90% True

.: It takes quite a bit of effort to motivate me into action by way of irritation. That is, if something bothers me, I usually let it continue bothering me since the amount of effort I must expend to rectify the situation is most likely at a level sufficiently high enough to be more bothersome than the original act of irritation. In other words, I’m incredibly lazy.

.: Of course, there are some objects and events that are so incredibly bothersome that I will stop at no length to rid the world around me of their immediate presence. A few examples are ticking clocks, mosquitos, and squeaky ceiling fans. However, most of the time if something I own isn’t functioning properly, I’ll spend the least amount of time, money, and effort towards fixing the problem. Case in point: my car stereo.

.: I enjoy listening to music more than the average person. I don’t believe I’ve gone a day without hearing a familiar tune or humming a delightful melody. That’s why, several weeks ago, when my car’s tape deck fiendishly decided to stop working, I was crushed. It happened late one night when I wasn’t there to witness the events. The morning after, my tape deck wouldn’t recognize the adapter I use to play my iPod. To further compound matters, it wouldn’t even eject the damn thing, so I couldn’t play actual tapes I had purchased from several clearance racks.

Fig. 1. My friend Hunter, an engineer, tried removing the jammed adapter. As you can clearly see, engineers have difficulty distinguishing tape adapters from buttons.

.: For the rest of the week I listened to NPR, during which time I learned that several people in the country don’t like the president, oppose the war in Iraq, and really need money from me so that they could continue not liking either of the aforementioned items. I was tempted to give them some, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think what better use that money would go to if instead I bought a new tape deck.

.: Then, a few days later, while I was packing away my computer for the trip home, an idea struck: I have an inverter, a power strip, and computer speakers — what’s stopping me from simply plugging everything into the twelve volt power port? As things turned out, I now have a very good answer to that query, one which I discovered today and will reveal near the end of this post.

.: In the mean time, my planned worked wonderfully. To hell with NPR; I could listen to whatever I wanted to listen to, at my own pace and at my own whim. I no longer suffered the mendicant programmers and reporters who interrupt their stories every ten minutes to make me feel guilty.

.: But my new setup had many shortcomings not present in a typical car stereo arrangement. To state the most obvious, the subwoofer was inconveniently located where one would normally place one’s legs if they were a passenger. However, since I’m not a very popular person and have relatively few friends who need to be in the same car as me, this has only been a problem once.

.: Another drawback is that my computer speakers aren’t as loud as my car’s speakers. Coupled with my broken air conditioner and my frequent need to drive on highways, this doesn’t bode well for spoken word podcasts.

.: Also, another obvious drawback that you might have already inferred is that my computer would not have any speakers! Luckily, that problem was solved before it existed, thanks to all the computer equipment my brother left behind, including an extra set of computer speakers.

Fig. 2. Yes, that is a baseball bat on the driver’s side.

.: (On a slightly related note, my iPod is also partially broken, in that its battery no longer holds a charge. Since I mainly use it for driving, however, I haven’t bothered to find a replacement battery. Pressures increased, however, when my car charger for it also broke, rendering it useful only for precise and particular geometrical arrangements — meaning I couldn’t physically move my iPod at all, or it would suddenly go dead. However, once I setup my computer speakers in my car, I was able to simply plug in my iPod to the power strip, and all was fine. I think this contributed to my reluctance to fix my tape deck, since that would only reestablish the pressure to buy a new car charger or battery. I’m mindlessly simplistic and needlessly complicated at the same time.)

.: All this time, though, I never really gave a second thought to actually getting up off my butt and fixing any of the underlying problems. For those of you who are counting, they are 1) broken tape deck 2) broken iPod 3) broken car charger. Also, somewhat tangentially related is my broken air conditioner, and to a much lesser extent my broken radiator hose. In fact, that last one isn’t related at all, but it is costing me about $10 a month in antifreeze. Why have I not fixed it? My guess is that I wouldn’t have my car for at least a day or two, and fixing it would cost a lot more than $10 — and that just bothers the hell out of me. The point is, I am content with simply refilling my radiator once a week, because the alternative requires more time and money from me.

.: Now here’s the problem: I told Susan that I would see her today after she got off work, and now I can’t. Why? Because I left my speakers plugged into the twelve volt power port, and now my car’s battery is dead. My makeshift solution to an insignificant problem has resulted in unforeseen consequences that I can do nothing to fix, at least for now. And now I can’t help but think what will happen when the leak in my radiator grows too large. I should also change my oil soon, too.

.: At about 11:00 am I was awoken by the shrill crescendo of Ravel’s Bolero, rendered into the wildly inappropriate medium of 8-bit ringtones. It was a phonecall from Gigi, and she was in Houston alongside Oscar. “Where are you?” she wanted to know, presumably because she wanted to visit me.

“I’m in The Woodlands.”

“Good,” she said, “I’m in Houston with Oscar. We’re coming to visit you.”

Fig. 1. On the left is Oscar, and on the right is Gigi. I have removed everything else that’s irrelevant from this picture.

.: Now that I have said everything twice, I think it’s time for me to offer a brief diescription of Oscar. He somehow manages to be completely harmless while also being disgustingly disturbing. He’s lecherous in a manner that completely excludes harrassment of women while at the same time being attracted exclusively to them. He will stop short of nothing to offend your sensibilities, and he’s motivated not by spite or anger, but simply because it amuses him so. He’s also funny as hell.

.: Gigi’s Vietnamese; that’s all you really need to know.

.: At the insistence of Oscar, we went to Johnny Rockets for lunch. Johnny Rockets is a 50’s style burger joint which, we later learned, features a staff that dances to 70’s style disco music. They also play music by the Stray Cats a lot, because nothing better exemplifies the 50’s experience than anachronistic music and outrageously priced burgers.

.: Afterwards, we met up with Susan, played a game of cutthroat, and ventured down to the galleria, where we met this woman. I forgot nearly everything Gigi told me about her, but I now have her picture.

.: Before then we went to a fine chocolates store and purchased delicious-looking chocolate which, by and large, left the majority of us unimpressed — which is a shame, too, because we spent a lot of money on it. At one point Oscar suggested we go back to the store, return the uneaten portions, and yell “No!”

.: Before that, we were still driving to downtown Houston, and that’s not a very exciting avenue of the story to explore, so allow me to skip towards the end:

.: Oscar led us all on a guided tour of Central Market, a kind of focal point for all things commerce. He exposed us to chocolate far greater than that which we purchased earlier. One notable item was a dark chocolate bar that actually contained tiny chunks of cocoa beans interspersed throughout. Eating that chocolate was like taking a small bite out of heaven, swallowing a part of Jesus, and digesting the Holy Spirit.

.: I also added two new brands of root beer to my collection: Gale’s Root Beer and Blue Sky’s Ginseng Root Beer. Gale’s was no winner, but Blue Sky’s was about the softest tasting root beer I’ve ever had and goes quite well with chocolate and sushi.

.: We went back to my place after that, Oscar and Gigi parting ways and Susan remaining with me for a little while longer before departing for home herself.

.: Since I don’t want to make a separate post for this, I think I’ll share it with you here. It’s what Susan wrote into my Notebook of Admittedly Bad Ideas last night. In an effort to mock me and my ideas, she decided to transcribe my profound thoughts and story ideas into a language more transparent and accessible to the public.

- writing late at night = crap
- people are meaner when lacking sleep - true?!?
- young girl goes to prep school, leaves sheltered life, meets attractive boy. There is some sort of continued complication that is worked out in the end. (Alternatively, could be case with Olsen twins for a lesbian incest twist.)
- Cody stares at me while attempting to not fall off the bed. I push him, we see what happens. He fell.

.: So I didn’t post every day like I said I would. Sorry about that. I have a pretty good excuse, though: I didn’t have internet access. It’s a long story (in that it spans the course of several days), but it can be told relatively quickly: the internet people came by on Tuesday to give me internet, and through diligence and hard work they had my internet working by Saturday.

Fig. 1. This is my stapler. If I don’t lock it in my desk drawer when I leave to use the bathroom, it will be gone by the time I get back.

.: In the mean time, I got my old job at the bank back, only now I’m no longer endlessly scanning papers into the computer. I’ve moved on to bigger and better things: I now wait for someone to send me a piece of paper which they scanned into a computer, then I read what’s written on the paper, and if everything’s okay I get to go into the computer and click a button that pretty much tells the system, “everything’s going to be okay.” I can’t help but think that these are the papers I scanned last summer and that they don’t actually mean anything — as if it were an infinite loop of inconsequential assignments, designed to accomplish nothing and serve nobody. I get paid nine bucks an hour.

.: I get about forty or so of these papers a day, and it takes me no more than two minutes to process them — that’s about eighty minutes of solid work every day, only I work an eight hour shift. (Actually, this past week I worked a nine hour shift each day, simply because I can’t do clock math.)

.: On the first day, I was told that if I ever got a paper where not everything is right, I would have to call the number on the bottom and make sure the person on the other end of the line was mistaken, because our system couldn’t possibly be mistaken. In addition to forcing the other person into admitting that they were mistaken, I would also have to make them fix the mistake, because we can’t do anything to fix the mistake, since we didn’t make it. Surprisingly, I soon learned that most other people are unwilling to fix the mistakes they obviously made; I would frequenly reach an impasse and nothing would get accomplished.

.: That all went away the very next day, when I learned that, instead of calling the number at the bottom of the paper, I could just circle what was wrong with the paper and put it in a folder. There, I could simply leave the papers for two weeks, and if nothing happened with them (this is usually the case with inanimate paper), I could throw them away. I was elated! No more angry people who refused to admit their mistakes! No more uncomfortable stalling while I try to figure out what I need to say next! It was glorious.

.: That, of course, changed on Friday. Starting next Monday, the Incorrectly Marked Papers Folder shall be no more, and I must return to the disembodied angry voices. Still, I’ll have plenty more to do, like trying to figure how to automatically email new posts from blocked websites to my gmail address. Anybody out there know anything about that?

.: I just moved into my apartment today. It’s a place I could see myself living in for most of my life, although that’s not going to happen. I don’t have internet yet, so I’m using the computer room at the apartment complex (which I think closes at five . . . lazy s).

.: They gave me a list of all the different things to check for (damage to walls, blinds, countertops, etc.), and the last thing I checked was the keyless bolt on the only door to the outside. It didn’t work. I mean, of course, that it only worked halfway — it locked perfectly fine, but it would not unlock. That was a fun hour of my life.

.: God, these computers really suck. I can’t view any page on my site without it automatically going to an error page .5 seconds later. I keep trying to reload and stop, but it’s not easy. I’m lucky I made it to this page. Since this post isn’t all that great, I’m going to point you to a nifty website:

Fig. 1. This was my old dorm room during my freshman year. The mattress is on the floor because I don’t like wobbly bunk beds.

.: I’m getting an apartment for myself this summer. It’ll be the first time I’ve ever actually lived alone; or, to put it in other words, it’ll be the first time I’ve ever actually felt secure enough to walk around the house completely naked and carefree.

.: I watched Match Point with Susan today, and I must say I was unimpressed. It was a lot like Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, only with more beautiful actors and a crappier storyline. Also, I hate tennis. It’s not as fun as ping pong, and the movies they make about it invariably suck (really just that one movie).

.: Right, this isn’t much of a blog post, but I’ve already gotten this far, I can’t imagine not pressing “publish”. Okay, here goes.

Fig. 1. This is the cutest goddamn thing ever.

.: School’s over. I didn’t do so well this time. I blame the usual mélange of culprits: the government, aliens, and those elusive phlogistons. I’ve since learned not to trust anything volatile.

.: I’m going to try to update my blog more often, perhaps at least once a day. I can’t promise much original content, but I will point you to interesting links, with perhaps a sprinkling of commentary by me.

.: Also, I think I will include in each post a random picture from my computer; these will of course be pictures I have taken myself on my own camera, or most likely pictures I have gleaned from the internet. I most note, however, that I do have 2.5 gigs of my own personal pictures, so I shan’t run out of options soon.