22Dec / 2009

The light machine

I’m pretty sure it was a call I got and not an ESP message because a conversation was involved and ESP messages are more one-sided experiences of sensing something – something just happened, someone is about to call, whatever. Say it was a call, and the kid said her car died after reaching Vienna and she left it in a bus lane and got a ride into town.

Being ostensibly the alpha male now, things like cars abandoned in tow-away zones and cat… solids are my purview, so I initiated nervous breakdown proceedings and looked for the car on my way into work. Luckily for her, Beta had taken bridge #2 and not bridge #1, which has no good places to stop when your car breaks down.

Believe me, empirical research etc.

I eventually found her car, and she told me to put a sign on it so they wouldn’t tow it, and told me exactly what to write, I always do best with clear instructions, and I went to the shop across the street and bought some clear tape and some off-brand Saran-wrap stuff because they didn’t have clear plastic things to put your paper don’t-tow-me signs into, and taped all that to the window and went on to work, hoping they wouldn’t tow it and relieved to have that step behind me.

We telephoned some more during the day, and met after work to have a look at it and maybe move it to a better place. The auto club guy had said he would be there some time in the next 6 hours and would call half an hour in advance. As we were looking at her car and trying to start it another car pulled in front of us, also a breakdown.

Beta’s car wouldn’t start, meaning it was, most likely, the alternator, known as the Lichtmaschine in German, meaning light machine. And not the battery, which is a pretty good one, and fairly new.

It wasn’t the fan belt, I didn’t think, because it seemed to be doing proper fan-belt-like things. And it wasn’t, like, moisture in the distributor, because I don’t think diesels have distributors, right, and moisture always seems to involve praying and angels, at least in my experience, and there was none of that.

Then as I was helping the guy who broke down in front of us push his car into a safer position, Beta got a call that the autoclub guy would be coming soon. We went to my car to look for her gloves, which she had lost and thought she might have left them in my car but didn’t, as it turned out and when we got back the autoclub guy was already parked in the lane next to Beta’s car (I eventually found her gloves in the snow behind her car).

So it took the guy less than 30 minutes to get to her car, and so on. That must be a good job, being an autoclub guy, because everyone is always so happy to see you! Like the opposite of being a dentist. Greeted with open arms and smiles everywhere you go.

Fuck, it was freezing out. This nasty Viennese wet cold that sucks your body heat out through your hands and the soles of your shoes.

The man said it was the alternator. Beta’s car started right up when he gave it a jump, but the battery wasn’t loading when he checked it with his potentiometer or whatever. Some box with two alligator clips and a dial. He got a crowbar and gave the alternator a few whacks but that didn’t help, strangely. I guess that means it wasn’t, like, frozen and was seriously broken or something.

Beta got her car towed to a mechanic, or, rather, the auto club guy organized that. And the mechanic will fix it. And all will be well.

Beta kept thanking me. I kept saying, I have a lot of car-breakdown karma to work off. Late-night pick-ups, flat tires. Once, before Alpha and I got married, we went for a drive around the Olympic Peninsula and I had my light machine fixed beforehand, rebuilt at relatively great expense, to lower the chances of breakdown out in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as we got to the middle of nowhere, the alternator began to burn. Swiss tourists who gave us a lift to the nearest pay phone, on the side of a hotel at the beach, laughed the whole way. I called my dad and we watched whales for four hours until he showed up and towed me to a supermarket parking lot with a tow rope so amazingly short I felt like Luke Skywalker doing the Death Star, that level of concentration, while my brother, who had accompanied my father, sat in the passenger seat and told me stories so funny that my eyes filled with tears and all I could see was the bumper of my dad’s pickup truck a couple feet in front of my car as we tore down narrow forest roads.

So I told Beta I didn’t mind standing around with her in the snow while the auto club guy made everything right.

Permalink 4 Comments

17Dec / 2009

Amalgam fillings found to cause Gypsy curses

Wow, the mojo asana post was a real spam magnet.

I love my new yoga mat so much.

I still feel energetic, although at a more socially acceptable level. I was a bit talkative yesterday. When the cat got me up at 4 this morning, I was, four, okay, cool, an hour more to fuck off.

And I’m really looking forward to the effects doodads Santa is bringing me, although I sort of dread a little bit the look on Alpha’s face when I stick the oyster mic on the saw and run it through the one with all the buttons.

Maybe I’ll wait until her next business trip to do that, in fact.

New goal: clean out my workshop so I have a place to put all this junk.

And lose weight.

And memorize some new jokes, as long as I’m at it.

Permalink 13 Comments

16Dec / 2009

The Mojo Asana

So we were all like, wah, do we have to go to yoga, last night, Alpha and I, by “we” I mean “I”, and not really “wah” but, it’s cold out, a nice fire is a tempting thing, but we went, both of us, readily in the end, and willingly, a new yoga place with a new teacher because Alpha got robbed at the last place and it gave us a bad feeling sort of, and the people here looked nice, and hey, she had yoga mats for sale so I got a new yoga mat first off, and we ordered yoga cushions, so it was worth it right there, because I hadn’t had a yoga mat before, always just borrowed spares. Plus there was a fairly pretty, young brunette with nice hips I did a good job of not staring at, sort of a sad look in the depths of her eyes, just the way I like, sad and vulnerable, and the teacher instructed in more detail and the asanas were in general more strenuous than at the last place. Less exotic-language singing, just an Om at the end and Namaste, and at the beginning a story about a little boy who wanted to meet god and had lunch with an old lady at a park, shared his lunch with her on a bench, no conversation, just smiles, and when he got home his mom asked him what he had been up to all day since he was in such a good mood, and he said he had lunch with god and she has a nice smile, and the old woman when she got home was asked by her son the same question and she said, I had lunch with god and he is a lot younger than I expected which story, okay, but OTOH it pretty much sums up my personal theology right there.¹ So another good sign, I guess, or at least not bad. And in the relaxation winding-down thing at the end she — the instructor — talked about “sending smiles” to various body parts, such as feet and legs etc.

And we came home and went to bed and fuck if I didn’t wake up at 2 in the morning so fucking pumped up with energy, mojo and ideas, my legs so full of fucking smiles, like restless-leg syndrome on crystal meth, that I ran downstairs so as not to wake my wife and licked all the Christmas card envelopes, and sorted them by country of destination for easier postal service and read another chapter in Inherent Vice. It was like being plugged into a wall socket. Ideas for novel chapters and blog posts, such as the following:

Beta visited me at lunch yesterday to sign Christmas cards and chat. She was wearing a frilly sort of sleeveless black mini-dress over jeans and I told her that she looked like someone who had escaped from a circus. She was all, huh? I meant it in a positive way. I have always admired and enjoyed her unique, personal fashion sense. Dunno if she took it the way I intended. And I have liked the dress over jeans thing since (one of) my beautiful cousin(s) used to visit back in the, I guess, early 70s dressed like that, she and her hippie friends, and I thought it looked cool.

I also had a series of footnotes to include in that post there but, no time! I didn’t get started writing or painting or surfing the internet because it was 2AM and I wanted sleep. I went back to bed and mananged to sleep from about 3 to 4.30 or 5. Had some dream about sex, at least I think it was about sex, may have involved fucking, or not. It is unclear.

On the way to school, I was telling Gamma how hyper I was, thanks to whatever new mojo asanas we had done, talking at a marvelous rate and she was like, Heh, I believe you. And she told me about an end-of-the-world dream she had had, one of a lot she’s been having apparently, and I would have been, gee, interesting, except it was a spookily close match for a similar dream a friend of mine had a couple days ago so I was like, paying close attention and asking questions such as, How was the weather? and Who was in it? and all the details were matching. It was snowing. I was in it.

And right now, I look out the window and see: it is snowing. And I am here, reflected in the window.

Whoa.

_____

1 My only, or main, problem with this theology is it means the douche in the Doblo who cut me off in traffic this morning is also god. Which, man.

Permalink 3 Comments

15Dec / 2009

No, Tom, I don’t want to be your friend or in your movie or whatever

Tom Cruise invited Morgan Freeman over to talk about a project. Things kept happening while they talked. Accidents and catastrophes that Morgan Freeman eventually figured out Tom Cruise had prearranged. He also figured out that the project was merely an excuse to get him to come over, and that what Tom Cruise really wanted was for Morgan Freeman to be his friend. It was night and Morgan Freeman was wearing a colorful, striped terrycloth bathrobe, due to one of the catastrophes, and standing in front of the fountain at the Gloriette above Schönbrunn palace, when he said, “Tom, I’m not interested in being involved in your project, nor in any friendship with someone so manipulative.”

Then my alarm went off and I really had to pee.

I slept all night, interrupted only once when someone tapped me, twice, on the back. My wife seemed to be asleep. Have the cats learned to tap? I wondered. Or do we have freaky Mansonesque burglars? I couldn’t see anyone. Maybe they were hiding. But if we had burglars, the cats might be uneasy or something, and they seemed calm. But can cats tap like that? Like a wife waking you up in the middle of the night for some reason. Or a guy in a bar, before he picks a fight with you. Or a crazy burglar.

How odd, I thought. And decided to have a dream. And Tom Cruise wrecked it. I was showing Gamma a big, phat Vespa with a built-in television when Tom Cruise stole my dream and pissed off Morgan Freeman. Serves him right.

Permalink 4 Comments

14Dec / 2009

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Man: Yeah, so basically, the Dunning-Kruger effect is, the stupider you are, the smarter you think you are.

Girl: How smart are you?

Man: Oh, pretty sm… oooh. I see what you did there.

Girl: Heh.

Permalink

10Dec / 2009

Careers in Science: Zoosemiotics

The cat was chirping.

She was telling the zoosemiotician something, but it was heavily contextual, so he had to stop what he was doing, whatever that was, something with a pen and a Moleskine that looked like a guy fisting a wasp while Juliette Binoche watched, and observe the cat more closely.

The cat was chirping and looking at the front door, so the zoosemiotician opened the door and the cat went out. Three more came in, so he fed them.

It was like a story problem. One cat goes out, three come in, how many are eating? Two, because one has a thing whereby he won’t eat with the other cats unless you watch.

Obviously not hungry enough, was the zoosemiotician’s diagnosis. He was depressed. He had been reading about how stupid people are. That is, he had known it for a long time, that people are stupid, but god. He had made the mistake of reading about Fox news pie charts that were nonsense and Fox news survey results that added up to 120%, and he had watched that video where that guy interviews Palin supporters and not a single one can name a single actual Palin policy. Even accounting for bias and editing, it was a chilling thing to watch.

The zoosemiotician thinks, the Dunning-Kruger effect goes further towards explaining modern society than any other single explanation of anything.

The zoosemiotician’s wife comes into the kitchen. He offers her coffee.

“WTF is that in your journal? It looks like a guy fisting a wasp.”

The zoosemiotician chirps. His wife opens the front door.

A cat comes in.

Permalink 8 Comments

09Dec / 2009

Careers in Science: Stomatology

The stomatologist’s wife gave him a tongue scraper.

Blue.

Molded plastic handle branching, curved, with a single scraping blade at the end. All in one piece. The stomatologist wondered how long it would be until the razor blade companies got involved, after which scrapers would be molded with the scraping blade at a more efficient angle, and finally manufactured with multiple scraper blades; first two, then three and more.

The tongue scraper spent several days in the stomatologist’s cabinet before he gave it a try.

Wow!

The stomatologist thought.

He wished he had a microscope, because, wow!

No wonder the dog didn’t want to kiss me anymore, thought the stomatologist, even though he didn’t have a dog.

The stomatologist wonders why everything is blue. His toaster, his coffee maker, his teawaterboiler, his shampoo and toothpaste.

The stomatologist just got the old kitchen table back from the carpenter, who refinished it. He is happy at how it turned out. He tells his daughter a story about one time when his dog shat plastic army men, then spends 15 minutes trying to work out what motivated him to tell the story.

The stomatologist hopes he isn’t turning into one of those guys who travel in clouds of malapropisms, like when you roll down the car window on the freeway and receipts fly all over.

Permalink 2 Comments

← Older posts Newer posts →