Manic Oppressive

“Milton High School does not discriminate against males, females or anybody else for that matter.”
— Principal of Milton High School in Boston

Makes me wonder just who all goes to that school. (Article at Yahoo News).

Occasionally they run out of coffee in my pod at work. Actually, I figured out that we get a shortage every third stocking rotation, and there’s really no way for us to get it refilled until the next stocking rotation.

But random mathematical moments aside…

Today, I got fed up and drove to Starbucks and got a cheap pound of coffee, and took it in. I brewed a pot and left a note (in Japanese, of course) saying, “Hey look! Starbucks coffee!”. Against all my expectations, I saw a reply (in Japanese). Since it was in a foreign language, I couldn’t read it but it looked happy.

I’ve always wanted Fisher-Price to make electronic gadgets because, well… when was the last time you saw something from Fisher-Price break? And think about how much abuse it survived before it finally did go kaput.

At least that’s how it was when I was a kid.

Anyway, according to this article Fisher-Price will have MP3 players and digital cameras. I can’t wait.

I pulled into my spot this evening and parked next to a c ar that was running. Which in itself isn’t all that weird, but it was covered up with a tarp-thingy that people use protect their cars from things like snow and teenagers. It had the dome light on, and I saw movement.

I’m not entirely sure how gets inside a car that is covered like that, but it was weird enough that after a few minutes of hard thinking, I decided to call the police. It could be some random neighbor that’s fed up with living here; but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because, as I said, how do you get inside?

Or it could be something much more innocent, but I’m still trying to figure that one out.

For some odd reason, I keep my phone charger at work. However this week I screwed up my charging routine, and this weekend finds me with a dying battery. So instead of taking a long drive and charging my phone in my car, I plugged it into a bench power supply.

I think it’s funny:

A story as recounted by my neighbor, “The Grapevine”.

This past Saturday, sometime in the afternoon, The Grapevine heard an altercation of sorts. Being the curious type, he went out onto his balconey and noticed two women and and older gentleman. One of the ladies was talking on her cell phone, while the guy was staggering around cursing. Or something. The other lady was in an old beat up pick-up, removing the keys from the ignition.

She got out, and the guy starts yelling at her, “Hey! Give me back my keys!.” So she said something to the effect of, “You want your keys? Here you go!” and threw them into the bushes. This is the point where The Grapevine realized that he was drunk, the lady on the cell-phone was trying to get the police, and the catty lady was a bystander of some sort. Anway…

So he staggers over to the bushes saying, “Help me get my keys!” and starts looking for them. At some point, he falls in forward over the retaining wall and can’t get out, so with two legs in the air he was calling for help in that cute way that only a drunk person can do.

By and by the police do show up, at which point he has freed himself from the prison of shrubs. They pull up in four or five police cars and wearing SWAT gear. They take the drunk guy, put him in the front of a squad car, and take him to a warm fuzzy place.

That was Saturday afternoon. A few days later, The Grapevine was wandering about and noticed the same guy was there, looking for his keys with a buddy. So The Grapevine lets them know about where the keys were thrown, and they end up finding them. Being the curious type (as grapevines ought to be) he asks a few questions.

The guy admitted to “Making a mistake” and that the consequence was a DUI. This is the boring part. As for why the SWAT team had arrived… well it turns out that there was some other yahoo wandering around my neighborhood brandishing a gun, so a bunch of people called the cops. That’s where they were going, when they were called into the DUI thing. Turns out that at first they thought that the guy’s hook was a weapon, which made them think for a bit that he was the guy they were looking for.

Wouldn’t that be a bad situation? You have a hook and the cops show up…
Them: Drop your weapon!
You: What weapon?

So that’s the story.

This just in from the grapevine: One of my neighbors, specificially the short Italian barber, had his car stolen a few nights ago. He just got it to replace his ‘79 oldsmobile.

Feels great to live in a secure neighborhood.

I generally don’t lose things, especially important things like checkbooks that torment one’s life for months if they get lost. That happened to me, and eventually I discovered that someone was using it to buy things over the internet. Scary things from company names like “CCBill Clam Shake”.

So I try not to lose it. But I lost it tonight, andI had no idea where. So I get home and there’s a message on my phone.

“Yeah, we’ve got your checkbook, and we’re putting in the vault”. Wells Fargo. That has to be the coolest place to lose things. Except maybe one’s honor. Or life’s savings. But a great place nonetheless to forget one’s checkbook.

It seems the spammers have discovered this site. Not that they can post, But they’ll keep trying.

I don’t get it. Who would read a blog comment and say, “Oooh! They mention viagra! I’ve been meaning to pick some up!”

Sheesh.

I was considering this painting when I realized that the hardest loss was the convient plants that always seemed to grow right where we needed them.

Granted, I may be a little biased since I’m not privy to the burdens of child-birth, but that is my opinion.