Gas Price Bitching

I'm one of those lucky people who work from home and live within walking distance of 90% of the places they regularly go, so I'll just pre-emptively apologize for bitching about the price of my once-or-twice-a-month fill-up.

That said, it should never, ever cost $52 to fill up the tank on a two-door hatchback. That shit's just wrong.

Oh, sorry. As you were.

A few minutes ago, at the stroke of midnight, I heard a rustling in the bushes outside my apartment below my balcony, followed by some sort of animal squeal. I've only ever seen two kinds of animals back there -- my neighbor's cat, and a gigantic raccoon. So when I heard this noise, which did not sound pleasant, I scrambled for my flashlight and ran out onto my balcony to see if I could save my poor neighbor's cat.

I shined the light down along the path of bushes between my building and the next, and saw nothing. Then I heard a grunt to the right, and swung the light that way. Two heads rose up - a big raccoon head and...a smaller raccoon head. One above the other. It kind of looked like the smaller raccoon's head was sticking out of the larger raccoon's chest, with the larger raccoon standing in a sort of wide stance....

....Ohhhhhh. My bad, Mr. and Mrs. Raccoon. Didn't mean to barge in on your romantic evening. As you were.

I retreated back into my apartment, feeling oddly guilty. They had resumed before I got through the door. I think getting caught was a turn-on for them, because the really started going at it after I left. Hilarious.

Kickball is ridiculous

You probably already knew that, but it got ridiculously ridiculous last night for the back-to-back semi-finals and championship game.

First, the punchline -- we won.

Why was that unlikely? Where to begin...

1. Due to the games being rescheduled twice, we were missing 4 guys and 2 girls, leaving us with only 10 players (11 play the field in kickball).
2. Of those 6 missing players, one was our captain/lead-off kicker, and another was our bigfooted homer-smashing RBI machine.
3. Then, in the first inning of the semi-final game, our co-captain/awesome fielding catcher pulled a hammy trying to avoid a tag at third base. Down to 9 players.
4. Somehow we eeked out a 3-0 win in the semi-final.
5. Then things got retarded. First inning of the championship game, we gave up 6 runs. It's a five inning game, folks. That's a lot of runs. As far as I can remember, we scored 7 runs or more only once all season.
6. Down 6-0? No problem. We won 7-6 on a two out, bottom of the fifth bloop single.

Kickball is ridiculous.

Oh, did I forget to mention the bunt home run?

Why are we encouraging a Monkey-Robot Alliance?!

Monkeys: Cute, lovable, mentally-deficient ancient ancestors who we dress up in funny costumes for our entertainment, and who we occasionally find useful as test subjects for the next wonder-drug. But one look in their tiny monkey faces reveals the same warning which is found in their DNA; within their genetic code lies much the same potential that is found in our own, for good and ill.

Robots: Do not be fooled by the innocent prototypes that vacuum your carpet, or the more complex versions that build cars in giant assembly lines in Detroit; these, too, are but idiot cousins to a possible future enemy of all mankind - intelligent, evil machines, bent on destroying their creators and seizing the planet for themselves.

Hollywood has tried to warn us of these twin dangers countless times. Who can forget poor Charlton Heston, and his eventual and much-less-competent successor Marky Mark, in their losing struggles against a planetful of super-evolved apes and their anti-human bigotry? Or Keanu Reeves' valiant fight against a race of machines of our own creation, turned twisted and evil, and with an insidiously annoying penchant for talking way, way too much?

These movies showed us that both of these evil beings would enslave us: Monkeys would use us as beasts of burden; machines see us as an upgrade to the lithium-ion battery. Surely, then, it would be the sheerest folly for humanity to thrust these two potential destroyers of men together, to provide them with an opportunity for communion and conspiracy.

And yet, somehow, science has failed to heed these warnings. I ask you, if we continue down this path, how much longer will it be before someone utters the dreaded words of two combined nightmares: "Take your cold mechanical hands off me, you damn dirty robo-ape!"

It may already be too late to stop such an alliance, which means we have only one possible path to survival. Initially, at least, the strength of robotic apes will be confined to the digital and tropical realms. We must, therefore, strengthen our currently shaky relationship with polar bears, who have no love of the robots themselves, and work in secret to perfect vacuum-tube and other analog-based technologies, so that when the future war comes, we are prepared.

Yeah, work was slow today.

New Barbeque, Part II: The Grrrr Continues

The "No Knobs" problem was resolved amazingly well today; the store said "Oops, our bad" and, since they had no replacement in stock, they just GAVE me a barbeque worth about $100 or so more than the one I bought. It's the same brand and uses the same cart, just nicer barbeque equipment and performance. Sweet!

So I take it home, and begin to assemble the cart. I got 95% of the way through the cart assembly, which took about 2 hours. Last step: put on the front panel. Problem: The holes in the legs for the front panel are on the back legs not the front legs.

Oh man, I thought, I must be an idiot. How did I put the front legs on the back? Looking at the drawings, I found the problem in the first fucking figure in the instructions. The one that shows you how to put on the back legs. The back leg in the picture, labeled "rear leg," is the fucking front leg! Grrrrr! And of course, I didn't catch it when I put on the front legs, because the only difference between the rear and front legs is an extra hole on the in-facing side of the leg, and Figure 2 helpfully shows you only the out-facing side of the front leg. Did I say Grrrr? I meant GRRRRRRR.

Okay, I think, calm down. All this means is your front panel goes on the back. It's just a screen to hide your gas tank, so who cares. Just put the panel on the back so you can mount the shield-thingy to it and you're done.

Nope. Physically impossible. It turns out the front end of the barbeque is a quarter inch wider than the back end. Which means, so is the front panel. Which means you can't mount the front panel in the back, because it's a quarter-inch too wide.

So an hour later, and 3 hours after I started, I got the entire cart disassembled so I could swap the front and back legs. Yeah. Fun night. Tomorrow I get to do it again.

When I finally get this thing assembled, I'm gonna cook me a giant steak, drive it to the barbeque store, walk in, eat it in front of the guy who wanted $50 bucks to assemble the thing for me, and then shout "Ha! I win, motherfucker! I win!" And in honor of Natron, I might even throw in a "Game over, man, Game over!" Maybe. I still hate you, Bill Paxton.

I have no knobs.

I bought a barbeque tonight. Unassembled, cuz you know, my car is tiny, and cuz, you know, I didn't want to pay the store to assemble it. I'm a freaking ninjaneer, I can put together a barbeque.

So I took all the big parts out of the boxes and started going through the instructions. I hit a minor snag on step 5. Actually, my problem had nothing to do with step 5, which looked pretty simple -- attach stuff to the barbeque frame. The problem was that my barbeque frame was missing something that was shown in the picture. Three things, actually. Three very, very important things.

The knobs. You know, how hot do you want the damn thing to get? Turn the knobs. No knobs. I have no knobs.

So I flipped back through the directions, looking for the step where I was supposed to put the knobs on. There is no such step. Oh well, I'll just put them on now, I thought. At this point, most of the stuff was unpacked from most of the boxes. I figured that I must have not unpacked the panel with the knobs on it yet, so I took out the rest of the stuff from the rest of the boxes.

Still no knobs.

So I went down to my car with a flashlight and searched for any boxes I might have forgotten to bring in.

No boxes. No knobs.

So I went back to the instruction manual and looked at that exploded view picture that shows all the parts, and there's the frame in the picture, with the knob-laden control panel already attached.

Everything else in this thing has been exquisitely, painstakingly packed, with detailed and easy instructions. It's not like IKEA. So you're telling me that somehow, the guy in charge of putting the biggest piece of the barbeque into the box didn't noticed the control panel was missing? The knobs? The freaking knobs?!?!?!?

I'm going back there tomorrow, and I'm not leaving without knobs. I've been in the showroom, I know they have knobs. I'll leave that place knobless, if need be. No knob is safe.

No
Knob
Is
Safe.

I will have my knobs.

Old hat, new hat...

Old hat, new hat
Clean hat, dirty hat
White hat, yellow hat
'Hawks hat, 'Hawks hat.

Wear the old when dirt is near,
Wear the new when we go for beer,
Wear either one when it's time to cheer,
Wear 'em both if you're a ninjaneer.