Dodging a Bullet

So night before last I'm in an overpriced motel in Pasadena, about 30 miles from LAX, and I have a 6:40 AM plane to catch. (Plus the following week is going to be stressful for reasons I won't relate here.) I figure I ought to practice returning the car the night before. I set out at 7:45, hoping to make it back to Pasadena within an hour, maybe an hour and change.

Sure enough, I take several wrong turns on the way to the airport. The rental car return
is abysmally marked, with a few haphazard signs but no clear path, and I'm driving around in circles on Sepulveda and Century and suchlike looking for Avis when I realize I have a desperate need to relieve myself. Thinking Avis would not be appreciative if I were to piss their car, (well sort fo a car, it is a rather worthless largish beast called an HHR or such that they have foisted upon me as "midsized") I begin an urgent search for a back street with a tree I can water.

Taking the road less traveled three or four times works smoothly enough. I find a deserted out of the way street which is unlikely to have any evening traffic and proceed to fertilize a handy eucalyptus. Or so I thought. In retrospect it was something of a dyscalyptus.

Much relieved, I pull a U and am surprised to see another car waiting at the light. So I'm behind this car at a bit of an angle. Perhaps my lights are not visible in the mirror of the nice lady in the other car. In any case, she suddenly takes into her head to go into reverse. I see the reverse lights come on and start leaning on my horn to no avail. She guns it and gives me a good solid thwok in the side.

Well, suddenly I am facing a sleepless night with accident reports, something which I can ill afford at the moment. I am furious. But when we go to look, there isn't any sign of damage on either car! Not a scratch!

"We dodged a bullet" I say to the nice lady, and let her go on her way and me on mine.

I find the Avis lot at last and head back to Sepulveda to find the 105 eastbound ramp. Something glitches in my brain, and when I pass the 105 ramp I think I see "405" and keep going. I am wondering if the car is a bit misaligned. Of course, I groan, she must have hit the tire. I stupidly think nothing of it, wondering if I will have to report this to Avis after all. When I am sure I have missed my ramp, I turn right onto a quiet little cul-de-sac on 30th street to do a 3-point turn and go back, but when I shift into reverse, essentially the wheel breaks off along with a bit of the axle, loosely remaining attached to the car at a jaunty angle.

I did dodge a bullet after all. Had I found the 105 ramp, this a axle-breaking trick would likely have happened at speed on an elevated expressway. Who knows what would have become of me.

Since my phone battery was dead, I was lucky to find myself right by a Domino's pizza to make a couple of calls. The tow came, Avis in total indifference swapped out the car, with no mention of the 45 degree angle that one of the wheels was dangling at. This gave me enough time to get back to Pasadena, sleep for two hours, collect my luggage and (with some trepidation) haul myself back to LAX where the plane to Austin was on time. Irene was kindly waiting at Bergstrom, and I came home and collapsed into bed.

One moral of the story is that what appears to be good luck can be bad luck and what appears to be bad luck can be good. I slept through my all too brief weekend, but intact, intact.

The other moral is that if someone backs really hard into your tire, file the accident report anyway. I guess. I don't know. I really wouldn't have thought of it, and maybe the cop wouldn't have either.

I suppose Avis will be bothering me this week as if I didn't have enough troubles. But all of that is better than getting onto the 105 elevated expressway with a wheel that is about to break off, something I had every intention of doing,

Larry Monroe invokes Shakespeare Eggly

Larry is sitting in hosting the "Phil Show" this week on KUT. He just played a tune called "Plans Aft Gang Agley", but I think he missed the reference. So...

"PLAYuns EFT GAyung EGGly" of course.

Kick butt show just the same. I love Tixes.

Have to Give 'em Credit

The Texas Republicans certainly don't mince words.

See, e.g., p 18: "We pledge our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state."

The Seven Blunders of the World

Some rich people's travel magazine has an article called the New Wonders of the World. I like the giant toaster somewhat; it's a posthumous le Corbusier church in France somewhere. The village's web site doesn't appear very proud of it, though.

The rest of the wonders, though, the usual Lebeskind and Gehry crap, ought to be prosecuted, not celebrated.

I love KUT

Paul Ray is the ever-so Texan jazz DJ. (Pay no mind to the picture. He sure sounds Texan.) He just came out with this:

"Y'know muh car's th'only shade I got out there."

rah

zed, dammit, zed

On a related note, progress is defined by running it backwards.

Think Indifferent

Famous Potatoes

I'm sure he wouldn't care for my opinions very much, and vice versa, but I find it impossible not to like this guy or the simple cheerful vision of America he represents. R I P J Simplot.

Trudeau

I was struck by the resemblance between Obamamania and Trudeaumania so I went looking to see if anyone else had noticed.

Someone had. So, I just want to get it on record that this really isn't the way I, for one, remember it going.

What can you say to people who gather their evidence in an alternative universe of their own imagining?

Tobis and his Gauchos

"Tobis and his Gauchos - led by singer and guitar player Torvald "Tobis" Tollgren (1910-86) - could be described as the first Swedish latino pop group. During the 1940s and early 1950s, Tobis and his Gauchos was very popular with their (in the eyes and ears of the Swedes) exotic and colourful music. They lad lots of tangos, rhumbas and (as in this case) sambas and even a couple of hillbilly numbers on their repertoir and made over fifty 78 rpm records 1940-53. Tobis formed his group in 1938 and disbanded the group in 1956. Torvald Tollgren later worked as a manufacturer of ballet shoes." mp3 here
 

Update: I was remiss in not crediting my source: http://the78rpmblog.blogspot.com/

Song for Yom Tov

Well I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road
and I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
Well, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year, yes, and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil's bargain,
and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

-JM

Your Flag Decal

won't get you into heaven anymore

Talkin' 'bout My Generation

I wonder what it would be like to be from a generation that wanted to please its parents. I suppose that's the norm, but to a childless boomer everything mentally healthy young people do seems bloodless and shallow, on whatever side. It all seems to be a quest for parental approval, not for creativity or self-actualization.

This may have something to do with why waiting around for youth movements isn't going to amount to much. It's not all roses, but maybe we really are a special generation. Nobody will ever have parents as out of touch as ours were. We were on opposite sides of the Future Shock.

We really had no guidance. This led to many very bad things and many very good things.

Maybe the future is still up to us.

Folk etymology

Now that's one for the books. Spotted online:

Legally Google can not be in kohutz with Yahoo.

heh

So Hip It Hurts

Huh.

I bought a Scion xD because it seemed practical and comfortable. I wasn't trying to be brash or act other than my age. I just wanted a car.

Apparently this makes me so hip it hurts. Or so unhip I can be hip by accident. Which is the same thing I guess. Somebody in Chicago was amazed by the thing, wnted to talk about it and figure me out like I was riding Ken Kesey's bus.

The fact is just that apparently I am missing some neurons. It looks exactly the same as any other hatchback to me. I prefer to buy cars from Toyota because their stuff works. I got a silver one because the red color was even uglier.

I like the steering wheel controls of the audio system, but the dash controls of the radio are among the worst user interface designs I have ever seen, and I used to run Windows 3.1 . The roof is too low and the vertical extent of visibility a bit cramped. Everything important works, and it works great for small Ikea runs. City mileage isn't great compared to the Prius but it's really pretty good on the highway.

Update: Luigi refers to its "bug eyes". The headlights are indeed a bit distinctive. I rarely approach the car from the front though and I really hadn't noticed.

Honor Among Thieves

From today's Statesman:

University of Texas at San Antonio students wanted to draft an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.

Unfortunately, it appears they copied another school's code without proper attribution.

The student in charge of drafting the code said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don't cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

Akshay Thusu said he took over the project a month ago and inherited a draft from other students.

He said he discovered that a group of students attended a conference put on by Clemson's Center for Academic Integrity five years ago. Materials from the conference, which are used by many universities, were probably the main source of UT-San Antonio's code, Thusu said.

That's why parts of the draft match word-for-word the online version of Brigham Young University's code.

Brigham Young credited the Center for Academic Integrity, but UT-San Antonio didn't. That will change, said Thusu, who plans to submit a draft with proper citation to the Faculty Senate

.

Rule of Law

Indeed.

It appears that Mr Bush got one right and the supreme court overruled him. This is pretty close to a showstopper for me. Man.

Avoid Circuit City

I must have been Texan in a previous life. I can't believe how, on leaving Circuit City after a repulsively foul consumer experience, I mutterred in perfect Texan "That's alright (assaw rat). I'll take it out of their hide (attather had.)" Weird.

So herewith, delivery on my vow. I offer you a strong piece of advice to avoid Circuit City, which essentially will not accept returns of merchandise that does not function as advertised. I won't bore you with the details of my story. If you are foolishly tempted to enter the place, and you aren't within 300 miles of a Fry's, please just go to Best Buy or some small time place instead.

If you won't take my word for it check this story out. Corroboration here, there and everywhere. Treating staff with this sort of contempt apparently leads to staff that treats customers with comparable contempt. Don't let them take it out on you.

Blame Canada

I guess it's not funny anymore.

A Stray Thought for PyCon

So it turns out I actually end up believing that rules and regulations are a good thing, but really, it's just a stray thought, don't read too much into it:

So your brother's bound and gagged
And they chained him to a chair,
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing.
In a land that's known as freedom,
How can such a thing be fair?
Won't you please come to Chicago
For the help that we can bring.

We can change the World.
Rearrange the World.
It's dying
to get better.

Politicians sit yourselves down,
There's nothing for you here.
Won't you please come to Chicago
For a ride.
Don't ask Jack to help you
Cause he'll turn the other ear.
Won't you please come to Chicago
Or else join the other side.

We can change / yes we can change the World.
Rearrange / rearrange the World.
It's dying / do you believe in justice?
It's dying / and if you believe in freedom.
It's dying / Let a man live his own life.
It's dying / Rules and regulations who needs them?
Open up the door.

Somehow people must be free,
I hope the day comes soon.
Won't you please come to Chicago,
To show your face.
From the bottom of the ocean
To the mountains of the Moon.
Won't you please come to Chicago
No one else can take your place.

We can change / yes we can change the World.
Rearrange / rearrange the World.
It's dying / If you believe in justice.
It's dying / and if you believe in freedom.
It's dying / Let a man live his own life.
It's dying / Rules and regulations, who needs them?
Open up the door.