Unfinished Rambler

As promised a few posts ago, in which I shared a few photos of my car, I'd write more extensively about the comedy and tragedy that is my car. So here goes...

Sorry to think this about some of you reading this who may be reading this on Humor-Blogs, but I'm guessing from at least 9/10s of the posts I've read that you're mostly white, citified honkies, so you may not know what a "hooptie" is.

According to the Rap Dictionary, a "hooptie" or "whoopdie" is "an old car in bad shape." For even more, uh, descriptive definitions, check out Urban Dictionary.

Under any definition or spelling, my car is definitely a hooptie, hoopty, whoopdie (absolutely, as in whoopdie freaking do).

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="From this side, not so much a hooptie...except for that back tire. Oh, the house on the exterior is a bit of a hooptie too, in't? "][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Note, NASCAR fans, what my wife calls a "Darlington stripe" down the side."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="237" caption="And stripes put on by a snow shovel from an overzealous snow shoveller. That bastard. Oh, wait, that was me."][/caption]

From the one side, not so much a hooptie, but from the other side and the top, it definitely qualifies.

How did it get to be this way? Certainly, it didn't come this way?

Nope.

When I bought it six or seven years ago as my first and so far only car, it didn't have much mileage on it, under 80,000, I believe. Now, it's got 152,957, and guardrails and a flood put a beating on it, as you can tell.

First, the guardrails

The Darlington stripe, so named for the infamous Darlington Raceway, down the side actually is a series of stripes from at least two different times that guardrails up and hit the car right out of the blue.

The first time, a guardrail hit my car, I was living in suburban Philadelphia and while driving on a three-laned road, I was in an outside lane, when a car on my right pushed me over to the guardrail...or I should say, the guardrail up and bitch-slapped my car silly. I just kept scraping along, but luckily, that car on the left didn't hit my car too. I really would have had a hooptie then.

The second time a guardrail hit my car was only a couple of years ago when I moved to where we live now in northcentral Pennsylvania. I was working for a newspaper and was headed to the scene of an accident on icy roads when another guardrail just up and bitch-slapped me again.

This time, though, the guardrail had assistance from slippery roads and the driver of the car who was zooming along at 60 mph -- behind a snowplow. I figured hey, he cleared the road for me; I might as well use it.

The car actually was sort of all right-- except for a few mishaps, in addition to the ones mentioned, like the time, wait, I mean, times, I hit a curb, those curbs-- up until 2003.

That's when the proverbial poop hit the fan.

Then there was the flood of 2003

The Lord said to Noah
there's gonna be a floody floody
Lord said to Noah
there's gonna be a floody floody
Get my children (clap)
out of the muddy muddy
Children of the Lord.

In my case, the Lord R. God didn't speak to me and tell me about the floody, floody or to get my car out of the muddy, muddy. I sure wish he had though. Instead, one day when I was still living in the suburbs of Philly, I went to work and the waters of the Brandywine rose and while I was in the office, yep, you guessed it, they bitch-slapped my car.

The sun came out
and dried up the landy landy
Sun came out
and dried up the landy landy
Everything was (clap)
fine and dandy dandy
Children of the Lord.

But in my case, after the sun came up and dried up the landy landy, everything was not (clap) fine and dandy dandy.

The interior was rurned. Not just ruined, mind you. But RUR-ned. It was that bad. Not to mention the engine was completely waterlogged and killed.

The dumb asses who were my insurance company at the time decided not to total the car. Instead, they decided to pay for repairs to the interior, to the tune of $3,000 or so dollars. Of course, the body shop that did the work did the work wrong the first time around and still didn't get it right the second time around either, as I still have carpet on the sides that doesn't fit snugly like it once used to fit.

The worst part of the whole thing for me was that the flood also rurned the radio so I still can't read on what station I have it. Not that it matters where we live now as we pretty much have country stations so you don't need to turn the dials anyway.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="I now plug in an iPod and listen to that most of the time via the cassette player...and yes, that's a dirty snot rag that's visible. I was going to crop it out, but then I figured you've seen my manboobs. You've about seen it all...and um, no, you don't have to worry."][/caption]

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Keeping on the theme of instant messaging, I present a conversation that took place over a couple hours between me and my friend John, a 60-plus retired metallurgist now English teacher whose breadth of knowledge of literature and the arcana of theater and early TV and movies is unmatched by anyone I know. After this, we decided from now on to talk on the telephone, but this conversation, in my mind, was classic.

John: I'm listening to Tarzan on the radio while I type this. The villain just said "Never-the-less Zultan. Your sabertoothed tiger is dead".

Me:Hard to top that line.
I don't know what else to say.

John: You should hear the sound effects. Snarling, and thumping. I didn't know the sound-effects man could overact.

Me: Those shows are great, aren't they? Whenever I try to listen to them when [The Wife] is home...wait, she's out right now. Maybe I should find some online and listen to them. Or XM...who knows? This might be my chance. [It wasn't, as John and I ended up "talking" for the next 2 hours.]

John: Thanks for the invitation, but aside from the time constraints, gas is 4.13 a gallon and still going up. I just finished the next to last course to get my ESL certficate- Applied Linquistics 493. The last course (Tarzan is fighting a prehistoric talking ape. the grunting and thrashing about is terrific) the next course is on grammar. Penn State offered to apply the credits for the five courses we took for certification to a Masters Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language, and then we would just seven courses ("The Arteff went into a house that moved across the face of the water, and was afraid". Were you afraid the first time you were in a boat Tarzan?".

Me: Well, I'm sad you can't come up, but certainly understand, especially with gas as high as it is. (By the way, I love the running commentary.)

John: ...Aside from the drive it would be pretty expensive. Now there's a Bob and Ray interviewing a backhanded, left-handed table tennis champ. Bob asked Ray (Biff the table tennis champ) who was his toughest opponent. Ray said "Well, since I'm my own worst enemy, it was me." If gas goes up to $5.00 a gallon, and some say it could go to $7.00, it might not be worth going to work.

Me: [after finding the Internet station to which he was listening to the shows] How to use dental floss is what I'm listening to right now.

John: Now there's an episode of Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy Jack and Uncle Jim are in the headhunting country in the Phillipines. Betty said "Oh hurry Jack I can see Black-Beard and Lazzro talking together". There was also a commercial for Wheaties which are "rich in heat energy units". I knew the daughter of Robert Hardy Andrews who wrote Jack Armstrong and also coined the ad slogan "The Breakfast of Champions" for Wheaties. He also wrote Skippy, and Ma Perkins. We were in some Immaculata English classes together. Now another commercial they're singing "Have you tried Wheaties the Best Breakfast Food in the Land". Then they went out with "Tune in next week for another exciting episode.". Then they sang the Hudson High song which is how they ended every episode. Hudson High was Jack's school. He was hardly ever there, of course, because he, Betty and Uncle Jim were always flying around the world and having adventures. I wonder if Jack ever graduated?

Me: I know I've mentioned this previously, but you really need to write a book, John.
In your spare time.

John:...Yes Bob is now broadcasting a list of people who have brought their cars in for the recommended service. He is now interviewing a fingernail clipper tester.

Me: I know. That's pretty funny...the one on dental floss was pretty good too. [It was; I wasn't just saying that to be polite.]

John: They just announced a Sherlock Holmes series starring Tom Conway and Nigel Bruce. Tom Conway was George Sanders' brother. The family name was Sanders. They both played the same character in a "B" movie series in the 40 called The Falcon. Of course George was in All About Eve, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. You can understand just listening to the narration on these programs what a difference there is since we have become a visual culture. How many people can be entertained by this strictly verbal story telling?

Me: I loved George Sanders in All About Eve. [Uh, I've never heard of any of the others, except of course, Sherlock Holmes, so what else am I supposed to say?]

Later, after a conversation about a few books...

Me: ...I'm listening to Nat King Cole, if you can believe it...The Christmas Song. Christmas in July...

John: Good singing is good singing, and always good to listen to. Well, it's getting a little late, so to paraphrase what they used to say on the radio "Tune in next time for another exciting adventure, and be sure to eat your Wheaties."

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Last post, The Wife and I were arguing about me being Captain Weather-Genius and MY geography. In this post, I accuse her of stealing my special pen. Again, editorial comments are in brackets.

Me: did you take my pen this morning? My Dr Grip?

The Wife: Now why would I take your pen?
Last night in the car I clipped it to your yellow legal pad.

Me: I don't know. Maybe you just accidentally picked it up w/o thinking?

The Wife: No. I don't have accidents with pens. Ever.
Look outside and make sure you didn't drop it when you were running in from the rain.

Me: I was just asking. ...and I found it, Miss Snottypants.
I don't have accidents with pens. Ever. Sheesh.
Ever?
Ever.
Ever! Take that. Mrs. Smartypants. I don't have accidents with pens. [She was Miss before, but now Mrs. and smart, on top of it, I'm really stepping up my rhetoric.]
Ever.
la de freaking da. [the ultimate comeback]

The Wife: Nope. Pens are like the chalice. [we're Catholic and I serve communion, but pens aren't holy objects. Jeebus!]
You just don't go swinging it around.
One at a time until they are empty.

Me: Yeah, but most of the time you just keep it locked up in the tabernacle in your case so they're never used anyway. At least I use my pens [It's true; she has her "secret" stash in the bottom of her dresser drawer, which really isn't all that "secret" -- of course, now she'll go hide them, but I don't care since I've got my Dr. Grip, so bite me, Miss Snottypants.]

The Wife: Yes they are (used) ONE AT A TIME UNTIL THEY ARE EMPTY.

Me: OMG! you are so serious today. You don't have to shout.
You're such a pen purist.

The Wife: I'm not serious.

Me: You worship pens don't you?
You have like a little shrine at work to pens, don't you? [I think she does, right alongside her shrine to John Cusack, whom she loves]

The Wife: Nope. I keep the good ones on my person.

Me: I would, but they stopped making the Giga pen. [see posts here and there]

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If you like me are unhappy about Scripto no longer making the Giga pen, then go here to complain.

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Last time I said I'd get to talking about the comedy and the tragedy that is my car, so that must mean that I get to talking about the car in this post, right? Wrong. Instead, in today's posts -- plural -- I am going to talk about instant message (IM) conversations I've had with The Wife and then IMs I've had with others.

The other morning The Wife and I were talking via instant message about the possibility of my going for a run that morning before I had to begin working on a project. [Bracketed are thoughts that weren't included, which might have infuriated The Wife even more, if some of them had been included.]

The Wife: I just looked at the radar.
It's a big system.

Me: Darn.

The Wife: We're only just getting the front edge of it now.
It's about four counties big with more behind it coming from Jamestown. [At least, this is where I thought, which didn't make any sense to me.]

Me: Jamestown? [in my head, I am thinking of the colony, the aforementioned linked one where they have all those reenactments and stuff.]

The Wife: NY
That's the top of the system.

Me: I know but why would it come from NY. Usually, it comes from our west.
Still in Pa and Oh [and no, that's not Pa as in Kettle and Oh as in Sandra]

The Wife: Um, that is west of us.

Me: New York isn't west...that's um...north of us.

The Wife: It's a big skinny system.
It's going right across PA but it's topheavy to the north. [At least she knows how to use her state abbreviations.]
Oh, go look at the radar, captain weather-genius.

Me: I didn't say I was captain-weather genius. [Note: See the first part of the conversation, where I didn't say I was captain-weather genius or even captain weather-genius or Captain Weather Genius, no matter how it's spelled or capitalized or not, with or without hypens.]
I just know my geography.

The Wife: Jamestown is NORTH WEST of here.

Me: NORTH. [since then, of course I have learned I may know MY geography, but it may not be other people's geography, as according to a quick search on Google Maps, Jamestown is not only NORTH of where we live in northcentral Pennsylvania, but also WEST. Go figure.]

The Wife: Whatevs. Go work. [My wife is 38, we have no children and yet she uses the word "Whatevs." I don't know where she gets it from. Whatevs.]

The ironic thing is that after all this, it didn't even rain, and I didn't make my run, because I thought it was going to rain.

...but somehow I seem to know how to find it and stick myself with it anyway.

Take this morning, for example. As usual, I had a difficult time getting my generic Dollar Store special Zyrtec-equivalent open. So what do I do?

Get a steak knife (technically, not from the drawer, but from the knife holder thingamabob on the kitchen counter above the drawer) to cut through it as I usually do. Then as I do sometimes, not all the time, but every few days, I end up sticking the tip into the side of my index finger in which I'm holding the pill in the wrapper.

I then noticed another cut above where I just placed this new cut, and it looks like it was a good one, even though it's starting to heal now.



Hmmm. I'm always cutting myself. "Where did this one come from?" I think to myself, because I honestly couldn't remember. It all was a little fuzzy.

This afternoon, my wife calls on the way back from an appointment and I ask her.

"Oh, that one? That's from when you cut it on the can last weekend."

Hmmm. I vaguely remember it.

Oh, that's right. I was drinking my own version of a Jager-Bomb -- Jagermeister with Dale Jr.'s energy drink of choice, Amp -- and...

you know, there's a logical explanation coming, don't you?

Now that I look back on it, I realize that:

1. As a Jeff Gordon fan, I shouldn't have been getting involved with anything to do with Junior even if they are teammates.


2. I shouldn't have been using Amp anyway with my Jager. I should have been using the original Red Bull anyway. Then I wouldn't have get myself in all this trouble, I'm sure. I mean, with Red Bull, how can you go wrong?

In short, I tried to unblock the piece of frozen Amp so I could get to some liquid Amp and when I did, I cut my finger on the lip. It bled profusely, and I whined like the wuss I am to my wife, who is an EMT and promptly told me to quit my whingeing and bandaged me up pronto ("thanks, hon, I lurrrvvv you," I think I said during, or something similarly silly).

All this reminded me of how when I was a young'n, a friend and I were playing catch with rocks. I think we were imagining we were playing baseball, but whatever, he ended up tossing me a curve ball that curved right into my forehead. It also bled profusely, and I didn't whine that time.

No, I out and out cried, because I thought I was dying with all that blood coming into my eyes. Of course, it was only a surface scratch, but I've still got the scar to prove it.

Of course, it would be only the first of many yet to come from similarly stupid things I would do.

...blogger. That's right. Sorry, for those of you looking how to be a supercalifragilisticexpialidcious lover, you're at the wrong place. The Ominous Comma threw down the gauntlet to his favorite bloggers to write a funny post that included helpful technical tips or educational material to help new bloggers. Since I am not an established humor blogger and responded only once to one of his posts with a comment, which for some reason wasn't approved by him. I suppose I'm not erudite enough for him, even though I have a college diploma too (let's not talk about GPAs, though, please), or maybe it's that I never served in the military like he did, so maybe I'm not tough enough. Whatever...but I still like the guy enough to respond to this meme even though I wasn't tagged by his almighty, droll self (and whom I shouldn't even begin to pick on, because not only will he kick my ass, but he'll kick my ass authoritatively). Since venturing forth into the blogosphere, lo, these last trio of years, and having had at least six blogs, five of which are still sailing the seas of the blogosphere here, here is a little of what I've learned thus far (and still am learning as you shall see) in my journey (in no particular order):

• For each article in an enhanced feed, show full feed. I learned this today from a friend, who sent me this message: "First: THANK YOU for updating your RSS feed so it displays your whole post instead of a snippet." No one wants to read a half-assed post in a feed. They want the whole ass, baby, either in all its bootylicious glory or in all its butt-ugliness ugliness with the pimples and all. Once people see it, they won't want to turn away, either because of its luminosity or its offensiveness like this crazy crack whore.

Another reason is you might see the first pagraph and shrug your shoulders, but then you realize like Jeff in Coupling, there is not only the word "breasts" but also pictures of breasts, though sometimes if you're like Leigh Online you can get rid of ambiguity from the start with a great title like this: show us your t*ts!!, for which half-assed feed or not, you want to click on, especially if you're a guy or hey, you could be a lesbian for all I know, who am I to judge? which in a roundabout, rambling way brings me to

• Titles: Have a title that will catch people's eyes in a feed so even if you only give your readers a half-assed feed, they'll still want to read it...

Like this one: Wanted: Your Witty Responses (which makes me think "Hey, I can be witty and I can respond, maybe he's talking to me.")

Or like this: Celebrities I Have Dreamed About (ooh, almost as good as Leigh's in tantalizing the reader to click there, isn't it?)

Or this one: Death by Strangulation (What would make a person want to strangle somebody? I'd like to know. Oh, that, Catherinette. I see. I don't blame you.)

But this one, Playin' Catch Up that begins with "It's been 10 days since I posted..." I mean, yadda yadda, we've all been there, but you're already breaking another thing I've learned post regularly (I mean, look at this blog as a shining, nay, luminous example of that).

I'm also a member of a another group here in the blogosphere, a book blogging group, where all some do is post the headline by the group The Sunday Salon. While it is required of posts, why not add something to it to catch readers' eyes? We already know to whom you're writing, but which book or books are you going to discuss, book beyotches (which is another tip if you're a humor blogger, don't use too much vulgarity unless you're established like the beyotches already mentioned)? Why should I read on? Which is what you might be thinking at this point. So let me get to my third tip:

• Graphics. Include them, even if it's totally random like this:

One, which not planned, has breasts. I only clicked like three times (honest, honey, and uh, sorry, Mom). Well, I had some other tips, but now I've lost my train of thought completely for some reason.

You know how I said my phone was Jewish last post, well, that's not all it is. My new cell phone is British too. Don't worry, I won't break this down into every ethnicity or nationality that contributed to this phone. I mean, if we really wanted to do that, I'm sure we could figure out that one part of the phone came from South Africa, another from Myanmar, and so on and so forth. But I won't do that...for now I'll just stick to its Britishness and its Jewishness.

My new cell phone may be written in Hebrew, but it speaks in the Queen's English, although I'm beginning to think that's the case with most cell phone messages anymore, or at least the ones which I get from our cell phone provider.

Not that my cell phone really is a cell phone. When I use voice activation and a woman's voice asks me to say a message, it's a mo-bile (each part sounded out separately and distinctly, as "Moe" in the overrated Stooge and "bile" as in the fluid that issues forth from my pores when I hear how great Moe is, when we know that Larry was the glue that kept the whole trio or quartet, depending on when you saw them, together).

So when I call my sister, and the woman's voice asks me which number, I say, "Mo-bile."

And the woman's voice asks, "Did you say 'Mo-bile'?"

And I say, "Yes, I said 'Mo-bile!'"

If like I did earlier today, and I say "Kim's cell," she says.

"Could you please repeat the message?" And then says, "Did you say e-mail?"

And so on and so forth.

And what is it with British accents anyway? I can't help but laugh when I hear British accents. I think it's growing up watching Monty Python, which probably was the first time I heard a British accent. So every time I hear a British accent, I crack up. Of course, the subject matter might have something to do with it too:


And last, even though this story is a serious story about the environment, I can't help but laugh as the British reporter talks about it (not to mention the subject).

On the subject of tripping, imagine my surprise when I took a look closely at the new cell phone I was looking to purchase Wednesday (and did purchase last night) and saw this:

If you zoom in and look closely, along with letters in the English script are letters in the Jewish script from the Hebrew alphabet. And Jewish script is what it is called by scholars, according to that great source, Wikipedia, lest you think I'm being anti-Semitic. Which you shouldn't anyway, since I bought this Jewish phone (my wife said I should call it a Hebrew phone, because she thought I might be too offensive), after all.

How did our local cell phone store get it?

They don't know. It can't be to supply the large Jewish community out here in the woods of northcentral Pennsylvania. I think I've met one Jew since we've moved here and I think she goes to a synagogue, which is about 60 miles away.

All of this somehow led my Caucasian wife and I, also Caucasian, both WASCs (White Anglo-Saxon Catholics), to a conversation about how many friends of the ethnic minorities (soon to be majorities) we have.

We have about one of each, and in some cases, two. The breakdown is as follows:

• ONE Jewish friend, who, bonus, is married to an African-American. TWO down.


• And another African-American, who is the boyfriend of my wife's sister, and who probably will end up our brother-in-law, double bonus: we'll have an African-American as a relative.


• ONE gay friend, who was in our wedding and to whom I always refer to my parents, as "Kim's friend from high school, who was in the wedding, you know, the...(dramatic pause and then pronounced slowly and with a flourish)...LEZ-BE-AN."


• THREE Asian friends, if you count Kim's friend, Raj, who is from India. The other two are Soyoung, who is from Korea and who recently married my college roommate for some unknown reason (she's hot and well, he's...well, let's just say if he wasn't married, I thought we probably had two gay friends) and Tim, whom we met at a conservative Christian college we attended -- if you can believe it -- and who we always remember for saying once at a reunion in an art gallery full of people at the college, "Holy Shee-It. Holy Shee-it" upon seeing us. We don't think he quite had the concept of the word being considered a swear word.


• HALF a Hispanic or Latino (depending on which terminology is in vogue this year) friend. I didn't think we had any, but then my wife reminded me that we have a friend who is married to a woman who is half-Hispanic. So hey, we'll count her.

To top it all off, when I mention to my mother that I have a Jewish phone, what does she say?

"Well, you're not anti-Semitic, are you?"

Thanks, Mom, for the vote of confidence. Like suddenly I had strayed that far from the path I was raised and had hidden my Hitlerite tendencies all these years? (They're in the basement, right next to my collection of Leninesque leanings and my Mussolini penchants.)

Speaking of not hearing things correctly, this afternoon I had the strangest conversation with my mother on the phone, to which I admit I was half-listening, until I started to put three letters together...

"So you know that guy that made some kind of drug in the 60s popular? What was his name?...ummm...something Leary?"

"Timothy Leary? Yeah, Mom, what about him?"

"Well, what was the name of that drug that he made popular?"

"LSD."



At this point, I didn't know where the conversation was going to go.

Ummm. Okay, Mom, what exactly are you trying to say? Here are some of the loops into which my mind spun (yes, in just a matter of a few seconds):

I was born in June 1969.

Hmmmm.

Meaning I was conceived probably in September/October 1968...

...when Leary still would have been promoting his product, so to speak.

Could my conception have the result of an LSD trip?!? My strait-laced parents, could their past have been laced with something else?

Was she going to say next that I was the result of an LSD experiment gone terribly wrong?

Which my sister would say would explain a lot.

But this is what my mother actually said next:

"Okay, thanks."

"Ummm, okay, thanks?"

"I was doing a crosswords puzzle..."

"Oh."

"Why did you think I wanted to know?"

"Ummm. I don't know."

"Did you think I was going growing nostalgic for the old days?"

"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking that. Really."