William Shatner Ain't Got Shit on Me

Well first let me apologize for not writing a post in quite a while. I've been very busy at work and my blog has slipped my mind when I'm home and have time to write in it.

Anyways this is going to be brief because I'm tired and it's almost 11:30pm. So I'll just share this quick experience that I had about a week ago when I was driving home.

It was about 930 or 10pm, I can't remember exactly, and I was driving down Friendship Ave towards Negley, because my new favorite way to get to and from Oakland is to go across the Bloomfield Bridge. So I'm driving down Friendship and up ahead I see what appears to be a man slumped against a tree, with his legs sprawled out in the middle of the street. So I of course slow down and move toward the center of the road, as there were no oncoming cars at this moment. As I approach this man, he does not move or make the slightest indication that he realizes I am traveling towards him in a 2 ton box of metal. As I pass he still does not move a muscle in response to the fact that he's blatantly in the road.

Being the conscientious person that I am, I think to myself that something must be wrong in this situation. So I pull out the old mobile, and dial up 911, and politely inform them that there is an unconscious, possibly deceased person lying almost in the middle of Friendship Ave, all Rescue 911 style!

Just another exciting adventure of my adult life. Sorry for this brief/lame post. I promise I'll have more exciting material to write about soon. Till next time, thanks for reading!

Life In the Ghetto

Well it's 10:30P and I just got home from a great evening hanging out oh I'llfeelya Street. I'm turning from Negley onto Stanton and I had a rather alarming experience. Now I don't mean alarming in the sense that I was afraid, rather angry and anxious could be the description of the feeling I had. Now as most of you know Morningside is a great little neighborhood that is bordered by East Liberty, a not so great neighborhood. Full of thuggish guys driving Buicks with "dubs" on them and larger chicks wearing clothes made for 12 year olds. Anyways, so I'm turning onto Stanton, and suddenly an explosive sound erupts into my ear (insert sex joke here). Simultaneously, a piece of debris ricochets off the back of my car and onto the street beside me. Ok honest first thought, I was just the victim of a drive by shooting. I mean what was I supposed to think. I was driving through thugtown with gunshot-esque sounds flying by my head, with shrapnel hitting the Wasaabi. So I park at the church immediately following the turn, and inspect the car. No detectable damage, but I'll have a better assessment in the morning. My only conclusion is that it could have possibly been someone driving over a closed container like a soda bottle and the lid blew off, though neither the sound nor the piece of whatever hitting my car fit the of description. Who knows. Megan will probably call me in about 10 minutes telling me she just saw a news story about a murder by Howitzer Cannon in East Liberty, and then I'll know the real story. Jesus H!

A Step By Step Guide On How To Ruin A Labor Day Party

Well step one would be to consume copious amounts of alcohol (namely, beer) and an even larger amount of food (namely, burgers/dogs, mac’n cheese, pasta salad) A body weight amount should suffice.

Step two is to play beer pong and win (so that you have to play multiple games and consume even more alcohol)

Step three is to smoke a cigar much too quickly. Ten minutes ought to do it.

Step four is to eat a little more.

Step five is to be coaxed (read: coerced) into playing quarters (be sure to get “skipped” like 10x and also to land a quarter into the cup of beer in front of you)

Step six is important, so be sure to pay attention. You need to go up to an unoccupied room, lay down on an air mattress (most uncomfortable sleeping surface known to man) and lay there in agony for about twenty minutes. The culmination of this step is to vomit into a moving box, provided you by your host. You then need to carry it downstairs, for everyone to see, so that you can throw it away and get it to stop leaking on your hands.

I hope this was informative.

As I Lay Dying

Hello Reader,

The title of this post is a literal translation of my day. I've been bored to tears, on the brink of death from mental and physical stagnation. It's the end of the month (obviously you knew that) and I don't have anything to do. It gets like this every month. The first two weeks are complete hell, with heinous amounts of work to do, and then the last week of the month is a different type of hell, where I sit at my desk desperately trying to find something to do, willing myself away from the IE icon on my desktop, for fear that I'll be caught surfing and given another account to work on in my "spare time". I also forgot to mention that I sit and watch on bated breath for the minutes to tick by. There was a cartoon I once saw as a child, I forget what it was about but "Father Time" was in it, marching on as he always does, although this time he was on a treadmill. Well Father, I fear that your piece of overpriced exercise equipment has gone caput. Please buy another so that I do not feel the cold, steely fingers of tedium entrap me. PLEASE!!!

Well since the timestamp on Blogspot never works, it's 4:11Pm and I'm about to leave work for the day. Thanks for tolerating my eccentric outbursts.

Bleeder Valve Nipple Covers

Good Morning to all my rabid readers!

Last night I was given the distinct privilege to assist a good friend of mine with working on his car. Now I always jump at the chance to use and improve my mechanical skills, and yesterday’s opportunity was especially exciting, because I got to work on a Porsche! Since there are only like 5 people who read this blog and they all know each other and all of them know only 1 person who owns a Porsche, I’ll just tell you now I was helping Bru.

So our task was a fairly simple one. Flush the brake system in preparation for Saturday’s Autocross race a Beaver Run. This process isn’t really difficult; it’s just tedious because all 4 wheels need to be removed which involves lifting the car on jack stands, ect. We got a bit of a late start on the whole process, on account of Bru having to run out to get a last minute gadget for our project, but by 6:30 we were ready to start.

Now Bru is an extremely meticulous person when it comes to doing ANYTHING with the 911, and with good reason. I mean the car is amazing. However he did make me laugh at times with how careful he was being. For example: It took him about 5 minutes to loosen the first lug nut. Not because it was on so tight that he couldn’t do it, but because it took him that long to work up the courage to actually use the force that was necessary to crack it loose. The preceding 4 minutes and 50 seconds we filled with little baby attempts. Once the first one was loose and he saw that no damage had come to his baby, we made excellent progress.

Ok, car raised, wheels off, and we’re ready to go. It was a scene straight out of West Virginia. Well… and affluent area of West Virginia (I doubt there are many 911s sitting in front yards on bricks, but w/e). So my job for this project was the “helper”, meaning I sat in the car and put pressure on the brake pedal to keep air from getting sucked back into the brake system when the bleeder valves were release. I also was teaching Bru how to do this process. Now I know some of you might say something like “How the hell does Dallas know anything about fixing cars?” Well remember, I’ve now owned oh, 8 of them. If I hadn’t learned how to fix some stuff myself, I would have been broke because with all the cars I bought, there wouldn’t be any money left over to fix them. Anyways, I’ve done a brake job or two in my years, as well as a lot of other stuff, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’m doing. I did have one other job, which will explain the title of this blog. Each bleeder valve has a small rubber cap on it. Because Bru was wearing gloves he couldn’t remove this, so I was responsible to getting them off.

Anyways I was the helper and I sat in the car and pushed the brake pedal. This will probably be the only time I’m ever in the driver’s seat of the Porsche. Even sitting still, engine shut off, wheels removed, up on jack stands, this car is still fricking nice! We finished bleeding the brakes, put the wheels back on and lowered the car right around 9pm. Even though it took 2.5 hours, this was the easiest “do it yourself” mechanic project I’ve ever completed. After we finished we took it for a test drive. No fatal crashes so I guess what we did, we did correctly. Hooray!

Men of Steel

Well hello there reader, welcome back.

Every morning, on my daily commute, I get to go past a construction site downtown. It’s on Liberty Ave, at 10th Street. Each day I’m continually amazed at the engineering that goes into constructing something so large in such a cramped space.

Now I of course have seen large urban buildings, in fact I work in one. But I’ve never been lucky enough to see one being constructed. I have gotten to see the daily progress ever since they broke ground on the project. Granted this building isn’t even going to be that big. I think 4 or 5 stories. I’m not sure, but I think it’s the new African American Cultural building.

Right now, the building is only a collection of steel girders, but it’s still fascinating to watch it take shape. Already I’m trying to figure out what goes where. For example, I’m fairly certain I know that there are going to be some escalators, and consequently where the lobby is going to be. There are 3 rows of ascending steel frames that have the look of an escalator. I can also see that the building is going to be very unique looking, because it’s not modular or square at all. There are beams going every which way.

What’s so awesome is how a building transforms from this scraggly collection of steel beams into a structure capable of supporting people with form and function. How the empty spaces between the beams become rooms and hallways and offices is just so fascinating.

Anyways, this might be the first actual topic that I've pondered. So that’s kind of exciting. Have a great day everyone.

Oh, also. On a side note. Last night during a game of Scrabble I was observing, I, along with everyone else, learned that "et" is actually the past tense of the word eat. Who the hell knew? "Last night I et some pizza" I guess "ate" is getting the shaft on this one.

An Anal Bead or a Dragon.....Which One Are You?

Think carefully now on your answer. It could be important.

So if you haven't guessed, I just got back from seeing Pineapple Express. Let me just say that it was hilarious. I must say that I was slightly skeptical, and mostly ignorant of this film in the past weeks leading up to its release. I hadn't seen any previews (I pay for cable solely to get a discount on my internet) and therefore I had no idea what to expect really. I like Seth Rogen and although I've only ever seen James Franco in the Spiderman movies, he wasn't bad. Then several people told me it was a great movie, and the prospect of $5 movie night is just too much to pass up. So I went to see it, and was not disappointed.

The evening had some moments about as outrageous as the movie. It was supposed to be Ravi, Mike, Kerri and myself, but it ended up being a bros night. First off, Kerri, apparently unaware of how a clock works or how to read one, went grocery shopping at the Waterfront 20 minutes before our movie was supposed to start...in the Southside. So she did not make it. Now Ravi had already purchased 4 tickets (the movie was sold out so good call) and upon receiving the call from Gatti that she would not be attending, was now in a bit of a situation. Luckily the universe does not fail to provide, as an 8 year old had just such a need for a ticket of this kind. So Ravi was scalping tickets at the Southside Works movie theater. Before our movie could even begin, there was some additional excitement. Apparently a rather unscrupulous character had tried to see a showing of Pineapple Express without right to do so. Whether it be by sneaking in or just not leaving after the previous showing, we will not know. Now I was not there to witness the initial fiasco, but McCall tells me that a very beastly movie attendant with no shortage of attitude confronted this guy, who fled the scene into the Men's bathroom. Where I come in is at this point, where she is outside the bathroom, yelling various obscenities which vary around insulting this guy's manhood...or lack there of.

Anyways, the movie was GREAT. It did a great job of building excitement and anticipation, which is no small feat for a comedy. It started of benignly enough and built up into this crazy smattering of ridiculous situations that did not fail to disappoint the laugh-o-meter. It does a great job of simultaneously glamorizing and denouncing the practice of smoking weed, and has some killer action scenes. I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, so I won't say anymore.

I hope everyone else's Monday evening was equally enjoyable. Goodnight all. Until next time, thanks for reading.