Kablammo!

In other news, there’s nothing like living in New York. People throw away all kinds of great, useful stuff which can be yours for the price of hauling it back to your apartment. Zoidberg‘s monitor, for instance. Or the fucking wheelchair I just snagged.

It was just sitting on the curb across the street, with some junk on top of it — I figure some invalid must have either died or been moved to a nursing home or something. There was one of those toilet chairs next to the wheelchair, too. I didn’t take that.

Song of the Moment: “Concrete Schoolyard” — Jurassic 5

I just put up some shelves in my apartment, finally! I’ve sorely needed some shelving for the entirety of the two and a half years I’ve lived here, and apparently I finally caved.

In any case, I can’t tell which of these two shelves is more humiliating. What do you think?

I had an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years stop by out of the blue today. Yuenglings were consumed, old times were caught up on, and Terminator 3 was watched.

Thence to the roof of the engineering building, where I got to look at Mars through a telescope and bump into a classmate, with whom Bases Loaded was played and more Yuengling was consumed.

…

When the fuck did this blog turn into a list of what I did on a given day? Fuck that. No more of this kind of entry.

Song of the Moment: “My Beloved Monster” — Eels

Today was a Wednesday. My first Wednesday in the city since a few weeks ago, in fact. As such, the late dinner at the Alehouse felt quite appropriate. Abbreviated, but appropriate. Speaking of which, there’s some cranberry juice in my fridge that looks awfully lonely…

What else happened today? I finished making a mix CD, into whose creation I put far far far too much effort. I can only hope that the relevant parties appreciate that fact. I also started work on my newest domain-name-related project. You can, should you like, see some mildly interesting things at http://www.pildid.net/radiohead… Stuff like short, low-quality bootleg videos of Radiohead’s concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

I’m never again restringing a guitar ‘just because the strings are old’, as it’s simply not worth it. Wait till a string snaps, I say. I broke that rule yesterday, only to have a bridge pin fly out and disappear, leaving me sans low E string until today, when I had to go two music stores to even be able to buy an 80¢ replacement. To top it all off, the new high E string I put on yesterday decided to snap today, apparently purely out of spite, so I had to dig my old dirty one out of the trash in a fit of ghettoness.

Speaking of 80¢, I discovered today that I’ve been wasting my life making the cent sign. While trying to find the alt-number key combination for ‘ñ‘ I made my way past alt-155, which produces the same result as alt-2536987412536987 with an assload less keypressing. Such is life, I suppose.

Song of the Moment: «Señor Burns» — The Simpsons

There’s nothing quite like coming home to your apartment after being away for three weeks, and finding the decayed remains of a mouse in the middle of your kitchen floor. I’m kind of impressed with the mouse, considering that in its death throes it managed to move the mouse trap it was caught in a good three feet or so from under the sink to the middle of the floor. I’m also relieved that I happened to stay away from my apartment long enough for the mouse to transform from bloated-corpse-that-gives-off-putrid-stench mode to creepy-but-stench-free-pile-of-bones-fur-and-tail mode. I had to spray various cleaning fluids at the floor and do some scrubbing to get all the mouse parts to dissociate themselves from it, but that’s better than having to smell dead-mouse fumes would have been.

In other news, Verizon is really pissing me off right now. It’s not that the service has suddenly degraded or anything; it remains as shitty as it’s always been. No, what’s irritating me is the bill I just got from them. It’s not that the bill was unexpectedly large or anything; the amount of the bill was reasonable as such things go. No, what’s irritating me is the form of the bill; specifically, the form of the envelope that the bill came in. The envelope is upside-fucking-down. I can’t think of any way to explain it other than that.

I picked up the bill such that the writing on the front of the envelope was right-side-up, fully expecting that there would be a flap along the top side of the back that I could gleefully tear open to find out just how much money Verizon claimed I owed them. I flipped the envelope over, only to discover, to my horror, that the flap they expected me to tear was situated along the bottom of the envelope. So now, instead of behaving like books or envelopes, Verizon’s bills behave like coins. Fuckers.

Verizon also loses points for having the gall to print “The Post Office will not deliver mail without postage” on their reply envelopes, instead of something that lets me retain my dignity like “PLACE STAMP HERE”, the way Time Warner Cable does. I sure am glad Verizon informed me about what the post office does and does not deliver, or I might have assumed that postage was a thing of the past and that I could send things for free. Boy, would there have been egg on my face when I tried to mail a mix CD to my friend in Italy without paying postage! Thanks, Verizon, you’ve averted another catastrophe. Fuckers.

Speaking of postage for paying bills for Verizon, I’m also pissed off by the fact that Verizon expects me to pay a 37¢ postage fee for every bill I pay them, while they send me two or three pieces of worthless junk mail a month. I’d much rather have them spend the money they waste on mailing me that bullshit on something useful, like pre-paying the postage on the bill return envelopes. Fuckers.

Why do you hate Verizon today? Leave a comment.

Lucky you, you have more of this drivel to read. About time I updated, eh? In any case, you’re now privy to some observations I’ve made since my last update.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Two pounds of london broil plus a shot of warm vodka equals bad news. Just take my word for it.
• Old people who are normally crotchety assholes can, in the right context, be fairly interesting and cool.
• Digital cameras rawk.
• It feels great to be able to feel like an idiot because of something I said instead of something I should have said, for once.
• The Kajaka Salk is some good people.
• Laager’s at its best when uninhabited.
• St. Pauli Girl makes a surprisingly decent non-alcoholic beer.
• Radiohead puts on an awesome live show.
•   
• You’re all jerks.
•   
• If you ever get the nagging feeling that you want to accomplish something, just take a nap or go watch TV and the feeling eventually goes away.
• Foster’s oil cans are the shizzle.
• PLD is best cured by not giving a shit.

And so it came to pass, on the first day of the month of August, in the year of our Lord 2003, that I’ll be away for a while, so this shitty blog shall return to its usual state of me not updating it, since pine forests aren’t known for their internet connectivity. Once I reëmerge from my wonderful self-inflicted prison of blissful, isolated misery, this shitty blog may or may not return to its recent state of me updating it surprisingly frequently. And then I go see Radiohead at the ‘Meriwether Post Pavilion’, whatever that is. Hopefully I’ll find that out in time.

In other news, go and read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Also, listen to the Moog Cookbook’s cover “Buddy Holly.” Warning: I wouldn’t recommend reading the former while listening to the latter, since I’m pretty sure it would make your face explode.

Song of the Moment: “The Sinister Minister” — Bela Fleck & the Flecktones