Author: gala5931

Now, you might wonder just where the hell I’ve been. While my various adventures are not necessarily suited to be etched in the html of webshite, I can tell you that I’ve been playing Gran Turismo 4 as if I were an automaton programmed to drive and drive alone. If you are even vaguely considering getting it, get your sorry ass out there and get it right now.

Just the other day I found something new. Something awesome. OK, so I got the IB license, opening up more races. In the rally races, the Normal Tsukuba circuit is a single 3-lap race. The prize car is valued at about 100 large. and you can run the race over and over, thus getting the aforementioned prize car over and over. And selling it over and over. Not a bad take of 3.19.109 minutes of race time.

God damn it.

The first day with some sun and I’m stuck inside, waiting for Mr. Fix-It to swing down and check out the water dripping from the window in the bathroom.

When stepping outside is synonymous with brutal cold and frustrating driving, the scope of potential activities narrow dramatically. One would think this would cause an up-swing in the world of blogs, but no. We’re all starting to crack, and our blogs reflect it. My day-to-post ratio has dropped substantially, even with last weekend’s marathon. Over at webshite, Greg is happy to let us know he’s got nothing going on. At outgrabes, boredom is tune of the day. Swish is on sabbatical, and DHKA (while not a blog) has been silent since the cold began.

And here it is, a sunny day with melting snow and the promise of a decent drive, and I’m doing the same thing I’ve done for weeks. Sit inside and screw around.

Side-note: Water damage follows me around. My childhood home, my college dormroom, my two previous apartments, and now my current living sitcheeation. I think water’s out to get me.

I have government issues. I come from a town where we voted by raising our hands in town meeting and state in which there are no taxes and no services. I now live in a state where they make laws as if the goal of human existence was to cover all the paper in the world with esoterica. If the current year was 1995, I’d say I experienced culture shock, but the proliferation of the internet has made any accepted turn of phrase passe in nano-seconds, and I wouldn’t want to lose my credibility.

Here’s the problem. I don’t trust the government, and I don’t trust the people. For example, I’m not a big fan of the jury system, since it takes people who don’t necessarily know anything about the law and puts them in charge of implementing it. I also don’t think the judge should make all of the decisions, since people have biases and mortgages.

Let’s talk about public school curricula. (No, wait! Keep reading! I promise, it won’t be too bad. If you get bored, just think about how ‘curricula’ reminds you of Bunnicula.) Who should decide whether or not to teach about evolution? Now, the federal govt coming down and telling the town and city govts what to do gets my blood warm, but my guess is that the number of school districts that want not to / do not teach evolution is getting up there, and this needs to be stopped by people who have brains.

This is my pain. I don’t trust big central govt not to exploit the hell out of everything and I don’t trust the citizens to make educated decisions.

So what do I do about it? Like any self-respecting American under 37, I blog about it. Completely ineffectual, but it does feel so very, very good. I mean, to the untrained eye it’s almost like I’m writing a respectable article about a pressing issue, when in fact I’m vaguely bitching about whatever’s on my mind without being restrained by having to have a good point or any recommendations. No editor needed, I’ll publish whatever the fuck I want, thank you. This format rocks.

Three day weekend, hour 52.

I think we’ve learned just what I do when I’ve got free time: videogames and drinking.

Last night, I judged a bake-off. After ten desserts, three cups of coffee, and a half-dozen cigarettes, I felt like a 2nd grader on Halloween. I’m still a little spazzed out.

Three day weekend, hour 36.

I have a confession to make. Last night, a friend told me about a website which has broadened the concept of those digital pet things. Remember those? Well, here’s how the conversation went:

Mike: “So, yeah. You feed ’em and clean ’em and all that.

Alex: “Uh-huh.”

Mike: “But they’ve made a whole world for them, all these different islands.”

Alex: “Yeah. Uh-huh.”

Mike: “And they can fight each other.”

Alex: “Oh, your neopet is going DOWN, BITCH!”

Never mind my deep-seated psychological problems related to competition for now. I went and set myself up a Neopet today. Here’s the deal. It’s a whole bunch of flash games you play to get points to buy stuff for your pet. Like minesweeper and poker and stuff, but in this loose configuration of locales and with Wuzzle-looking beasties. I guess it’s like any MMORPG, but without the monthly charge.

So yeah. I hope nobody finds out.

Three day weekend, hour 28.

Apparently Saturday morning at 11 is peak Grandma-calling hours. Two grandmothers before noon, one discussing a past visit, the other scheduling an upcoming one. The latter is my grandmother, the Italian lady from the Bronx who has lived in VT for fifty years and misses real Italian food. I’ve got a feeling Buffalo has more to offer in that regard than Burlington.

Three day weekend, hour 24.

My plan had been to sleep in, but the combination of the upstairs neighbor clomping around at 6 and the incessent squeaking of the radiators put that concept to bed. I got up and went down to the basement so I could stare in impotence at the offending pipes, apparently under the impression I would have been able to diagnose the issue and then change the universal properties of metal with my bare hands. “What’s he looking for, a big ON/OFF switch?”

Three day weekend, hour eleven.

Aside from about an hour and a half of eating excellent lunch, enjoying conversation, and answering the blasted phone, all I’ve done since the last post is play PS2 games.

You see, something in my head changed today. A little backstory – I have become more and more voracious for new titles, since when I get a game I either play it all the way through or stop when the fun-to-difficulty ratio swings too far to the right. This leaves me with a stack of games that I have had enough of. Every once in a while I go back and mess around a bit, but for the most part they’re as useful to me as used Kleenex brand facial tissues. One of the titles that was set aside for difficulty issues is Gran Turismo 3. I pulled it back out a few days ago, and today I found that I could get past the parts that gave me trouble before. So now, with these newfound racing skills, I was unable to stop. The trophies and prize cars kept rolling in, and before I knew it, it was 6.

Now I go drink.

Three day weekend, hour six.

Only in Buffalo does it take three stops to buy lunch.

At the recommendation of a German scientist, the fraulein and I went in search of a deli which is purported to have the best bratwurst in town. All I had to go on was a general location (Grant and Amherst) and a single syllable: “spaaaaah”. Right when we had given up and started to head home, there on the right appeared Spar’s. In we go to find on display all manner of german meat products, including the promised bratwurst.

After a swing by Globe Market for bread and Wilson Farms for mustard, we’re go for lunch. I was tempted to run out to Premier to get some weird German beer, but the two Molsons left over from last night’s sixer will do. I’ll keep you posted.

Three-day weekend, hour three.

Just got back from a supply run. Every time I take a day off I end up at a store of some kind, and it always weirds me out. The only men at a store on a weekday are retired or gay, and there stands Alex, living out the part of the dazed young married guy to an absolute T.