moved into my personal space.
"Ahh, I see," I murmur as quietly as possible, narrowing my eyes and attempting to back up, only then realizing that I had already backed up as far as possible and was pressing by back into the candy rack.
I dart my eyes over to the friend, to see if I can find some hint about what's going on here. Is this an elaborate dare? She's got this appraising look going on, and I suddenly really wish that I had more of a shirt on than I do right at this exact moment. High school girls are not this aggressive, right?
"So, are you here by yourself? Is this your first week off from school too?"

It doesn't matter that I'm still completely sort of pissed off from this day, or that I'm basically half naked and covered in sweat in a Blockbuster - I completely just bust out laughing. I don't mean to, but seriously. Like, uncontrollable laughter, from deep within. The two girls stop and look at each other a little puzzled, but don't join in. I realize right then that they might have actually been serious, but I cannot stop laughing. Luckily, almost simultaneous with my inappropriate bout of laughter the guy up front calls for the next person in line.

The girls tell me to go ahead, since they're still waiting for another friend of theirs, starting to look at me a little funny. I get it down to a mild chuckle and tell them thanks, and that it was nice to meet them.

The checkout guy can obviously tell something strange is going on, but he's not going to get involved.

As I head out the main door, my principle interrogator calls out "Bye Jason!"

Determined not to bust out laughing, I turn and wave goodbye. As creepy as it was, I suppose one should still take it as a compliment.

And turning back to leave, I manage to misjudge how far the door will open and slam half my body against the frame. And then - reaching back to steady myself from falling - I crunch the little finger on my right hand against the other door handle.

Not daring to look back I virtually sprint back to my car and vow to never leave the house ever again.

Worst. Day. Ever.

The Revolution Will Only Be Televised on the Internet

So about two weeks ago, I went to watch my latest obsession, How It's Made on the Discovery Channel (which I love in a very deep 'I-wish-I-could-work-in-a-factory' sort of way). But when I turned on the TV, instead of my delicious cable, I found a black screen and a little box that said "One Moment - This channel should be available shortly".

That was totally a lie - there was no cable to be had for several days (by several I mean 10). And when I called the reprehensible Time Warner to complain, their response was "We're aware of the problem. No, we don't know what is wrong. Or when it will be fixed. Hope you're cool with that."

After I got over my spitting rage at the complete ineptitude of the world (seriously, at one point last week: cable (out), apartment gas (out), car (still not fixed), phone (cannot retrieve voicemail), insurance (not covering anything), payroll (not issuing me my cash). I was ready to shank someone.) I reassessed things and realized that this was no where near as bad as it seemed.

Mostly because cable TV is totally superfluous now.

Have you been to Hulu? Do you realize that at any time you can now pretty much whatever you want whenever you want, and all you have to suffer through is potentially 90 seconds of commercials per episode? Sure, it's not everything in the world, but it's enough to keep you going for a good long while.

Want some nostalgic sitcoms? You've got full seasons of NewsRadio, or Major Dad.

Looking for current dramas? How about every single episode of The Riches, Friday Night Lights, or the last season of Nip/Tuck?

Current comedies? You've got the last season of The Office, 30 Rock, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia right there waiting.

And then for your news needs - they keep the most current episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report right there for you to catch up on the next morning.

I swear, if they would just migrate How I Met Your Mother over from CBS.com, I don't know that I would ever need another thing.

Which brings up the other thing - anything else worth watching is almost certainly just an official website away. If you're into Ugly Betty, hit ABC.com (although they're still a little weird about what is available on any given day). Same thing if you've suffered a recent head injury and are still watching Grey's Anatomy. I already mentioned How I Met Your Mother. South Park has it's own website that dedicatedly streams every episode ever made.

Even How It's Made has it's own online channel.

Join me, my brothers, and throw off the chains of cable and satellite oppression. There's still time to escape and be free. You'll never have another productive hour of your life, so long as you still have internet access. It's a wonderful thing.

Since this Blog is Only About Hair Now

I now present the picture that was the final straw in convincing me that I should get a haircut, and at the same time is quite possibly my favorite picture ever taken of me.



I'm now sporting a much cleaner and professional cut, but it doesn't photograph anywhere nearly as well.

I mean damn.

(I promise that someday there will be actual content forthcoming again, but that day is not today. Maybe tomorrow.)

Vainposting and the Art of Not Caring

My long term battle with my hair is well documented.

At this point, we've sort of come to an impasse - I don't like it, it doesn't like me, and we've accepted that fact. There was a bit of a scuffle very early in January, when it refused to conform to anything remotely professional looking and I responded by cutting it all off to within an inch of my scalp. But that was resolved pretty squarely in favor of the hair, when I got the pictures back from my January visit to Austin and I looked like the world's most confused and drunken escaped mental patient in every single photo.

But lately I've just let the hair do its growing thing, and it's been perfectly happy to just there lie like a bushy mass on my head. Part of this hair indifference included letting semi-professional hair people do pretty much whatever they wanted to it for the first quarter of the year. When Jordan went to cosmetology school for a month and needed a hair dying model person, I volunteered my unruly mop for a coloring. And then the next month when his friend David needed a model as well, I signed up for a second coating without a thought.

People kept just politely nodding their heads and secretly rolling their eyes when I said that I really didn't care what my hair looked like, but I quite literally meant it. I would still attempt to tame it into something respectable on the off chance that it might finally have given up the battle, but I had truly decided to make a concerted effort not to put too much stock in how my hair reflected my worth as a human being.

And omigosh, it's so great. I realize now that the difference between great hair and normal hair is so much wider than the difference between normal hair and bad hair. And that the difference between bad hair and truly horrible hair is the widest gap of all. Or more plainly - there's pretty much nothing I can do to my head to get out of the normal-bad range, and no one in the world is going to care one way or the other.

So now I go with all out non-caring - I wash my hair in the morning, towel it dry, and then run my hands through it until it's roughly flat on my head. And then I don't mess with it for the rest of the day. Except on occasions when I'm in the privacy of my own home and I wear a headband to keep the hair out of my eyes, as previously disclosed. It's so awesome. And functional.

Plus, it doesn't look that terrible.

Okay, maybe I do look like I've wandered straight out of an 80's movie, what with the feathered nature of how it now falls. And sure, it's gone from 'mildly bushy' to 'so bushy that it brushes the ceiling of car when I get in' while rapidly approaching 'white boy afro' levels. And yes, I have grown out my sideburns down my chin, to offset the 80's look of the upper hair by doing a throwback to the mid 1920's. ...Wait, I forget exactly where this whole story was going.

Um, hair. Yes. Not caring is awesome. I never want to go to a barber ever again. We'll see how long I can hold out. We're currently somewhere around month three. I probably give it another three weeks, roughly, or until I can see my hair at all times in my field of vision. That's usually what causes me to snap. But maybe my willpower and self image have gone up so much lately that I'll be able to last for ages without caring what others think of my crazy 80's mane.

(Yeah, seriously, three weeks)

When Good Cars Go Bad

We all knew it had to happen eventually. My Car of Awesomeness (who is rapidly approaching his first anniversary with me) has started down the dark path that the Truck of Malfunction forged many, many years ago.

I know at first I was a little worried when, less than a month in, we had that brief period where the car was possessed by Satan. But that was resolved in general short order, and there had been no problems since. (Unless you count the fact that it burns through gas so fast that I can literally watch as the gas gauge goes down, which is slightly demoralizing in an age where one gallon of gas costs more than a 12 pack of Coke. But let's not get into that.)

Then, about two months ago I started to notice that my left front tire was a little flat. Almost imperceptibly, but as time went on, it definitely got flatter. So I ran by a gas station, filled it back up, and fully intended to go get it checked out at the tire place.

But time passed and I grew complacent. It wasn't actually getting any flatter anymore, it was just one of those things. And then when it did start to get noticeably flat, I ignored the problem until my car actually started to pull towards the left. And again, I simply filled the tire with air rather than going to the store.

What can I say? I was young. And foolish. And the tire place was totally like at least seven miles up the road.

Okay, so maybe the car isn't so much heading down the TOM path of destruction so much as my own carefully crafted path of willful ignorance, but follow along, it's an exciting story.

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All of this rising action and foreshadowing leads us up to last weekend when I am supposed to drive out into deep East Texas for my Mom's family birthday lunch. As is our family tradition, the diaspora of our clan is temporarily put on hold, as we return together for a single meal on each member's date of birth. Usually held at a delightfully colorful theme restaurant.

We decide to shoot for a late afternoon meal, as going to church Sunday mornings always adds an extra element of complexity to the proceedings. I head out from Dallas just at 12:00 so I should arrive roughly at 2:30-2:45, with some spare room for traffic to make the 3:00 meeting time. I once again notice that my tire is looking a touch low, and thus do a quick fill up before I embark. (Note: this would be the third fill up of its kind in under 2 months. Lord knows I never was called the brightest bulb in the box.)

Things go great as the trip begins. Traffic is super light, I have both the new Hush Sound album and a copy of the latest offering from The National to obsess over/dance around to all the way up there.

Now the trip from Dallas to Longview is a relatively simple one. There is only one highway involved, and it is basically a straight horizontal line connecting the two cities. The only thing of note about the drive is that there is pretty much nothing in between the two places, besides a plethora of empty or cow-ridden fields. There is one city about 30 minutes outside the Metroplex, then the turn off for the only other mid size city (Tyler) and then nothing for upwards of 80 miles.

So of course, my tire chooses the dead center of this Nothing Span in which to completely blow out. I actually had about 15 seconds of warning about this, luckily, as my car started making a peculiar *Wwhoomp* *Wwhoomp* sort of noise as a precursor to becoming completely undrivable. This causes me to slow from 75 to 65 mph, which is probably the only thing that saved me from untimely death, as I still nearly careened straight off the road I was on and into a nearby creek. Instead, I slam on my breaks and am able to instead just crazy swerve my way over to the side of the road, minus a large portion of my tire.

After a couple of fun moments of hyperventilating, personal body checking to make sure all limbs were still intact, and nervous laughing, I make my way out of the car to survey the damage.

I pull out the jack and spend an agonizingly long period of time lying on the ground trying to find the lip of the car body that I'm supposed to brace it against. Then I spend an even longer time lying on the ground attempting to figure out how to pump up the jack using only this coat hanger-like apparatus that was packed in alongside it. Once I get the car up in the air and the old tire off, I'm able to see just how bad a blowout it was - nearly a 5 inch hole on the interior wall of the tire. It looks like the exit wound of a particularly nasty shotgun blast. I have a brief fever dream while lying on the side of the busy highway of an armed robbery gone bad in the interior of my left front tire - their last job before they were going to go straight too - until I shake myself out of it and get the little tiny spare tire attached to the car.

I'm wildly impressed with my tire changing abilities (which, yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but come on. Show of hands, how many of you would think I could change a tire under my own power without dropping a car on my head?) but now face the fact that I'm going to have to drive at least 60 miles in any one direction before I'm going to find civilization advanced enough to help me get off this Baby's First Tire that I've got going on.

Getting up to 60 mphs is an epic feat and strain for my car at this point, so we stick with about 55 mph, all the while wheezing down the highway as we are passed by 18 wheelers, uHauls, and even old people driving those giant camper houses on wheels, with dumb names like The Summer Breeze, or The Elegant Pelican. I'm thoroughly humiliated for my fancy luxury sedan, but at least it's still operational and we aren't in a sort of Deliverance/Wrong Turn situation where I'm forced to go wandering through the woods for help.

I decide to just head for Longview, as it's probably the closest and biggest place that I can reach without dying, and make it there with little further issue, although minus a large portion of my dignity. I arrive at the restaurant and the hostess blanches at the sight of me, probably thinking that she's going to have to rush some bum out of her fancy establishment. Finally for once I have an excuse for getting this look, as I'm pretty much covered head to toe in gravel, brake dust, jack grease, and God knows what else.

Being pretty sure that there isn't a place that could help me at this point anyways, I enjoy a nice leisurely (if soot covered) dinner with my family, who has awesomely waited around for an extra hour and a half just for me, chowing down on chips and what have you while placing side bets on what sort of disaster had befallen me this time.

Afterwards I make the long journey home to Dallas on the Tire of Stunted Growth, and find that if you just come to accept the fact that everyone on Earth is going to angrily rush by you, usually while flipping you off, driving can be really quiet and relaxing. Almost therapeutic. I'm not sure that it was worth the extra 2 hours of transit time, but it wasn't as horrible as I anticipated.

Still, getting the bird from the elderly driver of The Regal Eagle? It sticks with you.

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The next day I was able to get two new front tires and a front end alignment (the real reason for the blowout, apparently, insomuch as my alignment was far enough off that the inside of the tire was getting worn down about 10 times faster than it should be) with almost no trouble, assuming I didn't mind mortgaging my first born against the costs. Seriously, owning a fancy car is cool and all, but who would have ever expected that an expensive car would have associated expensive repair and maintenance costs? That shit just comes out of nowhere.

So to recap - stupidity and lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE against potential car problems causes tire explosion and near death of the driver, but plucky ingenuity saves the day over said stupidity and everyone survives, just minus all their disposable income for the month.

Oh, and the bastards at the tire place totally lost one of my lug nuts on the tire they replaced. Which will take them as long to fix as it is taking the city to repair my gas at home. (Meaning they'll both be in place sometime around my 40th birthday.)

Woo and hoo.

A Primitive Lifestyle

About 5 weeks ago, I came home after work and really wanted some cookies. Because I am incredibly handy around the kitchen like that, I set out to whip up a batch from scratch. And by scratch, I mean I added an egg to the Betty Crocker pre-made cookie mix and then spooned the results on to a cookie sheet. I tossed the sheet into the oven and set the timer for 13 minutes, practically drooling in anticipation.

When the alarm (finally) went off, I shook myself out of my cookie-lustful stupor, wiped my chin, and wandered back into the kitchen, expecting shortly to be able to stuff my mouth full of warm chocolaty goodness. Except upon inspection the cookie dough was in the exact same condition as when I put it in the oven.

"Fool!" I thought. "In your haste you forgot to preheat the oven. Now you will have to wait another 15 minutes before you can gorge yourself." I was very sad.

Until I looked over and realized that I had set the oven, it just wasn't getting hot.

This sounds way less ominous than it should, but right at this second you should hear the soundtrack that accompanies my life rise in dreadful anticipation of a horrible reveal.

Because while it may look like just a lack of cookie-making power one night, this one event was the foreshadowing of oh so much doom to come.

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We fast-forward to today, where I am still unable to cook anything. Because the city has shut off our gas. And by the current rate of things, they plan on never turning it back on.

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I feel like I already discussed my problem from a couple of months ago, where my hot water heater kept abruptly refusing to heat any water. Most commonly whenever I was actually in the shower, mid-way through the chorus of George Michael's Faith. But just in case I haven't - the boiler for my condo complex kept repeatedly failing over the course of several weeks. After (futilely) replacing the heating coils multiple times, the HOA board realized that it was actually a problem with the natural gas line going to the boiler. They put an above ground gas line directly to the heater while the real line was fixed, and everything seemed peachy.

That was until the moment 5 weeks ago when the gas line repair company came in and did the test to check the new line. Which indicated that there were at least two, possibly as many as four, huge gas leaks in the overall existing system in our complex, not just the one going to the water heater. And huge is sort of an understatement - according to one workman, had one of these leaks actually ignited it could have easily taken out our entire block.

My faith in urban safety now completely undermined, the city shut down the gas and has been systematically replacing the whole setup. Which apparently takes the entire length and breadth of time itself, as we are now approaching day 40 without the hint of gas. Do you know what sort of primitive lifestyle one must lead if you have a gas range stove with no gas to power it? Lemme tell you, it is not pretty.

Mostly it involves foraging in the wild (read: eating fast food for every meal), or subjecting yourself to eating radioactive matter (anything zapped in the microwave for extended periods of time). I have easily gained 10 pounds of weight, mostly in the form of french fries, which have directly applied themselves to line my torso, or in tiny microwaved hamburgers, which I feel go straight to my thighs.

Had I expected this little gas siege to last the rest of time, I might have sped up the plan that I put into motion over this weekend: buying an electric skillet to offset this new, even more wildly unhealthy lifestyle that has been thrust upon me. Unfortunately, my taste in skillets runs very cheap, as I'm already poor from the never ending eating out and the surprising expense of pre-made microwavable meals. So the skillet I ended up purchasing tends to only heat things in a very specific manner. Namely: Poorly, most kindly described as 'wildly uneven.'

Thus, to the two other food options we add a third: preservative-laden fast food, radioactive frozen meals, and alternatingly raw and burnt self-prepared delicacies. And not even I will buy the idea that something half raw and half totally blackened actually averages out to properly cooked. I'm a forager, not an idiot.

So still, we are left eating basically hand to mouth, wandering the streets looking for food made by others, all the while wondering if someday they will ever give us back the power to sustain ourselves on our own. And if so, will that day will arrive before I reach the weight of a killer whale, can no longer move under my own power, and approach all problems from the couch while wielding a reaching broom?

The answer most definitely seems to be no, but I lie in wait nonetheless - my pre-made cookie mix at the ready, an egg sitting in the refrigerator, under glass affixed with the words "Break in case of emergency. Or the ability to bake cookies," next to a tiny little hammer.

Someday, my friends, someday.