Happy talk like a pirate day!
Dear Mr. SUV Man/Ms. SUV Woman,
I was just thinking about you. Remember me from last night? I was the little red car driving in front of you. I was driving down the curvy highway at night, which I haven’t driven on enough times to have memorized all the curves. I know you don’t care how poor my night vision is, or how smudged my windshield was from shitty glass wipes. I was driving the speed limit, but that seemed to make you really unhappy. Why is that? Are you just an angry person in general? Is it because you purchased a gas-guzzling monster of a vehicle, only for gas prices to skyrocket shortly after? If so, don’t take it out on me.
Did you purchase your SUV because you like to intimidate people in smaller cars? I’ll bet you are also one of those people who likes to pull out so far that the person in the car next to you cannot see oncoming traffic to make their turn. Even though you can clearly see over their little car. But I digress.
I was writing because I have a question for you. Exactly what is it that makes you think that by following me too closely with your brights on, I will go faster? Has it not occurred to you that blinding the person in front of you only makes them go slower because they can no longer see the lines or where the curves are? I was having enough trouble before you came along. I was going to get over as soon as there was a passing lane so you could get around me. In fact, I did. Remember? But I wasn’t going to pull over onto the shoulder so your sorry ass could be a speed demon. My apologies. I will see you again tomorrow night, or someone just like you.
Sincerely,
Compact Car Lady
Okay, I know the day that I saw the new X-Files movie, I griped about how much it sucked. But that doesn’t diminish my love of classic X-Files. (The last 2 seasons, I thought, were awful, the first 5 were great, and 6 and 7 were mediocre. Just for the record.) I have an insane collection of X-Files collectibles and memorabilia, but there’s always room for more! Well….maybe not so much room, but I always want more.
I got the majority of my collection about 10 years ago, when the first movie came out. I had my first job, a summer tech support job, full-time with a decent wage, and I spent a lot of that money on X-Files stuff. I got all of the action figures, movie poster, t-shirt, and all of the VHS boxed sets (they were like $40 each at the time, and there were 8 sets.) I also have all the novels, comics, trading cards, film cels, books on different seasons, and a whole bunch more stuff. The last X-Files thing I bought was the complete series DVD collector’s edition boxed set. I never did get the X-Files: Fight the Future Barbie and Ken dolls set, and I really want more film cels. Man, I miss the good old days when the X-Files was in its heyday, and when I didn’t have anything better to spend my money on than X-Files merchandise. 
So, for one of my assignments, I have to make my predictions on what shows will succeed and which will be prematurely cancelled, focusing on the ABC network. (Yes, this is an actual college assignment!) Looking up the schedule, I found a new game show called Opportunity Knocks, hosted by J.D. Roth. I was like, damn that name sounds familiar. So I looked up good ol’ J.D. on the IMDB. OMG, he was the host of GamePro! I know a lot of my readers are far too young to remember this show…hell, I think a lot of you weren’t even born yet! Way to make me feel old, guys! 
Anyway, my brother and I used to watch this show when we were kids. I immediately put Opportunity Knocks on my cancelled list, because, um..J.D. Roth! Just look at this!
And no, I don’t expect any of you to actually watch the whole thing. 
I know I’ve talked before about my love of video games. But sometimes I just don’t feel like getting out the console or Zack is watching TV or he is using the console, etc. So sometimes, I like to Play Free Games online. Because free is much better than, say, buying a game, and then paying even more for a subscription to allow you to actually play the game, which really makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Anyway…on the topic of free games, it’s always nice to be able to Play Arcade Games without throwing away a bunch of quarters (I like to save those for vending machine sodas and those rigged claw machines with the stuffed animals you can’t win). I don’t really like to Play Action Games as much as, say, RPGs, but in every genre, I find something that’s really addictive and fun or, in some cases, just so twisted and bizarre that they can keep my interest. Take Los Simpsons for example. I’ve just discovered this, but it’s so weird and messed up that I can’t stop playing it.
I start losing track of time when school is in session. I’m thinking, “eh, I posted the day before yesterday” when it’s been more like a week.
I’ve been home for 2 hours now, and when I started my 1 1/2 hour journey back here, all I could think of was sleeping as soon as I got home. And then look, here I am, reading blogs, watching Monk, checking e-mail….I am still sooo tired though, I have no idea what I’m still doing up.
It’s my dad’s birthday today, and I still haven’t gotten a present for him. I will be making him a giant cupcake though…even though it’s not really something he’s supposed to be eating. You only have a birthday once a year though, right?
I think it is time for me to go to bed now though, because I’m kind of nodding off as I’m trying to type and my brain isn’t really fully functional right now.
Zzzzzzzz…….
Dragon Blogger wrote a post about energy drinks, which made me think about my beloved Josta (R.I.P), so I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about my favorite discontinued beverage.
I’m not big on energy drinks. They don’t really seem to do anything for me, and most of them taste awful. I only like Red Bull with Jagermeifter. By itself it tastes kinda like Robitussin to me. I do like the flavor of the Sobe drinks but they do a number on my stomach. Bleh.
The greatest energy drink of ALL TIME, and perhaps the first, was Josta. It was actually a soda/energy drink, with a unique flavor. I don’t know if it provided much of an energy boost, but damn it was good. Most people I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of it. It’s been off the market for nearly 10 years now anyway. They sold it in the vending machines at my high school, which I believe is the only place I ever saw it for sale, so perhaps poor distribution is one of the reasons it failed. Pepsi, bring back Josta! Please!
At least I can finally prove I didn’t make it up, because there’s a whole site about it. With pictures! Has anyone else out there ever heard of Josta? Aside from the folks that run the Save Josta site?
So, Thursday marked my first time driving to L.A….err, Northridge all by myself and driving back. I have mentioned before that I do not drive on the freeway because of some inexplicable phobia about it. So, I took the highway there (I have been told numerous times that the highway is worse than the freeway because it’s 2 lanes and blah blah blah..but people are not going as fast and whipping around each other to get there 2 minutes earlier and I don’t have to go through the whole getting on the freeway and getting off and that freaks me the hell out.)
Anyway, I had my class Thursday night (I didn’t make it to the Tuesday one largely because I was terrified of driving myself there…but I am definitely going this week.) When I was driving home on the highway there was some sort of accident or something because it was one truck in front of me and in front of him there were just emergency vehicles as far as the eye could see driving extremely slowly. It was taking like 15 minutes to go half a mile. I tried that for quite some time, but there was no sign of it ever getting better and more and more cop cars & etc. kept joining the caravan (I have no idea what happened, I never heard anything about it on the news or anything.) So at this point I am so frustrated and pissed because it took over an hour to get there and then 3 hours of class and then not being able to leave until 10 pm, and OMFG the traffic never ends. I am in fact so irritated that I nearly get on the freeway to escape this mess, which is a big deal in and of itself because of my aforementioned freeway phobia.
I ultimately decided not to do that, but I got off the highway and took a different route home, which consisted of driving mostly downhill, through the mountains, with 180 degree turns one way, and then back the other way, and then back the other way again which was only like 30 or 40 miles or so but felt like for fucking ever. And I got home safe and sound, about a quarter to midnight, even though I was almost as scared of the mountain road as the freeway (and realistically, should have been far more so because I was basically hanging off the side of the mountain, with a very far drop, which I knew was there but at least couldn’t see because it was nighttime.
Oh, and also, there is one freaky ass narrow road that is nearly impossible to make a left turn to get onto, which takes one from highway into town on the way there which I thankfully have found a way to avoid in the future. So basically, I have now driven on 2 of the scariest, most messed up roads around here, to avoid driving on the freeway. So, I think I’m going to start trying to drive the freeway sometime pretty damn soon, because I am so much braver than I though I was, being such a wussy driver and all.
Okay, our society is pretty screwed up. The majority of Americans are overweight, but I keep seeing these commercials on TV for various weight loss products and diet pills. I remember, when I was a kid, the testimonials on these types of ads would be from women saying “I went from a size 16 to a 10!” Now it’s “I went from a size 8 to a size 2!” What is wrong with people? I don’t understand the necessity to lose that much weight, it’s not necessary and likely not even healthy!
I’ve been trying to lose some weight myself, but that’s mostly because my family has a tendency to carry their weight around the middle, so even though I don’t wear a large size, my waist measurement is borderline on being a health risk. I’m trying to get healthier and no longer be teetering on the edge of having higher health risks (diabetes and heart disease already run in my family.) So it’s kind of nice to see that there are still sites that have honest reviews of diet pill scams like extreme acai berry, which leech off of people that are trying desperately to lose weight, be it for health reasons or body image issues.
Now my site is down completely. Thanks to the magic of MacJournal, I can write this now and post it whenever the hell my site works again! If you are trying to access it right now, you are probably seeing something like this:
Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
Lucky for me, I’ve already signed up with Lunarpages. Unluckily, I hadn’t backed everything up yet when this happened. That actually is what I was about to do when this happened! I e-mailed their support (because totally awesome hosting companies like Dreamhost will only talk to you on the phone when you pay them extra.) I’m just waiting to see what they come up with this time. My support history page shows 3 pages of back-and-forth emails with them over the one year that I’ve been with them. I’ve had websites for 10 years, and rarely needed to talk to support before Dreamhost.
I’ll be moving everything over when I can access my files.
Added: It’s back up now! (A few hours later.) I received a response from support.
I’m sorry to hear that you are having problems. I just checked and the website is accessible both via http and ftp. Can you please check again for yourself and let me know if you are still unable to connect?
See, this is part of my issue with them. I only get a response after things are okay, which makes me think that they did something to make it okay, but it’s always sorta implied that it was something on my end, and I’m either an idiot or crazy. Or maybe I’m just reading to much into it. But it’s never like “oh, there was an issue with your server, it’s all better now.”
I really wanted to like Dreamhost. I had heard good things about them. But, my experience was not so good. See ya, Dreamhost, I’m moving!
