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September 12, 2005

Dead cars, bad taste, power outages...business as usual

I only worked half a day today, courtesy of L.A.'s citywide blackout, so I ended up knocking out a lot of chores of the life-maintenance variety this afternoon. By the time I would have otherwise been leaving the recording studio, I had already paid a variety of bills, returned some e-mails, made some phone calls, and finished off John Barth's "The End of the Road". He's one bleak bastard, that Barth. I'm still not sure how I feel about having read that book and "The Floating Opera" back-to-back; the latter reads like a superior draft of the former, and since I read "The Floating Opera" first, I didn't feel like there was much new ground to cover in "The End of the Road".

There's probably a wonderful segue from Barth over in to the buying of a new car, but I'll be damned if I feel like expending the energy to think of it. I hope I go out of this world with more grace than my 1993 Saturn did right before I left for Japan. Suffice it to say that I was subjected to a grand guignol of shaking, overheating, and foul odors before the car shook off its mortal coil (or, rather, a rod). Luckily, I was in the position to purchase my mother's car from her. Out with the '93 Saturn, in with the '97. With 100,000 miles on it, I figured I was set for years to come.

As nature abhors a vacuum, so do the car gods abhor assumptions.

They fear me.

After all, it's not every mortal who can kill two cars in 90 days flat.

The '97 Saturn perished of a cracked cylinder and subsequently corrupted engine last Thursday. I'd had it all of three months, and had unwittingly spent an amount on its upkeep equal to what I'd eventually get for its trade-in value.

So now I have a 2006 Saturn. It's a beautiful, brilliant blue, it works perfectly, and it's totally dashed any hope I had of moving to a less ghetto-riffic apartment building when my lease is up. I haven't named the car yet, but I think I will. I'm open to suggestions, all.

I'm in the process of getting more recent photographs put onto the site. The current batch are a little outdated, as was hammered home when I put up a casual picture of myself from the Japan trip and some folks out there in internet-land had their minds thoroughly blown that I could have...ahem...expanded my borders so suddenly, not realizing it was no lipid blitzkrieg that had taken place, but rather a sparsely-chronicled, slow conquest. Also, I no longer look all of 16 when I'm clean-shaven. Now I look 23...

I'm still losing weight, though, so hey--no harm, no foul. Except for my ego, which felt like President Taft must have felt when he special-ordered a bathtub for his huge Commander-in-Chief butt.

One of the pictures below is a recent photo of me. One is a Mexican dwarf matador. The third is an old Asian man in New Orleans warding off his rescuers, courtesy of my questionable sense of humor, fond memories of "Street Fighter," and MS Paint.

Posted by patrick at September 12, 2005 09:35 PM

Comments

Posted by: Ashley at September 12, 2005 09:41 PM

Posted by: Rich Lashua at September 13, 2005 09:57 AM

Posted by: Marianne at September 14, 2005 10:36 PM

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