The Lowest Common Denominator
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'.
January 24th, 2010
Oddly, I got nothin' today.
Actually having a pretty good weekend, so I wasn't really grumbling about too much. Or really thinking about a whole lot. I am mostly just enjoying myself and my Sexy Other's company, and doing a bit of reading whilst the opportunity arises. I picked up not one but two books this weekend. One being a compilation of stories by William Gibson, and one being a sort of manifesto on the Future.
You Are Not A Gadget is the title, and it's by (oddly) the guy who mostly invented virtual reality. It's not what you'd imagine at first glance though; so far, I get the impression he's really unhappy with how technology has progressed, and thinks it may not too be late for this path to be 'locked in' to its current course. Of course, people are greedy shits, so it's likely he's wrong on that score.
But so far I'm liking it. It makes sense. It speaks to my dissatisfaction about the way the world is progressing.
Posted, I will keep you.
Listening to: nuthin', really.
January 22nd, 2010
I can has a link for you.
This is one of those things that simply stops me, and makes me do a double take. How is it that corporations now can give as much money as they want to buy into elections? When these restrictions were first put into place at the turn of the last century, it was for a goddamn good reason. And yet, the Republican cheerleaders aren't seeing this as a problem in the slightest.
These short-sighted fuckwits are out of their minds. Sure, in the short term it's going to help them and their causes, but what about down the line? In time, these companies are going to hold so much sway over who gets to serve in what office that they aren't going to give a shit if it's a Republican or Democrat candidate - only that he toes the corporate line. You wait.
This may seem minor now, but in say ten years' time, when nobody can get elected without serious corporate support, then what? Does the government stop giving its congressmen and senators a salary, since the goons are already bought and sold? Do we get to see commercials for Senator Boner, brought to you by G.E.? Where does it end? Once you let the people who own everything control everything, the end is nigh.
It's funny really. More and more I find this country is slipping further and further out of reality, and more into a bad dystopian science fiction future. I suppose it's just a matter of time until we have megacorps ruling the place, doing whatever they want to whoever they want with little worry of repercussion - at least, until their actions get in the way of another megacorp - at which point we see corporate warfare!
After all, when they own the government, what's to stop corporations from doing anything they goddamn please. Give it a decade, and you'll see these fuckers start to rearrange the laws to suit them - and only them. Our Republican Supreme Court has given the corporations of America - many of which are not even owned by Americans - the keys to the store. Do you really think they give a shit about the people that live here?
Or just their own bottom line?
Listening to: Megadeth's Foreclosure of a Dream.
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