Electronic Tumbleweeds » Rants

My Day

Jeremy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:42:37 +0000

Some backstory: Back in like 2007 my mom left a car at her job, in the parking lot of a police station, because it wouldn’t start. Skip to today, where I, using her AAA membership, try to bring it home. Here is the story:

I get up to Chamblee (about 30 miles/90 minutes by MARTA) around 1pm, hoping I can either have this thing driving before rush hour or in a shop before they all close. I call a AAA tow truck, and he gets there about 1:45 and gets me to a local Goodyear about 2:00-2:15. But right before he puts the car on the truck, he determines that the problem with the car is not the transmission, which would be a costly fix, but a cheap little shifter cable bushing which could be easily bought at any local parts store! Hooray! I just saved a lot of money on an unnecessary fix! My day’s looking up, right? I wish.

Now, we get to the Goodyear place, where I mistakenly went to originally because I thought I had a transmission problem, and the guy with the tow truck pops the bushing back on – I can has working car now? I wish – the tires are flat and the battery’s dead. But those are minor problems, a jump and some air and I’m in business! Hooray!

Until we find out that since the battery’s been sitting for so long that it won’t take a jump, and I’ll have to buy a new battery. Well poo, I though I’d get away without paying for anything today. But my mom’s gonna pay me back, so it’s okay, right? It was…

…until I couldn’t undo the old damn battery. The thing had been sitting there for so long, and had been so neglected while the car was running, that the negative terminal was rusted on, and I couldn’t undo it even with the help of some WD-40. Eventually, a mechanic from Goodyear came out with some vice grips and got the new one on for me, and I drove the car back over to the parts store where I bought the new battery to return the old one. I come back to the car outside, wondering why the car was driving so wonky, and see I’ve essentially been driving on a flat. Right – remember to fill the tire with air when I go back to the Goodyear. I’m backing out of my spot at the parts store to go back to the Goodyear, when…of course, the shifter bushing pops off again. Well, the wrecker guy did say it was shot. I try the gearshift a few more times, and hallelujah it works. I drive back over to the Goodyear and try to pull up next to one of the bays to fill the tire when – say it with me now…

…the shifter bushing pops off again. Now I’m stuck in front of the Goodyear and have to push it back into a parking space. I try to reach the bushing but can’t, until another nice Goodyear mechanic comes over and pops it back in for me.

Right, so here’s the plan: I probably only have one chance for this, so once I shift into Drive I can’t stop until I’m back at the house. I start the car, drive up next to a bay, have the second nice mechanic fill up my tire for me, then I’m on my way home. Did I mention that the tags on this car are about two years out of date? No? Well they were, and I was going to have to drive about 40-50 miles on surface streets (because I didn’t feel comfortable taking it on the highway) with tags that have been expired for almost two years in what I’m pretty sure was going to be rush-hour traffic. Joy. So I wave goodbye to the Goodyear guys (who were amazingly helpful, even to my slightly overprivileged self) and start on my journey home. I don’t think I even made it five minutes.

So I’m on Chamblee-Tucker road, and my plan of action is to find the Chamblee MARTA station, which will lead me to Lenox Square Mall, which will lead me to Peachtree Street, which I can follow almost all they way home (because you’re always only two streets away from one named Peachtree in Atlanta). So I’m cruising (in the loosest sense) down Chamblee-Tucker, when I start to play Warning-Light Bingo. I’ve got a low windshield-washer fluid light (fuckoff, who cares about wiper fluid? The car barely runs) and a check oil light, which I don’t think has gone off since before the presidency was a gleam in Barack Obama’s eye. But there’s a new one – “Check Gauges”? What in the world does that mean? I mean, I know I need wiper fluid (and I really don’t fucking care) and I need new oil, but I’ve known that for years. I just want to get the car home, okay? Fast forward a couple minutes, and I can’t get that new light out of my mind. “‘Check Gauges’? They’ve always been the same – oh God I’m an idiot.” I mentally facepalm as I realize that I’ve been checking the lights instead of the gauges. “Well I still don’t see why in the world I would need to check the holy shit time to pull over.” The temperature needle is beyond the red, and I basically emergency stop in the middle of a very busy street freaking out before I hightail it into a Quiktrip. It is at this point in time that I’m glad that I decided against taking the freeway hame or giving the car a shakedown, for I am sure I would have blown the engine. After parking (and thankfully having the car go into park) I remember that this car has a bit of a coolant leak issue, and that after two years there shouldn’t be that much coolant left. I call my mom and she’ll come back with me to get the car after she gets off work.

Flash forward about two hours, my mom realizes that they might sell coolant at Quiktrip (they do, FYI), she buys some, and we put it into the car. Moment of truth time – will the car go into reverse? Then will it go into drive again, allowing us to get home? Short answers: it does, we do, and I’m either safe at home or hallucinating all of this as I die in a fiery car crash. I think I’m safe, if only because if I were hallucinating there would be more scantily-clad women.

So – in the couse of about six hours, I:

Save a lot of money
Spend a bit of money
Prepare to spend a bit more money
Get stuck multiple times
Bother some nice people (really, they didn’t have to be so accomodating)
Only make the car drivable in the loosest sense of the word.

And I don’t even really want to drive that car. And mom owes me like $100 for all this drama.

Cho-Breasts

Jeremy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:49:49 +0000

I don’t know why I’m like this, but ever since I can remember I’ve always been against porn of something once I’ve started to like it, unlike what I’m guessing is 90% of everyone who would like to see what is only hinted at in canon depicted by fans. For example, take Chobits – I see a bit of myself in the lovable and ever-so-slightly perverted lead male Hideki and have somewhat grown to admire the wide-eyed optimism of his magical girlfriend Chi; it was the second manga I ever bought and the first series I ever completed and thusly I take it as a personal affront to my honor when I see some random person on the Internet put them together in some lecherous doujin (and she can’t even have sex! Her reset switch is down there!). In contrast, I don’t a flip-flying fuck about anything Naruto and his loli harem have to say, do or feel about anything, so I’m fine perusing the multiple combinations of ninjutsu-based dickery that Rule 34 has cooked up, whether they be m/f, m/f/m, m/m, m/s(nake) or m/m/t(ree). Hell, I liked the Spice & Wolf doujin before I watched the show, but since then I can barely manage to get through the first eight pages without squicking out and closing the folder.

Now over the past three days or so I’ve logged around 17 hours playing Fate/stay night and I currently find myself in a situation I do not care for. The three protagonists – Emiya, Rin and Saber – are hiding in a ramshackle building in the woods surrounding the castle of the current big bad, Ilya. Their ally and “friend” Archer has just sacrificed his life against Ilya’s pet/plaything Berserker so they could escape. As they huddle inside this bedraggled cabin of sorts, they know that the only one who could even stand a chance of defeating Berserker and help them all see another day – Saber – is not long for this plane of existence due to the fights she has been in the past few days having drained her of the energy she needs to remain. But if they could replenish her energy, everything would be super-special-awesome! But wait – her master, Emiya, is inexperienced; and due to the fact that he summoned her wonkily, he does not have a standard magical path to replenish her energy.

But… there is another way…

As her master he has a physical, as well as spiritual, path to replenish her energy. And so the time has come that if he wishes to survive he must exploit it.

In short, now he has to fuck her.

And thus F/SN has managed to hit me the same way as Chobits and Spice & Wolf. Originally this didn’t bother me – hell, I knew there were sex scenes in this game, it’s kinda the reason why I torrented (oops, bought) the game in the first place – but now as I am on the cusp of vindicating the effort I have placed in the game, I stand at the precipice with trepidation, instead of eagerly leaping into (supposedly apathetic) debauchery. And amazingly this is what’s keeping me from the game: I originally didn’t care about the characters unless they had breasts and were going to be showing them soon so I decided to play the game with reckless abandon, but in the 17 hours I’ve played since then I’ve grown to like the characters, learn their strengths and weaknesses, figure out what makes them tick, and generally want to see them not get plowed by a chauvinistic dumbass with a nasty habit of giving himself mortal wounds every 15 minutes.

I feel as though something is wrong with me in this regard, that I originally got the game to see breasts and now that I have the chance to do so I shy away, and I have no idea on how to correct it. Some people might say to just nut up and watch the scenes, which is probably what I’ll do to see the rest of the game, but while just getting it over might solve some symptoms, it isn’t the cure, which I’m scared to say is moving towards therapy. If I sit down on a couch, I plan on blowing the shrink’s mind, that’s for damn sure though.

P.S. Only m/m/t is fake.

P.P.S. I know they redid the game with the sex scenes taken out, but that would take more time to torrent (oops, buy) and I don’t feel like it.

Losing It

Jeremy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:39:37 +0000

I lost my Nokia N810 on Friday. Super pissed since I had it less than a year, and it was my only way of keeping the world out when I was on MARTA. *sniff* no more music…

I Think I Miss High School

Jeremy — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:31:04 +0000

I never thought I’d be saying this, but after all the shit I went through, all the stuff I had stolen from me, all the times I’d wished I had gone to a school that cared about education instead of passing standardized tests, I think I am beginning to miss Benjamin Banneker High school.
Don’t get me wrong, it might’ve been the worst school in the district at the time – with an interim principal that could make George Bush look like a lame-eagle instead of a lame-duck and a surplus of theiving people that made Ali Baba’s crew look like concerned neighbors – but there were some good people there, some people that actually gave a damn through it all, and I respected for that. It might be the ending of Super Mario Galaxy getting to me, but I miss some people from high school, people I could fuck around and be myself with, people I could laugh with.
I’m reminded of the calculus bowl I went to my senior year with the other top students in my Calculus AB and the higher-up BC class, and all the fun we had the way there and the way back: the the funny things we said were going on in the back seat between DJ and the African girl whose name is on the tip of my tongue and I can’t remember; when we were at the Cracker Barrel up in Braselton and I solved the triangle puzzle while Richard fumbled, all the cracks I managed to get in on Richard while he said his brain was “warming up”; hell, on the way back I saw Road Atlanta for the very first time.
I think I miss the people most of all: Mr. Swann, Mr. Oliver, Ms. Ensmann, Ms. Scretchen, Ms. Goggins, Ms. Mobley, Ms. Burnette, Ms. Salisbury; God, how I’d forgotten these people so easily; how I wish I could see them again since the new principal basically fired them all and scattered them to the wind.
I guess that for better or for worse, Banneker’s always going to be my high school – I guess I could do it a favor and remember the good times a little bit more than the bad.

Uneasy Hesitance

Jeremy — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:09:05 +0000

I listened to Nine Black Alps’ latest single, but I couldn’t be bothered to blog about it until now. Anyway, I didn’t name this post “Uneasy Hesitance” without a reason:
When I first heard Everything Is, their first album, in its entirety I thought it was made for me. It was the rock music I wanted to hear – hard and heavy, making no qualms about being angry and making you want to be angry too. I fucking loved it – the first time I heard Shot Down I wanted to fuck someone, break something and burn the world and I’ll be goddamned if I wasn’t proud of it. I officially made it my favorite song a few days later and I’ve listened to it so much that that urge had waned, but I still think back to when I first heard that song with all the love in my heart.
Then came Love/Hate.
I’m not saying it was a bad album, not at all – it shows that the band isn’t a one trick pony, and has the range that I think they will need to really go the distance – but it left everyone who loved the band for their first album hanging. Sure they had a couple songs on the album that had some of that angry swagga that made me love them, but it seemed a bit…orchestrated. I’m sure that’s not the word I want to use, but it’s the only word I can think of to accurately describe how I’m feeling at 1AM. I’m not the only one – I perused their forum hoping to find some drum tabs for Shot Down when I read someone comparing “Forget My Name”, one of the few what I will now call “angry” songs on the album, to Nirvana. I had listened to the song myself prior to reading this and I thought the same thing. This was a big deal to me because I, someone who has listened to very little Nirvana, thought they sounded like Nirvana and it made me think they were losing their original, angry, “burn the world” sound for commercial viability, but to add insult to injury I don’t believe it sold all that well. I began to have doubts.
“All their albums can’t be winners.”
“I can’t like all their songs.”
“The third album will be better.”
“Will their third album be better?”
“God, I hope their third album is better…”
I put it out of my mind and gave it no second thought.
Later, I picked up Glitter Gulch, a six-song EP that showed me that they still knew what their fans of the first album loved. It only had two “angry” songs on it – Over The Ocean and Ilana Song – but they were enough to tide me over. Especially Ilana Song – it gave me that same feeling that I got when I listened to Shot Down the first time; if I was alone I would have turned up the volume until my ears bled and rocked out with my cock out until I passed out from exhaustion. I thought that maybe I _could_ keep hope alive, that their third album will turn it around – you’ll see!
Now I’ve heard the first single from their third album, Buy Nothing, and I don’t don’t like it, even though it looks on paper to be everything I asked for. It seems like they’ve gone back to their roots of anger and heaviness but it sounds overdone. It’s like with Buy Nothing they’ve tried to get from Love/Hate back to Everything Is but overshot and gone to Dragpipe, another band I listen to. The addition of political subtext in the lyrics is also an unwelcome change to their normal Seinfeld-esque songs about nothing in particular yet angry all the same.
So now I don’t know where I stand – I listen to Love/Hate and say they should be more like Everything Is, but when they do, I think they should tone down what made me love them in the first place. To quote someone from the Nine Black Alps forums, this new album will choose “between whether I say ‘I’m a fan of Nine Black Alps’ or ‘I’m a fan of Nine Black Alps’ first album’.”
I’m with you.

Hum Practice

Jeremy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:50:15 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write – just like I’ve been meaning to do pushups except for when I feel like a weak bitch, which is more and common nowadays, except I’m being stopped by my mental insecurities instead of my physical ones. I have a lot of ideas for stories – from a serial in the vein of Bruce Almighty, to a novel-length cynic’s take on It’s A Wonderful Life (I just wanna knock that stupid innocent smirk off Jimmy Smits’ face). I’ve even got a couple serials rattling around in my head that I don’t just want to put out on the Internet because they’re so strange (and I don’t want anyone stealing them – those two have sadly been done in some fashion before).

But when I’m not thinking I’m too much of a pansy to do something with my life, I’m getting stuck at character development. I mean, I want to be able to write my characters well, but I don’t want to commit the first cardinal sin of literature and self-insert. *sigh* I just have to get over myself, put on my big-boy pants and do it.

Change is Overrated

Jeremy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:01:43 +0000

Nowadays I seem to be interested in things I coudn’t stand six months before. Beginning with gum sometime in October (probably as a replacement for another nervous habit that’s come back in full force) followed in quick succession by brushing my teeth before going to sleep (which does nothing, btw) and showering every other day (but I have a feeling those last two were more about helping the people around me rather than any nervous condition I may or may not have). While I am not condemning these acts – I can’t prove it, but I’m sure my teeth are happier – it tells me that either the things I do under pressure to cope stay with me when I’m not stressed, or I’m still stressed.
Now which of those two is more likely: I’m rushing to get my financial aid info in to attend (and ace) some quick summer college courses at bumble-fuck community college along with having to find and successfully BS some “educational” psychiatrist into saying I’m sane enough to go to the college I actually want to go to while being haunted by my both biggest and most recent failure fostering feelings of academic insecurity which, because my self-esteem, self-respect, and self-image are built almost exclusively on the demolished house of cards that was my academic career, has metastasized into general insecurity and flown an A380 into the twin towers of my self-image.
It would just be so much easier to become a drifter. Also, I just realized: A380+Twin Towers=government watching me.

My Day

Jeremy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:15:52 +0000

It began quite shittily. After missing two buses while within 50 and 30 seconds of the bus stop, I got double-charged for a game I bought. Also, I’ll probably end up realizing I made a horrible impulse buy and return it within a week. Great.

Snow Leopard, A Couplet

Jeremy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:20:28 +0000

I don’t doubt your
os just works
when used by
idiots
and smarmy jerks
Burma-Shave, bitches.

If At First

Jeremy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:01:32 +0000

I suck. Damn I suck. I really fucking suck. The one thing I should be good at and I fail. Now I see why I can’t get shit done – because I fucking suck. Christ, I’ll never do anything I want to do because I suck so much. I fail at life.

Planned Obsolescence

Jeremy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:04:23 +0000

I was quite happy at 4:00 PM today. That was because I had just recieved my Xbox, which I had been waiting on since the semester started, about two months ago. Brimming with boyish delight, I insert my copy of Burnout 3 – my favorite game – and sit back on the lounge couch ready to play for “an hour max”.
But I never got to play Burnout 3. Wanna know why? My DVD drive had finally died. After close to six years together, my DVD drive decided to give up on me on one of the days I needed it most.
I quickly jump into doctor mode and succintly hacked it open, spraying everything with compressed air, including the inside of the drive. But nothing worked. Finally, hours after beginning my heroic, yet ultimately doomed attempt to resuscitate it, I finally gave up.
They say that when a loved one dies, you should focus on the time spent together instead of their death.

No.

Fuck that.

Planned obscolescene is for pussies. I want my Xbox back.

I haven’t had a good rant in a while…

Jeremy — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:06:37 +0000

Last week I lost my phone. And my headphones. So Now I’ve lost my contacts and I can’t listen to music. Plus someone stole my flash drive yesterday, so I have to reget all my torrents. And wget. Plus I’m stressing out over packing for the Reed ting tomorrow, and some essays I have to do, and a story for VOX. *sigh* I need a vacation.

Le Sigh…

Jeremy — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:58:07 +0000

All my electronics are breaking on me or suck. My computer keeps overheating, which I believe is the result of a clogged fan; my MP3 player isn’t recognized by Ubuntu, and I need to upgrade it anyway; and my flash drive is too small to haul the big files I need around. Ineed a vacation

I hate my computer battery.

Jeremy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:12:49 +0000

I’ve only had it for about 3 years and it’s at 40% of its orig. capacity, and I’m only getting an hour per charge. I need a new computer. Ad my Hard drives officially died yesterday. And I really want to go to the Nats with a VOX media pass, but that doesn’t seem like it’ll be possible, so I’ll have to pay the $60 out of pocket to go. I better win something. I’m kinda miffed at my life right now; can you tell?

I hate the GIMP.

Jeremy — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:02:17 +0000

For the biggest part, it’s the only image editing software that WON’T let you color in black when you select it! I don’t see why it comes so highly regarded, I would rather be using Paint. At least it lets you color in lack. Case in point: right now I’m trying to get the comment bubbles working right, but the default color was too bright, so I had to edit it. and In comes GIMP, with no matter what color I choose is being displayed in the shade of gray that was too bright in the first place! Now I’m wasting time trying to find a new image editing software to actually finish the job the GIMP was supposed to do, and I’m writing this rant. *sigh* I need to get laid.