the world is dying and i'm out swimming in the blood.

At her request, we haven't spoken in years.

As kids we were friends. As teenagers, we weren't. That one's all on me. In college, we were friends again for a time. Then we drifted apart. There was no discernible malice on either end; we simply drifted as our lives pulled us in different directions. And then, at her request, we weren't friends again.

That was more than 3 years ago. It's a shame, and I wish things were different. There are times, like today, when I see something that so completely reminds me of her. That's when I regret all of what has happened between us.

I saw this today. Oh, the good old days! Instantly thought of you and wished I could share it with you.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/374918/240-worth-of-pudding.jhtml#id=160961

I'm sure you've all heard about the government's "cash for clunkers" stimulus. A number of European nations started similar plans to kick start their floundering automotive economies. In the US, we got a dumbed down, limp-wristed approximation of the plans that have been so effective across the pond.

Not familiar with the tenets of the plan? Allow me to elucidate: the basic outline of the plan is that you trade in a junky old vehicle for a guaranteed trade in value against the purchase of a brand new vehicle only. No trading up to another used car. In the US, the minimum trade value is $3500, but if your new vehicle averages 10MPG or more over the vehicle being traded, you can get the full available government incentive of $4500. In order to qualify for any funds, the junker you're trading has to be registered and insured within the last year, and it has to get 18MPG or less. Jump start the economy and get gas guzzlers off the road in favor of fuel efficiency.

Sounds like a good enough plan, right? It's a solid foundation, sure, but it fails to provide any reward incentive for the people who were conscientious enough not to have a gas guzzling hulk in the first place. A $4500 government incentive is a hefty sum, and the people with the least disposable income, incidentally the ones who need this money the most, are often driving around in beat up 10 year old cavaliers and neons. Sorry, people, the government has no money for you. There's no opportunity for the government to espouse ecological responsibility in this "gone-green" government.

But let's forget all that. Let's just stick with the program as it sits. Officially, the program starts on Monday (July 27), and goes until the end of November, or until the $1B in USD the government put aside for the program is spent. It may sound a sizable sum, but one billion dollars is chump change for a program like this, and one that will barely do anything to reinvigorate the economy. To explain, you need to understand a couple of simple statistics:

$1Billion total kitty.
$4500 per car.
222,222 cars can be purchased with the $4500 incentive before the $1B is spent.
833,000 new cars are sold in the US in an average month.
6 days a week cars are sold
26 days a month.
32,800 cars are sold a day.

Given those figures, the $1B in the cash for clunkers is good for about 1 week worth of new car sales, if it accounted for total car sales. Seeing how a lot of dealerships started taking deals a month ago, waiting to file the paperwork with the government, I bet cash for clunkers runs out within the first two weeks.

.

I've more or less accepted re fact that by and large, I hate people. The newest group of people I hate: the hangers-on to the holier-than-thou green movement. You are the second coming of politcally correct groupthink, and as a collective, your effortsre furthering the destruction of a rational human race.

Nothing is more likely to incite my black rage than suggesting I "be conscious of my carbon footprint."

i got engaged. more details later.

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. Tons, actually. Here's the reader's digest version...

I went to Maine with Tracy over the first few days of my forced 3 week vacation. Was offered a contract job in Maine through Labor Day at my old company, found out I was, in fact, getting laid off by my company in Philly. Decided to take the job in Maine, but they needed me to start a week later. Cut my vacation short, went back to Philly and started packing. Spent most of last week taking care of odds and ends, packing, trying to find a new tenant for our apartment, etc. Went to an awesome Phillies game, played quizzo at the New Wave for the last time, said goodbye to China Town, spent the last of my time on the roof, went to a BBQ, enlisted some friends to help me move all of our furniture and shit out of our 3rd floor walk-up, celebrated a friend's birthday, and had a final night out at my favorite Cuban restaurant with my closest friends.

Then, Sunday, I got in the car and drove to Maine. Yesterday I started work. Today I joined a gym and worked out for the first time in way too long. And drove to work with the top down, looking at the ocean.

A lot has changed in the past two weeks, but it's shaping up to be a great summer...

I am a huge Scrubs fan. I have all the seasons on DVD, could pretty much quote them all verbatim, and I even named my car Choco. But this season has been a bit blah. There are some humorous episodes, some that try too hard to pull at the heart strings, but the only thing consistent about this final send-off season is how detached it seems. It's like everyone from the writers to the actors to the editors have been phoning it in this year. Somehow, even when the jokes are great, they fall flat. The whole show does. It just fails to engage.

And so it was when I began this post, on a slow day at the office where I am watching last night's episode on my laptop. I watched the uninspiring cold open up to the opening theme song, and then paused to write that opening paragraph. Then I went back to the show, and proceeded to laugh my tits off for the next 18 minutes. That serious I'm at work and shouldn't be laughing this loudly kind of belly laughter. It was excellent. It's like everybody, especially the writers, finally got around to bringing their A-game. Now everybody, just keep it up till she wraps in a few weeks...

only seasons 1 and 4 are left. Season 1 should be had by the end of the day, but season 4 will probably take another week. Oh well, I'm sure I'll have enough others to keep me busy...

T minus 55:32 hours and counting.

That's when my mandatory vacation starts. I've got a 2 weeks of vacation and a week of unused comp time from last year that rolled over into this one. Counting weekends, that puts me at 23 consecutive days off, at the end of which I either come back to work or pass go on my way to the unemployment line, where i'll probably collect about 200 dollars. Weekly.

As I've said previously, I'm not horribly concerned about the prospect of being unemployed. I've been laid off before when an almost identical crisis hit another production company for which I worked. I was able to survive a solid 3-4 months that time while looking for work. I don't imagine I'll be unemployed nearly that long this go 'round, as I'm in an area where there's more work, and I've got a much stronger resume than last time. The point, though, is that I've been there before, and I know I can weather the storm if I have to.

In the meantime, however, I still have to figure out how I'm going to spend my vacation. Considering the very likely unemployment that follows, I can't really justify taking a real holiday and traveling. It doesn't make sense to spend what little savings I've got. I've got short trips planned to see Tracy's family in Maine, and my family in North Central PA, and I'm going to try to do a 4-5 day hike somewhere in there as well. Spring is the perfect time to go get lost in the woods. The weather's nice but not sweaty hot, things are blooming and the woods are waking up, and the real kicker: the bugs aren't out yet.

Even so, all of this will only account for about twelve of my twenty-three days of vacation. What will I do with the remaining eleven? I'll probably spend a lot of it in Philadelphia, bumming around in the parks, writing resumes, relearning the banjo, and otherwise trying to spend my time without spending much money.

Fortunately, I've got an ace up my sleeve: Top Gear. My favorite television show of all time, and you've probably never heard of it. It's from the UK, and though we get watered-down, heavily edited versions of it on BBC America, you aren't really getting the full effect unless you can watch the original BBC2 broadcast version. That's not easily done here in the States, where the show was never released on DVD. If it had been, I'd currently own every last scrap of it. You can get seasons 10-12 on iTunes if you were patient enough to wait for them (I wasn't), but it seems nobody's made any attempt to get seasons 1-9 into the hands of the American public. The only real way to get your hands on them, then, without buying a region 2 encoded DVD player, a PAL television, and all the DVDs from Europe is to get the torrents. Which I've done. Am doing. I've had my computer on for the past week straight, downloading the each season separately via peer to peer sharing. It's taking forever because there aren't a lot of people sharing old television, but I'm finally starting to see results. I've got seasons 2, 7-9 currently, and should probably have seasons 1,3, and 5 by week's end. That leaves just seasons 4 and 6, which, ironically, are the two seasons that feature the Mazda MX-5 (my current car). But hey, even without seasons 4 and 6, I should have a good 60 hours of Top Gear to keep me entertained in the quiet evenings of my un-holiday.

Thank God for small miracles...

This post is useless. I don't have anything to say. I just felt like fucking around with my phone.
This is the product of said phonication.

Pointless.

Paypal's 3% fees really suck until you attempt to pick up cash at a Western Union location. Then it seems very VERY reasonable.