notes from wonderground

I retrieved my car today. Fixing the window cost $479.44. I’m going to split it with Jaime because I could have got a better deal going to a cheaper joint, and because Jaime is a good egg.

Driving in lunchtime traffic through Tustin and Irvine, I encountered the Office Men On Lunch. Groups of men all take lunch together from their desk jobs. Whether it’s the clerks at Taco Bell with their ties flipped on the back or the Brooks Brothers smooth execs eating Cobb Salads at the Daily Grill, they have something in common: they’re asshole drivers. Without fail, the car stuffed with four guys in button-down shirts will blow a red light, tailgate, cut in and out of traffic, and go 40 mph in the parking lot. A mild-mannered paterfamilias turns into a tire-squealing road rage case in this situation. Hooting like teenagers, he and his buddies flip you off and take the 30 mph onramp at 70, making the Taurus list unhappily to the right and the near-bald discount tires whine in pain.

As far as I can tell, women who go to lunch from work together just go to lunch.

citizenx informs me that his friends The Scattered Pages are playing in San Francisco on Wednesday the 24th at the Rickshaw Stop (8pm, 21+, $6). If you like indie folk/pop music, stop by and enjoy. I liked their song Emily (mp3 download link) from their label’s web page.

I want to see this documentary about Freud’s influence in America but it’s only playing in New York. Apparently Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, invented the term “public relations” and was responsible for quite a few other Faustian ideas.

phony beatlemania has bitten the dust

  1. Of course every public figure or institution must now have a blog. Yes, even him. No. NO!
  2. They’re getting closer to understanding metabolic syndrome which is good for people like me, who have it.
  3. Momus has a pretty good attack on “fashion Goth”. Then again, you could probably write that pretty good attack on any trendy horseshit, eh?
  4. The candy marketers have a new! exciting! paradigm! and it is: really big M&Ms.
  5. A hearty “fuck you” to the nerds developing these sonic torture devices for controlling crowds.
  6. Polecats hate freedom. NEVAR FORGET the enemy we all face together.
  7. The Oracle corporation and their million-dollar heavyweight corporate database would like to say this to you: TOAD.

semiotics for dummies

  1. The AFLAC Duck is Gilbert Gottfried. Wow! I had no idea. I now like those stupid ads even more.
  2. Can it be true that 1 in 25 dads in the U.K. is raising someone else’s kid? Or is this one of those things where it turns out someone didn’t carry the two and the statistics are bad?
  3. Crazy-ass mammatus clouds, strange color too. (Flickr)
  4. Deep in the depths of Syria, our hero will not pause in his quest until he finds his Grail: the elusive wild hamster of Aleppo.

Did Nena snuff it at the Fairview offramp this morning or something?

Some woman in a Hummer Limo apparently committed suicide on the freeway at 5 this morning by leaping out of it. The news reports say they had been at a “celebrity event” (nice phrase) and then at a party in Costa Mesa. Also that she was in a “German band”. Unsurprisingly, there may have been alcohol involved!

So, what German band was at a Celebrity Event, then came down to this hub of culture and excitement called Costa Mesa and partied until 5 am, and then got in their Hummer Limo to go back to L.A. only to be interrupted by this lady’s suicide?

Edit: Now it says she was in a “popular German punk band”. I’d put up the Drudge siren because it’s a DEVELOPING… story but I’m lazy.

News story in our local rag

AP Story at sfgate.com

Coping: A list

Do you have a fatal tragic flaw? Are you plagued with self-hatred, irrational fear, or stomach-shredding rage? Perhaps your career has shit the bed for good, or you’ve had a bad divorce, or you’re paralyzed with shame and guilt from some long-past disaster. Anyway there’s stuff you really don’t want to deal with, and it’s not going away any time soon. What to do? Psychotherapy is very, very expensive and slow. Psychiatric medications are also very expensive, and they make you feel funny and aren’t socially okay. For those of you without good insurance, who need to economize, here’s a handy list of sublimation, avoidance, and substitution mechanisms.

the list

diamonds

Whoops! Gardener’s equipment threw a rock up and took out my passenger side window. We’ve known Jaime for 10 years and he’s a businessman; he’s paying for it. He told me about it, in fact; I wouldn’t have noticed until later and never suspected him. He’s a Good Egg. So the substitutemobile is resting overnight at Tustin Acura and tomorrow they fix it. Apparently the expensive part is the time they spend very carefully making sure that there’s no more bits of safety glass in the door mechanism rattling around messing things up. Glad I’m not paying, though.

I was driven home by Alfredo, whom I’ve had this ride with before, and we talked about life and cars and kids and stuff. He’s a really solid guy.

When I was a kid and we were living in France we went for a week’s drive around the Loire Valley seeing old stones and stuffing our faces. We had a rental Renault. It was hot as hell most of the time, and one day there was a cold front and a big thunderstorm, and icewater rained on us. The windshield basically exploded as we were driving; at first, my dad thought someone had thrown a rock.

We pulled into a tiny Provençal hamlet with about 8 houses in it and went to the gas station. The classic ancient Frenchman with the huge grey mustache and beret shambled out and inspected the Renault. “Ah.. Pare-brise”, he announced. He led us into the back where they had stacks and stacks of windshields for just about every possible French vehicle and selected ours. The whole thing had the air of routine.

French technology in 1979 could build nuclear power plants but apparently tempered glass was beyond them. For the rest of the trip we had diamonds dripping out of the air condition vents in a shimmering drizzle.