The Sporadic Curmudgeon

Man, oh man, I’m looking forward to today. I’ve taken a cherished vacation day and my daughter Naomi is playing hooky so that she and I can see the first showing of Speed Racer at noon. I’m a rabid fan of the original early-60s series, and if the rumors are true that they’ve gone to absurd lengths to preserve the cartoon’s atmosphere then I’m a happy man. Later this evening I’ll post my typical half-baked review. I’m expecting a ridiculously fun popcorn movie. Keep your fingers crossed!

By the way, this is the first non-Pixar movie I’ve made it to in a theater since The Fellowship of the Ring came out. Parenthood is a mixed blessing for a cineast: attendance goes way down, but DVD rentals skyrocket.

Special correction note: Actually, I saw the third Matrix film (I think it was called Matrix: Regurgitated or something like that, and was made by the same people that made Speed Racer) but it was such a God-awful mess that I blocked it from my memory. I mean, come on. Exoskeleton battle suits with completely open cockpits so that a ten-year-old could take the pilot out with a well-aimed rock? Give me a break. Weapons designers of the future, please take note: if your primary enemy wields deadly mechanical pincers at the end of flailing tentacles, at least PUT IN A FRIGGIN’ WINDSHIELD.

Special After-Movie note: We just got back from watching Speed Racer, and all I can say is that the negative critics out there are probably the same soul-dead jerks that think they’re above enjoying Disneyland. This movie is loud, colorful, fast-paced and one hell of a lot of fun. I’ve even read reviews claiming that kids were bored by it. My daughter is as hyperkinetic as they come, and she sat through the whole thing with a goofy smile on her face. Come to think of it, so did I. If you’ve got one little smidgen of the eight-year-old you used to be left in you, go to the theater, buy the biggest soda and popcorn they have, and settle in for some serious fun.

To wrap up: my life is little more than a steaming pile of pain and degradation, but my personal troubles didn’t enter my head once during Speed Racer. You won’t learn any major life lessons from it, but you’ll be free of the crap we all live in for a couple of hours. If that sounds good, by all means go see it and enjoy yourself.

And take the kids, too.

My lipstick-red 1999 VW Beetle, which was almost paid off (at last), was taken from our parking lot sometime last Wednesday night or Thursday morning. We’ve since had to rent a car, but can only afford to do so for one week. We are currently looking for a new car at presumably usurious rates which will further degrade our quality of life.

Shortly before its being nicked, Google Maps happened to capture it on Street View.

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I was very fond of this car, and its loss has affected me more strongly than I expected. It’s almost like someone has died.

Of course, I’m in the middle of a raging mid-life crisis, so who knows how I really feel about all this. I turned fifty almost a year ago, I’m artistically dead, and most of my personal relationships are so damaged as to be beyond repair. Especially the ones that really matter.

After I handed off the baton of my daughter’s interminable English assignment to my wife (and I do mean interminable; in all violation of time and space she began the dang thing back when New York was called New Amsterdam), I started dinner.

Our pathetic menu was hamburger steak (our fancy name for ground beef squished into a vaguely pancake-like shape) and supremely unpopular leftover Potatoes-Au-Gratin from the night before that have been miraculously transformed into mashed-potatoes-with-the-works using an electric mixer. I smashed the meat and plopped it into the frying pan. Hmmm, I thought. This could probably uses some seasoning to disguise the pervasive tang of beef hormones. I reached for the garlic powder (hey, I was in a hurry), unscrewed the lid, and sprinkled some on.

It was like an old Candid Camera sketch where they unscrewed the lids on all the salt shakers. Garlic powder completely covered my hamburger patties. I stared at the container. All previous garlic powder from this manufacturer (a famous spices-and-herbs brand that isn’t Lawry’s) had screw tops with a shaker underneath. THIS one had a screw top cleverly hidden beneath a barely-visible flip top. There was no shaker underneath the screw top.

To make sure I wasn’t going crazy (sadly, always a possibility), I checked the same brand’s onion powder. Screw top with a shaker underneath. Someone at the seasoning company was obviously playing some sort of mean-spirited practical joke.

I scraped the excess garlic off as best I could and tossed it in the trash, then continued as if nothing had happened. My family has yet to try it, so I may be spending the rest of my evening dodging hurled epithets and regurgitation. I’ll let you know, assuming I live.

Special Gastronomic Update: To my astonishment, the meat was eaten with nary a retch. The potatoes, however, were still regarded as something you might serve party guests in order to cut the evening short. Our cat is at this moment trying to bury the leftovers in her litterbox while glaring at me accusingly.

what part of the phrase
“we’re gonna die like dogs here”
are you not grasping?

man’s evolution:
eternal shitstorms favor
obliviousness

a two-stall restroom
outer door locked: “occupied”
an act of mercy

a sumo wrestler
writes haiku in a strip joint
limp efforts result

“invigorating”
on skin and hair care products
means “burns like crazy”

If you are running a site on Dreamhost, you got a nasty little surprise this morning: depending on how your hosting service payments were set up you either had sites down or were missing between $100 and $9,000 from your bank account. Dreamhost had screwed up, and mistakenly billed their customers $7,500,000 more than they were owed. That’s right: Seven Point Five Million Dollars. My own chunk of that came to $518.00, which put me seriously in the red. I am normally billed $20.00 on the 16th of the month. Despite their email claiming that the problem is now fixed and it was all just a dream, the half-grand has yet to reappear in my bank account.

Oddly enough, that’s not what I’m complaining about. Mistakes happen, and believe you me, I have plenty of experience with software mistakes. What’s got me really pissed off, though, is the reaction of some of the deeply empathic people posting to Digg and Dreamhost’s blog about the incident. Here’s a few sample quotes:

If your account get overdrafted because of $400 in the middle of the month, then I dont understand how you can possibly afford a paid host in the first place *lol* how do you eat?

It appears to me that some people just want to complain in the hope of getting something for nothing and to all those big talking idiots threatening to contact VISA, get real. If you are so piss poor this mistake has virtually bankrupted you, you won’t be able to afford to move to a different host company if you disrupt Dreamhost’s operations.

How broke are yo ass’s??

$120/$240 isn’t a lot of money (especially on a credit card) lol, and it’s already been refunded - get over yourselves!

Also, I’m amazed at how many people are one bill away from over drafting their bank accounts and defaulting on their mortgage.

I love how self centered our society has become. Each little minion creating their own little bubble to live in. When that little bubble collapses the world is just falling apart. Really though, with you and your bubble gone the world moves on and no one cares. We go about our business no ever knowing you existed.

It’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t matter. A lot worse would happen. You could have no home, no family, living in a ditch surviving off rat meat… Do something constructive and move on.

If you’ve set yourself up that you are now bankrupt and living in the ditch, what the heck were you doing in the first place… intelligence is hard to find… wisdom even harder…

If only everyone wasn’t so self-prioritized…

To those who keep no cushion in the bank to cover unforeseen circumstances, I definitely sympathize with the situation you’re in but take this as a lesson and give yourself a little wiggle room. If you’re living that close to the bone then you’re definitely living beyond your means.

LOL at the people who overdraft on their checking accounts when the bill is just $100. Come on, don’t you leave any padding at all in the bank?

Talk about bad money management. You probably shouldn’t be wasting any of it on webhosting at that point.

Yeah because everyone who hosts with DH has mortgage payments on the 15th on January and only has the exact amount in their account to cover it, leaving them completely broke until their next payday, gimme a break.

After all what’s $100?? A C-note won’t even fill up the fuel tank on my truck.

Do you realize that when you tell us that you are not managing your money correctly that it does not make us pity you, but think you are stupid?

So… do I actually need to point out the simple fact that some of us were not born into the middle class? Or that some of us, in spite of being lower caste, would still like to entertain people once in a while, and that costs about $20.00 a month? Or that some of us actually do live paycheck to paycheck, mostly because we were not expecting to be supporting both a young child and an invalid spouse with insanely expensive medications on one measly salary? Or that some of us were also not expecting to be assraped by medical bills and a sleazy insurance company that finds it cheaper for you to die than to pay? Or that some of us are not even able to go to the fucking doctor ourselves to have mysterious painful holes in our hip bones checked out because the same fucking insurance company won’t even admit to the doctor that we have a policy there even though we pay them a full god-damned THIRD of my stupid miserable salary? Or that some of us are trying to deal with all this unbelievable shit at the same time as we’re half-suicidal and still trying to help another relative who’s having trouble and are not asking the state for so much as fucking food stamps?!? How fucking DARE I not have five-fucking-hundred-goddamned-motherfucking extra dollars in my bank account. I have trouble finding the gas money to drive the thirty-five miles to my pathetic job, much less feed us. And I really ENJOY having to ask friends and relatives for help. It really makes me feel good about myself. Maybe I should get one of those fucking cushions in the goddamned bank they’re talking about.

And these kind, compassionate people, ladies and gentlemen, are exactly why the world is such a lovely place to live.

Jesus Christ, I loathe my fucking life. If I hadn’t been deserted by my own father, I’d blow my worthless brains out. But I can’t do that to my daughter. She’s the only person that loves me, and I mean that utterly.

Second Thought Update: In case you’re wondering why the hell I’d write something like this, it’s simple. I’m depressed, pissed off, and I just don’t give a flying shit about much of anything anymore. Dreams are lies and hope is what God spits in your face. What an original observation.

The good people at Sciencedebate 2008 are calling for a public candidate’s debate on science and technology. Given the complex and potentially catastrophic challenges we’re facing, the scientific literacy of the next White House inhabitant is truly a matter of survival. I would ask you all, regardless of political affiliation, to sign the petition.*

You are also given the opportunity to suggest a question. I wanted to know if the candidates would be willing to take the same standardized “No Child Left Behind” tests required by the Bush administration, and make their scores public.

Heck, the tests don’t even have to take place — I just want to see the candidates who’ve been whoring themselves out to the anti-science religious right try and answer without sounding like complete douche-bags. Now that’s entertainment!

* Of course, we all know there’s only one party likely to refuse. You know who I mean; they’re the same guys that fight to keep all the votes from being counted. Notice a pattern?