My lucky day at the gas station

It seems like every time I think of something interesting to write about the story ends up making me look like the idiot. This post is no different. I usually consider myself to be pretty intelligent but you can see from my occasional lapses in judgment that I keep my brain pretty well in check with poor decision making.

So a couple years ago I was driving home from work and was low on gas. I decided to stop at the Johnson Creek exit off of I-205 to hit the Fred Meyer gas station. This is typically a pretty congested area at rush hour, but the low fuel light was on and the only gas stations between Freddy’s and my house are terribly overpriced.

So I exit the freeway and take a right down toward 82^nd Ave. The plan is to cross 82^nd in the far right lane (there are two left turn lanes and two straight lanes) then turn right into the Fred Meyer parking lot. I’m in luck because there are only about 10 cars in front of me waiting at the red light and…dumb-frocking-luck!...the light turns green as I’m approaching. As I draw near the line is doing what all lines do at green lights, namely, it’s stretching out like an inch worm as each driver slowly reacts to the car in front of it. (Sidenote: I fantasize nearly every day that just one time when the light turns green every driver in line will start moving forward all at once in a synchronized motion thereby saving everyone valuable seconds which over the course of my life would save me a day or two). I happen to be the very best driver ever to sit behind the wheel of a Galapagos Green 2003 Honda Element (insert bread box or toaster joke here)...

...so I have my speed measured out just right so that I won’t have to brake when the guy immediately in front of me starts moving. It’s then I begin to realize that my plan has been foiled. As I approach I can see that the maroon pickup in front of me isn’t moving at all. As I draw even nearer I see him turn on his turn signal. Great.

Blink…blink…blink…goes his signal. He’s not moving. I finally have to hit the brakes as I approach. He just sits there. A car tries to let him in. He’s too timid to take advantage of it. That car passes, another tries…same result. I throw up my hands and say to myself “come on!” I see his beady little eyes in his rearview mirror. He sits there…blinker blinking. There are cars lining up behind me. The light turns yellow. He flips me off. The light turns red. He moves over to the straight-only lane immediately left of where he was. Great..he’s just prevented 8 cars (most importantly ME) from making this light and he’s going straight through this light anyway…wait a second. Did he flip me off?

I pull up next to him and roll down my window. He doesn’t roll his down. “Why did you flip me off?” He holds up his fist. At this point I size him up. He’s kind of a squatty, nerdy dude in a t-shirt that’s a little too tight for his beer belly. He may or may not live in his mom’s basement and he’s probably 37 years old. Wait…did he just raise his fist at me like he wanted to hit me? I mouth as I’m doing hand motions to communicate through his window “roll down your window (making circular motion with my closed hand) so we can talk (making an opening and closing motion with my fingers and thumb like a sock puppet) about why (I shrug my shoulders) you (I point at him) flipped me off (I point at my middle finger).” He holds up his fist again. “Oh, I see (pointing at my eyes). You’re a real brainiac (I point at my temple). “ He points to the gas station. “Okay. I’m (pointing at me) going to the gas station (I make a nozzle-like motion then point to the gas station) to get gas. You (pointing at his stubby little figure) can follow me (I wave him over like we’re playing red rover) if you want.”

The light turns green and I go to the gas station. I look in my side view and see he’s followed me. Great. So I know I’m going to have to get out and go talk to this idiot to make sure he doesn’t follow me home. Time to go into defuse mode. I get out my credit card so I can start getting gas before walking over to talk to this numb nuts. I turn to the attendent at my window…oh crap. That’s no attendent. That’s Stubs McFistyfart.

Him: “You’d better think twice about who you threaten.” He’s still not intimidating me, honestly, but he’s probably off his rocker so I try to swallow the sarcasm I want to use. This is a critical point and something that didn’t come naturally.

Me: “You think I threatened you? You flipped me off. Tell me how you think I threatened you.”

Him: “You were tailgating me.”

Me: “Do you know what tailgating means? You were at a complete stop at a green light. How could I have been tailgating you? Tailgating implies that you were actually moving.”

Him: “You’re lucky I just got out of prison or I would drag your a—out of that car and beat the living sh-- out of you.”

Me: (Well this just took an unexpected twist. I wonder if he could actually do it). “I guess it must be my lucky day then.”

Him: “Yeah, I guess it is.” He starts to walk away, looks back and says “you’d better think about who you threaten.”

Me: “I DIDN’T THREATEN YOU. GET A GRIP.” Did I really say “GET A GRIP”? No, but I think I said something in my head like “holy s…that was as close one. And these business casual threads ain’t fightin’ clothes.”

I watched him drive away as far as the eye can see to make sure he couldn’t follow me home.

This is what he would look like if he was in a giant diaper and was fatter and less beardy...and had a soul:

Oh, remember how his little truck just sat there blinking at the light? Well that’s exactly the opposite of what his eyes did when he was (note the irony) threatening me. This dude was calm and cold. I was full of adrenaline and thinking about how to use the door of my toaster as a first strike weapon. I had just figured it would take about 15 seconds of me holding my own before a gaggle of gas station attendents would break up the fight and call the police when he started walking away.

To quote Headliner from Arrested Development in their smash hit ‘People Everyday’: The moral of story is you’d better look very hard at who you step into. You might get killed or shot and it’s not worth it. Africans need to be loving each other and you’re not.

Wait a second. I told you I was going to look like the idiot in this story. Nevermind about that, I’m obviously the hero.

You're welcome

As a way of saying "thank you" to all of you for reading my blog, I thought I would share with you my favorite thing. Enjoy.

Cheap-O-Air

Well, we just got back from Disneyland. What an experience! But that’s not the part of the trip I’m going to tell you about. Be honest, you weren’t really looking forward to me telling you about which of the girls pretending to be Disney Princesses were the best looking anyway, were you? The most bloggable portion of the trip was the time we spent on the airplanes.

What I should say first and foremost is I’m cheap. I hate spending money I don’t have to. I’m famous for it in some circles. That said, my wife thinks I’m a frivolous spender which tells you something about her frugality. Having established all that you won’t be surprised to learn that we planned everything for our vacation on the cheap. How cheap? Well, I booked the flights on Spirit Airlines. What’s Spirit Airlines? It’s the airline that has absurdly low fares but then charges a fee for anything and everything you can think of. Oh…and which travel website did I use to book the flight? Cheap-o-air.com. Seriously.

This was our first experience with Spirit so we didn’t really know what to expect. We knew that we would have to pay for any checked baggage…and any carry-ons. Fortunately we were actually allowed one “personal item” for free. After much thought and debate I decided my personal item should be a change of underwear (in case the plane were to go down I didn’t want the news cameras to arrive to find me in soiled undies). Kidding. I was able to bring my laptop bag and Taela was able to bring a backpack that she referred to as her “purse”.

Next I had to call the airline to determine what it was going to cost to bring car seats and a stroller. I found the 800 number and dialed it. I got through to a lady with some kind of indeterminate accent. She asked for my “confirmation number”. Uh-oh. I was looking at the email from Cheap-O-Air and I gave her the “booking number”. Nope, wrong number. Ok…how about this one, the “reference number”. Nope. Crap. Then…silence… “Hello? Hello? Hello?” Nothing. Well, let’s hope the planes at Spirit are more reliable than the phone system.

I called back and got through to a man with a similarly mysterious accent. For no reason other than to make myself feel irrationally better I let him know that I had been cut off when I had called moments before. He either didn’t understand or didn’t care about that as he asked how he could help me. I said I had seen on the website there is a “nominal fee” for requesting particular seats on the plane. What would it cost to get all 4 of us sitting together? “Oh, sir, it is only $10 per ticket per flight.” Understand that we’re making a connection in Las Vegas on the way down and the way back. That’s 4 legs on this trip times 4 tickets times $10. That’s $160. We’ll pass on this one and assume that common sense will prevail when we board the flight. I mean they can’t possibly seat a 5 year old girl by herself, right? I rolled the dice and it worked out just fine.

Then I asked him if there was a fee for the stroller. “No there isn’t, you will have to leave it at the gate and it will fly for free.” How about the baby car seat that fits into the stroller? “If there is a baby for it then it too flies free.” Great! What about the booster seats for the other two kids? “Pardon me, sir?” You know, the booster seats. “Sir? I don’t understand.” You don’t know what a booster seat is? “No sir.” You know, the plastic seat a kid sits on in a car. If we rent one from the car rental place it’s $10/day and they only cost $18 brand new. Can we bring them as the kids’ personal item? “I don’t understand sir, please hold while I check on this information for you.” For the next 6 minutes I sat there and tried to think of a way to describe a booster seat to someone who has never seen or heard of a one. “I’m sorry sir, I cannot answer your question but here is the phone number for TSA.” TSA? “Yes, TSA, sir. The number is…” Well, at least the guy tried to help. I didn’t bother calling TSA since that would have been useless, but it turned out they checked the booster seats at the gate just like the stroller for no charge. Couple that with Taela’s family’s willingness to check our bags on their Southwest flight and this plan is set to save us $300!

Three hundred bucks…sounds worth it, doesn’t it? Well, the first flight was pretty routine. We had 4 seats in a row. The kids were excited for their first flight. It was great. Then we caught our connection in Vegas. Our seats were close but not right next to one another. I was able to get a lady to trade her seat so we sat two and two. We were in the same row but had the window and middle seat on either side. It appeared that nobody would sit in either aisle seat so we would be next to each other again but at the last minute a guy that must have weighed 350 lbs. sat down next to Taela. That was the last time I saw she and Tenley until we landed in LA. I think you’re still sitting over there and I miss you.

Then we went to Disneyland for five days. Yay!

For the trip home I got us back to the airport a little rushed for time. We were at the front of the check in line. Then a greasy looking guy with a gold chain tangled in his chest hair came up and stood beside us as if he were ahead of us. I used my shoulder to step in front of him and he moved uncomfortably close behind me. I looked at him and said “What are you doing?” He answer: “I’m on the 4:00 to Vegas”. “Me too.” After that I never remember seeing the guy again, but that’s the kind of class you get on Spirit. We made it through the security checkpoint quickly. We made our way to the dumpiest terminal gate I’ve ever seen. It was under construction and there were exhausted looking people everywhere. I couldn’t find an airline employee to save my life. When I finally found one I couldn’t tell if it was a man dressed like a woman or just an overweight, over made-up, over-shaped-eyebrow woman. There was no intercom so they just started shouting for us to board.

We were able to get 4 seats together again on this flight. Fantastic. We made our way on and quickly realized that this flight was damn near empty. There were probably 30 people on board flying from LA to Vegas. Of the 30 there were definitely 3 strippers. The lady sitting directly in front of Tenley was on the phone during boarding: “Yeah, it was busy last night. I gave 5 dances, but I’m not complaining about the money.” There was a young black woman in leopard print 6 inch heels. I don’t know if it was because of her lack of leverage balanced atop those stilts or just her lack of upper body strength but she was literally incapable of lifting her designer bag up into the overhead bin. Someone had to help her.

Just before take-off a flight attendant got on the intercom to address the 30 of us. “Is there an Allie Whozane onboard? Allie Whozane?” It took me 5 seconds to realize she was looking for “Ali Hussein”. Oh great. Ali Hussein went to the front and spoke with the pilot for a moment. Now every single person on the plane is trying not to let their inner racist out. The lady sitting in front of Taela turned around and started laughing about the look on my face. That would have been awkward except that we had already established that she was the lady who talks incessantly about nothing.

Some examples:
- She loves grape licorice. She bought it at CVS Family Foods…no, Ralph’s Supermarkets.
- She suggested to the stripper in front of Tenley that she go to a specific talent agency she highly recommended
- Her son is in the entertainment industry. He was the 8 year old kid in “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central When You’re Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” He’s now 23.
- Also to the stripper in front of Tenley: "If you believe in yourself and your dream you'll go far." It's nice to know that Disney's "dream" message is permeating society at all levels. No, I promise you're not a walking cliche. Most strippers in LA and Vegas make the big time.

Well, Allie Whozane didn’t forcibly overtake the pilot and we landed just fine in Vegas once more. We had a nearly 4 hour layover and then crammed into the flight to Portland. I’m not a particularly tall guy…we’ll say I’m 5’10” which is, for all intents and purposes, true. My knees were smashed against the seat in front of me. How they fit us into this tiny little space I will never know. During boarding a man said to his wife “why is that overhead bin closed, is it full?” She didn’t know any more than he did and she told him so. I said “there’s a fee if you ask them to open it.” “Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” he laughed.

I kept nearly mercifully falling asleep and then something would inevitably wake me up. Between the lady behind me hacking and hacking as hard and loud as humanly possible, the person behind Taela who raised and lowered the screeching arm to their seat over and over, the two young black women in the row in front of us loudly rehashing their drunken trip to Vegas and my attempts to keep from cutting a huge fart all over the nice lady from San Diego I was seated next to I just couldn’t nod off for more than 30 seconds.
Would I recommend Spirit? I suppose it depends how much you value the money. The 5 of us including our 10 month old were able to fly round-trip from Portland to Los Angeles for less than $600. However I will also say I heard all of the following on our various flights:
“If you want to move forward to the empty seat with more room there is a $25 fee.”
“Next time I’m going back to Southwest.”
When I asked what on the drink cart was free the answer was “I can give you a cup of ice.” I accepted.
“What’s that smell?” At some point I just couldn’t hold it any longer. Sorry, nice lady from San Diego.

You're out!!!...or you'rein?

I don’t watch the news on TV. I don’t often read the paper. I do, however, read the news online typically on KATU.com. I do this in part because it keeps me up to date on current events and local happenings and in part because I love to leave absurd and sometimes inciting comments after the story. It’s amazing the enjoyment I can get out of saying something inflammatory to a group of out of balance message board nerds and then watching the wrath come down because I’m not sensitive enough about the plight of pit bulls. It’s fantastic.

Recently I read an article on KATU.com about a man who worked at a high profile castle in Vienna which housed a “major art collection”. So now you have to get an image of this guy in your head. You see, Alfred Zoppelt is 57 years old and had been working at this castle for 23 years. Like you, I’m picturing an astute gentleman in an outdated top hat with some too-formal suit who looks directly down the length of his nose when he speaks to you. He’s probably come to believe that he owns the castle over the decades, right?

Now, with that picture in mind, you have to wonder why this man was fired. I’ll tell you. He regularly rubs his own piss into his face and his hands. He does this for undisclosed “medical and cosmetic benefits”. Apparently it’s called “urine therapy” and it has all the confirmed scientific benefits of the late night infomercial-driven colon cleansing products on the market that claim you have poop spackled to the walls of your colon which drain your energy every day. Honestly, if you haven't seen this guy talking about your colon you need to click the link before this sentence, scroll to the bottom of the page and watch a couple of clips.

It turns out Mr. Zoppelt is not the only disciple of the pee-pee wash down. After further research I stumbled upon the fact that this phenomenon apparently infiltrated the clubhouse of my favorite sports team. You see, former Cub outfielder Moises Alou believed that peeing on his hands toughened up the skin. Toughens up the skin? Tell that so someone who has passed a kidney stone. I’m pretty sure the “skin” of the urethra is about as tender as it gets.

Listen, I kind of backed myself into a corner with my first post about the guy pulling his own giant turd out of the toilet. I want you to know that not everything is about human waste, but seriously, you need to know that people are out there right now peeing on their hands and rubbing it into their face. If you see someone with a yellow complexion they’re not jaundiced, they just need someone to politely suggest they take a wad of toilet paper and wipe their face.

Below is a picture of Alfred Zoppelt extolling the virtues of his treatments.

It's like ten thousand spoons...

A few years ago I misused the word "ironic" and instead of arguing the point I decided to learn from it. If you're still reliving your glory days of 1994 then you probably remember Reality Bites and the back and forth about defining "irony". Dictionary.com says: 1) the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning 2) Literature: a technique of indicating, as through a character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated and 5) an outcome or event contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

You see, irony is not coincidence. It's also not simply something you'd consider a bummer. With that said I would like to take you through something I put together long ago...a breakdown of Alanis Morissette's lyrics for "Ironic". Then, to conclude, you can read my song set to the same tune.

"Ironic" by Alanis Morissette
An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day – Bummer is not equal to irony.
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay – It’s not a black fly in your chardonnay...though the contrast of the white wine with the black fly could be used in the setting of literature to parallel an ironic concept.
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late – This is more like a big "whoopsie!!!!!".
And isn't it ironic... don't you think – No it’s not ironic…I don’t think.

It's like rain on your wedding day – In the context of literature this could be used in an ironic sense.
It's a free ride when you've already paid – This has no irony whatsoever.
It's the good advice that you just didn't take ¬– This is just called poor foresight and/or judgment.
Who would've thought... it figures – Huh?

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well isn't this nice..."
And isn't it ironic... don't you think – This is the exact opposite of irony. I mean the dude thought he would die in a plane and then he did.

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you – Kind of like those squirrels on the golf course when they steal your snacks.
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face – There’s nothing ironic about the Unabomber.

A traffic jam when you're already late – This is like a compounded bummer.
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break – This actually is kind of ironic.
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife – Yes…yes, “irony” is “ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife – This is more a timing issue. She simply got there first.
And isn't it ironic...don't you think – No.
A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think... – Trust me, it’s not.


"Really Ironic" by Keith

A violent man with fire in his eyes
Started a world war which won him the Nobel Peace Prize
It’s a dirty blotch on your bar of soap
It’s a contraceptive being worn by the Pope
Yes it is ironic…don’t you think?

It’s like pain when someone hugs you too hard
It’s a skinny girl who only eats lard
Or when it feels good when you get kicked in the nards
And who would’ve thought it figures?

Mr. Fireman saved peoples’ lives
He was a hero every day of his life
He took his kids camping for just one night
When the marshmallow set his hair on fire he thought
“At least it’ll burn up the lice”
And isn’t it ironic…don’t you think?

It’s like pain when someone hugs you too hard
It’s a skinny girl who only eats lard
Or when it feels good when you get kicked in the nards
And who would’ve thought it figures?

Comedic contrast has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything’s just as it should be
And life has a funny way of pointing it out when
Someone poops their pants in a fancy dress

A bad hair day when you’ve been bald for years
An excellent joke that brings you to tears
It’s like getting sloppy butt drunk on A&W root beers
It’s like meeting the woman of your dreams
And then finding out she has male genitals
And isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?
A little too ironic? Well, it makes you think.