floorpie

I think I hate driving.

I used to love driving. Freedom from the world, all that power at my fingertips, etc.; but, now I find it just mostly annoying. I’m sure this is partly due to the fact that my truck is about two and a half wind gusts away from becoming a heap of twisted metal parts with no discernible function; save perhaps, manufacturing tetanus, and, leeching rust into the groundwater.

It also turns out that I hate going places.

Please don’t misunderstand, I like the idea of being somewhere (be it club, bar, restaurant, bathroom, etc); and I love being there when I get there. It’s just the actual process of transporting my carcass that’s beginning to bother me. It seems like such a waste of time sitting in a car, running, flying, whatever, to my destination, especially when I so clearly wanted to be there 10 minutes ago. It would be so much more convenient if I could be instantaneously teleported a la Star Trek, or, more correctly, if my destination could be transported to me (imagine the convenience, I wouldn’t even have to put on pants!).

You’ll understand, now, how annoyed I must have been on the drive into work today. I was already running late as the result of an especially poignant episode of MASH, when getting on Central Expressway (a weird freeway that’s not a freeway here in Silicon Valley), I was slowed to a near halt by a Mercedes in front of me.

“Hmmm,” I thought, ” must be a lot of traffic on Central this morning. Looking over my shoulder I saw that the merge-way was abundantly clear. Clenching fists in constrained range I said aloud, “Go…go…go…gogogogogogogo!” and still nothing. Taking a closer look at the Mercedes, I saw the driver applying mascara in her rear-view mirror.

breath…1…2…3…4…

honk!

Startled expressions of embarrassment and bewilderment, ingrained attempt to go back and finish the spackling honk! honk! expletives let fly. Stupidity and danger to self realized, drive on, drive on… sigh

The incomparable Meg has a new home. check it out.

Important anthrax info from victory blog (formerly everyone’s favorite asian bastard).

On Ariel’s impetus, I researched whether or not I could become a Canadian. With 70 “points” necessary for admittance, I scored 72 (where points are awarded based on your age, education ,job, etc.).

Nothing too terribly interesting in that, save for the points awarded for “Demographic Factor”:

Factor 8: Demographic Factor

This is a number set by the Government of Canada. Award yourself 8 points.

Hmmm…couldn’t you just not do that, and lower the minimum requirement to 62 points? Then again, it’s not mine to question why…

It’s company policy to give you…the plague – Mr. Burns

Will wonders never cease? Despite my being rather annoying, people are still kind enough to send me birthday gifts. The latest (and hopefully last) comes from Stuff and Stuff’s original Blog Madame, Erica.

Two books that promise to be amazing arrived. The first, Picture This by Joseph Heller, one of my favorite authors, and writer of Catch-22:

Rembrandt painting Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer was himself contemplating the bust of Homer where it stood on the red cloth covering the square table in the left foreground and wondering how much money it might fetch at the public auction of his belongings that he was already contemplating as sooner or later going to be inevitable.

Aristotle could have told him it would not fetch much. The bust of Homer was a copy.

It was an authentic Hellenistic imitation of a Hellenic reproduction of a statue for which there had never been an authentic original subject.

There is record that Shakespeare lived but insufficient proof he could have written his plays. We have the Iliad and the Odyssey but no proof that the composer of these epics was real.

On this point scholars agree: It is out of the question that both works could have been written entirely by one person, unless, of course, it was a person with the genius of Homer.

The second, The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, the GM of IDEO, and a product designer’s hero:

…many companies shy away from novel solutions. Moreover, they tend to believe that truly creative individuals are few and far between. We believe the opposite. We all have a creative side, and it can flourish if you spawn a culture to encourage it, one that embraces risks and wild ideas and tolerates the occasional failure.

Thank you!

I went back. I walked briskly and with resolution. I grabbed one, then another, then another and another. I was asked if assistance was needed and, I declined without looking. Reason intervened temporarily. Long enough, anyway, for me to return to the endless miasma a few of my treasures. I walked briskly again, the way I had come, retracing in reverse and backwards.

Smiles all around.

I rushed into my apartment, rending materials aside. I played, and played, and played. I am now, inexplicably, missing several dollars, have an Excedrin headache, sore fingers, and a grin. Simple (dorky [oh dear God you DORK]) pleasures.

Looney Tunes do the Matrix, err, Matwix.

Overheard Exchange at Fry’s over PSII Games:

Jock-Nerd #1: Dude, this game totally kicks ass!

Jock-Nerd #2: Really?

JN1: Yeah, man, it’s sweet! I played it at Bill’s and it was awesome!

Jock-Nerd #3: I can’t wait to play this one…

JN1 & 2: Yeah!

JN3: Dude, the first one…the first in the series was fuckin’ scary, I can’t wait to see what the second one’s all about.

JN2: (incredulous) Whaaaaat?

JN3: Yeah, dude. You turn out all the lights, and turn up the sound, and it would be fuckin’ scary when stuff would jump out at you and shit.

JN2: Cool…

extended pause

JN1: Dude, I got scared getting up to take a piss last night…

I am the victim of credit card fraud. It’s for a card that I haven’t even used in over a year, and that sits, even now, in my back-up wallet containing other unused cards, expired ID’s, frequent flier cards, and the like. Somehow, someone got a hold of the number and charged $250 to an online gambling site. I’m not so much upset about this as I am curious. I still have the card. I haven’t used it recently, so I haven’t gotten any statements. I haven’t even touched my back-up wallet in months. I am perplexed, and a little bit impressed.

I feel unclean.

In a situation much similar to Ariel�s, a garbage truck arrives under my window not everyday (as in the aforementioned raver�s existence), but only once a week. One of my apartment complex�s sets of dumpsters is roughly right under my third story window (competing bitterly with the freeway beyond it for Best View From a Bedroom Window in a Supporting Role). Which means that I am awakened by the idle-idle-whrrrrCRASHwhrrr-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-repeat, on cue faithfully, at 7 A.M every Friday. There are three individual dumpsters below me, which equates to what I can only estimate as 47 minutes of garbage-truck�n time.

I haven�t mustered the bravery, yet, to actually go to my window and watch the process unfold, but I�m fairly certain it involves a lot of pointing up to my apartment and laughing heartily.