Assorted Breakthroughs

My car has never been so shiny. And the inside? Vacuumed. Starbucks cups from a month ago disposed of. Miscellaneous parking receipts stacked in a neat pile inside the empty dashboard slot where a fancy radio could, but does not, reside.

On Monday I took my car to Schmidt’s Collision Repair on Sheridan Drive in Amherst New York to have an unfortunate blemish repaired, and 350-some-odd dollars later, it has been returned to me in fantastically shiny and clean shape. Even the tires emit a glossy sheen. Shiny rubber! This is what America is all about.

I am utterly thrilled. But I, having been raised in an environment where feelings of guilt are nurtured, feel decidedly guilty. I know this is all a customer service effort, an attempt to lure frequent guardrail-scrapers back again and again with visions of gleaming new fenders and tires that glisten in the sunlight. I know this. But there are some parts of me that I cannot change: the length of my fingers, and my feelings of guilt when other people clean up my messes.

And when those messes are especially heinous, composed of weeks-old GoogleMaps printouts and aged fast-food cups, pay-at-the-pump receipts from scattered gas stations and salt-stained empty containers of windshield defrosting fluid, those feelings are particularly acute. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. My car was still a fully-functional people mover, and the effort required to clear a seat was never what would be described as substantial. Still, I wish I could have picked up a little.

But what’s done is done, and I am most sincerely appreciative, Schmidt’s Collision Repair on Sheridan Drive in Amherst New York. I lack the facilities to do such car detailing, living without a driveway such as I do. Vacuuming, let alone tire scrubbing, would have been difficult (“pardon me, traffic, while I place this vacuum in the northbound lane of Elmwood Avenue”). And further, spending precious quarters to operate a standalone auto-vac at the gas station for several moments would only serve to divert this scarce resource away from the Laundromat, where it is most surely needed. So I suppose it is all for the best: my car is repaired, and cleaner than ever.

Now. Matt asked for more info on the loaner.

It was a white Ford Escort with a tan interior, no more than ten years old. Its distinguishing characteristics were as follows: (1) uncommonly loud engine, operating on the cusp of legality, and (2) violent shaking. The shaking was particularly strong at idle, when the dashboard and steering column moved with such ferocity that the gauges were rendered nearly unreadable. The good features of this vehicle, however, outweighed the bad. Specifically, this car was noted for its: (1) freeness. The 30 bucks I saved by not renting will be enjoyed in the form of beer or other consumables, with which I will toast this dangerously quirky little beast.

All vehicular issues thus addressed, we must now turn our attention to significantly more important matters: I recently discovered the biggest breakthrough to hit nut-butters since, well, the peanut (to which I am allergic). It is: chocolate soynut-butter.

As I child, I occasionally ate but ultimately rejected almond-butter. Now an adult, I am a major connoisseur of soynut-butter, eating the plain or crunchy varieties nearly everyday for lunch (they travel well). The brand is I.M. Healthy, which wins no points for its name, but as indicated above does indeed deserve serious congratulations, if not prizes such as perhaps the Nobel, for its most recent product development. I imagine it’s something like Nutella, but less peanutty, thicker, and also quite possibly more awesome. But this is mere conjecture. Someone who can actually eat both will have to decide.

This culinary breakthrough, however, begs the question: why is there no chocolate-flavored peanut-butter? I’ll tell you why: because the peanut has been lulled into a false sense of security by years of domination in the nut-butter and in-flight-snack market sectors. But take note, because I have a message for all of you to take to your little be-monacled friends: almond and soynut are coming for you, and they look PISSED.

And taste CHOCOLATY.

It's Hard Out Here for a Temp

Friday night I was hanging out at a bar with some friends. At around midnight, Office Space came on the TV, and I was hopelessly transfixed. I watched that movie more times than I care to remember in college, and—don’t get my wrong—it was funny. But I couldn’t really relate to it, not REALLY... until now. I kept diverting my gaze from the person talking to me to the TV. I think she was getting annoyed (“stop watching TV!”), but I was having an epiphany. I mean, everyone says his work life is like Office Space. That’s what makes the movie great—everyone can relate to it. So I guess it’s a little cliché to be all “oh, my office is just like Office Space!”. But it is.

And while we’re on the subject of my office, here’s something weird: my network account expired last Thursday and, unable to login to my computer, I called the HelpDesk for assistance. During one of the long “waiting for the computer to reboot” lulls, the HelpDesk Guy says “so, did you go to Williamsville East? And did band, and stuff?” Umm, yes, yes it is. Helpdesk Guy graduated in '98 or '99 and played percussion in band. His name was familiar, but can’t think of what he looks like. Regardless, I’d like to point out that this stuff never happens to me. I’ve never stuck around any place long enough to run into people I know from back in the day. It’s a weird feeling.

Finally, my car is in the body shop getting the horse-related guardrail scrape repaired. I have a loaner, which is a piece of crap, but free. I’m no mechanic, but judging from the sounds this thing puts out, it has no muffler whatsoever.

Over and out.

More About Words and Driving

First of all, let me do a little reputation-defending. I will preface this by saying that my vagueness in setting this up is not intentional, but is the result of an alcohol-induced haze I was in at the time.

Anyway.

I had a conversation with some people at some point in the past couple weeks that involved my use of the term “jerry-rigged” to describe a makeshift solution of some kind. One of these people informed me that this term is offensive to Germans, a reference to their stereotypically shoddy workmanship, and said that “nigger-rigged” is a similar term still, apparently, used in some places. I was, this person asserted, insulting my own people.

I was certainly taken aback by this; I had never heard of Germans being called “jerries,” and was unaware of any reputation of poor production quality. In fact, I was under the impression that German engineering is something to be admired. But mortified by my naïve insensitivity, I filed the term away in my internal “Things That Are Not to be Said” directory, and cross-referenced the entry to “Embarrassing Things I Have Said,” for good, if totally involuntary, measure.

My workday being what it is, though, yesterday I had a few extra minutes and set about Googling this issue in hopes of discovering some explanation. I will paraphrase for you what I found; but first, let me tell you the most important thing, which is that I am not racist.

Jerry-rigged is a hybrid of two other terms: jury-rigged and jerry-built. The latter has a negative connotation and describes sub-par workmanship. Its historical origins are unclear, but some websites do indeed reference a possible connection to the WWI-era nickname for German soldiers and their apparent reputation for badly constructed machinery. Jury-rigged, however, describes a solution of an improvised or makeshift nature, and most websites trace its origin to nautical endeavors (“jury” in this case meaning temporary, and “rig” referring to the sailing structure on a ship) that long predate the British/American nickname for Germans.

Conclusion: though my word usage was technically incorrect, I did not commit the soft bigotry of colloquial misappropriation, nor did I sully my ancestral heritage. In terms of unusual tradeoffs, this is by most standards the desirable outcome.

Now on to other things, those less pressing than Defending My Honor.

I went to Syracuse on Monday for an interview. The trip out was actually better than I expected; the Four Seasons anthology on my iPod lasted the entire trip with more than a few songs to spare. I’m now a seasoned expert at navigating unfamiliar college campuses in unpleasant meteorological conditions (this one being exceptional cold), and I found the music building in short order. Basically, the college area of Syracuse is more hoppin’ than I expected it to be, and the music school itself perhaps a bit less, but I had a good talk with my interviewer, a composition professor. I am not terribly excited at the prospect of spending two years in central New York, but educationally and geographically speaking, things could certainly be far worse. And the opportunities that exist in a smaller school might well be beneficial to me.

The drive home, however, was less than ideal. About half an hour after my departure, the snow started, and simply did not let up. The two-hour-and-change drive grew to four-and-change as traffic slowed to 40, then 20, and finally to a 10 mile-per-hour crawl in heavy snow with little obvious delineation between lanes, and, for that matter, between highway and not-highway. At one point I came upon a police car from Cheektowaga, a first-ring suburb of Buffalo, which was obviously way out of its jurisdiction. I followed it loyally, figuring that police academy training and experience driving a rear-wheel drive car in Buffalo’s winters must have imparted a certain level of automotive enlightenment on its driver. By and large, the officer did not lead me astray. However at one point, while passing a long row of tractor-trailers, I became stuck in a rut that threatened to pull me to the left, into the median, and efforts to right my course were, for a time, wholly ineffective. This led to one of those heart-thumping-oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-drive-off-the-road-and-my-parents-will-never-let-me-live-this-down moments. Twenty years from now, I’ll be visiting my parents’ house for Thanksgiving and will offer to run to the store for some butter in a light snow shower, and my mom will say “do you really think that’s a good idea? You remember what happened last time.”

These are the thoughts that pass through my head in moments of vehicular crisis.

Let me also comment for a moment on the use of hazard lights in heavy snow. The way I’ve always heard it, hazard lights are to be used when driving in the following circumstances:

1) A vehicle is moving significantly slower than the speed of traffic (i.e. 45 in a 65 zone).

2) A vehicle has approached an obstacle (i.e. a traffic jam or accident, or horse-in-road) that causes the driver to slow dramatically or stop, and wishes to warn drivers approaching from the rear. This is mostly used on highways or other roads where stop-and-go traffic is unexpected.

3) Heavy rain or snow causes the driver to slow significantly, and he wishes to warn other drivers of his sudden change in speed.

But many drivers use their hazard lights constantly when in particularly inclement weather. I can understand the instinct, but I would like to offer the following arguments against this practice:

1) Vehicles that do not have rearward-facing yellow directional lights are wired such that the brakelights will serve a double purpose: they indicate both braking and directional use. This is fine when only one directional is used at a time, as in normal driving. But when both brake lights blink while the vehicle is moving, as in the case of hazard lights in the circumstances outlined above, this serves to completely obscure small adjustments to speed that might be crucial to a following driver. Likewise, drivers of cars without ABS are taught to pump the brakes to maintain traction when stopping, which, wouldn’t you know it, looks a whole fucking lot like four-way-flashers.

2) In situations where EVERYONE has slowed because of poor weather, you need not warn other drivers that you are going slowly. It is taken for granted. Everyone is driving slowly.

If I seem unusually passionate about this issue, it is only because it took twenty minutes and a considerable amount of concentration to overtake a perpetually blinking Ford Tempo that proved to be significant hazard on the road, given it’s driver’s predilection for stomping on the brakes in short, undetectable bursts. Also, by way of a third, more personal, argument, let me add that it’s freakin’ distracting, all that flashing. Ditto for the dude in the Tahoe with the 24” rearward-facing TV. This is no time to share Aladdin with your fellow travelers, chief, and furthermore, how can you see out your back window with a TV in the way?

He was probably German. Fucking jerries.