Everything in the World You've Ever Wanted

I could hardly believe my eye-brains today as I read in the good ol' Metro Express that wireless internet access might soon be offered on some trains.

"That's a huge step forward for humanity," I thought to myself. "Not for me since my laptop is 4+ years old and probably couldn't handle a wireless card anyway, but for humanity in general, that's pretty rad."

Then I got to the next sentence:

Metro is moving forward with plans to give companies the right to install wireless Internet access at certain bus stops and in tunnels in exchange for shared revenue from advertising or user fees.

What a thing to read on a Monday morning. "We're going to offer wireless internet! But only in some places, probably the rich parts of town, and it's not us, it's other companies and they will probably charge by the minute and one company will probably get an exclusive deal to provide access and will probably not give a damn if users have problems. It'll be just like the whole VERIZON ONLY policy in the tunnels, only wireless!" To be fair, it won't be just like the Verizon thing. Everybody will probably be allowed to pay outrageous fees to use the wireless access.

How is it that entire cities (i.e. Philadelphia and San Francisco and Seattle) can embark on projects to blanket every neighborhood with public wireless service and Metro can't even put in their own antennas? Oh yeah. It's because Virginians want to use Metro and not pay for it. Thanks a lot Virginia.

But hey, at least Metro will get some revenue out of it. If they get enough they could lower the fares, right? Right?

Every day at lunch....Scratch that. Every day that I go out for lunch (more often than strictly necessary) I sometimes take the metro. Actually, I really only do that if I'm going to meet the Brickfam somewhere for lunch (usually CalTort which runs tasty, messy circles around Chipataplay if you want my opinion (and why else would you be here? (are you ready for this: triple parenthesis!))). But every time I do ride the Metro, I walk by a guy selling Street Sense. I almost never carry cash, which means I almost never buy Street Sense, which can lead to the vendor looking at me and saying things that I just have to ignore. Like, once, he said "Oh, you graduate from college and you go all Wall Street on us?" I think he was trying to say that I should give something back. I know I should, but can he take credit cards? No? Shoot. And then, every time I'm at lunch with the brickwife, I intend to ask her for a dollar so I can buy a copy on my way back, but I always forget.

All this to say that last Friday I did have some cash on me so I bought a copy. And since I was in a good mood, I chatted with the vendor a little. He introduced himself (I don't remember his name) and said he was the house photographer and asked if he could take a picture of me for their Cheerful Givers piece. I said sure, and then a reasonable facsimile of the following conversation took place.

Me: That's a nice camera you've got there! (Speaking of his Nikon D-SLR)

Street Sense Guy: Yep, digital, cost two grand.

Me: Wow, pretty pricey. Out of my price range at least.

SSG: But now I don't have to pay for a whole roll of prints, just twenty-nine cents each! I been takin' pictures since about '70, but I just went digital last year. I was all used to cropping and dodging and that s---, but now I don't got to do none of that.

[aside: if you don't know, "dodging is the practice of, well, dodging your hand in and out of the projector/print maker thing in order to lessen the exposure on certain parts of the print. Just goes to show, I've learned more of practical use from one High School photography course than from all of my high school science classes. Oh, wait. That's not true. In physics I learned about audible beats in slightly different frequency sounds which is very useful when it comes to tuning a guitar.]

Me: It must be pretty convenient for you since you take so many pictures for the paper.

SSG: Yep, now I don't have to worry about getting 36 pictures that are all no good. But it's bad news for the little mom-and-pop developers. They aren't gettin' much bidness any more.

Me: Yeah, too bad. Do you like the camera though?

SSG: It's great man. Cost about two grand.

Me: (thinking that I'm pretty sure he already said this) Wow!

SSG: About two years ago I was crossing the street when this woman waiting for me to cross yells at me "Move it you slow motherf****r!" So I looked at her and said "You dumb black b****, I got the right of way, so you just better wait." (ed. just so you know the vendor was African-American, so he wasn't racist, just a little crude) And then she yells back at me that she doesn't care and she'll run over my a**. So I said "Kiss my sphincter!" She didn't know what I was talking about, so I look at her and say "You dumb black b****! The sphincter is the muscle that controls your a******!" You should have seen the look on her face! And then she steps on the gas and runs me over! Felony hit-and-run! Then this other woman who saw the whole thing says to me "I can't believe she cussed you out and then ran over you!" I made sure to get her license plate number. I ended up getting a three thousand dollar settlement, and I spent two on this camera!

Me: Um, I gotta go meet my wife for lunch, okay?

So we shook hands, I walked down into Metro Center, and that was that. Just goes to show: if you want an interesting conversation, talk to the Street Sense guys.

By the way, does every city have a homeless newspaper? I know that Seattle does. Here's a shout out to anyone who shopped at the Roosevelt Ave Safeway in the U-District back in the day (so, basically just me and the brickwife among all those who read this)...

"Real Change? Have a great day ma'am. Have a great day, sir."

Yes we've got no money!

Here's a good memory for you all!

Once, right after I got married and we added Maggie to my account, making a joint checking account, I said to myself, "well, no sense keeping these old checks with only my name on them around. I might as well throw them out!"

Little did I know that we had a dumpster-diving vitamin fiend living in our neighborhood. On second thought, looking at where we lived at the time (in The Hyatt apartment building on the corner of 47th Ave NE and NE 15th St in Seattle) the existence of such a person shouldn't have surprised me. Also, little did I know that I was such an unstoppable moron that I would throw away perfectly good checks without tearing them up. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Anyway, cut to a couple weeks later (financial aid day!! WOOHOO!!!!!) when we go to the bank to deposit some money. "Hmm.." I think while I look at the balance, "I don't always keep exact track of how much money we have, but it should be.....well, quite a bit more than this.... So we get home and call the bank and they tell us of all these mystery checks for random amounts that have check numbers not listed in our checkbook register. "Oh crap!" I thought, "My second-worst fear has come true! Someone stole our checks and is out there pretending to be me!" (For your information, my worst fear is falling out of bed into some kind of weird space-time vortex or bottomless pit or something)

So we went to the bank and filled out all kinds of paperwork to get the fraud fixed. The woman who helped us at the Roosevelt Ave Washington Mutual was very helpful (thanks, whoever you were!) The only problem was that we had to wait, like, 20 business days to get our money back. So, we basically ate no food and bought no stuff for awhile. We tried to heat our apartment by lighting copious amounts of candles. It was pretty cool, really. Then, one day, we went back to the Yak to visit family and we totally scored a whole bunch of food from our parents because they felt really bad for us. HAH! Suckers, little did they know, but we actually got all our money back two days before we raided their kitchens! Oh man, they totally got OWNED! (To all of you who think that using OWNED or one of the typoed variations of it is really cool, let me tell you this: There is a big difference between cool and stupid that is immediately obvious to everyone. Except for you, apparently.)

Still makes me feel a little homesick

My mom and dad went to the coast this past weekend, just for the heck of it. On the way, they took these two pictures that I thought were quite lovely. I like it out here in DC, but part of me still feels homesick for the land of my lost youth.

Random Thoughts Friday

Now, don't get your hopes up. I'm not starting a whole new feature here, I'm just harnessing the power of my rapidly deteriorating brain. I'm coming down with a bad (based on what the Golden Girl has been going through) head cold, which means that my brain is not functioning at its normal high level. Instead, I can't follow one train of thought for more than a few seconds before it derails. Fortunately, this facilitates the creation of a random thought post. So, yipee!

I think that "blogosphere" is a totally apt word, since it reminds me that the world's collection of blogs makes up a huge, floating cloud of crap.

I'd rather be at Disneyland.

The Frosty may be the world's most perfect food.

I've never been to Spain. I haven't been to Oklahoma either, dammit.

Some days, I just can't figure out how I'm going to make it through. I just want it all to end.........Ha Ha Ha! I had you going there didn't I? Maybe I'll start a new feature in which I impersonate other types of bloggers. That was my self-absorbed 15 year old boy with a mean father style. I can't wait to try out celebrity photo blogging!

How come Blogspot's spell checker doesn't recognize "blog" or "blogger" or "blogging?"

Is it sad that I've spent my whole life living in, if not cities, than at least towns? Should seeing a deer or a rabbit or something really be that exciting?

Have you ever noticed that anyone that has one of those big trampolines ends up calling it "the tramp?" "Okay kids, let's all go jump on the tramp!"

The other day, we saw this really weird bug in our house. It had lots of legs, was flat and wide, and was super fast. I think it was just a centipede, but still, it's creepy.

I know it's stupid, but that Heineken commercial where the delivery guy drops a bunch of beer and then a dude in bed with some chick says "I don't know, I just feel so sad" cracks me up every time.

I think the phrase "jump the shark" has jumped the shark.

I have a fake tooth. Once, it fell out of my head and I had to go to work with a missing front tooth. I told everyone that it was knocked out while I stopped a robbery at the 7-11. This was in, like, week two of the first real job I've ever had.

I thought for a second that I'd be disappointed that the new SAT can have scores as high as 2400. Now no one will be impressed with my score anymore. Then I realized that I took that test 8 years ago, and no one ever really cared about it.

Sometimes I can't help but feel proud of myself for being smart. Oh, trust me, I am.

If you think it's a good idea to let your toddler go down an old-school swingset slide while sitting on the trailer of a big toy semi, you're wrong. It's really, really not. If you are kid thinking that it would be fun, you're wrong too.

I have a crash test dummy bobblehead sitting on my desk at work.

Remember the Crash Test Dummies? Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmmm. Once there was this girl who wouldn't go and change with the girls in the change room. How was that song ever popular?

Remember the Crash Test Dummy toys? Those things were cool. So were the M.U.S.C.L.E toys.

I hate it when it rains here in DC. At the tiniest drop of rain, everybody pulls out these giant, canopy-sized umbrellas and pokes me in the eye. I think they're doing it on purpose.

I used to live in Seattle. If you've never been there, please stop imagining it having rain pouring down all the time. That is so not the case. It's actually just six months of soul crushing drizzle from October to April. In fact, on average, it rains 7 more inches per year in DC than it does in Seattle.

How cool would it be to have a fake eye you could freak people out with?

Okay, here's an experiment for you. Put your iPod on shuffle and just listen. This is a good way to remind yourself how awesome a lot of older bands are. Like the Who. John Entwhistle, Keith Moon, and Pete Townshend are the best rhythm section ever.

Hats off to the new-age hairstyle made of bones. Hats off to the use of hats as megaphones. Speak softly, drive a Sherman Tank. Laugh hard, it's a long ways to the bank.

I've never, ever tried any drugs. I hope I'm not missing anything really cool.

No, I'm not counting alcohol as a drug. Or pseudoephedrine. Or Doritos.

Have you ever seen the movie Straw Dogs? It's really good, but kind of hard to watch. But it has Dustin Hoffman going medieval and some English dudes, so it's cool.

I wish I could be part of a blogger clique.

I wish I lived in an Ivory Tower, because I bet it would be worth a lot of money. I mean, it's ivory!

I think the term "golden parachute" is really stupid. Gold is heavy, so I don't think it would work as a parachute at all. I think the term should be cashmere parachute or something.

The time is right for dancing in the street.

All you anti-Wal-Mart protesters out there, don't you think it would be a better protest if you let Wal-Mart build a store and then just boycotted? It would be pretty embarrassing for Wal-Mart to have to close a store because nobody went to it. Oh, wait. That's right. You all are just an extremely vocal minority that try to prevent everyone else from being able to shop there.

This post has gone on just about long enough.

I think the saying "(blank) is the new black," is really fun to use with completely inappropriate things. For example "Oak trees are the new black."

Okay, on that note, this post has definitely gone on long enough.