Car Problems

Some of you might have read an earlier post about bicycles, and the hassles that accompany them. This one is about cars, because apparently bad luck is not limited to two wheeled vehicles. As somebody who appreciates the humor in life, the following post documents the unabated week or two of car problems that recently plagued me and my room mate.

First off, some background information about the cars involved. The car that I own is a 1999 Ford Escort. It's gold, has four wheels, two doors, a sunroof, you know... car things. Anyway, about a month ago my car broke down while I was out of town. Although I'm not too mechanically inclined when it comes to cars, I did know that it wasn't the battery, the gas, oil, spark plugs, radiator, or what not.

Should have checked the flux capacitor, Doc.

Anyway, it turns out that the problem with my car had something to do with a primer belt, or a timer belt, or some sort of belt. It was rather inconvenient to be stranded an hour away from both my house and my apartment. It was fixed, and all was right with the world again. Happy days!

Little did I know, this was just a taste of the car troubles yet to come.

Cue ominous music.

A few weeks later, a veritable monsoon hit the eastern part of the state. Roads were closed, homes flooded, even some schools were shut down because of the excessive amounts of rain pouring down. Driving through that did not agree with my car in the least. After driving through a puddle the size of a small pond, suddenly my car didn't want to turn.

Lucky for that pedestrian, my brakes still worked.

So I manage to pull my car into the parking lot of the local public library where it would be slightly less likely to be pillaged for spare parts or towed than if it was simply left on the street somewhere. I took a look at it, and the engine belt was draped over my wheel axle. Not a good look for my car.

I had a similar experience once with a makeover attempt.

I went to get some estimates from local repair shops, all of whom were rather unhelpful and vague when it came to giving me a quote. I brought in photos of the problem, with a detailed description, and all they could do was say "somewhere between 100 and 300 dollars". Not cool. As a poor college student, that kind of bank is not really what I'm all about.

So, that weekend, while attempting to figure out what to do about my down and out car, a friend mentioned that he knows a mechanic who will come to where your car is (saving on towing) and fixes things for less than most repair shops charge. Sounds like a win right?

Wrong... So very wrong.

The friend who recommended this "Mobile Mechanic" happens to be a little flaky at times. We attribute part of this to his status as a home schooled kid. Perhaps I should have realized that this might not work out as smoothly as anticipated.

I call the guy, tell him what type of car I drive, what's wrong with it, and where it's parked. I also gave him my cell and work phone numbers in case he needs to get up with me about the car. I even tell him where I'm leaving the spare key for him. Seems like all you should need, right?

Wrong! Again!

He can't find the car. It's not like I parked in a super center parking lot or anything, with multiple levels or anything. I parked in the only fucking parking lot next to the only fucking library downtown. I was the only gold, two door, sun roof-having Ford Escort out of the thirty cars in the entire parking lot. This should have been easier than finding Waldo in Antarctica.

Not for this guy.

There comes a time when you have to realize that thinks aren't going smoothly, you need to cut your losses and move on. However, I am notoriously both stubborn and lazy. I wanted my car fixed, and fixed the way I started.

After nearly a week of having my car sit in the library parking lot, I got so paranoid that I started seeing tow trucks everywhere. Like, more than I've ever seen in my life outside of a 50 car pileup on the freeway.

I also began to hear unexplained fake country accents.

Luckily for me, the library apparently doesn't care if a car stays parked in their lot, without moving, at all. My car sat in that parking lot at all times. It was there at 11:30 at night, it was there at 5:45 in the morning, and it was there at 1:30 in the afternoon. All week.

The only good part of this story is that the fly by night mechanic only charged me ninety dollars for fixing my car. That was a good deal. And for that, I will not attempt to blacklist that terrible mechanic. It might have taken him five phone calls, three visits to the library parking lot, some research and a little bit of actual work, but he got it done.

Great job guy!

Ballin' Is a Habit Part Two

If you haven't read the first post on this topic, well honestly you're not missing too much. If you want to though, you can read up on the background athletic information. Quick recap: my room mate and I are decent at sports, and have played a lot of them. Hence, we've got a lot of stories about winning and/or losing horribly. Here come some more.

Sorry, this image was supposed to be for the post on cooking.

I'll start this post off with a brief tale of one of my more em'bare-ass'ing moments in sports. That's right, good for you! That not so subtle spelling alteration to the word embarrassing cued you in! This story is about pantsing!

For those of you who don't know what the term "pantsing" entails, it's a pretty simple concept. All you need is somebody with loose fitting pants/shorts and somebody else to pull those pants down. Now you can go pants somebody yourself! Let the merriment begin!

Huzzah!

For anyone who's ever played a sport against, played around with or simply been stuck in crowded elevator with a member of the opposite sex, you know that sometimes inadverdent contact is made.

Some times it's painful, like an elbow in the spleen. Some times it's awkward, like an elbow in the boob. Some times it's downright embarrassing, like pulling the shorts off a girl and exposing her rainbow colored panties to the entire intramural fields.

"Boy, I'm glad I wore underwear today."

That my friends is what happened to me, during one of my soul crushing defeats while playing flag football for Teaching Fellows during my undergrad years. For anyone who, for reasons possibly related to illiteracy (why are you pretending to read a blog?) or just poor imagination, the image below is an artist's recreation of the event I just described. In order to protect the identities of everyone involved, the rainbow panties wearing blond girl has been replaced with a cornrows wearing black man.

Also, the football was replaced with a rugby ball.

In my defense, those flag belts are actually more difficult for me to grab than it would be for me to actually tackle somebody. I have to repress a lot of training and frustration to just go for the flag. That's one of the reasons I dislike flag football. It makes me look like an impotent fool who can't even grab a silly piece of fabric dangling from a smaller man's waist. Outrageous, I know. Moving on.

It's not just sports that involve raquets, bats, wheels, frisbees, food or greased pigs that my room mate and I have played. He used to be quite the paint ball player. I've played like twice, one of those times with him. We were on a trip sponsored by NCSU's Cru or something and were playing some paintball. It was mostly rental style equipment, so nothing too pricey.

Not that cheap. Is that even a real paintball gun?

There about 14 or so people on the trip, so we had decent teams. We played in some nice woods, full of trees, creeks and underbrush. Now I had heard my room mate was good, but it was all from him and I sort of assumed that he was just bragging a bit.

The first game of capture the flag we played was over in like three minutes. I didn't see anybody. My room mate just walked back with their flag and said he got six of them. No big deal.

Artist's simulation of my room mate playing paintball.

This continued for the rest of the day. One time he had expended his 20-30 shots gunning down half the opposing team, turned to one he had just taken out of the game and politely asked the dude for some ammo.

The guy gave it to him.

To this day I'm not sure if the other guy did that because he was a genuinely nice guy or if the blood lust in my room mate's eyes terrified him that much.

He did say "please".

If you ever play basketball with my room mate and me, you'll know that there are few things we appreciate more than blocked shots. If you can pack somebody's jumpshot right back down to the ground, that's almost as good as dunking in our opinion. And since neither of us can dunk, looks like you're about to have your shot denied a time or two.

Don't forget the subsequent trash talking.

While neither of us are spectacular basketball players, we both believe in playing close, aggressive defense. Which doesn't work out well if we're on opposing teams and have to guard each other. Passes get stolen, shots get blocked, people get hurt. Mostly my room mate. He jokes that he has to call fair catch before going for a rebound against me.

What can I say? Football is my first love.

But even we draw the line when it comes to blocking the shots of people who obviously shouldn't be blocked in an aggressive manner. Like six year olds. Unless you are also of a single digit age, you should never think that it's cool to block a little kid's shot. Especially to the point where you knock him to the ground. I'm not going to go into detail about this, but let it be known that we know a girl that we call "Lebron" in memory of her rage blackout style play against a little kid.

"And give me your juice box while you're at it."

Super Sketch

My room mate and I have been to some pretty sketchy places in our days, and today's post will share a few stories about times when we wondered if we would make it out alive. The two easiest ways to find someplace really creepy is to go to either a city or get way out in the middle of nowhere.

Now, naturally these aren't the only ways to do it, but it's a safe bet that most cities, even small ones, have a region where you definitely don't want to just kind of stroll around in and anyone who's familiar with ominous banjo music is probably already a bit creeped out by super isolated little hamlets in the backwoods.

(Insert creepy red-neck quote here.)

Probably the first memory I have of going somewhere I really felt like I should be afraid of something ridiculous happening to me was our nation's capitol. Yes, for those of you not aware of it, Washington D.C. is also in the running for sketch capitol of the nation. Nestled in between the country of Virginia and the bustle of Maryland, it is a veritable treasure trove of sketch activity.

Now, I know that most people think of things like the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museums or the Lincoln Memorial when they think of D.C. Some unfortunate souls might even associate Washington D.C. with the seasonal disappointment that is the Washington Wizards.

"What do you mean we're terrible?"

The first time I visited D.C. it was with the Boy Scouts and we stayed in a hostel on the outskirts of downtown. Sign of sketch number one: the word hostel. When has anything connected with that word ever ended up being a good thing? Sign of sketch number two: the place had bars on the windows up to the third floor.

I mean, I can see having bars on the windows for the first, maybe even the second floors, but three? Seriously? What kind of cracked out Spider-Man imitators live in this area? If it gets to the point that you need metal rebar over the openings to your building thirty feet above the ground, I think you should probably just start handing out shotguns to tenants as they check in.

"Don't forget your complimentary guard dog, sir."

Sign of sketch number three: at least every half hour some sort of ambulance/police/fire truck siren combination roared down the road. There's a reason why D.C. got the nickname "murder capital", with over three times the national average of violent crimes per capita. With that in mind, some of the guys I was with decided that the best way to enjoy their trip was to taunt homeless people rummaging through mailboxes outside the hostel.

Now, I don't mean your average friendly "Hey man, you spare some change?" homeless guys.

How can you say no to a story like that?

I mean the "I just got done jerking off in public and am now robbing you at fork-point so I can go buy some meth" homeless guys.

"Seriously though, I want some meth."

The other guys were laughing about how funny it was when they creatively shouted "Get a job!" to the hobos, to which the street people replied that they would, and I quote "fucking kill you punk-ass kids". I was not laughing. And for good reason.

About five minutes later, there was an angry knock on the door to our room. I quickly dove under my bed, where I figured I would soon witness multiple murders from as the homeless person made good on his promise.

Luckily, it was merely the security officer from the front desk warning us that someone had complained about kids yelling at them from the windows, and that we shouldn't antagonize the people out on the street like that.

Just like how you shouldn't feed wild ponies.

Moving right next door to Baltimore, we take this sketch-fest to the next level. My room mate and some friends took a bike trip around Baltimore about a year or so ago. All of them regretted it. Baltimore is like the younger, slightly less sketch version of D.C. It's got all the sketchiness you've come to know and love, in a bite sized package.

Oh yeah, we went with the obvious mini joke.

When you're a group of lily white college students riding around on bicycles in an area of the city that is inhabited mostly by minorities in the lower socio-economic strata, it's not a great idea to take too many long stops or interact with the locals more than you have to. While not as dangerous as a line of Humvees driving through Falujah, my room mate and his friends were quickly beset by difficulties.

"Somebody just ordered some grape juice. There's white folk about!"

First off, they quickly became lost in the twisting and turning labyrinth of that particularly sketchy area of Balitmore. Secondly, some of them had to answer the call of the wild, and not in a "running free with the wolves across the tundra" sort of way.

Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?

Wait. Sorry, wrong movie. Here we go.

Wait, this still isn't the right movie.

You know what? Forget I even mentioned him. Back to our story.

My room mate really has to urinate. So he starts asking around to see where a bathroom might be. A public restroom would be cool, also like a gas station or something could work. Well, supposedly there aren't any nearby. How is that even possible?

Well he's really got to go, so he keeps wandering further away from the group, asking random people on the street where he can go potty. One guy he happens upon offers up an interesting solution.

He said, "Hey man, for three dollars, I'll watch you pee."

"WTF?" in ASL, according to the interwebs.

Either he means that he will A: accept a payment of three dollars to watch out for policemen while my room mate takes a whiz in an alley or something, or B: he will watch while my room mate takes a whiz in an alley. And yes, I mean that last option in the creepiest way possible. Like if he really needed to score three dollars and thought my room mate was into some weird stuff.

"If you have to ask what it is, you can't afford it."

After he manages to convince the dude that he didn't want to pay him three dollars for questionable services, my room mate tries to back-track to the rest of his group. Unbeknownst to him, but knownst to us, they had left for a more fortified position. Literally.

In the days of the Old West, the practice of circling the wagons was common place. However, circling the bicycles didn't exactly provide the same level of protection, and the natives were closing in quickly.

Too bad they didn't have air support.

After coming to a group concensus to get the hell out of Dodge, my room mate and his friends pedaled as fast as their little legs could take them, vowing never again to return to that particular city unless they had to.

Yeah, that might be worth it...maybe.

Hipsters! Gosh!

The topic of today's post, with a little help from Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame, is . . .

What's the deal with them?

After my recent post about bicycles, I realized that I do actually need to get a post out there about hipsters and why they suck.

Now, I know what you're thinking, provided of course that you're thinking the following sentence: "Gee, Doctor Woofers, what are hipsters and why do they suck?"

Stay tuned for the answer!

*Disclaimer*

This post isn't meant to hurt the feelings of anyone who identifies themselves as a quote-unquote "hipster", merely to vent some of my irrational hatred in a humorous fashion for the entirety of the interweb to see. If you think it might hurt your feelings to find out that hipsters are what's wrong with the world today, you probably shouldn't continue reading this post.

Sums up my feelings on hipsters.

For starters, take a quick visual survey of what constitutes a hipster by checking out the website "Look At This Fucking Hipster" at http://www.latfh.com/. The people who run this site have been bringing the issue of hipsters, that plague upon humanity, to the attention of anyone who has access to a computer with internet capabilities (and now to anyone who can find a book store with the release of their book).

Hipsters.

They probably knew about this pic before it went mainstream...

I am not alone in my distaste for these unwashed masses, but perhaps I am alone in how irrationally I despise them. I mean, sure it's culturally acceptable to have a bad opinion of Hitler, but hipsters are surely nothing like him, right?

Wrong!

Look at those ironic mustaches!

I'm going to organize this rant against hipsterdom into three categories: belongings, clothing and personality. Each of these three categories is nearly enough to earn my undying antipathy towards hipsters, but together they create a trifecta of annoyance.

Material goods such as bikes and headphones.

Hipsters are defined by their possessions. As much as they wish that they could go all "Fight Club" and be liberated from their belongings, they actually go the opposite direction, and are seemingly incapable of realizing that they are their pair of skinny jeans, they are their Buddy Holly frame glasses.

Even though they like to dress like they shop at a thrift store, or scavenge their clothes directly from the dumpster, all hipsters love to buy things that help create their image or give them "hipster cred".

How hipster marriage ceremonies probably look.

Things that give them acceptance by their peers include, but are not limited to anything that Apple has ever made or will make. You name it, Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, if you tell a hipster that Steve Jobs was involved with developing it you could probably sell him a large steaming pile of cow feces.

Old vinyl records of obscure bands. Nothing screams "I am a hipster!" more than having an obscure version of a particular song on a largely obselete form of technology. It would be like if I really wanted to have a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special on Beta-Max or some shit. It makes no sense, and is often more expensive than just getting the mp3 of your favorite Clash song.

Plus you have to deal with people like him.

Also, fixed gear or antique bicycles. Hipsters fucking love these things. If they can't have one of these to get to their independent record store on, they might have to settle for a 1980's Volvo or something else suitably retro like an AMC Gremlin or a Ford Pinto if they can find one.

It just screams "I might be legally retarded!"

You might have already read my blurb against fixed gear bicycles in the previous post, but if now, here's a brief summary: they suck. Not only are the frames usually expensive, the tires fragile and the brakes non existent, they don't allow coasting. Not having to exert physical effort is the best part about using wheeled transportation.

Getting a regular bicycle and turning it into a fixed gear bike is like getting a car with power steering and then cutting the lines just so that you'll look cool for your friends. It makes no sense what so ever, yet hipsters flock to fixed gear bikes and the shops that service them like homeless people to an underpass.

I'm sure that there are other things that hipsters possess that I just am not currently annoyed by, but will remember at a later date.

True fact: All hipster closets are replete with skinny jeans.

Perhaps the easiest way to spot a hipster (aside from hearing an obscure band blasting from their over sized headphones) is by their clothing. Unless said hipster is attempting to fit in with the rest of the world, whether because they have a real job or they think it'll be ironic, a hipster will instantly be identifiable by the mismatched articles of clothing that they drape over their often androgynous bodies.

I'm going to start at the feet and work my way up with things that annoy me about hipsters.

Feet: Individualized Chucks or Rainbows. My dad wears Chucks, not because he's a hipster, but because he's almost fifty years old, and has a right to wear old style shoes if he wants to. Now, I'm not putting down Chucks, because they are nice shoes. But hipsters take them and cover them with sharpie, and sequins, and alternate lacing patterns.

WTF? Honestly, I've got no beef with Rainbows either, it's just that hipsters wear them when there's snow on the ground. What is that about? Is frostbite cool again?

I could have sworn that went out of style with dysentery.

Legs: Skinny jeans or ridiculously short shorts. Alright, without the adjectives in front of them, jeans and shorts sound like what normal people wear. Unless of course you combine them to form the almighty pair of jorts. And that's cool with me. However, I would gladly let gun control laws become lax enough to allow assault rifles for fourth graders if there was some way to have stricter clothing restrictions.

Men should not wear skinny jeans. End of argument.

Be grateful I didn't use a fat guy.

If you argue against my statement, then you are obviously someone who wears them and as such have no place in this argument due to your deteriorated mental state. Also, wearing the same style of shorts that YMCA youth did in the 50's does not make you cool. All it does is make you look gross, because your legs are usually pasty pale and excessively hairy. As somebody who has hairy legs, I am not suggesting you shave them, merely wear shorts that are closer to your knees than your crotch.

Pictured: A hipster who knows how to wear shorts (anomaly)

Torso: Up above whatever studded or sequined or random object used as a belt any given hipster wears around their waist comes the ridiculous shirts, jackets, vests and other things used to cover up their top half if they aren't flaunting their ripped physique.

Fact: hipsters love terrible shirts. Whether it's a sweat stained v-neck plain t-shirt,


a horrible sweater,

some sort of plaid/stripe combo

or just a massive dosage of their all time favorite word.

(Hint: it's irony)

After this we get on to accessories. Accessories like ironic fanny packs, or ironic sunglasses, or weird piercings, or the ever classic "culturally signficant piece of clothing until we got ahold of it" things like those omnipresent keffiyeh used as scarves.

Yes, I said it. Kanye is a fucking hipster.

That's pretty much all the space I have for complaining about the way hipsters dress, so it's on to the next category!

The most insidious trait of the hipster.

On a scale of bad personalities, ranging from angsty teenager (best) to Sarah Palin (worst), hipsters score a Snooki (previously thought to be an unachievable low). And no, that is not a compliment. The danger posed by hipsters is greatest when they are not easily identifiable via their belongings or appearance. If you see someone dressed like they were dressed by aliens who had no actual understanding of clothing, you might either assume that they are Japanese, or just a hipster.

Either way, don't take anything they say seriously.

The key character traits espoused by hipsters include, but are not limited to "irony", "individuality", "retro", "enlightened" and "pretentious". (Editors note: I know that they don't think of themselves as pretentious, but such a majority of them subscribe to that personality trait that I felt bad leaving it out.) For some reason the best way to exemplify these personality traits are drinking PBR, having terrible hair cuts, weird tattoos and listening to bad music.

First off, you may have noticed that I've used the word "irony" or "ironic" like a couple dozen times in this post, almost always incorrectly. That's right bitches, I know what the word means and the proper usage of it! Because I happen to be terrible at grammar and punctuation, you might not gather that I know a lot of words, and what most of them mean, if not how to spell them. Hipsters, on the other hand do not. This does not stop them from applying it to every single facet of their lives.

"I have a tattoo of PBR, isn't that ironic?"

No! Perhaps the toxic levels of douchebag that you are attempting to shield your eyes from have corrupted your vocabulary usage!

Irony is when you do one thing and an unexpectedly opposite result occurs, or when you say one thing and mean something contrary to what you said, or even when you're a character in a book and your words mean something more to the reader than they do to you.

Ironically, the term MILF was invented the next year.

The only way the PBR tattoo turns out to be ironic would be if he died from being hit by a can of PBR dropped from off the top of the Empire State Building. Aside from the irony, that whole situation would be totally fucking awesome... I mean... sad. Right. Sad...

Last time I checked, a PBR loving hipster and a tattoo getting hipster are often one and the same. What an amazing coincidence that this person would conceive of getting a tattoo of something he loves! I, for one, am astounded!

Philosoraptor's mind is blown!

And so we conclude this chapter on hipsters. Both because I have momentarily run out of things to type, and because my co-host needs to leave.

This joke brought to you by www.thedoghousediaries.com

For a bit more reading on the subject, check out these links, or just search hipsters in Google to see how they don't believe in the census or some stupid shit.

Wikipedia entry on Hipsters

Hipsters Desperately Seek New Anachronism to Claim as Their Own

Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization