Morty, the Undead Lobster

I'm still pretty busy with work, so all I can offer you today is this little anecdote from my youth. On the plus side, I think I've convinced Grundir to come out of hiding and fill in for me on Wednesday. I think he's up to something. Anyway, here's the story of Morty the undead lobster. Enjoy.

For simple cheap entertainment, few activities can top messing with drunk people.

I’ve never been a big drinker, and in college my smartass friends and I used to amuse ourselves by going to parties and talking over the heads of our inebriated fellows. I guess it made us feel superior, making fun of people to their faces without them realizing what we were doing. Kind of a stupid way to entertain yourself when it comes down to it, but at least you don’t end the evening puking in some stranger’s wastebasket.

My all time favorite experience of garnering amusement at the expense of drunken partiers happened a few years back, when I went on a snorkeling trip with a college friend in Florida. After a few days of swimming and snorkeling, we drove down to Key West on Labor Day weekend.

Key West is a strange place any day of the year, and on Labor Day it’s like a miniature Mardi Gras. Throngs of drunks fill the streets, drinking and smoking God-knows-what and generally wreaking havoc. My friend and I found a nice restaurant where we could get some steak and lobster and enjoy a few beers. We were seated in a crowded patio area, right up against a picket fence that ran along the sidewalk of the main avenue through town. The drunken throngs milled past only inches from our table, which was a cheap plastic thing with a half-dollar-sized hole in the middle where an umbrella could be placed.

My friend, whom I’ll call X, ordered the lobster. Part of the fun of getting a lobster is, of course, moving its little claws and antennae about and pretending to make it talk. Hi there, I’m Morty the Lobster! How you doin’? That sort of thing.

X discovered that if he put his fork under the table and stuck it up through the umbrella hole, he could, with just a slight movement of his wrist, make the lobster’s antenna wave wildly. Seeing the potential for entertainment in the situation, he situated Morty so that from the street it was impossible to see the hole in the table.

We sat there, sipping our beers and chatting as people milled past. Suddenly the dead lobster’s antenna jerked spastically to life.

Two young women, having seen the antenna twitch, stopped abruptly at our table. “Oh my god, did you see that?” One of them said. “Your lobster moved!”

By this time X had gracefully pulled his hand out from under the table, and sat there with both hands in view, regarding the women skeptically. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Seriously, I saw it move.”

X poked at the lobster, which had clearly been boiled and mostly eaten. It didn’t move.

“You ladies been drinking?” I asked.

They erupted in nervous giggles.

“You must have imagined it,” X said.

They kept eyeing poor dead Morty, expecting at any moment that he would spring to life, but he never did. He just lay there, lifeless, in a pool of butter. Eventually they gave up, shaking their heads. “I could have sworn….”

After a few minutes we tried it again, hooking another victim. And another. And another. We must have sat there for close to two hours, messing with the heads of dozens of befuddled partiers. We were merciless, insisting that there was absolutely no way they had seen what they claimed to have seen. We never let on, and nobody ever figured it out.

The funniest thing was how differently men reacted from women. Usually only one person in a group would notice the lobster’s unnatural movement, so the noticer could take the safe option by pretending not to have seen anything, or they could risk being embarrassed in front of the group by claiming to have seen a dead lobster move.

The women, God bless ‘em, generally did a double-take and then stopped dead in their tracks while they tried to sort out the mystery of the undead lobster. I don’t know if they were oblivious to the fact that they were about to be mortified (ha!), or if they just didn’t care as much about being embarrassed, or if they were just naturally more curious than the men.

The men, on the other hand, tended to do a double-take, maybe slow down for a second – and then keep right on walking. Were they less gullible than the women? Did they assume that it was some kind of prank? Maybe, but that’s not the impression I got. To me, it looked like they were just as stunned as the women, but they were damned if they were going to claim to have seen an undead lobster in front of their drinking buddies.

You couldn’t help but admire the women (and occasional man) who stood there insisting in the face of logic and our stubborn and condescending denials that they had seen a dead lobster move. I could tell that some of them walked away still convinced of the reality of what they had seen. Maybe some of them still secretly ponder the day they saw the undead lobster of Key West.

Drunk people are fun.

Being boiled alive has never stopped humor-blogs.com.

I Think My Cat May Be on Drugs

That's not an expression, like "What has gotten into that cat? It's acting like it's on drugs." I mean, it started out that way, but at this point I seriously think my cat may be abusing a controlled substance. I don't really know how to find out for sure; they don't make public service announcements for this sort of thing.

It started a few days ago, when our normally sedate cat started darting from one end of the living room to the other for no apparent reason. Then she would meow plaintively, as if she needed food or wanted to go outside, but if you followed her to where she seemed to want to go, she would just stop at some arbitrary location and look up at you quizzically, as if to say, "Where to, chief?"

"What is up with Molly?" I would say to Mrs. Diesel. "She's acting like she's on crack." We've had this stupid cat for 11 years now, and she had never acted like this. We weren't exactly worried, but it is a little disconcerting to see an animal experiencing a sudden personality shift. Although maybe that's just because in the movies, animals acting strangely is always a harbinger of something horrible. "Shut up, Duke!" yells Expendable Character #1, just before he gets eviscerated by whatever dreadful corpse-like entity Duke was trying to warn him about.

I have to admit that part of the reason I never talked to my cat about drugs is that I feared being thought of as a hypocrite. You see, everybody in my family except my daughter, Speed Pony, is on drugs. (Speed Pony doesn't need drugs because, well, she's freaking Speed Pony.) I take blood pressure medication so that I won't die of a heart attack and Prozac so that I won't die of a shotgun blast to the head (Take it easy, I'm joking*). Mrs. Diesel has rheumatoid arthritis, so she takes all kinds of drugs for that. And my son, Climber, takes Adderall(R), which is basically a stimulant, because he's a space cadet. I think that's the actual technical medical term: Space cadetism. He can't focus on a task for more than about 2.3 seconds without some kind of medication.**

So I feel a bit hypocritical lecturing my cats on drugs. And who knows, maybe it's really hard to be a cat. Maybe sometimes you just need something to get through the 3 hours of the day that you're awake. But when a cat's behavior starts affecting other people, that's when I have to put my foot down.

As I mentioned, Climber takes Adderall every morning. We usually leave his pill out for him on the kitchen counter so that he'll remember to take it. We have no way of knowing whether he has actually taken it; we just assume that if the pill is gone, he's taken it. I mean, we could ask him if he took it, but there's not much point in that sort of questioning due to the aforementioned space cadetism. So as far as we're concerned, no pill on counter = Climber has taken his pill.

Around the same time that Molly started freaking out, Climber started bringing more homework home. It seems that he was having trouble getting all of his work done at school. Still, we didn't correlate these two behavioral shifts until yesterday morning, when I caught Molly on the counter batting Climber's pill to the floor.

Once she had knocked it to the floor, she leaped down and proceeded to attempt to eat it.

I smacked her and grabbed the pill, which was now wet with cat saliva. "What the hell, Molly?" I yelled, and proceeded to rinse the pill under the faucet. (Those damn things are expensive; no need to waste one on account of a few cat cooties.) I put the pill back on the counter.

Molly immediately leaped back onto the counter and grabbed the pill with her paw. You've probably never seen a cat grab something before, but I swear that she grabbed it. The pill was still damp, so it stuck to her paw. She then lifted the paw to her mouth and tried to pop it in her mouth, like it was a Junior Mint or something.

"Molly!" I yelled again, snatching the pill from her paw. I pushed her to the floor.

By this point the capsule had pretty well deteriorated, so I pulled it open and dumped the contents into Climber's oatmeal. "Try to get that, you stupid cat!"

Now as I mentioned, Adderall is a stimulant. It's a Schedule II controlled substance, meaning that it has high potential for abuse and addiction. And of course the dosage of Climber's pill is meant for a fifty pound child, not a ten pound cat. I'm not sure what the proper dose for a cat would be. I think it would depend on how bored you were.

We have no way of knowing for sure whether Molly got into the Adderall before. All I know is that cat was acting like a freaking drug addict. I can't explain its eagerness to get Climber's pill unless she knew exactly what it was.

In any case, we're now keeping better control of our controlled substances, and Molly seems to be back to normal. I think she's coming to grips with the fact that she has a problem. Admitting you have a problem is, of course, the first step to recovery.

And I'm pretty sure that for a cat, the next eleven steps are sleeping.


*I'm really not joking.
**Please don't lecture me on the dangers of medicating my child unless you're also going to deal with the risk factors associated with not being able to finish 3rd grade.


All the cats at humor-blogs.com are on drugs.

Kidneying Around

In the late 90s, back when Al Gore's Internet was still shiny and brimming with possibilities, I worked as a tech support rep at a large software company. My boss at the time was a good-natured dufus that I'll call Chad. Chad drove a blue Camaro with the license plate YAHOOO, not because he was a fan of the then-nascent web portal but because he was, in fact, a moron. Chad would demonstrate his cognitive deficit by forwarding emails of dubious origin to our entire department. I'm not sure if he ever sent his bank account number to a desperate Nigerian, but one time he did forward the one about people being drugged and having their kidneys cut out. You remember that one, right?

At this point I should mention that I'm a big-time skeptic. Not a Skeptic with a capital S, but a person who tends not to believe anything that sounds a little fishy without some hard evidence. I mean, I believe in UFOs because, well, I've seen one, but I don't buy the rumor that Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite because, well, I've also seen True Lies.

So I read the kidney theft email, complete with testimonials from people with reputable sounding names and titles, and thought to myself, Bullshit. I did a web search and found statements by several reliable authorities, including the Las Vegas police department, attesting to the fact that this story was indeed bullshit. I forwarded the information to all the recipients of the original email, along with my own editorial commentary -- which I don't recall in detail, but which I can only assume was an extremely tactful and subtle rebuke of people in positions of authority who should know better than to infect the entire company with their own stupidity. (This job was, surprisingly, not one of the many I was fired from.)

I continued to do my best to counteract this sort of idiocy for several years. Whenever an email started to circulate about little Jimmy whose dying wish was to crash the world's email servers through infinite recursion, I would do a quick search and then pound out a debunking email. I would try to respond almost instantaneously, as if to say, "Hey, it took me 26 seconds to figure out that your email was bullshit... so exactly how much research did you put into this before sending it to 300 people?"

Then, in the early naughties*, something strange happened: People got a little bit smarter. Not a lot smarter, mind you, because they were still people and people are inherently stupid. But for the most part they stopped forwarding ridiculous stories like these, which was of course a good thing. But then people started doing something even more irritating than mindlessly distributing lies: They started mindlessly distributing facts. Or, perhaps more accurately, factoids.

Factoids are more subtle than the Look Ma No Kidneys variety of nonsense, but they are just as widespread and even more difficult to dispose of. A factoid is a kernel of truth wrapped in an oversized package of misleading implications. What happens is that someone picks up -- usually from the internet -- some intriguing 'fact' which runs contrary to conventional wisdom, and then repeats that fact, sans context, at every opportunity.

I was recently treated to a factoid-based discourse prompted by my bout of the "stomach flu." Now if you've had the stomach flu lately, you know that the standard response to this statement these days is: "There's no such thing as the stomach flu." And technically this is true: What we generally call the "stomach flu" is not in fact caused by the influenza virus. Which, while we're being technical, I don't give a shit about.

Look, I'm not using the term "stomach flu" in a clinical sense. I'm using it in place of saying "Hey, I spent all day Monday Voldemorting into a tupperware bowl next to my bed." If you prefer the more graphical description, let me know. In any case, if Sports Illustrated can get away with an article saying that Kobe Bryant had the "stomach flu," then maybe you can let it go, Dr. Literal.

Anyway, the statement that "stomach flu" doesn't exist is an accurate, if entirely superfluous, correction. But the follow-up to this statement -- complete with knowing look and raised eyebrows -- is always: "It was probably food poisoning."

Look, I've eaten bad McNuggets. I know what food poisoning is. And yes, it's remarkably similar to the "stomach flu." But here's the thing about food poisoning: You get it from food. So if my mother-in-law gets sick, and then a few hours later my nephew, whom she was babysitting, gets sick, and then two days later my kids, who were playing with my nephew, both get sick, and then two days later I get sick, and then two days after that my wife gets sick, all with the same symptoms, guess what? It's not friggin' food poisoning. The only way that the food poisoning diagnosis makes any sense is if my family members were eating each other. And I think I would remember something like that.

Oh, and one more thing before I let this one go: Food "poisoning" isn't poisoning. It's caused by a virus, not a poison. So even if you're right, you're still wrong. Suck on that.

Another example is the old canard about how "Most accidents occur within x miles of home." When someone says this to me, I respond, "Wow, I should move somewhere less dangerous!"

The point, of course, is that you spend most of your time within x miles of home. When you say that most accidents occur within x miles of home, all you're saying is that most accidents occur in places where you spend the most time. Gee, thanks for the tip, Mr. Safety. In reality, my odds of getting into an accident on the way to Disneyland are probably 10 times the odds of me getting into an accident on the way to work -- they key difference being that I don't drive to Disneyland 20 times a month. Of course, if you work at Disneyland you're pretty much screwed, but I suppose that goes without saying.

Or how about this one: Someone once told me, in regard to jogging during the winter, that it was important to wear a hat because "you lose 75% of your heat from your head." Again, this is probably technically true. Of course you'd have to stuff the hat down your throat, because you're losing that heat by breathing. But hey, don't let me stop you. Two birds, one stone.

So here's the deal: Reading some factoid off the Internet doesn't mean you know any more than someone who didn't read that little nugget of wisdom. In fact, often the people promulgating those factoids are pushing some sort of agenda that they're hoping you'll help them with by mindlessly regurgitating their blather. Don't buy it. If you want to pontificate on a subject, do a little research.

And when in doubt, think bullshit.


*Come on, people, am I still the only one using this term?


CORRECTION: As the Amoeba points out, what is commonly called "food poisoning" is not caused by a virus, but rather bacteria. Proving that even when I'm right, I'm wrong. Or something.


Humor-blogs.com is a hermaphrodite that had its kidneys forcibly removed.

Projectile Blogging

Perhaps the least pleasant way to start a week is with a violent attack of Dianetics.* I was under the impression that my near-superhuman immune system had allowed me to sidestep the viral maelstrom that had recently laid waste to my household, but it turns out that I was foolhardy to finish my daughter's serving of pot roast after she had sneezed on it. Hubris, thy name is Diesel.

I thought the worst was over once the Dianetics had cleared my intestinal tract of harmful engrams, but man was I wrong. After the Dianetics came periodic bouts of Voldemort.** Yes, he-who-must-not-be-named treated me to seconds of that pot roast, not to mention everything else I had eaten the previous day. My life may not have flashed before my eyes, but I did get a good look at my recent digestive history. Apparently I eat a lot of purple stuff.

In my semi-delirious haze, my thoughts naturally turned to what is most important in my life: Coming up with a good blog topic. "Eureka!" I would have shouted if I had the energy to make sounds with my vocal cords, "I should do a post of my Top Ten Gastrointestinal Ailments!" The fact that this seemed like a good idea at the time should give you some indication of just how sick I really was. Fortunately I came to my senses and cut the list down to five:

5. The time I came down with a stomach flu the day before my final exams my sophomore year in college. On the plus side, I was able to reschedule 3 of my 4 exams for several days later, garnering some much-needed additional studying time (not to mention that it's easier to borrow the textbooks you never bothered to buy when your classmates don't need them any more). On the minus side, my religion prof wouldn't let me reschedule because he was a big friggin' Scientologist.***

4. The time I drank 2/3 of a 2 liter bottle of raspberry wine cooler and threw up in my garbage can. Wow, is there a phrase that dates someone more than "The first time I got really drunk, I was drinking from a 2-liter bottle of raspberry wine cooler"? Can't you just hear the Lost Boys soundtrack blasting from the tape deck of my friend's dad's car? I was 17 and I thought it was a shame to waste the rest of the bottle even though I weighed about a buck ten and was pretty wasted after drinking half of it. To my credit, this was the last time I ever threw up from drinking too much. Most of the kids in my high school weren't nearly that smart.

3. The time I slept on the bathroom floor after the Better Than Ezra Concert. My wife's birthday a few years back. I took her out to a surprise dinner and concert. The surprise? Salmonella in the clams vongole! This was when I perfected the "porcelain pivot," where the goal is to switch from Voldemort position to Dianetics position as quickly as possible. (Note: The "reverse porcelain pivot" is not recommend for amateurs. Or anyone, really.)

2. The time I ate tainted fast food after a trip to Disneyworld. College spring break trip. Late night stop at McDonald's. Then, six words that I now realize that you should take VERY seriously: "These McNuggets taste a little funny."

1. The time I threw up in my college roommate's brother's sink in Berkeley. This is one of those experiences that was so absurdly horrible that I'm almost glad that it happened so that I can blog about it.

A friend of mine from college, whom I'll call College Friend, was visiting his brother, whom I'll call College Friend's Brother, in a city about an hour and a half from my house, which I'll call Berkeley. The three of us got together for dinner and drinks. I hadn't seen College Friend for years. I had met College Friend's Brother a few times, but we weren't exactly friends. I had to work the next day, so the plan was for me to sleep at Brother's apartment and leave from there in the morning. Brother lived in a tiny apartment, so College Friend and I were to sleep in the living room. College Friend had an inflatable mattress or something and I got the coveted futon.

As I lay there my stomach started to feel a little queasy, but I figured I had just had too much to drink. I spent about an hour lying on the futon with my eyes open, trying to get the room to stop spinning. Eventually I fell asleep.

I was violently awakened by none other than Voldemort himself. I didn't even have a chance to sit up before the Evil One laid waste to the futon and surrounding area. I don't know if it was something in the steak I had eaten or what, but whatever it was, it wanted OUT.

I sprang up from the futon as quickly as I could and ran to the bathroom before he struck again. Unfortunately, I only made it as far as the sink. Pow! Voldemort sprayed the sink with his noxious effluent.

Fortunately, after these two brief eruptions, Voldemort left me alone. I didn't even feel terribly sick, although of course I wasn't feeling exceptionally proud of the type of houseguest I had turned out to be.

I rinsed out the sheet that had covered the futon, mopped up the floor with toilet paper, and cleaned the sink out as best as I could. Amazingly, neither College Friend nor Brother had woken up during my performance.

Sadly, no amount of toilet paper was going to restore my futon's innocence, and the sink was hopelessly clogged. I looked around for a plunger, Liquid Plumr, Dran-O, or any other suitably misspelled plumbing product -- perhaps Sync-Kleer or Barph-B-Gon. Unfortunately I found nothing stronger than Cool Mint Listerine. Now what? Leave a note saying "Thanks for letting me stay at your place... Don't use the sink because it's clogged with chunks of prime rib"?

I got in my car and began driving aimlessly through Berkeley. For all its reputation as a party town, you'd be surprised how difficult to buy a plunger at 3 in the morning. I drove and drove, eventually getting on the highway that would take me back to my house. I wished there was something I could do to rectify the situation, but there was nothing open. I would just have to go home and call College Friend's Brother in the morning to explain what had happened.

Then I saw it: A 24-hour K-Mart, right off the highway. There was even an ATM just inside. I went on a late-night shopping spree, hit the ATM, and then drove back to Brother's apartment.

I attacked the sink with an arsenal of plumbing products and after 20 minutes or so, I finally managed to get it to drain. By this time I was shaky and exhausted. Unbelievably, neither College Friend nor Brother had woken up during this ordeal.

I stood there for a moment, wondering what etiquette demanded of one after one has puked all over a college friend's brother's futon. Should I wake them? Leave a note? Send a "Sorry about your futon" condolence card? Lacking any suitable precedent, I decided that I would have to set the benchmark of appropriate response in such circumstances.

I left a clean sheet and $200 in twenties next to the futon and drove home.


*As this is a family blog, I will be using the pseudo-scientific term "Dianetics" in place of the word normally used to denote a violent, runny discharge from the anus.
**I think you can figure this one out.
***Ok, not really, but if he was a body part he would have been the one that spews Dianetics.

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Trying to Keep My Cool (Part 2)

When we left our intrepid and mechanically challenged hero, he was stranded in the foothills 60 miles from home with an overheated car and a completely dry radiator. The sun was going down, coyotes were howling in the distance, and he began to inexplicably talk about himself in the third person.

Pulling myself together, I noticed an assortment of small trees growing in pots across the road. Some kind of nursery, out here in the middle of nowhere, I thought. I left my hood up and walked across the road. The gate was chained shut, but there was a good ten inch gap in the middle. I glanced around, then stepped over the chain, sliding through the gap. I walked past the little trees for a few yards until I found the end of a garden hose. I followed the hose, which was, as hoses tend to be, attached to a spigot. Unfortunately the spigot was two feet behind another chain link fence. I’m skinny, but I can’t reach two feet through a chain link fence.

I walked around until I found a five foot length of rebar (you know, that reinforcing bar that they use to strengthen concrete). I poked the rebar through the fence and managed shove the valve open. I went back to the car fetch the empty water bottles. I didn’t want anybody to see me sneaking out of the nursery, so I hid amongst the saplings until the coast was clear, feeling very much the complete idiot. After a couple of trips, my radiator was full, and I’m proud to say that I risked detection to go back and shut off the water so that some poor Mexican wouldn’t get chewed out for leaving the spigot open all night.

I got back on 680, but knowing what awaited me at the 580/680 interchange on a Friday night, I quickly exited and took the surface streets through Pleasanton and Livermore. In Pleasanton, I overheated again and managed to coast into a Raley’s parking lot. I went and had a beer at Round Table, then bought a 24 pack of bottled water, a gallon of antifreeze, a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a copy of The Atlantic. The cashier rang me up as if this was the third time somebody had bought that combination of items that evening. “Have a nice evening,” she said. Like maybe I was planning a party or something.

The next challenge was the Altamont Pass. Another big hill with a name. It’s a name that you may know, in fact. The Altamont is known for two things, besides being a godawful big hill: First, it’s so windy that they’ve lined it with giant windmills for generating power. The wind, of course, heads inland from the Pacific, so if you were driving east at sixty miles an hour and the wind was blowing twenty miles an hour, your car would cool much slower than if the wind were blowing the opposite direction. Theoretically. Second, the Altamont Raceway was the site of the ill-starred Rolling Stones concert in 1969 where four people were killed – one of them knifed, two of them hit by a car, and one drowned. Less famously, the Altamont Pass is the site of thousands of automotive breakdowns a year.

I refilled my radiator before beginning the climb, and amazingly I made it up the Altamont without redlining, then coasted to the bottom. I had to pull over two more times to refill with bottled water, wait for the engine to cool, drink some Dr. Pepper and catch up on what was going on in Afghanistan.

In this manner, I drove the rest of the way to Ripon. I coasted into my driveway with the last of the water hissing out of my radiator at 11:30pm. I had driven 70 miles in six hours. It’s strange how something like that can feel like a significant accomplishment. On top of that, it was nice to have a reminder of why I don’t commute any more. And it was nice to be home.

Happy Independence Day!


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Trying to Keep My Cool (Part 1)

Sorry to split this into two parts, but I couldn't cram all the excitement of this story into a single post. Well, I could, but then y'all would bitch about it. You'll bitch about me splitting it up into two posts too, but this way at least I get two posts out of it.

I theoretically know a lot about cars.

I know, in theory, how an internal combustion engine works. I know in essence how a cooling system transfers heat from such an engine to the atmosphere. I know that there are a lot of things that can go wrong with this system, and that the little needle creeping up toward the top of the temperature gauge is a pretty good indication that one of these things has happened. I also know that the first thing to do when that happens is to turn off the A/C, open the windows, and crank up the heat – because the more you can disperse that heat, the better. None of that theoretical knowledge helps you much, however, when you are halfway up the Sunol Grade in the blistering California sun, and the ventilation system stubbornly refuses to output any hot air.

It’s bad news when you are driving up a grade that has a name. Nobody ever named a grade because they were just so thrilled to be driving up it that they wanted to make sure to send a postcard to all their friends from the top. People name grades so that they can say, “Man, I didn’t think I was going to make it up Godforsaken Grade,” or “Hello, Triple A? I’m halfway up Gehenna Grade and my car has exploded.”

So there I was, the unwilling spectator in a race between my 300ZX’s journey to the top of the hill and my temperature needle’s trip to the top of the gauge. It was neck and neck, and I weighed my chances of making it to the downslope before my engine caught fire against the prospect of sitting for half an hour on the shoulder of 680 in ninety degree heat with no air conditioning – not to mention missing my meeting regarding a lucrative potential programming job in Fremont (yes, I’m retired, but there’s retired and then there’s retired, and I’m about five lucrative programming jobs away from being the italic kind of retired. With the italic variety, you get to vacation in Italy). All these thoughts bounced around in my head as the needle flirted with the top of the gauge. I could see the crest of the hill just ahead. I decided to go for it.

The race was a tie. Just as the Z crested the hill, beginning its descent, it stalled. The Z sailed down the slope, the 6% grade more than enough to keep it at sixty-five. There’s an odd feeling of satisfaction that comes with piloting a completely unpowered vehicle three miles down a steep slope. Rather like running the luge, I imagine. Eventually the grade ended and I coasted through an exit to a stop light. Several cars were stopped ahead of me; I had no choice but to slow to a stop. Fortunately the trip down the hill had dropped the needle just barely back into the safe range. The light turned green and I cranked the ignition. It started. Thank God.

I pulled into a gas station, looking for a water hose. In California, gas stations are required to proved air and water to their customers, so I knew there would be one, but I couldn’t find it. I found a shady spot to park, and popped the hood. There was no steam: I had already vaporized every ounce of coolant in the vehicle. Not good.

I called the woman I was meeting and told her I’d be a little late. She’s a former co-worker of mine, so I knew she’d understand. I went inside and asked where I could get some water for my radiator. The cashier pointed across the parking lot and then said, in a slightly hushed tone, “You’ll need a code.”

A code. For water. Of course. God forbid they give away a few gallons of water for free. I stood there dumbly, wondering if she was going to give me the code. I mean, of course she was, she had as much admitted she was going to give it to me. But she wanted me to work for it. I was supposed to ask for the code, so it would be clear that she was doing me a favor, since technically using the restroom didn’t qualify me as a customer. I refused to ask, and after three seconds of uncomfortable silence, she whispered “Two six five.”

Got that? 2-6-5. That’s all you need to get all the free air and water you want at the 76 station on Auto Mall Parkway in Fremont. You’re welcome.

I got back in my car, started it up, and drove to the water hose. I filled it up, waited a few more minutes, then turned the key. Nothing happened. Dead battery? I thought dimly. Maybe I had boiled all the liquid in the battery as well. Still, it was strange that it had started twice since stalling, and now it wouldn’t even turn over. For all I knew, I had burned out the starter, the alternator and the flux capacitor.

Fortunately, I was just down the road from my meeting, so my ex-coworker picked me up and brought me there. The meeting went fine, and afterwards we tried to jump start the car. Click-click-click went the ignition. I was pretty sure that at the very least I had fried my battery, so it wouldn’t hurt to run across the street and get a new battery. After that I would have exhausted my mechanical know-how, and would have to figure out (1) where to get my car towed and (2) how to get back home to the Central Valley, about 70 miles away.

I fiddled with the battery terminals for ten minutes or so using the cute little baby crescent wrench I had purchased from Wal-Mart, and managed to get the new battery installed. Amazingly, the Z started right up. I topped off the radiator with magical 2-6-5 water and was on my way home.

I was about halfway up Satan’s Grade when I saw that the needle was pointing to ten o’clock again. Shit. I had figured the Z was just a little low on coolant, but now it appeared something more serious was going on. This time I pulled over, steam hissing from the radiator. When it had subsided, I grabbed the single one liter bottle of water I had in the car and took off my shoes and socks. No, really. Stay with me.

I wrapped one of my socks around the radiator cap and twisted it off. I poured the water in, and there was more bubbling and hissing. I put the cap back on and sat and waited for the needle to slowly drop. When it was level with the horizon, I started up again. As I picked up speed, the needle began its rapid climb, and I barely made it to the top. I coasted to the bottom and drove for another mile or so. It was Friday at rush hour, so the traffic was stop-and-go. Every time I hit the brake I was wasting valuable momentum. The needle went higher and higher, and when I saw a sign for highway 84 east, I got off the interstate.

I drove for a few miles on a windy, two lane road through the foothills before pulling over again in a cloud of steam. After a while, a guy in a Porsche stopped and asked if I needed help. “Do you have any water?” I asked. Of course he did. Everybody in California carries bottled water. He gave me a couple of bottles and I poured it in. By this time I had noticed that the traffic on highway 84 was pretty light for a Friday evening. “Is this 84?” I asked.

“Uh, no. This is Calaveras Road. 84 is back that way,” he said, pointing the direction I had come. Fantastic. It had just spent half an hour going five miles in the wrong direction.

The Z limped back to 680, boiling off what little water was in its radiator. I pulled over a few yards from the onramp. I could get on the highway, but I wasn’t going to make it far without any water. There were few cars around, and probably no houses or businesses for miles. It would be dark soon. Now what?



Read the exciting conclusion on Wednesday. And make sure to submit your captions for the caption contest by tonight, and come back tomorrow to vote!

Humor-blogs.com is self-cooling.

The Scariest Motel Ever

Over the course of our fourteen years of marriage, Mrs. Diesel and I have stayed in some scary motels. Being of Dutch stock, we’re unnaturally frugal, and even now that we could probably afford to shell out an extra $40 for a Best Western, it’s sort of a demented game we play, trying to find the cheapest imaginable motel in a given area.

We stayed in a several crummy motels during our ten-day trek from Michigan to California eleven years ago (some day I’ll blog about that nightmare journey. Suffice to say it took us ten days, three of which were spent in Rapid City, South Dakota). After paying for a room at one place that had delusions of respectability, the clerk noticed that our luggage included a large plastic case with air holes in it. Luther, our big black cat, was traveling with us. “We don’t allow cats,” she said.

“Well, we’ve already paid for the room, and we can’t leave him in the car.” I said.

After some grumbling, she said we could have the cat in the room. “But don’t let him sleep on the bed,” she said.

We spent the night watching tv in bed, with Luther between us. Whenever he would close his eyes, we’d snap, “Hey, wake up! No sleeping on the bed!”

In Reno, we once stayed at a motel that was on top of a convenience store. It was $15 cheaper than the second crummiest motel in town. Then there was the place in Yreka, California with the mismatched bedspreads that clashed with the garish orange wallpaper which, in turn, clashed with the red shag carpet. The surreal climax was when we opened the closet door and found a hidden stash of volleyball trophies. Just go ahead and try to envision a scenario in which six volleyball trophies end up in the closet of a motel room. I’ll meet you in the next paragraph when you get back.

Astoundingly, despite this string of brushes with the low end of the hospitality industry, our worst motel experience occurred just a few days ago, on our way back from Michigan. We were scheduled to fly out of Chicago’s Midway airport at 7:30am, so we drove to Chicago the night before. We pulled in at a suitably crummy motel called the Aloha – presumably because for any sane person pulling into this place, hello would also be goodbye. If there was a Hawaiian theme, I didn’t notice – unless the toilets in Hawaii make a horrific screeching sound that sounds like a hippopotamus gasping for air through a saxophone.

Of course we didn’t know about the screeching hippo at first. Our first sign that something was wrong – other than the fact that the motel had a sign advertising 4 hour “naps” for $20 – was when we opened the door to our room and flipped on the light switch, and no lights came on. This was probably a blessing, because what we could see by the light in the bathroom was not encouraging. I support the hiring of handicapped people as much as the next guy, but blind retarded people really shouldn’t be cleaning motel bathrooms.

Next I tried turning on the TV. That didn’t work either, indicating that maybe a circuit breaker had been tripped. Wires dangled from the smoke alarm, unconnected to a battery -- always a good thing in a room that has electrical problems.

Fortunately the toilet did work – though at the age of 37 I’m no longer so proud of doing my business that I need the toilet to announce it to the folks six doors down from us. Seriously, it was that loud. I don’t know what you have to do to a toilet to cause it to make that noise, but it can’t be healthy for either the perpetrator or the toilet.

My parents ran a motel for ten years, so I know better than to touch a motel bedspread without a hazmat suit, but the sheets at least looked clean. Even the yellow marks around the cigarette burns had been bleached almost white. And really, clean sheets are all I require in a motel room. Well, clean sheets, working lights, a TV and a toilet that isn’t possessed by evil spirits.

I went to the office to ask if we could get a different room. The clerk was a young woman of Iranipakafghanindian descent, so she had a hard time understanding what my problem was. It wasn’t until I managed to communicate, through a variety of complex gesticulations, that our toilet was possessed by Flushscreemi, the Iranipakafghanindian goddess of the maelstrom, that she agreed to have the maintenance guy come and “fix all of the problems.” Five minutes, she said.

Ten minutes later we were still in our room, entertaining ourselves by not watching tv in the dark. I headed back to the office and told the kids to come with me. “We’re going to play a game,” I said. “It’s called ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can.’” The kids happily complied by yelling back and forth to each other in the lobby until the maintenance guy showed up.

After twenty minutes of the maintenance guy calling us periodically on the phone to ask us whether the lights were working yet, we were finally offered another room. The alternate room was right next to the lobby, which would have been a drawback if we could have heard anything over the roar of the traffic. There was no problem with the TV in this room, because there was no TV in this room. One of the two lights worked, and we were blessedly free of the tormented wails of Flushscreami. A massive crack running down the bathroom mirror had been repaired with what looked like strawberry yogurt. We had the maintenance guy move the TV from the other room, not so much because we wanted to watch TV as because we wanted to watch him carry a TV down a flight of stairs.

But other than a few games of ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can’ played in the lobby by participants of varying skill levels over the next several hours, and the incessant chirping of a smoke alarm that refused to go quietly into that good night, our stay was relatively undisturbed. And when it comes down to it, all you really need in a motel is clean sheets and a comfortable bed. And at least one light. And a non-screeching toilet. And maybe some twine to tie up the seven year old in bed next to you who seems to be dreaming about falling from trees.

I looked forward to getting some sleep on the plane.


Humor-blogs.com now has hourly rates and volleyball trophy suites.

Trippin'

My vacation couldn’t have come at a better time, blogging-wise, because frankly I was running out of material. One thing about being a man of leisure is that not very much interesting happens to me on a given day. Generally this is good thing, because interesting usually means unexpected, which usually means bad news. An ancient Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I’ve been blessed to have avoided many interesting times lately. Even my vacation went basically as expected, which is always nice. Fortunately for my blogging career, cross-country travel continues to get more interesting, in a sort of surreal Kafkaesque way.

Diesel's Travel Log

11:59 PM (Pacific Time)
We depart from the Oakland airport for Chicago/Midway. Remember when “red eye” meant a nearly intolerable trip aboard an excruciatingly cramped 737 with lousy food and laughably inadequate pillows and blankets? Well, those days are over. They no longer give you food, pillows or blankets.

12:18 PM (Pacific Time)
A couple next to us begins conversing in Spanish. Judging by the volume, they are used to having these conversations just outside the plane. Climber and Speed Pony fall asleep.

6:24 AM (Central Time)
La terminacion de la conversacion!

6:31 AM (Central Time)
Great news: Our plane is getting into Chicago early! Got about six minutes of sleep on the plane, so I feel refreshed if slightly disoriented.

6:42 AM (Central Time)
Even better news: Midway airport is so efficient that sometimes they close runways for construction until three minutes before a plane is scheduled to land! We run out of fuel while waiting for the runway to open and take a nice little detour to scenic Rockford, Illinois. I am a little disappointed there are no T-shirts available that read, “I refueled in Rockford, IL and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

7:47 AM (Central Time)
This time we land in Chicago. We retrieve our luggage and head for the rental counter, where we’re offered a PT Cruiser! The excitement is almost too much for me, and I nod off a little and drool on the counter. They ask if I’m going to be the only driver. I say yes, if you don’t include the purple monkey that taunts me when I close my eyes. They give me two identical keys, on a keychain whose ends have been crimped together so that the keys are impossible to remove. “Ah,” I say. “In case I lose one of them.”

8:09 AM (Central Time)
We find our PT Cruiser in the lot. On the dash is a placard informing us that the car was “serviced” by a Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson is evidently a blind chain smoker. As I peel around corners, jeered on by the purple monkeys, the placard slides wildly about the dash, and Mrs. Diesel and I amuse ourselves by chastising it. “Mr. Wilson!” we chide. “Sit still!”

1:02 PM (Eastern Time)
After 3 hours of driving, we pull over to rest. We are taken in by an elderly couple who turn out to be my parents. Mrs. Diesel and I stumble inside and fall asleep on the nearest pieces of furniture while Climber and Speed Pony entertain their grandparents.

Fortunately, the return trip was somewhat less interesting. There was, of course, the Scariest Motel Ever, but that will have to wait for another time….

Humor-blogs.com has all the laughably inadequate pillows you could ever want.

This is My Brain Without Drugs

Occasionally when I write a post that gets a strong reaction, I feel the need to write a counter-balancing post a few days later. I'm the kind of guy who will argue like crazy for a particular point of view until people start agreeing with me, and then I'll switch to the other side where it's not so crowded.

I'm not going to contradict my anti-authority stance; I'll remain bitter at my idiot junior high school teachers for pretty much forever. Yeah, you, Mrs. B., who told us that you didn't think anybody should get paid more than the president of the United States. You're an idiot. And you, Mr. P., who asked Glacial Spain, when he wanted to draw pictures in study hall after finishing his homework, "Don't you have anything more constructive to do?" You're an idiot. And you, Mr. B., who marked me down 7 points for writing "Ye Olde Testament" on my (otherwise flawless) list of the books of the Old Testament. You're a big f*#%ing idiot. I was smarter than you then, and guess what? I'm a successful software developer who is building a house and finishing up a Master's degree in the humanities. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure you've only gotten dumber. If I ever write a book, I'm going to dedicate it to all the jerkwad teachers who would have steered me into selling insurance if they could have. You're all idiots. By the way, I'm coming into town in a week, so if you get a break from peddling mediocrity you should stop by.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant on my junior high teachers, but while I'm on the topic, let me clarify that I'm not pissed off at all my teachers. My grade school teachers were pretty cool. And actually my high school teachers were mostly ok. I mean, they gave me lousy grades because I screwed around and didn't do the work, but I can't really blame them for that. And my college professors were almost all good people too. I'm sure a lot of them remember me as a lazy jerk, but that's mostly because I was a lazy jerk, so again, not really their fault.

No, it's just you, my junior high teachers, who wrung your hands over my jokes about leaving the cat on the roof overnight and held special conferences about the Dungeons and Dragons figurines that I brought to school one day, whom I hold in such low regard. You are all a bunch of smug, sorry-ass, close-minded, by-the-book pablum-spewing dullards, and I hope you have a dictionary close by because I want you to look up all those words I just used. I pray none of you are still teaching, but in case you are, give me your address so that I can send you a T-shirt that reads "If you believe everything I tell you, some day you'll turn into me." Then you can die having taught your students something really valuable.

Okaaaayyyyyy. And that's why we generally keep a lid on the bitterness kettle around here. Things got a little ugly there. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the point of this post was to provide a counterbalance to Wednesday's post, in which I went on about my beautiful wife, wonderful children and gigantic house. I was facetiously suggesting some tips for avoiding my "fate," when in fact I'm pretty much the luckiest guy in the world. I mean, it's true that I made some smart decisions along the way (like marrying the first pretty girl who could put up with me, and buying 10 acres of land in California in 2002), but the fact is that I've also been phenomenally blessed beyond anything I deserve. Not five minutes ago Mrs. Diesel and I were eavesdropping on Speed Pony (age 5) "reading" from the Bible to Climber (age 7) about cheese. I'm not sure which epistle covers cheese in such detail, but it made for a good story. There's no way I deserve kids who are that cute. So it's a bit misleading to suggest that I ended up with such a great life because I'm so freaking smart.

It's also true that my life hasn't always been so great. I have a very weird brain, and it's taken me most of my life so far to figure out how to use it. I'm still not really sure what it was designed for. I seem to have a gift for writing, humor, graphic design, software development, and building stuff, among other things. Occasionally I'll meet someone who is a better writer, designer, or programmer than I, but I've never met anybody who can do all of these things even remotely well. I don't say this to brag; I'm certainly not responsible for these abilities. I just have them, and I don't know why.

And on the flip side, I am a complete idiot in many ways. I have a terrible memory for practical details. I can literally put down a hammer, turn around, and think, not five seconds later, "Now where is that damn hammer?" I lose things all the time. It's almost impossible for me to focus on what a person is saying for more than about 18 seconds. I have a horrible sense of direction. On top of that, I take a wrong turn about half the time I drive somewhere, even when I know exactly where I'm going, because I'm thinking about something else. And as if that weren't enough, I've been fighting depression since about fifth grade. My brain is always going a hundred miles an hour, and if I don't give it a problem to solve, it will create one. For example, it might say to me, "Hey Diesel, what's the point? Why not just shoot yourself in the head?" And other than not owning a firearm, I have a hard time coming up with a good answer to that one.

Before stumbling into software development, I worked at a succession of low-skilled jobs with minimal success. My first job was delivering newspapers. I would get a call nearly every evening from someone who didn't get their paper. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult to deliver newspapers to the same 80 houses every day, but somehow I almost always missed somebody.

After that I bagged groceries. I was ok at the bagging part, but I refused to engage in small talk with the customers. One guy actually seemed worried about me. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, a little surprised. Nothing except for the fact that I feel like I'm leaving a little bit of my soul in every bag of groceries. I eventually put in my notice because the management pissed me off. "Why are you quitting?" asked one of the managers, as I bagged her groceries. "Because the management here sucks," I said. I only had four days left to work, and they fired me.

At another grocery store, I worked my way up to stocking the shelves. I was constantly getting yelled at because I was so slow. Everyone was convinced I was screwing around, when in fact I was working as fast as I could. Eventually the stress got to me and I quit.

In college I worked at a Christian bookstore. I was bad at that too. One time a guy told me he wanted to buy a Bible, and I asked him what kind of cover he wanted. To me, Bibles were categorized in several different ways (translation, print size, etc.), one of which was the type of cover. I had planned to narrow down the options based on his answers regarding the various categories. I didn't realize how gauche it was to start with the cover. I went home for the summer and when I came back the store didn't need me any more.

I got a job at a store in the mall that sold things like luggage and those little clacking balls on a string that people put on their desks. I was terrible at that job, because I hated that crap and I hated the people that bought that crap. To be fair, I pretty much hated people at that point, although people who bought little clacking balls for their desks were a particularly annoying subset. After Christmas my name wasn't on the schedule any more.

I worked at the job service on campus for about three years after that. That was a pretty good job, and I wasn't all that bad at it. But this was during the peak of my depression so I started showing up later and later for work and would have gotten fired if I hadn't been rendered ineligible for on-campus employment by graduating.

After college I continued to prove my incompetence at a wide variety of simple tasks. I delivered pizza for three weeks. I worked at Blockbuster for 6 months. I worked for a moving company for 3 weeks.

I once loaded trucks at Amway (they're headquartered in my home town) for 2 weeks. I was particularly bad at that, because the packages were all different sizes and had to be loaded onto the truck really quickly. It was like playing Tetris in 3D. I have no sense for spatial relations. People were always having to come over and help me out because my line was backed up for like fifty yards. I went to the office to ask for a transfer to a different job, but they said there had been no complaints about my performance. I told them that there would be if I kept working there, but they said there were no other positions open. I went home at lunch and didn't come back.

Then I got a job cataloging documents that were being subpoenaed in lawsuits. I was bad at that too, but made friends with a manager and got promoted to a position where I was monitoring other employees' work. I did ok at that, but I had a tendency to get in trouble for showing up five minutes late. Because you see, if you showed up five minutes late the previous shift would have just left, so you could get a much better parking spot. They warned me not to show up late any more, and the next day I got stuck in construction traffic. They fired me.

So here I was, the kid who scored five grade levels ahead of his class on standardized tests, and I couldn't hold down a job loading trucks. Even when I got a job that I could manage to do, I was so enveloped by depression and self-doubt that I convinced myself I was going to screw up eventually, and anyway it was a pointless, stultifying job that made me want to hit myself in the head with a hammer if I could only remember where I put it.

Things eventually turned out ok. I got to thinking that it might do me some good to larn some 'bout those newfangled computers. So I studied a little, moved to California and managed to get a job doing technical support for a company in the Bay Area. From there, I moved on to web development, which I turned out to be really good at. I worked as a web developer for most of the past ten years. I still had problems with depression, but eventually got treatment for that. After three days on Prozac, I felt like I hadn't felt since fourth grade. I felt happy.

Eventually I got tired of software development, and when my job dissatisfaction and home equity both reached a critical point, I quit. I tell people that I'm retired. In truth, I still work pretty hard, building my house, landscaping, and yes, "wasting time" drawing pictures and writing silly stories.

I'm still not really sure what this brain was designed to do. I keep trying different things, and I find that it's true that I can do whatever I set my mind to. Of course, setting my mind is a little like programming a VCR with a soup ladle in the dark, but still.

Anyway, I'm having fun. Some day I'll probably run out of money and have to get another real job, and that will be ok too.

Maybe I'll teach junior high. I understand any idiot can do that.



Now where did I put humor-blogs.com again?

A Cautionary Message for the Class of 2007

There are 86,423 high schools, 8,021 colleges and universities, and 14,319 trade and vocational schools in this country, and not once have I been invited to be the speaker at any of their graduation ceremonies. Why not? Is it because I'm not "famous" enough? Is it because the last time I gave a speech I tried to outdo Winston Churchill in brevity by simply yelling "FIRE!"? Is it because I shamelessly make up statistics that are often inaccurate by as much as three orders of magnitude? Probably. Whatever the reason, I have decided to impart some words of wisdom to the class of 2007 here on my blog, where I can reach potentially millions of unemployed recent graduates.

Graduating class of 2007, my life is no picnic. Why would you expect it to be a picnic? That doesn't even make any sense. Grow up, dipshit. This is the real world. Nobody cares about your propensity for metaphors and flowery, poetic language. All we care about is that you pull down on that sheet-metal stamping machine 8,600 times a day and occasionally unjam the machine with that bent coat-hanger we gave you. And what did we tell you about using your good hand for that? Exactly, it won't be your good hand for long.

As I was saying, my life is pretty rough. First of all, I'm unemployed. I have nothing to do all day but build fountains, take pictures of my house and blog about how miserable I am. Second, I have a wife who is way out of my league in pretty much every way. Can you even imagine what it's like to be constantly distracted from your own inadequacy by some hot chick who's always hugging on you and laughing at your jokes? Don't even get me started on my children, who are unreasonably beautiful and well-behaved. I'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to fall on that front (yeah, I mixed a metaphor there, metal-stamper, what are you gonna do about it?). And then there's my house, which is so big that I despair of ever filling it with enough material possessions to make me truly happy.

So my message to you is: Don't end up like me. Work hard in school, and get good grades. Find out what your teachers expect of you and do it unquestioningly. If they tell you that one letter is better than another letter, try to get the best letter you can. Memorize rote facts like multiplication tables and the names of all the states including unimportant ones like Delaware (no really, that's an actual state). Imagination and critical thinking are overrated, and anyway you'll have plenty of time to pick those skills up later.

Don't cheat in school, and don't always try to find the "easy way out." These tendencies will manifest themselves as creative problem solving later in life, and no good can come from that. Once, when working as a webmaster for a Fortune 500 company, I spent several months automating every aspect of my job. Eventually I was only going in to work 2 or 3 days a week, and while I was there I would spend all day downloading songs from Napster. Sure, that sounds like fun, but after a few months you start to wonder, "Why hasn't anybody noticed that I'm not doing anything? Surely someone will realize that I'm not doing any work eventually." But no one ever does, and ultimately you get bored and leave for a higher paying job. Do you want that to happen to you? I didn't think so.

Find out which of the standard personality classifications fits you best, and try your hardest to fit into that mold. Take personality tests that define you in some ridiculously simple way, say with a string of 4 letters like "ISFJ" or "ENTP". Claim your personality type and don't try to change. Learn the phrase "That's just how I am," and use it often. If you're an analytical thinker, don't waste your time on drawing pictures or writing stories. If you have a gift for using language, don't try to master computer programming. If you're an abstract thinker, don't try to build a house. Above all, know your limitations.

Be practical. Take only classes that have a direct practical application. If you go to college, major in business or welding or something. If you get a degree in computer science you can probably get a job doing technical support and gradually work your way into a programming job, whereas if you get your degree in philosophy.... well, you can do pretty much the same thing, but the nice thing about computer science is that 90% of what you learned will be obsolete in ten years. All that abstract analytical thinking you learned as a philosophy student will stick with you forever. While all the other programmers are driving around in their sports cars and buying condos in Sunnyvale, you'll be thinking, "Am I really doing any good at this job? Should I maybe be doing something more meaningful with my life?" Thoughts like that will just make you unhappy.

If you have a risky idea, listen to the warnings of people around you. For example, let's say that you have left your job to start your own web development company, but now the market has crashed and you're running out of money. You have a little equity in your house, but you can't get a loan because you have no job. You may be tempted to sell your house and negotiate a seller-financed deal on a ten acre piece of farmland with no house on it. If you're really creative, you might be able to give yourself some breathing room by negotiating a deal where you make a 10% down payment and then don't have to make any payments for two years. Then you could find a cheap place to live while you build a house, get another job once the market improves, and refinance the property after the real estate market skyrockets. You might, if all that stuff works out, have enough money to take a couple years off to build fountains and blog. But don't count on it. Listen to the people who tell you you're crazy.

If you follow all of these guidelines, you have a good chance of avoiding my fate. Because let me tell you, it's no picnic.


Everything I need to know I learned at humor-blogs.com.

Mrs. Diesel Speaks!

You did it! You convinced Mrs. Diesel to do a post! And to not kill me! Although she did say that the picture was "horrible." Anyway, without further ado here's my -- ahem -- sweetheart blogging about my favorite topic: me!

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Well, first let me say thanks for faking all that enthusiasm about having me post something. I know most of you probably died a little inside each time you forced yourself to leave yet another comment in the hopes of reaching 100. Your sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed.

The most popular topic requests seem to be “What is Diesel really like?” and “How the heck do you put up with him all the time?” As for the first question, c’mon people! If you’re a faithful reader of this blog, you already know exactly what Diesel is like: really smart, a little self-centered, funnier than should be legal. He sees the humor in everything, which is a lot of fun. More than once he’s sent me into fits of giggles in church because of some comment or other. He takes perverse pleasure in doing that. The downside to this, of course, is that he can’t take anything seriously. When we went through a Lamaze class before Climber was born, he spent the whole time trying to make me laugh. When the instructor told everyone to choose a tranquil place to think about, Diesel leans over to me and whispers, “Racetrack.” All the other couples are obligingly going to their happy places while I’m giggling helplessly on the floor. I have lots of examples of that kind of stuff, but that’s enough for now. Suffice it to say that we can’t join any group where we’re supposed to discuss stuff seriously.

Another thing about this guy you know as Diesel is that he can’t remember anything. I’m not talking about important stuff like who directed Bladerunner or what was the name of the guy who coined the term “rock and roll.” Those things he remembers no problem. It’s the mundane things in life that he can’t keep track of. He posted once about my superhuman ability to remember where everything is, and he wasn’t exaggerating. That’s probably why we’re still married after 14 years—he wouldn’t be able to find shoes if I wasn’t around. But to be fair, I knew what I was getting into. On our first date we spent half an hour wandering around downtown Grand Rapids looking for his car. He said to me, “If you want to hang out with me, you’d better get used to this.” At least he was honest. Well that’s all I can think of right now in the “What’s Diesel really like?” department. If you have a specific question you want answered, just ask. More than likely I’ll answer it for you.

As for the second question, I was forced to develop a thick skin very early in our relationship. When we were dating, he never did the cutesy nickname thing. He’s never called me “babe” or “sweetheart” or anything remotely positive. He’s always called me the first thing that comes into his head, like “lumpy” or “squiggles”. I’ve chosen to find it endearing. His guiding principal in life is that if something is at least twice as funny as it is mean, then it’s okay to say. You suspected as much, right? Also, he has a hard time feigning interest in things he doesn’t care about. One time I was telling him a story about my day, and he told me I needed to "punch up the middle a bit." Make no mistake, living with Diesel isn’t always easy, but it’s never boring. So yeah, he can be kind of a jerk, but I’ve been cracking myself up writing this, so I guess I can’t complain. What are you going to do, I love the guy. Once in a while, though, I’d like him to take an interest in me rather than in this blog. I guess that’s what this whole thing was about. His attempt to show me he cares. Sweet, huh? Or maybe he could just buy me a nice piece of jewelry like normal husbands.

At least humor-blogs.com cares.

Appearing to Succeed

Note: This is the conclusion of the Saga of the Missing Front License Plate. You can read the first part here, but to be honest it's not like this is going to make any more sense if you do.

At the end of the first part of this story, I had decided to go to court to clear up the charge of Aggravated Procrastination. To do this, I needed to go to the court office first thing in the morning and get my name on the list. So I showed up that Wednesday at 8:30 am, went home for 4 hours (during which time I admirably remained almost completely sober), then turned around and drove back to the courthouse. As I entered, I was promptly examined by a swarthy security guard with a thick accent who was wearing a turban and had a beard down to his waist. I decided, in a remarkable display of high-mindedness, not to find this the least bit ironic.

While I waited in line I noticed a sign that had been pasted to the wall. It read:

No Shoes
No Shirt
No Tanktops
No Court

I considered asking how many tank tops I was expected to bring into court; whether I was supposed to wear them or carry them in a bag; if the judge had a color preference; etc., but decided against it. Again, do not aggravate people who know a lot of people who carry guns, no matter how confused their signs are.

The actual court proceedings were rather uninteresting. It was an awful lot like Night Court, actually, except that it wasn't night, and the judge didn't do any magic tricks. Surprisingly, though, Mel Torme did show up for a cameo.

The judge eventually called my name, and I pretended I didn't know English. "Nolo contendre," I said, and the judge smiled and told me that he would knock the fine down to $110 bucks. I could hardly believe my ruse had worked. Silly judge, I thought. I've got this guy wrapped around my habeas corpus.

It turns out that $110 actually means $130 in government dollars. Seriously. California passed a law after 9/11 legislating that any fine is actually $20 more than it is. They didn't actually increase the fines; they just said, "Whatever your fine is, it's still that same amount. Oh, and give us another $20 for, um, security." Because when you steal $20 from millions of Californians, you need a lot of security.

So then I got to wait in line again, this time to hand them my check for One Hundred Ten Dollars and 2000/100ths. While I waited at the Traffic Offenses window, various low-lifes and victims of low-lifes came and went at the Miscellaneous Grievances window (It may not actually have been called that). One guy seemed to be tagging along with a friend of his, who was involved in some kind of domestic dispute. Either he had requested a restraining order against someone, or someone had requested a restraining order against him, or he and someone had filed a mutual restraining order against each other, or something along those lines. Anyway, when the guy was done, his friend walked up to the window and said, "Can I get one of those?"

This surprised me, as I had never thought of a restraining order as an impulse purchase. Apparently the clerk had made it sound so appealing that this guy had been sold on the concept. Well, almost sold. "Do I have to fill out all those papers?" he said. Rule of thumb: If ten minutes of paperwork is too much of a hurdle for you to get a restraining order, you may want to reconsider whether a restraining order is really the right choice for you. Maybe you'd be interested in our Change Your Phone Number and Stop Wasting Tax Dollars on Your Domestic Squabbles program?

Anyway, I paid my fines, so I'm back in the good graces of the state of California. I'm sure they're happy, because now that I have both license plates on my car, they can literally get me coming and going. Actually, now that I think about it, if I had had both license plates when the cop pulled me over, I probably would have gotten a huge speeding ticket, since he wouldn't have had the option of giving me the license plate ticket instead. I should probably take that front one off again, just in case. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

All in all, it wasn't such a bad experience, although it did take up a few hours of my day. I drove like a madman all the way home. Places to go, things to do.


At humor-blogs.com, you may not know how fast you're going, but at least you'll know where you are.

Failure to Appear

As a person who has no job, no schedule, and very few commitments of any kind, it's essential that I drive ridiculously fast so as not to waste any of the 11 waking hours at my disposal on any given day. I average around 40 miles per hour, but that number goes up considerably if I'm out for more than 20 minutes.

I live on a dead end road, so to go anywhere I have to first get on a road charmingly called I-99 Frontage. The speed limit on this road is 40 miles per hour, which I take to mean that I should drive no more than 40 miles per hour faster than the traffic on the highway next to me. After all, Einstein proved that all motion is relative, so who's to say how fast I'm "really" driving? And of course Heisenberg demonstrated that you can't know where you are and how fast you're traveling at the same time, which means that any cop who has pinpointed my velocity doesn't have a chance in hell of catching me.

I tried to explain this to the cop who pulled me over a few months ago. "Do you know how fast you were driving?" he asked. "No," I said cheerfully, "But I know exactly where I am!"*

He was kind enough not to ticket me for speeding, letting me off with a stern lecture about blind corners, stopping distances, and -- I think -- something about the Romulan neutral zone. Thank God they don't test you for ADD when they give you your driver's license. Anyway, he did that cop thing where they find some innocuous offense to give you a ticket for that you didn't even know was illegal, because they feel sorry for you and don't really feel like hauling your ass to jail for attempting to outrace the earth's rotation. They might, for example, give you a ticket for driving under the influence of 18th century romantic poetry, or having one eyelash too few. In my case, I got a "repair and report" ticket for not having a front license plate.

(Aside: Who knew you even needed a front license plate? I thought the front license plate was an optional thing, like voting or registering for Selective Service.)

In point of fact, I did have a front license plate. It was in the back of my car, under the carpet and a pile of 4" ABS pipe fittings, where admittedly it would be difficult to see from a distance. I didn't tell the nice cop about this because (1) I didn't want him to have to ticket me for something more egregious, such as Misuse of General Relativity for Personal Gain (I believe that's a "one-eight-niner" in police lingo); and (2) I had forgotten it was there.

I was given 30 days to "repair" the problem and "report" to the proper authorities. It took me roughly 29 days to repair the problem, the "repair" process consisting of the following steps:

Days 1-21 Denial
Day 22 "Where the hell is that license plate? Hey, I bet it's still in the back of my car!"
Days 23-25 Procrastination
Day 26 Attach license plate
Day 27-28 Procrastination
Day 29 Go to police station to have a cop sign the ticket

So you can see, I just made it under the wire. Then, unfortunately, I spent another 68 days in denial about the "report" part, which would have consisted of simply showing up at the court office to display the newly autographed ticket. During this period various "courtesy" notices began arriving in the mail, courteously informing me of the myriad fees, fines, levies and dams (as in, "dam, that's a big levy") that had been added to the original ticket amount of $10. Warren Buffet couldn't have turned $10 into $425 that fast. The main thing that had been added was a "Failure to Appear" charge, which makes it sound like there was a courtroom full of people with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs while they anxiously awaited for me to show up. "What time did he say he would be here?" they fret. "Should we call?"

So finally I went to the court office to pay the fines. A lady in a forest green blouse sat behind the window. As I began to explain my situation, she stood up and another woman in what appeared to be exactly the same blouse took her place. "We're switching," said the second woman.

"Ok, well you're wearing the same shirt, so this should be an easy transition," I said.

I got the feeling that I wasn't the first one to point this out to them that day. Note to self: Do not immediately alienate someone who may have discretion over whether you have to pay several hundred dollars in fines.

Anyway, I showed them my "courtesy notice" and there was some discussion about whether they could reduce the amount or not. It turned out that they could not, but I had the option of going to court to get the amount reduced. It sounded like all you had to do was show up and you were pretty much guaranteed to get the amount knocked down quite a bit. Evidently Woody Allen was right: 90% of life is just showing up. I thought for a moment. "How long does that usually take?" I asked. Because again, I'm a busy, busy man. Places to go, things to do. I can't be sitting around for 2 hours just to save a few hundred bucks.

I was assured that it usually went quite fast. So I said ok, and they said that I needed to show up at 8:30 next Wednesday to put my name on the list for the afternoon. I didn't ask why I couldn't just put my name on the list now, as it presumably had something to do with the fact that persons of my unsavory character couldn't be trusted to keep an appointment without being forced to physically drag our asses down there first thing in the morning to demonstrate that we were still alive and reasonably sober.

"At the very least, you should be able to clear up t