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February 27, 2006

Keep on truckin'

My dad is a crazy man. The time has come for him to get a new car, because he got fucked over by his old employer (though I guess they are not technically employers, that's not really important) and now is working in scenic Logan and also apparently Columbus. Logan's about a 20 mile drive, and Columbus is maybe 30. So he'll have to drive everywhere, as opposed to his latest fad of riding his bike to work.

Now, for about the past nine years he's been driving a green Chevy Suburban, which is an absolute dream to drive. Not really. It's akin to driving an aircraft carrier, and sounds like one when it's going at full speed. It's an impossibly large car, but is very comfortable for traveling. A person can literally lay across a row of seats and sleep like it's a bed. We had some great family trips in that car, and I think it would be tops to drive 'round the country in a car like that with my own family some day. But it is NOT great to drive around to work, because it has over 100,000 miles on it and is starting to break down. Also, it smells pretty nasty.

So my mom and dad are out shopping for cars. My dad really, really wanted to get a pick up truck. A red one. With a gun rack. Apparently he and his colleagues sit around and talk about how they all want to get pick ups. I said this was a bad idea, and so did my mom. She forbade him to get a cap for the truck, because he would fill the bed up with junk. And if you know my family, you know we LOVE to keep junk. Apparently he also floated the idea of toting Simon around in the back of the truck, too.

Lo and behold, they looked at pick up trucks yesterday, and now he doesn't want one. All the cheap ones are, well, cheap. All the pimped out ones are more expensive than regular cars, and get worse gas mileage too. So now he is looking at yet another SUV, and I am told the new RAV 4 is the current favorite, as is the Subaru Tribeca.

But can I just say I am glad he doesn't want a pick up? Whenever I think of pick up truck drivers, the image that always pops in my head is of the guy who tailgates you at 75 mph, chews tobacco and flips his truck over when there's half an inch of snow because he doesn't know how to drive in snow. Hell, I would prefer a Hummer H2 over a pick up truck. (Okay... probably not.)

Posted at 12:32 AM | Comments (3)

February 24, 2006

Surprise surprise

Cub tickets go on sale today, and Christy and I have made it our objective to attend Opening Day at Wrigley Field. It'll be a Friday, we'll freeze our asses off, and it looks as though we'll be paying $100 each for a ticket to the festivities. I am slaving away at the so-called virtual waiting room, where all hopeful Cub fans go to try and snag their dream tickets. But once again, I have waited a half hour to get into the thing, and nothing has yet occured.

Nevertheless, it always seems like ticket brokers wind up with thousands of tickets. Why is that? Those guys have the life, and I secretly laugh with delight when a ticket turns out to be a clunker at they have to sell their tickets for less than face value. Now I know that these are the "prices that the market will bear," but what that really means is that enough people will pay triple the face value for tickets, that they can get away with such outlandish prices.

I had to do a legal memo on the legality of ticket scalping - it's only legal in Illinois if you are a licensed broker operating from a fixed location. So it's all perfectly legal, but it still chaps my ass. But if you are especially bored, here is the relevant Illinois statute! Yeah baby!

Posted at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)

February 23, 2006

US... eh!

It's a good thing I didn't spend too much time paying attention the the Olympic hockey tournament. As it turns out, both the United States AND Canada are a bunch of scmucks. I could have told you that when Canada picked such luminaries as Kris Draper, and the United States brought three questionable goaltenders to Italy. Now I'm not saying a guy like Kris Draper is an awful hockey player, but is he the best Canada could offer? The USA went down to Finland in the quarterfinals, while Russia, an admittedly formidable opponent, dispatched Canada. All I can really do now is sit back, wait until March 3, and see what the Sabres can do the rest of the season!

Posted at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

Pride

So I'm sitting at home, celebrating the ultimate glee that comes when Dayton defeats our arch-rival, Xavier. Dayton is struggling this year, but no matter what, beating Xavier makes it all good for that day.

First, look at this awesome picture of good ol' Rudy Flyer crowdsurfing:

It's enough to bring a tear to your eye. But, as I was watching the game on ESPN, they showed a picture of the Flyer Pep Band. And, wouldn't you know, there's my brother on TV. Because he plays the 'bone in the Pep Band, I expected this. However, I did not expect to see that he was shirtless, with his entire body painted blue. My first reaction was, "what the fuck!" followed by "ughhhh!" I mean, he's my brother and I love him, but there's just some things I don't want to see on national TV, and any member of my family shirtless, painted blue, is one of those things I don't want to see.

Posted at 02:31 PM | Comments (1)

A small request

Everytime I see this Sprint commercial, I get so worked up. I think it would be 8 million times better if the executive who gets trapped into a logical fault by his underling says "you're fired!" instead of "maybe." Wouldn't it? Huh?

Posted at 09:13 AM | Comments (1)

February 20, 2006

That's cold

Is there a thriving black market in prosthetic limbs?

For the second time in three months, a 16-year-old California girl who lost a leg in an accident has had her artificial limbs stolen.

Melissa Huff, an Arcadia High School student who uses a $16,000 prosthetic limb to play softball for the school team and another one, valued at $12,000, for everyday use, said both were taken from her bedroom Tuesday.

"I was picking up my little brother from school when my mom called me and asked where I left the two prosthetic legs," Huff, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Temple City, told Reuters in an interview.

"I knew right then that it had happened again."

Posted at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2006

Latest pet peeve

Guess what? I've found something else to be annoyed about!

This has happened to me a few times now. I'll be standing at an intersection, waiting for the light to change so I can cross the street. As I'm waiting, somebody who has just arrived at the crosswalk ditches in front of me, waits for the light to change, and then crosses the street. I always think to myself, "dick!" and try to catch up to him so that I can get back in the front where I rightfully belong.

It seems to me that if a bunch of people are waiting at a crosswalk, you do not ditch the front of the line and go around everyone who is waiting. I think it's extremely rude. Does this happen to anyone else? Or is this much ado about nothing?

I've also noticed that I seem to walk a lot slower than other people. I don't know if it's because I'm always lugging 40 pounds of books, or if it's a product of one of those city-life country-life differences. You know, people in cities are much more go-go, while people from less urbanized areas, like myself, are more laid back. I mean, whenever I'm back in Lancaster I'm always the fastest person at the mall, but then at the mall I am never laden like an ox with books on criminal law.

Posted at 02:07 PM | Comments (1)

February 16, 2006

I'll be damned

You know, I rarely agree with Miss Manners, especially because she uses the decidedly unmannerly third person - "Miss Manners thinks X" in all her correspondence. But, she nailed it when she derided the venerable institution of the high school prom.

Now, for whatever reason, I have always had a creepy feeling about high school proms. I don't think it's because they can get expensive, or even because kids get the chance to zip around town in a limo. But everytime I think about proms, I get all agitated.

So you can imagine my interest when Miss Manners herself condemned the prom, and I think I agree with her reasoning:

Her objections to the prom are that it has become crass, and that it serves as a training ground for even crasser weddings.

What do you say to that, kids?

What they say is, "So what? It's just supposed to be fun." And then their adult defenders ask what on earth she expects from teenagers -- that they should behave like little social climbers, heaven forbid?

Heaven forbid. But that is exactly what they are doing.

High school proms were never exactly decorous. The idea was to assume the privileges of grown-ups, as they had personally observed them. They actually assumed -- can you imagine? -- that the lives of their parents were more fun than their own.

...

Being grown-up is no longer a state to which anyone seems to aspire. Not even grown-ups. Any glamour that may have been attached to it has disappeared in the increasing freedoms and prevailing styles of youth.

And so the pattern for that anachronistic institution, the prom, is taken from the lives of pop celebrities -- the suddenly enriched who go wild with their appearances and behavior.

It would indeed be wonderful if high school seniors had a chance to sample the real pleasures of formality that are missing from compulsively casual modern life. Variety of style, even if it was no more elaborate than "Sunday best" or "company manners," was pleasurable. That there is still a craving for occasional formality is evident on the two such occasions left for it -- the prom and the wedding. It would be nice if the older generation could show them what it really is.

A hint: It is not riding around town in an impossibly long and expensive car, throwing up.

Dude! This is it! The prom is supposed to be classy - not trashy! Clearly this is the problem. I'd feel a lot better about proms if they were like that damn cute Enchantment Under the Sea dance in "Back to the Future," as opposed to people hanging out the roof of their limosuines like in that Saturday Night Live sketch.

Posted at 11:52 AM | Comments (3)

February 15, 2006

Ahhh

Do you hear that? It's the sound of wooden bat on a new, shiny baseball. Pitchers and catchers start reporting to spring training today! Baseball's right around the corner, and you know what that means! Summmmmeeeerrrrr!!!!!! Who wants to take a dip in Lake Michigan?

Posted at 09:03 PM | Comments (2)

No sympathy

I was the Walgreens on Diversey and Broadway today buying some pepper spray for Christy. A late Valentine's present? Hardly - it seems being the pretty girl she is, all the street toughs she encounters in her job try to take her home or otherwise attempt things they shouldn't be attempting. I figure the stuff will be a good self defense weapon. On the other hand, I never thought I would write that I was "buying pepper spray for my girlfriend." Nice going!

Anyway, so I'm at the Walgreens, and the lady in front of me is in a wheelchair, and she has one of the employees getting stuff for her because she can't reach the stuff or use her arms. I thought, aww, how sweet, they're helping her out. But then she turned into a nut!

There's about ten people in line BEHIND me, with this lady in the wheelchair in front of me. She has the woman scanning her stuff, while the only other person working the cash register is getting her things. Once again, I did not find this arrangement unacceptable. But then, as things are winding down, she has the woman go fetch her some Starbucks' frozen frappacino things out of the cooler. But they don't have the caramel, which is the one she wants. So she has the woman read off all the different flavors they have, before she decides on some chocolate ones or something. All this was done while she was staring at the wall, because she couldn't turn around to see the cooler.

Finally, after she gets her frappacinos, all her stuff is bagged up. Then she makes them re-bag it, because she doesn't want to get all the candy "squished up"! I mean, come on!

Part of me said to myself that I shouldn't get angry at a wheelchairbound woman, that I should thank my lucky stars I can get my own groceries (or pepper spray), and I tried my best to not get agitated. But I also firmly believe that even if you're disabled or incapacitated, that doesn't give you the right to be inconsiderate. And personally, I thought it was inconsiderate that she was holding up the line because she couldn't decide what frappucino to get and because she didn't want her candy squished.

I guess my question to you is, when does one cross the border from coping with your disability to milking favors from it? Is there a difference between having someone get your groceries for you and that same person reading you all the frappucino flavors? Or do you think I am an insensitive bastard?

Posted at 04:27 PM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2006

Hey now

Sadly there are quite a few cases of people cheating on their spouses, and apparently Valentine's Day - that's tomorrow, by the way - is the high point of the year for extramarital affairs. As a front page story on Yahoo tells us, it's also bling bling time for private eyes (or as I like to call 'em, private dicks, tehe) who track down unfaithful husbands and wives:

"This is the one day when infidelity and extra-marital affairs reach their peak," said Ruth Houston, author of "Is He Cheating on You -- 829 Telltale Signs".

"Any man who is cheating has to buy his mistress a gift, there's no way he can get around that if he wants to stay in her good graces and in her bed."

She said men or women who suspect their partners need to be extra alert on Valentine's Day and look for credit card receipts, new jewelry or lingerie, and unusual appointments so as to nail their partners.

Wait a second. 829 Telltale Signs??? Eight hundred and twenty nine? You mean there are 829 things that a person can do that will absolutely confirm that you are a cheating bastard? Pardon me for saying so, but I find it hard to believe that there are even 829 things a person can do during the day, let alone tip you off that you're a cheater. Seems to me that if you're going to list 829 things, you're LOOKING for an excuse to bust someone. Humpfh!

Posted at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

Understatement of the year

You're 47, you work hard to qualify for the Olympics one last time, and when you finally make it, your country declines to send you to the Olympics as a one-man team. What do you have to say for yourself? If you're Hubertus von Hohenlohe, you'd say it was "really annoying."

Von Hohenlohe, if you can believe this, is a Mexican citizen residing in Europe who spent the past few years qualifying for the Olympics. When he eventually earned qualification, Mexico decided to not send him to the Olympics. Now that's a kick in the pants! But I love the way that instead of getting fired up, he calls Mexico's decision "really annoying." Classic!

For 20 years, Hubertus von Hohenlohe has been one of the most colorful figures at the Winter Olympics. But now his dream of skiing for Mexico in the Torino Games at the age of 47 looks to have been denied.

Hubertus von Hohenlohe has raced in the downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom at world championships over the years. Dating back to 1993, he has finished anywhere from 38th to 76th.
The descendant of a dethroned royal family from a former principality in what is now Germany, von Hohenlohe, who is also a photographer and a pop singer known as "Andy Himalaya," first skied for Mexico at the 1984 Games in Sarajevo.

This season he has been pounding the slopes on the World Cup circuit as he successfully gained enough points to qualify for the Games which open on Friday. The problem is that he is the only Mexican to have qualified and the Mexican Olympic Committee decided against sending him as a one-man team.

"I've been training for three years for this, I've got my qualification points and then they tell me a few days before the Games that they aren't going to send a team, it is really annoying," von Hohenlohe said.

Posted at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

Deodorant travails

I'm getting quite frustrated with myself lately. In the cabinet in my bathroom I have three sticks of deodorant. Two of them are in use, and the third one hasn't been opened yet.

Every morning when I'm getting ready to go, I reach in the cabinet to bust out some deodorant. I don't know why, but every time I do, I always try to grab the unopened one and use it, even though I know I have two that are already opened and need to be used before I open the new one. I even rearranged them so that the new one would be in a different spot, but I still grab for it anyway.

I don't know exactly why I do this, or what it means. It probably means nothing. Could it be that I have nothing else to write about? Maybe. Is there some kind of Deodorant Gravity that I don't know about, instictively pulling me towards the greatest concentration of deodorant? It truly makes me wonder.

For my next experiment, I may put the new deodorant in a box or hide it behind something, and see if I still try to grab it in the morning. But if I do that, I will probably never find the deodorant again, and then I will be bitching even more about how I had to spend $3.50 or whatever on more deodorant when I KNOW there's a new one somewhere in the house.

Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2006

You're fired

Holy schneikies, NYC Mayor Bloomberg is a hardass. Look at this!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't playing games — after he saw a game of solitaire on a city employee's computer screen, he fired him.

The Republican mayor stopped by the city's legislative office in Albany a few weeks ago when he was visiting the state Capitol to hear the governor's State of the State address.

Office assistant Edward Greenwood IX was going over some papers at his desk as Bloomberg made the rounds with his photographer, greeting workers and posing for pictures. When the mayor reached him, Greenwood stood, they shook hands and the photographer snapped a photo.

But the eagle-eyed mayor — a billionaire former businessman with a certain idea of how offices should be run — noticed Greenwood's game of solitaire glowing on his screen. He said nothing about it to Greenwood but later told an aide to give him the ax.

That's pretty rough. It makes me wonder what sorts of computer games City of Chicago employees might be playing, and what kind of response Mayor Daley would have for an employee found to be indulging.

As for me, my workplace game of choice was Snood, an addiction I first picked up at my first ever paying job way back in 1997. Hot damn, I loved that game. And admittedly, I did play once or twice a day, and sometimes more if there was nothing doing. I mean, let's face it. If you were reading my blog back when I had a job, I wasn't exactly burning the midnight oil most of the time. I guess it's a good thing I don't work for Mayor Bloomberg!

Posted at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2006

It's just lunch

There's this dating service that runs around the country called "It's Just Lunch!" which apparently is geared towards busy professional people, of which I am not one. But I only really know about it because they used to have their ads in all kinds of newspapers, and one of their regional directors is a lady by the name of P.J. Osgood. Needless to say, that caught my eye.

So, in the Tribune today they interviewed some other lady who invented a "meal date seriousness scale," which purports to correlate the type of meal with the seriousness of one's relationship. This scale is nothing but a crock of shit.

It goes like this (from not-serious to walk-down-the-aisle-serious):

Juice at the gym
Coffee
Breakfast
Dessert
Afternoon Tea
Lunch
Brunch
Drinks
Dinner
Wine tasting

Now wait just a god damn minute. There is NO way lunch, drinks, or dinner is more serious than breakfast. It's impossible.

Here's why: if you're going to breakfast with somebody, you're seeing that person somewhat early in the morning. People do not meet for a first date and decide, hey, let's get up at 9 am and have breakfast. When you're at breakfast, it's because that person has slept over, or in the very least, you have a somewhat established relationship with that person. I don't know much about women, but I do know that they think they look like shit in the morning. Do you really think they want your very first date to be one where you go to Denny's in your PJ's and eat a Grand Slam? Putting breakfast so low on the scale seriously damages this woman's credibility, if you ask me.

And juice at the gym? Is that really even a date? You may wrangle somebody into having one of those awful protein shakes with you at the gym, but I would not qualify it as a date per se. It's more of an encounter. However, the juice at the gym could well be used as a springboard to garner an actual date, perhaps for the afore-mentioned coffee.

On the other hand, I don't know why this wine tasting thing is tops on the seriousness scale. To me, that is more of a impress your date kind of thing. Sure, wine's good and all, and despite the popularity of "Sideways," unless you are Frasier Crane, wine tasting is probably not your idea of a good time. But it is the kind of thing I think a guy might decide to pull off if he thinks it will impress his date. If you've been dating for awhile, you go to the wine tasting ostensibly to appear cultured, but in reality as an excuse to get your girlfriend drunk so she's easy. (Hey Christy, want to go to a wine tasting?) This is why I would not rank wine tasting near the top.

But really, such things do not justify an easy ranking system. There are degrees of meal. What kind of dinner are we concerned with? What restaurant is it? What time? What day? (Dinner on Saturday > Dinner on Monday, no?) So, in my estimation, this kind of thing defies ranking. Nevertheless, I will attempt to redo these rankings. Also, I've added a "degree of seriousness" ranking, so as to attempt to quantify exactly how serious all this is. Also, I firmly believe that this is a "minimum value" sort of thing, so that if you have managed to, say, get a person to go to lunch with you, you can also theoretically get that same person to do anything with a lower value than that (eg drinks, breakfast.) But, I cannot guarantee that a person who agrees to lunch will also agree to dinner, because dinner is greater than lunch. See what I mean?

0.7 Juice at the Gym - I don't even know what to say.
1.0 Coffee - the default generic date.
1.5 Drinks - Alcohol = social lubricant. Need I say more?
1.6 Lunch - It's lunch, it's in the middle of the day, and you can easily escape from a lunch date.
3.3 Dinner - Standard date fare, if you're at dinner you're not exactly in danger of putting Don Juan out of business.
4.5 Dessert - Now you're getting somewhere, because clearly you want to stick around each other, or you want to fatten her up to cook and eat her (wicked witches only.) Bumped up to 5.0 if you're SHARING the dessert.
5.1 Afternoon tea - You must really like this girl, you sissy.
5.2 Wine tasting - Dude... you're embarassing yourself.
7.4 Breakfast - Holla!!! Atta boy!
8.2 Brunch - Whoah. The only thing more serious than this is the buffet at the casino after your shotgun wedding. Not only has she slept over, you're hanging out with her enough that you've formed a combo lunch and breakfast in order to kill Sunday afternoon. Perhaps during this meal is the right time to write out all your thank you notes and put together a joing Christmas card list!

Posted at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)

February 08, 2006

"Where the fuck you been?"

(Name that movie!)

It's all quite funny, really. I know all two of you have been wondering what happened to this here commentary. Well, I'll tell you.

It all boils down to me being an idiot. You see, when I had my pants and wallet stolen, I canceled all my credit cards so as to avoid the fate of a stolen identity, as if I have any credit to be ruined.

I also have a rarely-used Yahoo account, in whose name this website is registered. I almost never check it. Maybe you can see where this is going.

In January, when my next payment on the site was due, it was rejected because my credit card was canceled. Because I never check the account, e-mail warning me about my past due went merrily on its way and piled up in my inbox until Yahoo slapped me across the face and suspended my account, and deprived me (and you, ho ho ho) of this commentary. Boy is my face red!

This is where the fun really begins: I tried to pay for the account on Sunday, but to no avail. Yahoo has some sort of automatic billing thingy, and nowhere on the site can you simply fill out a make a payment form like every other site in the world. I tried this for days, eventually calling Yahoo to complain about it, until finally I fired off an angry email. I'd like to say my bitching and moaning got them to fix the problem, but they probably just finally got around to processing my new card.

So, I am back in the saddle, and I hope you didn't miss me too much. In fact, you probably enjoyed my absence, you jerk.

Posted at 04:41 PM | Comments (2)

February 03, 2006

Real smart

I'm taking this class at school called Civil Procedure, which is basically about what sort of rules people must follow when they want to sue each other. Currently we're learning about what criteria must be met in order to sue somebody in Federal Court as opposed to state court. Needless to say, this is all very complicated, and the applicable statutes are not very easy to understand.

But hey, I'm a smart guy. I can handle this, right? Well, a student is only as smart as his teacher. My teacher is one smart cookie, and I have the feeling she will teach us quite a bit. However, and I say this with unequivocal anger: our textbook sucks.

First, there are the statutes. A normal book might have an appendix or something with all the important statutes, but not this one. Instead, if you want to read the statutes, you have to pick up the supplement for an extra $40. Then, the supplement has this supposedly handy-dandy tab thing like on the back of an almanac. Suppose you want to look at the Constitution. On the back of the book, it says Constitution with an arrow pointing to the edge of the book. Then, with the book closed, you can see black lines drawn on the edge, which the arrows are supposed to line up with. (This probably makes no sense at all.) Except, on this one, the lines do not line up at all! So you have to shuffle through the book to find what you want.

But the most glaring problem with the book is a very simple and annoying one. All the cases in the book do not say which court it is making the decision. In these law books, it always has the name of the case, the citation so you can look the bitch up on your own, and it's SUPPOSED to say what court's decision we are reading. So, if you had a case like, oh, Roe v. Wade, and then 410 U.S. 113, which means you can find the case in volume 410 of the US Reports book (the official report of the Supreme Court, natch.) But, it should also, for exact clarification, say "United States Supreme Court," and maybe the year. But this book doesn't do that. It just has the name and the citation, so you have no clue what court is making the decision. Yes, you can sometimes deduce what court is making the decision based on the citation, but that is cumbersome and more than likely to result in mistakes.

I am especially annoyed about this because this is CIVIL PROCEDURE. It is extremely important in this class what court is making the decision. So, we read this case the other day where some Chinese nationals and California citizens wanted to sue a Chinese-government funded TV channel based in the USA in Federal Court for racketeering and defamation. For whatever reason, they decided to sue these guys in the District of Columbia. But, I had no fucking clue any of this was happening in DC, because the stupid citation did not say that the DC Federal Courts were making this decision. In fact, the only reason one could have found out that this was happening in DC is because the stupid plaintiffs missed the statute of limitations for defamation in DC. Ha ha!

Now, once again, I am sure none of this made sense at all. But the point is, in a case like that, it would have been of utmost importance for somebody to know exactly in what court the suit is taking place. Every other book tells us what court is making the decision. Why can't this one? I have decided not to include the author's name in my rant, because I do not want him to sue me in Federal Court, or State Court for that matter. But you know who you are, buster. I'm gonna be looking for you some day.

Posted at 08:35 PM | Comments (1)

February 02, 2006

Say it ain't so

Where was Candace Cameron to bail out her little sis on THIS one? Sounds like a very special episode to me!

As Stephanie Tanner on the 1990s hit sitcom "Full House," child actress Jodie Sweetin portrayed a young, innocent girl who lived in a happy, healthy supportive home.

"Growing up when I was on the series, I never really watched, even from this day, it's surreal to watch myself on television," said Sweetin. "Growing up in the business you have to grow up very fast — you do have a different type of childhood, that has its benefits and it has its drawbacks."

When the show ended in 1995, she said she wanted to be a normal kid. She went to high school and college and by age 20 was married to a Los Angeles police officer — TV older sister Candice Cameron was in the wedding party.

But two years ago, she found herself dangerously addicted to one of the most debilitating drugs, methamphetamine. She said she was unemployed and bored and began simply by experimenting. Soon, she was using meth everyday.

Posted at 01:51 PM | Comments (4)

Road rage

I'm not an angry guy, but I can get pretty feisty if I think another person is being a dick. So it was that I had just gotten out of my 8:30 am class and I was crossing State Street when a lady who was trying to make a right hand turn on red tried to scoot around me.

I politely kept on walking, fully intending to exercise my right of way as a pedestrian. She did not like this turn of events, and she started honking her horn at me. And then I did a thing I had fantasized about doing since time immemorial: I turned around and angrily displayed my middle finger to her.

She then rolled down her window and shouted something at me, and I shouted back that she shouldn't honk her horn at me. I started grinning wildly, and then I got really nervous: what if any of my classmates saw my primitive display? I mean, I don't know for sure but most everyone I know thinks of me as fairly mild-mannered. What would they say if they saw me throwing around birds and shouting at people in cars?

So, in the end, it seems that my ultimate fantasy may have backfired. I got to get angry at someone, but perhaps at the expense of some other things. But, for that brief moment, I felt like a real live badass. Oh yes, I did. What are you gonna do about it, buster?

Posted at 01:26 PM | Comments (1)

February 01, 2006

T-shirt heaven

Everyone knows I collect t-shirts, and I realized today that I am missing a t-shirt from one of my favorite bands, Weezer. I couldn't get any old t-shirt, and many rock t-shirts suffer because they are black. I don't wear black t-shirts, so if it's black, it's out. Finally I settled on this goofy shirt, obviously a homage to my favorite Weezer music video, Keep Fishin':

Cool, eh? I am quite impressed. I know it's close to black, but it's gray, and that's perfectly acceptable. However, this particular shirt is sold only in Europe, it seems. Of course I went ahead and bought it anyway. I expect it to arrive in two months or so.

Posted at 11:29 PM | Comments (1)