The Lowest Common Denominator
July 28th 2010
Hate Mail 2!
Apparently, as it turned out, William Stanley took exception to my sharing his missive to me with the lot of you. Why, on the 13th he had to send a retort - I should check my mail more often, huh. And since it bothered him so much that I did so last time, I figured I should definitely go ahead and do it again. After all, he's so annoyed by my web site that he has to keep reading it. Anyway, here's some more unedited fun:
You pride yourself in your self proclaimed "arrogance" when most people think you are an idiot. Your over zealousness caused you to waste 30minutes of your life on assumptions about me. Your predictability is laughable. While you should be online looking for jobs. You are ranting about me. You are such a genius you let me rent space in your head and life for free! Is that coherent enough for you to understand? Good luck to you. I hope you learned something positive from this. I would bet you haven't.
'I hope you learned something positive from this.'
Actually, I did. I learned that I can just keep ranting on this site, which is its intended purpose, and no matter how vexed some people get at me for doing so, they'll just keep reading it. It's like having a captive audience, a bunch of ya-hoos so wound up by the fact that someone has the temerity to disagree with them that they just have to keep screaming about it. But, more importantly, keep coming back for more.
At this rate I may have to put up an ad banner on the site, since people like William Stanley, ostensibly from Dayton Ohio, feels the need to regularly visit the Banality. And this is with me hardly updating it of late. Of course, he's not really reading what I put down in response to his inane string of words masquerading as English. He seems to think I am still looking for a job - when I specifically stated I have one.
Even if the start date is still on hold.
So I thank you, William Stanley. Once again you have given me a benchmark by which I can measure myself. It's nice to know that I can at least read a paragraph and actually comprehend what was said in it, as opposed to just spiraling off into some bile-filled torrent at the mere mention of my name. On the plus side, at least you didn't call me 'Chris' again. My friend Chris found that quite amusing. But anyway.
May you continue to 'life free', William Stanley. And keep reading! It's fulfilling to know I have your rapt attention.
July 5th 2010
Hate Mail!
When I first put together this web site, way back in 2008 or whatever, I set up an e mail address in the event that anyone had anything to say to me about anything. I have, until three days ago, received a grand total of two e mails on this address, one of which was from some Brazilian fellow wanting me to sell the domain to him, because his friends kept going to my site instead of his, which was this or something.
That is, until July 3rd.
Apparently I have attracted the attention of a Master Communicator. I present to you, in total, a missive from William Stanley, who you can talk to at this address. His literary masterpiece is as follows (not altered in the slightest):
You really need psychological help. Your rantings which you think are genius are really insane. You talk as if you know and understand something yet they are weak assumptions with misinfo you have obtained. I look forward to meeting someday. I guess when you are unemployed you have nothing better to do. you know chris...or whatever your name is you unemployed loser. I would rather be underestimated than overestimated. chris or whatever your name is.I wonder if you even know anymore. Things in life come around quickly now days.I would love to meet and chat sometime or maybe a good debate. nah...that's probably not your style.
Ah, where to start. To begin with, I never take a critique serious when someone can't be bothered to actually convey a simple idea. I'm reading a series of unconnected sentences here, seemingly intent on berating me but unable to actually focus on one thing in particular. It's like the ravings of a drunken hobo, one who so desperately wants to be listened to yet can't actually articulate what he wants to say.
Secondly, it's clear that this functional retard didn't bother to actually think about raving at me for more than six seconds before doing so. William Stanley repeatedly identifies me as 'chris' (note the lower case 'C') while if he'd have followed one of but three links on the top (and bottom) of this site, he could've easily learned what my name actually is. And of course seen a lovable image of myself.
I would say I, too, look forward to meeting you someday, William Stanley, but I know that will never happen. While I do not hide behind the seeming anonymity of the Internets, you seem to be trying to. Even though your Yahoo! profile would indicate that you are also living in Dayton, Ohio, and that you are either lying about your twenty one years of age, or have had a Yahoo! e mail account since you were nine years old.
Clowns like you are all bluster over the Internets, but you tend to clam up when called upon it. Even in your own misbegotten ravings, you back down from the idea after you yourself bring it up. But that's okay, William Stanley of Dayton, Ohio, age indeterminate, I understand your fear. Actually having someone call you on your own boobery is scary for a lot of Internets trolls.
The only question I have is why you felt the need to gibber at me in the first place. While I do have a posh position as an Examiner for the Dayton area, I don't actually link to this site from that one. The only person from Dayton who knows about it and has bad blood towards me is the mentally deranged owner of a nearby comic book shop that took exception to my negative review of his store's shitty service.
I wonder if 'William Stanley' is a mere sock puppet for said store owner. Or perhaps he's one of the anti-intellectual Palinites that I deride on a regular basis. Or maybe - just maybe - he's one of the Catholic pedophiles I mock at every opportunity. Ooh - I've got it! You're the guy who stole my chair out of the dumpster, aren't you?
None of the above would surprise me, given your incoherence.
But I digress.
I thank you for a good laugh, William Stanley of Dayton, Ohio. And since you're so concerned about my job status, rest assured that I actually have one again. Since it seems to occupy most of your waking thoughts about myself, that's one less thing you need concern yourself with. I simply hadn't bothered to mention it on the Banality yet, because I've been somewhat busy of late. You know, having a life.
May you find one some day.
June 16th 2010
So who is that mysterious masked masticator, you ask?
What you're looking for is a story in itself, but I thought I'd give you the picture first. You see, About eight years ago I purchased a singularly awesome chair. This hot on the heels of my previous chair which I'd bought a day before. That's right, I bought a new office chair and it broke in a day. A DAY. One could say it's 'cause I'm a tubby bitch, but honestly I'm kind of rough on chairs, I suppose.
I should've stole the chair I used at A.D.T. before they laid us all off, huh? But anyway, I bought a chair with a plastic bottom support, and one of the legs cracked the third time I sat on it. So what I did was, I went back and got a new one... one with a steel base. STEEL, suckers. It was a nice chair, and it seemed to stand up to my plopping into it all exhaustively at the end of many a work day.
When you work until 4 A.M., you tend to do that.
But ultimately it, too died. Not because of the steel base, but because of cheap-ass welds made on the bits that hold the base to the chair proper. They were slowly breaking, so I had to brace the chair with random steel objects laying around the house (we oddly had several handy) or else it would consistently 'sag' to one side. Or it'd just tumble me out of it. Or both, depending on how the chair 'felt' that day.
So we eventually got another. Well, by 'we' I mean the Sexy Other bought a new office chair and gave me hers. So having a new chair, I had to bid my old chair adieu, and I transported it out to the dumpster. Now, normally they frown on this sort of thing but every goddamn time I take out the trash I see an entertainment center or a mattress or tires or sex toys or whatever in there, so I wasn't too worried.
Fast forward two days.
I'm getting out of the apartment to do something (I forget what by now, this was a while ago), and I see some dude backing out of the apartment door across the street, seemingly moving something furniture-like. Well, I look at said furniture and I couldn't help but notice that it looked awfully familiar. In fact, it not only looked like my old chair but it WAS my old chair. But what was this man doing with my chair?
He was taking it to the dumpster. News flash for you, slack ass: if the chair with the SOLID STEEL BASE was still awesome, I wouldn't have thrown it away. I would have in fact kept it in my office, and not parked it out by the dumpster. Perhaps you should keep in mind that people usually put furniture in the dumpster when they've used it up. Or it's full of bed bugs. Or crack, maybe.
Fucking goombah.
Apparently he noted the same problem I was having with the chair - or perhaps it spilled him out while he was masturbating to clown bestiality porn and ruined the moment. I dunno. But there he was, repeating the walk of shame I took just two days earlier, so I laughed. I laughed and laughed, and I then took his picture. I don't think the masticator there was too happy with that, but fuck him.
Stupid so and so. Dumpster Diving = Bad. Although on hindsight, I probably should've taken the chair apart and salvaged that steel base. I bet I could've got at least five bucks for that. Although apparently in Dayton they drop off old artillery shells at their scrapyards, or the places just spontaneously combust and fill the entire city with toxic ash. So perhaps I'm better off having not bothered...
But you know, hindsight and all that.
February 23rd, 2010
So I'm in Omaha this week. I haven't been here in a good long time, so I was spending a week catching up with friends and relatives and whatnot. But i'm also doing a bit of maintenance on the auto-mobile, which is amusing if you know me at all, 'cause my auto-motive know-ledge is less than com-plete. I could go so far as to say it's highly lacking - so much so, in fact, that seeing me struggle with mechanical bits might be amusing.
So imagine my surprise when I wound up at the U-Pull-It today. The U-Pull-It is an automotive graveyard, a place where cars go after they die. Far from a sort of nirvana, it's more like a Frankenstein's Laboratory, because instead of resting in peace, the cars which wind up at the U-Pull-It are picked over by all manner of people looking for spare parts and to simply loot what's left in the vehicles.
The specific reason I was at the U-Pull-It was that my odometer is deceased. The actual mile recording quit on the way to Ohio proper, but the trip counter still worked, so I kinda sorta used that thing to approximate my mileage from then out. The trip counter was working even when I started driving out from Ohio to Omaha last Monday - I'd reset it before starting, to get a basic idea of how long the i-70 drive was.
But it inexplicably died upon being reset here in Omaha. So my dad had the idea of heading to the U-Pull-It to see if we could find us some replacement bits. So we did. We went to the U-Pull-It (you can see a wall of Ford and Chevy corpses there in the photo), and went looking about. We found several Grand Marquis (amusingly pronounced as MAR-QUEEES by the local Taco Johns guy) but they were the wrong year.
Luckily for us, we did encounter a Crown Victoria that seemed to be the right year, and they're very close to my Grand Marquis in design; the dash was different, but the bits looked similar. It turns out we didn't get an exact match of course, as they don't line up right. But we are going to see if we can substitute parts after dismantling the sucker and see if we can restore one or both of the odometer bits.
That may or may not be successful, but I did also grab the Crown Vic's factory tape deck whilst I was there. I figured the fuckers around our complex wrecked mine, so I may as well replace it and see if I can get better performance from the thing. And not have to jiggle the tape converter on it for a half hour before driving. Oh! I also found an old Cobra radar detector, but thought I'd leave it.
Like I did the Ho Boot I found there. Now if I'd have found its pair I'd have grabbed 'em and e bay'd 'em, but you know.
Listening to: Nothing right now. Sorry!
February 2nd, 2010
Okay, so I sort of slacked off this last week. Some of you may've been used to me gibbering at you on a daily basis like I was through most of January there, but I kinda fell off the wagon. You see, I have been devoting a considerable amount of my brain power to the conclusion of a lot of loose ends on my nerdery site, not that I've been writing for it so much as working a ton of geek details out.
But today, I was rummaging through my Blackberry photographs and discovered something I felt the need to share. It was something I took a picture of a few months back, something at Best Buy that my rational mind reeled at. As you can see in the photograph there, it's a copy of the film 'Over the Top', arguably one of the worst films ever made - and I say this knowing there's a lot of horrible pornography out there.
But what is Over the Top about?
Okay. Okay okay okay. Okay.
...
Okay.
So there's this guy, Lincoln Hawk, who's a trucker right? And he arm wrestles for spare change while trying to get his crap together. And then there's his kid, who he winds up with after his wife dies. But his kid blames him for keeping him away from his mom when she's dying, so he leaves him for his grandfather, who was apparently behind a lot of shenanigans intended to edit Hawk out of the kid's life.
Despite being his dad. Long story.
But when the kid leaves, Hawk decides to arm wrestle in the arm wrestling world championship to win the grand prize, a new semi truck. Because nobody arm wrestles but truck drivers, apparently. And though he's all emo about losing his son, Hawk meets up with him again after he realizes what a tool his grandfather is, and then gives his pa the emo support he needs in this contest to go... OVER THE TOP.
I'm not making this up. I wish I was, but I'm not.
So having actually sat through this as a child, a fact that I cannot change despite my most fervent efforts to a) build a time machine to smack myself for doing so beforehand, or b) to perfect the Neural Editing Device to scrub my brain clean of this dreck, I can't help but enjoy the fact that not only is it available now on Blu-Ray - but you can get it for the low, low price of $25. Roll that around in your head.
Twenty. Five. Dollars. I think they should pay me twenty five dollars for mental trauma inflicted by their godawful movie!
Listening to: Sammy Hagar does 'Winner Takes It All'.
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