I changed my headlight today, y�all. I bought the thing, popped open my hood, and put the sucker in, all by myself with no help from anyone. I�ve never felt more testosterony in my life. Of course, it took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to pop the hood � as it turns out, the car does not respond to �Open sesame!� � but I did it! Now I just have to get someone at the police station to sign off on my fix-it ticket, and I�m all good. Oh, and I also have to find someone who remembers that I asked them to put air in the tires AND fix the headlight, before they tell me they don�t have my headlight in stock and I�m free to go, and then I go and find out when I get home that they didn�t put air in the tire either, like I had asked them to, and now I have to go to some gas station and buy a tire pressure gauge and probably some book on how to read the gauge and what constitutes �good tire pressure� to begin with, and THEN I�m all good.
On the subject of books and help and all that noise, I think my grandmother has finally lost her mind. I�m kind of a lousy letter-writer, but I decided that with some of my Unemployment Time (Soon to come to a close � I have a job! It starts on Friday! Woohoo!) I was going to write to my grandparents. So I sat down and typed up a quick blah blah about what I�ve been up to (nothing) and what interesting things are going on in my life right now (�Dear Grandma and Grandpa � I�ve been unemployed.�). It wasn�t much, but at least I made the effort, you know? Well, yesterday I got a package in the mail from my grandmother. I wondered perhaps if it might not be an early birthday gift, and I opened it with my curiosity piqued.
What I found was a plastic box with a big title emblazoned on it. I�m afraid to tell you what the title is, because it�s sort of obscure, and my grandmother does use the old computer, and I�m afraid she�ll find this if I�m too direct, and I don�t want to hurt her feelings. So let�s just say that it appears to be a self-help program, but damned if I can figure out from the title what it�s supposed to help me do. The note she attached to it was cryptic, to say the least, and so I just opened the box up and found eight cassette tapes and a little booklet. I flipped through the booklet, hoping it would help illuminate the matter, only to become more and more confused. For example, opening the book to a random page, I read the following: �In a state of relaxed alertness notice your deep even breathing as you turn the pages of the book before your eyes in a steady rhythm. Chanting to the rhythm breathing and your page-turning, mentally repeat the phrase:
�Re-lax...Re-lax. Four-Three-Two-One.
Re-lax...Re-lax. Keep the state...See the page.�
Okay, what? I mean, first of all...no, first of all, see Exhibit A, which speaks entirely for itself on the �first of all�. Secondly, �relaxed alertness�? Wha? And is this author allergic to punctuation? Whither the comma? And whither the grammatical sense-making? What does �Chanting to the rhythm breathing and your page-turning� even mean? You can see that understanding this gift is an uphill battle. There�s also some weird advice about lucid dreams and other things that sound like hallucinogenic experiences. So I turned to the beginning of the booklet, to see if there was an introduction that might finally engender all this with some clarity or context.According the tiny section called �Benefits Of The Course�, among other things I can hope to gain from this course are the �personal access code to [my] inner genius�. Which is...nice, I suppose, if a bit corporate-team-building-exercise-y. In more exciting endeavors, I should also be able to �supercharge [my] intuitive powers�, and �meet the �Oracle-On-Demand� within [myself]�. How awesome is that last one? How much help would that be on trivia night? The next skill, however, is my favorite: �Reach through time and space to extract the wisdom of the ages.� Which I was planning on doing anyway, so this is really quite fortuitous!
I mean, dude. Dude! How much of a bad-ass would I be if I could reach through time and space and extract the wisdom of the ages? I would be so popular at parties and bar mitzvahs and things, and I�d be really good at Jeopardy and The Price Is Right, too. I might also be able to finally understand why Paris Hilton continues to clog our mass media outlets with her creepy, anemic, three-quarter smile, despite the way it makes your soul feel greasy and used.
I�d also already know how to check my tire pressure.
In closing, I also have some big news. I hadn�t reported it yet, because half of it was really May Day�s news to tell, but now that she�s spilled the beans, I suppose it�s time: an era is coming to an end, y�all. When our lease is up at the end of March, May Day will be moving in with her boyfriend Chip. While I hate that bitch for leaving me, it really is fantastic news and I couldn�t be happier for both of them. Seriously � there are couples who make you feel good just looking at them, and May Day and Chip are totally one of those couples, because they�re so happy together. And where does this leave me?, you might ask. Well, it leaves me with a new roommate of my own: Ulrich.
But that�s an entry for another time. For now, I shall leave you with some fond remembrances of the time May Day and I spent in cohabitation. Like our (brief) obsession with American Idol, our experiences with turtle racing and finding dismembered body parts, or the time we misplaced my futon together. There were short breaks with sanity and lofty ambitions, long walks and complicated moves, but most of all? There�s been friendship, and that�s been great.
I wish them nothing but the best, though, because it�s still awesome.
Word Of The Week �Atari�, Japanese for �prepare to be attacked�. Try shouting it really loud: �ATARI!� I don�t care if you�re at the grocery store�try it! I�m Watching: Medium. It totally reminds me of Profiler, which I used to watch on CourtTV when...you know what? The rest of that story is boring. It reminds me of Profiler, only starring an actress I�d heard of before. I�m Also Watching: Passions, and it�s about damn time Theresa got off her ass and really started jacking peoples� shit up.