I've just found out why people don't put ice in their milk: milk's high freezing point.
Since i've been driving to work and thus spending more time around cars, i (and my coworkers) have noticed that the bay area suffers from a surfeit of vanity license plates. Primarily, dumb vanity license plates. A catalog of these dumb plates is beyond the scope of this particular post, but an interesting phenomenon that has developed is the use of stupid license plate as metonymy for the car and/or individual. So, for example, when the weather started turning warm (in March, goddammit), i commented on the way to lunch, "Huh. V8 4 AL's got the top down today."
V8 4 AL is either a dark green mid-90s Mustang convertible or a white middle-aged bald human.
So the other day, i noticed that NETANE[1] had a really, really low rear passenger-side tire. I pointed it out on the way to lunch:
tyler: "And that's like really low."
hotsteve: "Yeah, how can you not notice that? It's like, hey, my car is handling like shit. Except, oh wait, it's a fucking Yukon."
In spite of my well-maintained cynicsm, i am often very innocent. And it was in this spirit of innocence that i asked benjy, "What's that in the back of your car?"
The answer was bamboo. But because benjy was involved, it was not that simple. Jesus no.
The bamboo sat in a medium-sized cardboard box. It lay in the form of 12 inch tall, 24 inch wide segments suitable for, like, decorative fencing, i guess. You can see something that looks virtually identical to the bamboo in question here. That doesn't really give you a sense of scale, but that's a puppy and not a full-grown dog, if that helps.
Benjy has never demonstrated a need or desire for decorative fencing of his own, so he was quick to add to the rapidly growing tale that the bamboo was for his mom.
"What," i asked very, very stupidly, "is it doing in the back of your car?"
"Well," benjy said, before launching into his most commonly uttered phrase, "It's complicated."
Benjy's mom already had some of this bamboo (which you see in the picture linked above), but wanted some more. Somehow, she managed to find more of this fencing[1], but it belonged to someone living in Hayward.
"So why not just mail it?"
"The bamboo is heavy. It would have been expensive to mail. So i had to go pick it up."
But of course benjy got lost on his way to pick it up, because benjy has roughly the navigational wherewithal of a deaf fruit bat, and then he had to deal with the pivotal weight of the package. Thus, the bamboo continued to live in the back of his car because, as benjy took pains to inform me, it was too heavy to move. Even if he could move it, he said, he didn't have anywhere to put it, and it wouldn't be worth putting it there anyway because it was so damned heavy. And since benjy could always just make me drive to Kirkwood such that the back of his car would never need to accomodate boots and bags and snowboards and groceries and muddy, intoxicated, hummus-eating skiiers and snowboarders, the bamboo just stayed in his car.
For five months.
Until, finally, benjy had to get something out of the back of his car for someone else.
"What's that?" mark asked, pointing at the mythic box.
Benjy began to launch into the full, exhaustive explanation, but i interrupted.
"Hang on," i said. "I want to see how heavy this bamboo actually is."
I reached down, affirmed that my grip on the box was true, and heaved. And much like the Sword before Arthur, the box came free from the trunk.
It weighed perhaps 20 pounds.
To verify that it was the box's low mass and not any Arthurian powers on my part, i handed the box off to mark, who promptly and without any apparent strain hoisted it to his shoulder.
Well, i thought, there is still the issue of storage. Except that i forgot, as i often forget, that benjy lives in a cracky ass apartment which among its many features boasts an entire room between the hallway and the apartment's single bathroom whose sole purpose is and can only be to store junk. While i am not an artsy or craftsy kind of guy, i think i can charitably call a box of bamboo fencing "junk".
Also, benjy's room is converted attic space, so the ceiling of his room is the roof of the house. Thus, it meets the floor at a 45 degree angle, which creates a triangular shape useless for anything save the conspicuous, shining exception of... a small box of junk.
So really the problem isn't figuring out where benjy could have stored this box, but rather to choose one of the cornucopia of suitable places for its storage.
Indeed, this remains a mystery, for a man could die of thirst searching for a single specific box of junk amongst benjy's sizable collection of similar boxes. Fortunately, the box has finally made it out of my sight and, blessedly, out of my mind.
[1] It appears that this is less difficult than i thought. Who knew there was an entire bamboo fence economy out there? Google did! I did not. This is probably why google has more money than i do.
I had a physical this morning. Apart from it being the first time i'd had my balls fondled by a man in at least 8 hours, it was a lot like every other trip i've taken to the doctor.
As part of the physical, i had some blood tests run, which involved me going to a lab where they drew the blood. As i got directions to this lab, the nurse/receptionist asked me, "Are you fasting?"
"Uh, no."
"Ok, before you get the blood drawn, you have to avoid eating or drinking anything for 12 hours."
And so, my laziness and forgetfulness paid off for once -- i "fasted" this morning by forgetting to grab the glass of Cran-Grape juice i was going to drink, and so got to go get my blood drawn immediately after the appointment.
During the interview phase of the examination, the doctor asked me about risk factors:
"Any drugs? Cocaine or anything?"
"No."
"Share needles?"
"No."
"Share straws?"
"N-- what? What kind of straws?"
"Cocaine straws."
"Oh. No. I was wondering if you were asking about, like, soda straws, cuz i've probably shared those."
I've never even heard of a "coke straw", but i guess you have to call it something (when it's not a $100 bill or whatever).
The doctor also suffered from a global find and replace error, where i mentioned that i had done the California AIDS Ride a couple years ago, and he proceeded to tell me a story about a patient of his who did "The HIV Ride".
He told me a lot of stories about patients, including one about a guy who went to a sex party, and then came in to get checked out, and the doctor wanted to swab the inside of his penis with a q-tip (cuz that's what you do, i have gathered, and was very excited to not have to find out exactly what that feels like), and the guy said, "That won't be necessary," and revealed that some kind of discharge had run out of his penis and all down his leg.
The doctor also swore and asked about my "nuts", instead of about my "testicles". I liked his bedside manner, though, and it evidently lowered my blood pressure about 8 points.
This is sort of old news, as this happened early this week, but for completeness, i wanted to inform you that "[scribble] sucks ass" was completely polished out of the brass in Thomas. Another, larger section was also polsihed out, although to my knowledge nothing had been written there.
The standing questions remain, and new ones are added: did someone ask for the polishing to take place? Did one of the janitorial/maintenance folks take it upon himself[1] to bust out a sander and go to work? We may never know.
This is, admittedly, sometimes interesting, because a few weeks ago some female 'Tagger had a teary conversation on her cell phone. In the bathroom. Nothing like the endless echoing of your sobs against hard tile walls to comfort you in the midst of emotional crisis. Or to comfort the four people in earshot of the women's bathroom out in the engineering sector.
[2] Or "themself" or -- even worse -- "theirselves"? "Themselves"? Do you realize how stupid you are? God, i hate you.
Hace dos semanas que están pintando el edificio. Esto dice que cada mañana, alrededor de las 8:30, algún ruido me despierta.
Mi dormitorio está sobre el pasillo entre los dos edificios, donde están los garajes. Este espacio es donde trabajan los pintadores. Cada mañana, hay música en español, hablando en español, y el clang de escaleras de extensión. Estas escaleras hacen un clang por cada escalón que extenden. Aparece que necesitan unas doce escalones para subir a mi ventana, donde pueden cubrir las ventanas con plástico para hervirme en mi cama y cantar por mi ventana abierta directamente para aprobar mi comprensión.
Los días de trabajo, generalmente me levanto y me preparo por trabajar cuando llegan. Pero hoy día es domingo, y trato de dormirme más porque no puedo dormir durnate la semana, porque me despiertan temprano cada maldita día. Así que, cuando me despertaron esta mañana, me fui a la planta baja para mirar un poco de tele y echarme una siestita.
Mi siestita duró casi dos horas, cuando me despertaron otra vez. Habían encotrado la única ventana en la casa que estaba directamente sobre mi cabeza, y empezaron a usar alguna herramients eléctricos ahí mismo.
Por lo menos, me despertaron en tiempo para ver el brillante séptimo inning del partido A's a los Rayos Diablos, en que los A's permitieron seis runs en tres errores. World Series, aquí venimos.
