Category: Thoughts

I have probably mentioned the obnoxious loud exhaust that came with my used motorcycle. Well, a couple weeks ago I found someone on the Internet who traded me his old stock muffler for my noisy aftermarket one. Unfortunately, the stock muffler didn’t quite fit. I don’t know why that was the case, but the muffler was just about a quarter-inch too long and I couldn’t get the attachment screws to line up. Obviously the solution was to whack at it with a mallet to make it fit. No dice.

Then I tugged it back off. They call them “slip-on” replacements, but it doesn’t exactly slip so much as jiggle. I’m probably damaging the expensive parts of the exhaust by tugging on them constantly. I certainly pulled a muscle in my back. Anyway the obvious way to fix the problem was to cut the pipe down a bit.

I borrowed a friend’s Dremel tool and rapidly burned the fiberglass cutting bit to nothing. So I bought an eleven-dollar tungsten cutting bit and rapidly broke the bit in half, trapping the bit in the chuck. Went back to my friend’s house, she showed me how to remove jammed, broken bits (apparently this is a common and simple problem). I went back to the hardware store and bought a five-pack of the fiberglass cutting bits I’d first tried — a bargain at six dollars for the lot — and used up three and a half before I got a donut of muffler cut off. A sanding wheel to flatten all the scratches I’ve put on the thing over the past few days, and I’m set. The muffler fits smoothly (i.e. liberal use of WD-40 and a mallet) into tube A, tube A fits around the main exhaust outlet B. Assuming I haven’t broken anything while fixing this, I’m done!

Well, there’s this bit that’s supposed to go around Tube A, and tighten down, but I can’t quite fit it, so I’m not going to put it on. Seems well-enough attached anyway. Also I wonder if WD-40 was the right lubricant for something that’s going to get very, very hot. I imagine I’ll have some smoking and burning the first time I start up, especially since there’s plenty of half-burned fiberglass and powdered rust in the muffler now. And of course there’s the nagging conviction that cutting the front end of the muffler is not the best way to make it fit; this might totally screw up the airflow and break things. I mean, isn’t a stock muffler supposed to just… fit on?

Nonetheless: I AM A MAN BECAUSE I CAN USE POWER TOOLS. And because I used ear protection, but not lung, hand, arm, or eye protection. It wasn’t CONVENIENT! Well, I was wearing glasses. That counts, right? Sort of? I’m not blind! Also I have spread burnt fiberglass all over the basement. At least now I won’t set off the neighbors’ car alarms when I ride home.

I have joined a network of Boston-area bloggers to post some Boston-area ads on my Boston-area blog about Boston-area stuff. (Note keyword usage! Search-engine optimization ahoy!) This is at least partly because I have spent so much money supporting the Boston-area economy that I could really use a few extra bucks. So, click my ads over there in the right column.

My first local-economy screwup was the classic mistake of OK’ing some repairs to a motorcycle without getting a written estimate. Some things I asked for I knew were going to be expensive: the 15,000 mile service, for example, or putting new springs in the front forks (which really did help, and was totally worth it). But Greater Boston Motorsports didn’t give me a break on the little stuff, and because I didn’t ask them to write it down, I didn’t realize how much it was going to cost me. They replaced a brake lever for me. Now, I could have done that for ten or fifteen bucks worth of parts and about an hour of my time. They got a fifty dollar brake lever and charged me thirty bucks to install it. And I had to pay it, because, well, I’m a chump, and I didn’t get a written estimate beforehand, and the OEM lever does cost fifty bucks, and twenty minutes of tech time does cost thirty bucks. If I’d known they were going to charge me full price for that, I wouldn’t have gotten it. Half the lever works just as well as the whole lever.

Right after having my wallet sodomized by my good friends in Arlington, I went to the Porter Square Veterinarians and got my cats some dentistry. Let’s just say that cat dentistry is not cheap. I know they have a good dentist, but let me tell you, nothing is less appealing than trying to save money by brushing your cat’s teeth. That shrimp-flavored toothpaste is nasty.

Alternate essay my brother and I came up with while editing his b-school application: My name is J-Dub, and this… is my career. [Insert video of rioting Bolivian prostitutes.] I want to become a successful businessman, but I can’t do it with just a background in gas-canister dodging and government contracting. So please, MBA, pimp my career!

While searching for an appropriate image to go with that, I discovered that “Pimp My Ride” has been doing a UK version for the past two years. It seems only fair, after the US has imported remakes of all these UK shows like “The Office” and “Viva Blackpool,” to export something to them. Something like a Morris Minor with spinning rims. No, really: The first car they did was a Morris Minor.

I moved to the Boston area in 2000, but I am ashamed to admit that even after all this time there are parts of the city I just don’t know. These days, if it’s not in Cambridge or Somerville, I can hardly be bothered. Across the river? Only occasionally. All the way over in Jamaica Plain? You’re kidding. If you move from Somerville to Jamaica Plain, I’ll throw a going away party.

But this weekend I went two new places. Saturday morning I went to Quincy (thats Kwin-zee, for those of you from out of town) for a wedding. How have I been here for nearly eight years, but never been to Quincy? The reception was held in a banquet hall that also held an Elks Lodge, which was advertising at 1:00 PM Meat Raffle. I didn’t get to attend that. What kind of meat? Meat like the bride and groom? Elk meat?

Then today I went to visit some goats in a small town just over the border into Rhode Island, right near Purgatory Chasm (access via Purgatory Road), a state park which contains a rock formation known as Fat Man’s Misery. I learned how to milk goats. There was a llama, but it was shy if I was nearby. When I retreated enough, it came to the fence and ate carrots from its owner’s mouth.

I also found out that one of my favorite journalists, Rob Walker, links to me from his blog. TO ME. I am so honored it hurts. I am in the sidebar in a category labeled “Hard To Categorize,” along with “Ask A Mexican.”

I got a new insurance company in June. It has taken them until this week to figure out how much they are charging me for my shrink. Some time in July they said they wouldn’t pay anything at all, because me being crazy is a previously existing condition. I sent in the appropriate forms proving prior coverage of the previously existing crazy, and they conceded that they would bear some of the cost. The cost they are willing to bear is significantly less than my previous insurer, though. My doctor and I argued with them about that, but they wouldn’t budge. Apparently my doctor is too in-network or not in-network enough, depending on whom I ask. Anyway, it’s now October and I have consumed months of medical services without ever knowing the price. Now I’m going to have to pay a bill that’s double what I was expecting.

How can health consumers be expected to negotiate on price or shop around when it takes four months to get a price quote?

At this point the only thing that makes me want to get any medical care at all is the fact that it’s costing my insurer more than it’s costing me. I’m tempted to go over to my Primary Care Physician’s office and tell him I’ve been experiencing nonspecific bone and organ pain and ask for some expensive tests, just to bleed them a little more.

Did you hear the one about the doctor, the hospital administrator, and the HMO exec who were trying to get into heaven? They let the doctor in because doctors save lives. They let the hospital administrator in because hospital administrators help doctors save lives. The HMO exec says “hey, I help people save lives too!” and St. Peter says “Let’s do it like you do on earth with people trying to get into a hospital: We’ll admit you for three days, but after that you can go to hell.”

Hunger-strikes always struck me as kind of passive-aggressive, you know? Like, “I’m going to slowly and painfully kill myself, while you go on doing whatever horrible shit you like.” But that’s not how it works. Hunger striking is effective because the single most powerful force in the world is shame.

But what happens when you have two groups trying to achieve contradictory aims, and both of them start in on hunger strikes?

Yeah, this is a Bolivia update: Prostitutes in El Alto, the poor suburb outside La Paz, have sewn their lips shut in protest over last week’s protests that shuttered their (legal) brothels.

Yeah, it’s legal there. You have to have a license, though. And after violent protests, the city government revoked some licenses. But that’s people’s livelihood, you know. So, the hookers are on hunger strike. So are some bar-owners and karaoke operators. And also some of the student groups who want the bars and brothels shut down. And finally some people from the truckers union are on a hunger strike, over some kind of blockade being carried out by a rival union. It’s a giant clusterfuck of starvation.

The NYT has an English summary, but there’s more detail in Spanish in La Razón.

History notes that this is not the first hunger strike by prostitutes in El Alto. Last year, there was one over corrupt police and city officials who demanded bribes and sexual favors in exchange for licensing permission.

Great line about the tax-and-spend Republicans from the New Yorker this week: “Saying today that tax cuts will increase tax revenues is not like saying that bombing Iran constitutes a sensible foreign policy, or that education vouchers will wreck the public schools. It’s more like saying that the best way to treat sick people is to bleed them to let out the evil spirits.”

And yet… and yet… people still believe. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. There are also people who think Saddam (or possibly the Jews, or possibly the CIA, or possibly Saddam in collusion with the Jews in the CIA) caused 9/11. These are people who believe that God truly has it in for the New York Yankees. I mean, sure, the Yankees are not my team. But I don’t think there is a divine force rooting for the Colorado Rockies because they prohibit Maxim and swearing in the clubhouse. Whoever wins the World Series will win through the normal, everyday non-miraculous combination of hard work, training, luck, and as-yet-undetected steroids.

Plus, it’s done with mice instead of actors!

Freezepop “Less Talk More Rokk”
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf

In other news, today’s “Who’s Better?” compares Hannibal Lecter and Phil Spector. Voting is firmly in favor of Hannibal Lector, because he has way better taste.

Once again, awesomeness via Ectomo:

“Ginormous” is the latest addition, at least the latest one I care about or use. But I’m really waiting for “milf” to end up. And not just as an all-caps acronym. I want them to accept “milfy,” as an adjective. And I want to know whether the plural should be “milfs” or “milves.”

Seriously, these things plague me. I need to know!