In Other News

I didn’t mean to be so grouchy in my previous post, but that is how I was feeling at the time. The Summer-Long Kitchen Project has really been frustrating, especially considering that I’ve been in renovation mode for almost ten months now. Hopefully the time of living with no kitchen is coming to an end (soon) and I can be done with home projects for a while.

August in North Carolina was hot. We had successive days of triple-digit temperatures and have been suffering a drought for quite a while. During the extreme heat, I noticed that the gas mileage on my Honda Element dipped to an all-time low of 16.7 MPG. Usually the vehicle gets between 22 and 24 MPG. I knew that a vehicle would get worse gas mileage under extreme conditions, but it was my eloquent engineer friend Nathan who said “hotter air is less dense by a linear factor, so you use higher throttle settings for the same output you’d have needed four months ago, but the stoichiometric ratio doesn’t change.” This combined with constant use of air conditioning would help drag us down to the sub-20 MPG club.

Also, the drought has been causing animals of all kinds to seek out other sources of food and water as their environs run dry. I have seen lots of deer on my property (usually, but not exclusively, at night) and found the dried skin shed by some snakes. Overall, I’d say that the brutal summer heat has been tough for everyone. Now into September, we are just starting to see relief. Ooohh, the mountains sound good right now! Time to plan a trip to Asheville. (Amy, I’m crashing on your couch! FYI.)

Until then, please join me in praying for rain!

Memorial Dizzay

Happy Memorial Day, y’all! I think you should celebrate by buying a new (used) car!!

HOLLA!

Things Are Getting A Bit Weird

Maybe I should stop taking pictures in Carrboro parking lots, but the availability of strange sights just increases each day.

I have no explanation for this because there are no HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes in our area. Maybe the driver just likes the company?

Three's A Charm

I love how everyone in “Crunchy Carrboro” either drives an AWD Subaru (25 MPG) or a Honda Element (23 MPG). Way to care about the environment, man! Why don’t you just drive a Hummer or a Mack truck while you’re at it??

I spotted the Element Trifecta in the Panzanella parking lot near Weaver Street.

God Bless America! And pass that barrel of oil!

Apple Chill 2006 photos

Please check out my photos from Apple Chill 2006. As you may remember from last year, Apple Chill is a Springtime street festival in Chapel Hill, NC. However, 3 people were shot this year (at 8 PM, two hours after the street festival ended) and it looks highly unlikely that the event will be occurring in the future. In fact, these could be the last photos of Apple Chill you ever see. Please people — Stop the killing.

PS – That crazy pink theme had to go… 

Monday The Thirteenth

Forget about Freaky Friday (which we experienced about a week ago). Forget about incantations and the voodoo hex. Forget about “Signs of the Beast” and other tales of the Boogeyman. The real danger is in numbers. Number 13, for example.

From the “I knew I shouldn’t have left the house today” files:

After a really awesome weekend of sleep, exercise and quality time with friends, family and beloved pet, I awoke this Monday morning ready to take on the world. I was even poised to be “on time” for work, which in itself is a tiny miracle. But I knew I had to take care of one important thing before getting to the office.

Last week I missed the Mogwai concert at the Cat’s Cradle because I was too lazy to get a ticket and travel five blocks to the venue. This was a tragedy, and not one I wanted to repeat. So I knew I would be hard-pressed to find an available ticket to Tuesday night’s Silver Jews show (also at the incredible, amazing, possibly-best-dive-bar-venue-in-the-entire-South Cat’s Cradle).

Of course, I tried CD Alley first because they are my favorite Local Indie Record Store (LIRS). It was before 10 AM and their store was still bathed in last night’s darkness and the employee sitting behind the counter had the unmistakable “Dude, I’m not getting off this stool for another hour or so” look about him. Time was of the essence and I did not have spare time to dick around with slackers and their humiliating excuse for business hours.

So, against my better judgement and without (perhaps) fully thinking things through, I proceeded up Franklin Street to the evil empire Schoolkids Records. Dun-Dun-Duunnn!! Why malign Schoolkids you ask? How is the ‘evil empire’ comment permissible? Oh, only because they’ve been run by the biggest lame-o elitist music pricks for the last decade or so. No hard feelings on my end. (I hate those assholes).

Putting aside my personal hatred of this shrine to hoighty-toighty Indie snob “values” I went inside and begged the chap behind the counter for a Silver Jews ticket. Thankfully, this guy was about 45 or so and was obviously not as indoctrinated in the “Be a shithead to our customers” mentality prevalent at Schoolkids and he was actually a real pleasure to deal with. He kindly sold me the last ticket they had to the show and we chatted about 20 seconds before I raced to save my vehicle from a standard issue Chapel Hill ticketing and/or towing.

I was parked in one of the service spots behind the Carolina Coffee Shop and was proud that my entire engagement with the record store took less than two minutes. My emotional index was bubbling over with happiness as I saw no immobilizer boot attached to my wheel, no meter-reading peace officer filling out a tiny “fuck you” letter for my windshield and no obese, cigarette-smoking sweaty guy exposing his asscrack as his leashed my car up to his tow truck. I had gotten my concert ticket and was about to make my glorious get-away. (Cue dark music)

This was when the reality (or should I say “unreality”) of Monday the Thirteenth set in. As soon as I put the car in reverse, I heard the noisy, belabored engine of a delivery truck making it’s way thru the narrow alley that leads behind the coffee shop. Like a sane person, I stopped my vehicle and waited. The huge white delivery truck took up the entire alleyway and, once blocking all paths in and out, proceeded to sit still for over two minutes. I had an inkling that the driver saw me and my back-up lights and decided to just chill out for a while. Actually, I didn’t know what he was doing, but supposed that he was waiting for the security gate to rise so he could pull into the University parking lot back there.

Finally the big truck lurched forward and I thought that the gate must have risen and the truck was moving along. I took this opportunity to quickly back into the mini-intersection and before I could put the transmission in Drive to move forward, the eye-level rear bumper of the delivery truck crashed into my passenger side.

I was in shock considering the combinatory stupidity that led us to this collision, but the Hispanic immigrant acting as delivery driver thought it a good idea to jump out of his vehicle and begin brow-beating me into accepting blame for the incident. Now, I’ve been in enough car collisions to know that you shouldn’t just accept blame for any accident. Instead, the scene really needs to be looked at by a police officer and judged by a third party. After trying to calmly discuss things with the driver for a minute or two, I got tired of his hard-ball approach to fault assignment and phoned both my insurance company and the Chapel Hill police. He also refused to provide me any information related to him, the truck and the owner of the truck.

Roughly 30 minutes later, the police arrived and handled things very professionally and very quickly. Thankfully, they wrote up a police report so I get to drop by the police department tomorrow and pay $2.00 for a copy of it. Hopefully I can get in touch with the owner of the truck and their insurance company to file a claim for repair. Otherwise I will have to pretty much pay for the repair out-of-pocket (to avoid a $500 deductible and the surety of having my auto insurance premiums rise).

What a way to start off my week. Thanks a lot, Thirteen.

Big Ass Truck

International has released a new class of Sport Utility Vehicle (or SUV) called the CXT, once again raising the bar in totally extreme and massive vehicles you can own and operate on our roadway system. I fully expect to see people driving these around Chapel Hill this Fall. Maybe there will be enough of them that we could shut down Franklin Street and host some mad burnout drag racing competitions between differently tricked-out CXTs. Dude, I can’t wait for Fall semester this year.

It's Dat Woo! Woooo!!

When will the Whistlas hit the East Coast?? No one knows!
Exhaust whistle tips that can be heard for miles!
Now that is style.

The Whistle Tip interview that started it all.

The Official Bubb Rubb Soundboard!

Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis pics

“Yeah I got it on my car!” – Lil Sis