Author Archives: anachostic - Page 26

So, Are YOU A Collector? Clearly Not.

Posted by anachostic on April 12, 2018 No comments

As I posted recently, I went on a CD safari and ended returning with 20 CDs. 15 of those were purchased from two flea market vendors, both of whom said they were collectors.

In the first booth I went to, I felt I was in a hurry for time, so I scanned the discs very quickly, looking for smooth cases. However, I saw one CD that I had scored on my last flea market trip that was a valuable find. The CD wasn’t in a a smooth case (actually a shitty, flimsy case), so I was curious what a normal edition of that album looked like. When I opened the case, I was surprised. Similar to my previous reaction to finding gold, I said, “Oh, it’s a red-faced Polydor. Nice.”

Only a real geek would say “a red-faced Polydor”, right? That’s a statement that would come out of the mouth of an orthinologist. Like, you should log that in a bird-watching book along with the time and location. But, I didn’t log it, I bought it. WHY? I already had one and it was a valuable one at that! Sometimes, you can’t explain these things to collectors. Different is good.

When I got home and cleaned the CDs all up, I researched what I had purchased. Now you may recall the post about my $300 find for $3. Well, this time, I paid $5, and wouldn’t you know it? Someone has paid over $500 for this CD.

I now have both of these CDs. What’s the difference? 100% appearance. These are the two CDs. They have the same music.

And when I say they have the same music, I checked. They DO. I posted this on Relative Waves. It’s the same.

That’s two waveforms overlaid on each other. There’s no green or white peeking out anywhere. That means no differences. SAME SAME SAME.

Anyway. So now I have a new most valuable CD. Again, by a large margin. In fact, my collection value went up by over $1000 from this last trip. After all, I did find a bunch of other rarities.

Music Transcends Spirituality, Or Does It?

Posted by anachostic on April 11, 2018 No comments

On my recent mega-thrift run, I picked up a particular CD from a thrift shop. The thrift shop had one of those CD sections where everything was religious music. The CD caught my eye because the title was “Portraits in Synthesis” and the cover was very new-agey, although the back design was a little chaotic. The CD seemed like it would be a nice new-age synthesizer instrumental album, so I spent a couple bucks and got it.

When I got home, with my 19 other CDs, I took a better look at the back and saw the tracks were named all… uncomfortable names. Things like, “Fairest Lord Jesus”, and “Lord Be Glorified / Spirit Song”, and the rest were similar. Of course my reaction was, “Goddamn it. This is a religious album.” And I left it on the kitchen table while I cleaned up and cataloged my other finds.

The next day, I saw the disc sitting on the counter and picked up it again. I read more of the back and realized, yes, it was a synth album. It just had weird song titles. I looked inside the booklet and there were no lyrics, so, yes, it’s instrumental. What’s the deal with these titles?

I researched the label the album was published under and learned that it was a subsidiary of a religious music label. This new child label was made to take advantage of the growing “new age” music popularity of the 80’s. How weird. When I think new-age, I actually think of “anti-religion”, not in any evil way, but you know, new-age spirituality.

Think of the issues that come up when Christian music lovers can’t listen to new-age music because it conflicts with their personal beliefs. “I can’t listen to this because it’s new-age, and that involves crystals and tantra and whatever a chakra is!” Well, music finds a way, right? We’ll publish the same kind of music, but we’ll use religious titles that invoke the names Lord and Jesus and then there’s no moral conflict! What a genius idea! It’s genius, but it’s sad, too. Music doesn’t have any religious affiliation. It’s agnostic. And the sad part is that agnosticism isn’t good enough for devout believers. If it doesn’t fully walk the walk and talk the talk, it’s evil.

I was testing out my car stereo after doing some work on it and the only radio station I could pick up was the local religious station. Go figure, huh? And some woman had called in to talk to the radio host and explain how she loved the station and how it gave her whole house a worshipping feel all the time. That’s what you want your whole life to be? Like you’re in church all day?

But I try to keep in mind the lyrics from NOFX’s Happy Guy, from Punk In Drublic (Something the devout would never hear anyway):

Don’t try to judge him, his theologian ideal
His hopes may be false but his happiness is real
Don’t try to judge him, he’s just a man

Ooo, You’re So Slow and Tasty

Posted by anachostic on April 10, 2018 No comments

Provocative title aside, this is just a post bitching about upscaling at eating places. You know, where the normal menu, which has existed forever, just isn’t good enough anymore, so the place has to try new, fancy shit and to hell with what we had before. I’ve said before that I’m a fan of the standards, the basics. When I go to a place to eat, I usually know what I’m getting, so all this new and better stuff doesn’t really appeal to me. Yeah, I suck. Deal with it.

I have read numerous times in articles about how McDonalds keeps trying to attract new customers by making new things. There’s plenty wrong with this. First off, as all American investor-driven companies, McDonalds is not allowed to just be. They must forever be growing. There is no satisfaction in being good. You have to be better, quarter after quarter. So, to that end, McD’s tries to grow their customer base by selling different things. The problem is, these different things are more complex. They take time. They fuck up all the efficiencies that made the McD’s of olden times great. You want a plain old quarter pounder? Well, it’s going to be a bit because the party in front of you ordered Flapacheetos and McDonkles and we have to specially prepare each of those.

The exact same thing has happened the last couple of times I’ve been to Dunkin Donuts. The party in front of me doesn’t want donuts or coffee. They want, “An everything bagel, toasted, with butter, and bacon and cheese. And then another one just like that, but a plain bagel. And what do you want? Ok, a croissant, no wait, another bagel. What kind? They’re all right there. What’s that one? Never mind, just make it plain. And what do you want on it? Bacon? No. No bacon. Cheese? Sausage? You like sausage. Yes, you do like it. Just sausage and cheese. And I’m going to have a coffee, with half and half and two sugars. And what do you want to drink? I don’t know if they have that…” And 15 fucking minutes later, because they can’t take my order until they finish the order before me (FUUUUUUCCCK!), I order my two donuts.

Dunkin Donuts used to be a donut shop. There used to be a time, and it wasn’t really all that long ago, you could get in and get out. Now it’s a goddamn café. It doesn’t need to be one. In fact, McDonalds also has what they call McCafe. That’s the trap. McDonalds also used to be fast food. There’s nothing fast about it anymore. The same articles that talk about McDonalds adding new menu items to attract new business also say the restaurant owners hate it because it slows down their service times, which just backs everything up and irritates the customers, like me.

I say fairly often that I have pity for people growing up today because they have no idea that fast food used to be good and tasty and now it’s just processed bullshit. And now the service has gone to shit right along with the food quality. You know, Chipotle had something pretty good going for a while, until that whole poisoning thing happened. That’s another company that is probably going to get desperate and start introducing new items. You’ll know it when a new menu item has to be built off the conveyer line. And that will be the next nail in the coffin because it will reduce the efficiency of their service. Let’s see if they survive long enough to kick themselves in the teeth.

Safari 2018

Posted by anachostic on April 8, 2018 No comments

A little over a year ago, I went on a CD hunt, and I recently chose to indulge myself again. This time, I would travel to a remote metro city with a whole new, fresh collection of thrift shops to plunder. The trip would be two hours to get there (and coincidentally, two hours to get back). But that’s quite ok, because driving is something I do. The MX-5 has 263k miles on it right now and shows no sign of giving up.

I plan on making a couple of alterations to the car before this road trip. The first is removal of the Zune integration with the stereo. It’s been fun, but as time wore on, and Zune support in Windows went away, it’s less of a thing now for me. I’ve gotten back into CDs, which seen to have more fidelity than the Zune audio pumped through a 3.5mm cable, even when the files are lossless.

While I have things disassembled, I also plan to implement the traffic power cable for my GPS and hide the ugly bits behind the dash. Right now, I have a frankencable coming up from my center console and up the dash. It doesn’t provide a traffic antenna for the GPS and said GPS bitches about every single time I start it up. It will be nice to be rid of that stupid alert and also to have the traffic info for better routing. This will involve purchasing an add-on 12v socket that I’ll hide behind the dash and plug the GPS power cable into it. I can’t understand why they don’t design GPS power cables to be plug-in or hard-wired. Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve torn the interior of my car apart. I used to do it on a monthly basis.

And then, a trip like this is something that must be done solo. I can’t imagine the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in a car as a passenger for hours on end, then slogging around dingy shops for a full day. I have a list of 20 locations to hit in the remote area, including one bona-fide music store. I’m not sure if I will have time to hit the flea market while I’m there, but I’ll certainly try.

Friday after work, I spent a couple of hours fighting in the car, routing the power cable for the GPS and removing old audio stuff. That was a success, or so I thought until I went out for dinner that night. Now I have an alternator whine in my front right speaker, so I’m going to have to take the dash all apart again and be a bit more cautious with my power cable and audio cable routing. Worse, it means my Saturday trip (two hours each way) will be in silence. Oh fucking no.

I headed out early in the morning and made it to the flea market just as it opened. I found two large CD sellers and spent more than I usually would at a flea market. I paid more per CD, but I think I got some good items. (Wait for the post on this. You have no idea!)

The rest of the day was pretty sad compared to the flea market. Many thrift shops were closed or out of business. The music store I went to had outrageous prices, like $8 for used CDs, and nothing remotely collectable. Well, that’s not true. I treated myself to a Gold CD for $50. I’ve said before, you can’t really go wrong with those. They keep their value.

I finished the day at an old favorite Thai restaurant, which was amazing as usual. Just like the good old days when you would judge how good the food was by how long your tongue would burn after the meal. And it was a while.

The traffic feature on the GPS did its job and told me when construction was coming up and when I would be delayed by traffic and for how long. At one point it was counting down when the traffic jam would end and almost as soon as it said it was over, we started speeding up again. Amazing.

So tomorrow is car stereo repair time. And tonight has been cleaning, logging, and ripping. I’ll do some relative waves posts with some of the new editions I picked up tonight as well.

Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed

Posted by anachostic on April 5, 2018 No comments

I was browsing my old posts and found a semi-promise to relate a story about a massive keyboard I didn’t want anymore. And the thought of that coincided with something I’ve given thought to in the past with collections.

But first, the story. At one point in my studio, I had five keyboards. Two 88-key and three 61 key synths. On one rack, behind my desk, I had the General Music Equinox and the Casio CZ-1.

On the wall to the right of my desk, I had the Roland RD-600 and a CME UF6. The CME did not have any sounds; it was just a performance controller. Sadly, the computer drivers went out of date before I could ever use it. I’ve actually forgotten where it went or what I did with it.

And in storage was an old Ensoniq ESQ-1, my first professional-grade keyboard. It was awesome to the end. That keyboard was eventually sold for a pittance to a guy I was in a club with. I should have just kept it in storage.

Anyway, I didn’t have a real use for all these keyboards, especially two 88-key controllers. The Equinox had to go. I wasn’t looking to make money on it, I thought it would be a fair trade for a mixer, which is something I did have a need for at the time.

I have a Guitar Center in my town, so I loaded up the Equinox in the GF’s car and we headed down to make a deal. This keyboard is a beast, all metal case, weighted keys, hard drive, floppy drive, sequencer, the works. But when I get to the equipment guy at Guitar Center, he looks it over and just says, “nah.” Not literally, but he said as politely as possible that they did not want it. I explained that I didn’t want cash for it, I wanted to do a trade. That didn’t change his mind. So I was bummed out and got ready to pick the monster back up to haul it outside again. But then the sales guy asked, “What were you looking to get for it, anyway?”

And I can’t definitely explain why that question caused me to see red. Maybe I thought he was mocking me after telling me my keyboard was worth nothing to them. It was a pointless question, completely unnecessary. Like if I said, 50 bucks, he would change his mind? Did he want to see just how desperate I was? Was he looking to either take advantage of a low price or laugh at me for an unrealistic price? All these thoughts rushed through my mind and I just snapped at him. “Nothing, if you’re not interested in taking it!” And things got awkward, partially because my outburst didn’t really make any sense.

I stormed out of Guitar Center carrying my massive anchor under my arm and the GF followed me out, silently and probably sheepishly. I’m not one for making a scene (unless someone forgets my SPOON), so it was just bad all around. And you know what kind of hurt the most? I bought that keyboard used from the Guitar Center in Plymouth Meeting before I came to Florida. They’ll sell it, but they won’t trade for it.

So fuck Guitar Center. After calming down and reassessing, I decided to try the other option, Sam Ash Music. This would require a longish drive, like an hour away. So I loaded the Equinox up and headed out solo. This sales guy tried to set my expectations low. He said that nobody really wanted these old synthesizers anymore and the best he could do is try to sell it as a MIDI controller. Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. He said he could give me $150 for it.

As insulting as that was, I pressed on. I asked if I could do a trade for a mixer and he warmly agreed. We walked over to the mixers and I reviewed what I could get for $150. There was an ok model, but a much better one was there for $200. So I asked him if I could get the $200 mixer. He said yeah, we could do that. We had a deal. (Spoiler: we didn’t.)

The sales guy gets the mixer, does up all the paperwork for the keyboard trade and he sends me off to the cashier. She punches everything in and says that’ll be $54. Excuse me? This was a trade. She says yeah, the keyboard is a $150 credit and your mixer is $200. The sales guy gets called back over. I ask him what’s going on and he reiterates that we agreed the keyboard would be $150. I explain that I thought when we were looking at mixers and I asked if I could get the $200 mixer, we were negotiating. Nope, we were not negotiating at all.

I didn’t want to storm out of a second store in a blind fury, so I sucked it up and bought my $200 mixer for $50 and unloaded an anchor. In hindsight, I should have kept the keyboard in storage. I could have gifted it to someone who really wanted to play music.

So that’s the story of the Equinox. I said that that the circumstances of that story made me think of collections. The other night I did a quick Craigslist search for CDs and found someone selling his collection of “over 750” CDs. First of all, you don’t have an accurate count, that’s strike one. You don’t have a list of albums or even artists, strike two. You can’t make out any titles from the photos you posted, strike three. And for your strikeout, what were you looking to get for it, anyway? $2,250? hmmmm. Ok. $3/CD is fair, if I want ALL the CDs. But at this point, from what I know about the collection, I want zero.

This is the curse of all collections, that the bigger they get, the less aggregate value they have and the more individual value they potentially have. It’s the same problem with thrift shops and many flea market dealers. They make the incorrect assumption that every CD is worth the same. Any intelligent person would agree that is not true at all. And as the valuable CDs are snatched up, you are left with nothing but junk that is worth far less than the price you are asking.

The Definitive Article On Bands

Posted by anachostic on April 4, 2018 No comments

What a misleading title! Too bad, you’re here now. I have been puzzling a bit today over the use of “The” in band names when it is not officially part of the band’s name. The best example of this is “The Eagles”, whom I happened to listen to on my morning commute. The band is really “Eagles”, but most everyone says, “The Eagles”. You know. This oddity was best summed up on a post on a forum that said something like,

If I say, “I love Eagles!”, someone might think that I liked large birds of prey that symbolize freedom in America. But if I say, “Man, I fucking hate The Eagles!”, everybody knows exactly what I mean.

I thought I had found the answer in an article dealing with this specific topic, but I was unsatisfied with its conclusion. I delved into my own music library for examples to see if I could make any sense of this. Here’s a list of candidates from A through C:

Acoustic Alchemy
Alpha Rev
Art Of Noise
Blind Melon
Blue Man Group
Carpenters
Cheap Trick
Chicago
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crowded House
Curved Air

This is actually a very good cross-sample, because there are a couple bands in here that are definitely preceded by “the” regularly: Art of Noise and Carpenters. There’s some you would never consider preceding with “the”, like The Crowded House. And there’s some that could go either way, like The Blue Man Group.

I thought I was onto something when I made my first hypothesis that you cannot use a definitive article if the first word of the band name is a modifier, like an adjective – Cheap Trick, Crowded House, Curved Air. So, what kind of guideline is there for say, Art of Noise or Blue Man Group? I got a hint from the band name Art of Noise – the “of”. The Blue Man Group is The Group of Blue Man. The Art of Noise is, well, The Art of Noise. You couldn’t say The Air of Curved or The House of Crowded, right?

Let’s find some more examples that may fit this “of” guideline.

Dixie Dregs
Electric Light Orchestra
Hearts of Space
Jefferson Airplane (mentioned in the article)
Little River Band

And some examples of the initial guideline where an adjective is the first word:

Daft Punk
Damn Yankees
Deep Purple
Diesel Boy
Dire Straits (also mentioned in the article)
Dream Theater
Fine Young Cannibals
Flying Colors

In this second list, you cannot interject “of”, where in the first list, you can. Ok, the hypothesis is holding up reasonably well. That leaves single-word band names like: Buggles, Carpenters, Chicago, Devo, Dokken. And also, we have to consider bands that do formally use “the” in their name like: The Cars, The Doors, The Outfield, The Police.

The article I found proposes that if the band name is a plural or collective term, “the” is used or is assumed. That explains why we force ourselves to say “The Carpenters”, but not “The Chicago”. However, it doesn’t account for cases like “The Nice” or “The Who” except to potentially argue that excluding the article results in a shitty, confusing name. “I have tickets to Who tomorrow. Nice is opening for them.”

So, I think I’ve satisfied myself as to when I can realistically prepend “the” to a band name even when the band does not explicitly do so themselves. The exceptions to those guidelines, I’ll just have to chalk up to the bullshit of the English language.

Listen To This Story

Posted by anachostic on March 26, 2018 No comments

On a regular CD shopping run last week, I picked up a random album. I didn’t know the artist, much less the album, but the name was intriguing: The Interstellar Suite By Amin Bhatia. Peeking inside the case, the liner notes stated: “The orchestral textures on this recording are a complex blend of synthesizers.” Well, consider me sold.

The tracks of the album were named very specifically and initially it somewhat bothered me. Songs named explicitly like, LAUNCH: Mission Control and Liftoff/Jumping to the Speed of Light. Another one was: BATTLE: Planning the Attack/Return Fire/The Last Missile. I wasn’t entirely keen on being told what I should be thinking about as the songs are playing. Despite that, I did review the track names as each song came on.

So let me say first off that this is an amazing album for many reasons. The music is exquisitely composed and performed. It is extremely orchestral and melodic and that’s made even more impressive because it’s done on a collection of synthesizers circa 1987. The first track reminds me strongly of ELP’s Pirates and has a lot of John Williams influence, which isn’t a bad thing. The thing that makes this album stand out from a Star Wars soundtrack, is the addition of sound effects, including some minor character dialog and atmospheric sounds. And maybe it’s just the geek in me, but space ship launches and flybys and missiles and lasers and explosions, all rendered by 80’s synthesizers… consider me a fan.

I have probably played this a dozen times on repeat; it does not get old for me. And that part is what is most interesting to me. This particular album is what is termed “program music”, which I had not been exposed to before. With program music, the songs are meant to conjure up specific imagery in your mind as you listen to them. And this album does that amazingly well. To carry the example of Star Wars, when you hear the Star Wars themes, you can visualize the scenes in your head, you’ve seen this before. But there’s no movie with this album, all you have are the song titles, which I originally thought were too much.

Something about me is that I don’t re-read books. I also don’t re-watch movies (except concert videos). So, I find it peculiar that this album is very much like a movie or a book in that it tells a story, but unlike books and movies, I can leave it on repeat. In fact, I’m playing it right now. It’s a soundtrack for a movie that was never made or a book that was never written. It’s also theme park music. If you’ve gone to any Disney or Universal park, there is atmospheric music playing all the time that keeps you in the theme of the sub-park you are currently walking though. This music would not be out of place in the slightest.

Hearing this music has made me think of a couple things. I have a project limping slowly forward that involves a musical soundtrack. Hearing this suite of music has given me serious reservations of calling my music a soundtrack. Despite that feeling, I also realize that I have done something similar to this before, although nowhere near as grand. It was a short-lived time where I wrote two multi-track songs I called Spy Song and Airlock. The first was a short little song that could be considered intro/chase scene/romance scene/intro reprise. And Airlock was just a short scene of someone trapped in a space ship and eventually ejected into space. Neither of these little songs would be useable for any projects just because they’re too short – a couple minutes or so.

So I now have a whole other genre of music to explore now. I used to buy random CDs at pawn shops when I felt my listening habits were getting stale, but I haven’t done anything like that for a long time. And sometimes you get really lucky when you do that.

So, Are You A Collector?

Posted by anachostic on March 25, 2018 No comments

Yesterday, I had one of those days. The GF texted me and asked how it was going. I replied that I was out and about looking for treasure and I hadn’t found any yet. I didn’t know at the time, I was going to strike gold.

When I say looking for treasure, I’m just being really dramatic about my hobby: searching for CDs. I mean, if I can buy a CD from a thrift shop and it’s worth $5 online, I’m pleased. You’d be surprised how many CDs I buy that have a value of nothing. But sometimes that’s just because the CD is everywhere and it’s not valuable because it was made in such large quantities. Or maybe, no one likes it. My tastes are all over the place.

If you’re going to really get into CD collecting, you need to be knowledgeable. Duh, right? Well, not really. You can just collect stuff you like to listen to, or you can collect stuff that’s rare, or you can do both. But you need to know what’s rare and how to identify it to take advantage of it.

I hit a few thrift shops and picked up some CDs that were common and a couple that I’d never seen before but were identifiable as early CDs, which are valuable to the right person. And it doesn’t hurt that the music is all 80’s. I’d probably like it even if it was worthless.

Moving on, I made my last stop, at a flea market. I found one CD seller and he had SO many CDs. Well over a thousand, for sure. But they were fucking busted. Broken cases, dirty, some discs were damaged. But he made up for it in quantity and breadth. I did manage to snag some uncommon finds, including a target CD of ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It’s reported to be a common target, but it has a printing error on it, so to a serious collector, well, they might get excited. The printing error makes it immediately rare. Like a double-struck coin.

As I was finishing up, I asked the guy if he bought these CDs in bulk or was it a personal collection. He said these were bought from all over the place, but he had his own collection, too. I thought it was a little odd to sell a target CD for so cheap instead of finding another collector who was willing to pay more. But there was little else he had that was remarkable, so maybe he really did know value.

Anyway, after looking at every CD there, I found another large CD seller, who had much better quality of product. As I worked my way closer to her and her register, she said, “lots of good stuff, especially in these stacks here.” I took my time and when I got to those stacks, I discovered she was right. As I was pulling first pressing CDs and stacking them up to buy, I asked, “Are you a collector?” She said she was and that she had a whole bunch of CDs of her own. And that’s when I realized I was a collector unlike other collectors.

This is the album I bought for $3 from her. This screenshot is from Discogs, a collector website.

One thing to note is the entry doesn’t show the album cover. It shows the disc face. The importance of this is so that other people do not log that they have this particular release in their collection based solely on the album cover. This disc is rare. How rare? 14 people have logged it and 60 want to buy it. But, those aren’t the interesting numbers.

The disc is also quite valuable. And I have one now that I bought for $3. It instantly became the most valuable disc in my collection, by a long shot. It’s kind of like an Antiques Roadshow moment. When I first saw the CD, I knew it was an early pressing because of the case. When I opened it, I thought, “Oh, it’s a Polar. Cool.” I’d heard about Polar pressings and they seemed a little mythological the way some talked about them, but I didn’t figure it would be that valuable.

So anyway, go me! My collection as ranked by Discogs is worth between $4,200 and $12,500, with a median value of $7,100. Feels odd when you’re buying CDs for $1-$5 each.

Simple, Unhealthy Pleasures, Made More Expensive

Posted by anachostic on March 22, 2018 No comments

I read a recent announcement that a new burger place was going to be opening in my town. You would think I would be excited about something like that because I like burgers. But unfortunately, the burgers of my era don’t really exist anymore. They have been improved, upcycled, and gentrified. They are now Gourmet Burgers. And I fucking hate them.

Remember a time when you would go and have a beer? Well, I don’t personally, because I don’t drink. But I remember the reputation of people who would go and have a beer and it was, well, hmmm…. blue-collar. But then, craft beers came along and drinking beer was hip and trendy and super cool. And they also got super expensive, and there were so many variants it seemed impossible to keep track of what you might like, if anything. And drinking craft beers gave you a way to serious discuss the various ways you get yourself drunk, with organic hops and brew cycles and fermentation in only the highest quality drums and ABV or drunkerness-value.

Remember when cupcakes were a simple treat? You’d buy a half-dozen from the grocery store and eat them at a party or over a week or something? Then came along a concept of gourmet cupcakes, where you buy one super-expensive cupcake and savor the fuck out of it to get your money’s worth. But no one just eats one cupcake, so in the end, you’re just spending a hell of a lot more money. But you justify it because the cupcake is of a much higher quality. And the cupcakes aren’t just something simple, it’s a mishmash of crazy ingredients and flavors just to prove to yourself and everyone else that you have such a refined palate.

Remember burgers? A chunk of mashed beef on a bun? Well, that’s just too simple for the hip, modern person. A burger can be anything according to these assholes. Sure, you can put ground beef on a sesame seed bun, but where’s the challenge in that? What if you want chicken? Or fish? Or vegetables? Or… What if you want a wheat bun? What if you want lettuce as your bun? Those are all burgers! A bunch of vegetables wrapped in lettuce – look at my fucking BURGER! Bullshit! Sacrilege!

Oh, and toppings? Well, let’s just go right off the rails on this. I haven’t seen it yet, but I suppose you could potentially get a ground beef patty as a topping for your chicken burger. Why not? There’s no damn rules anymore!

You know the people that don’t go to Starbucks because they feel they’d be laughed out of the shop for ordering a coffee? “Get out of here, peasant! Go to Dunkin Donuts for your… coffee!” Well, that’s pretty much how I feel going to these places and asking for a plain cheeseburger. I’m offending them. And in a way, they’re offending me, too. I don’t see it as a place that has to elevate something simple to the point of eliminating the basics, I see it more like, we can’t do the basics well, so we’ll hide behind fancy buns and toppings and other ingredients to make up for that shortcoming. And people eat that shit up, literally.

This problem is everywhere. Remember when you could buy a candy bar? Now you can’t buy one. You have to buy two. They call it King Size, or Sharing Size, or whatever. Pretty soon, they’re going to start mixing different candy bars and saying it’s the new hip thing to do to when you get say, a Mounds and a Peppermint Patty together and eat them together like a fucking BURGER.

Remember when you just went and bought ice cream? Cold Stone Creamery took care of that. Remember when you bought a fountain drink? Coca Cola Freestyle machines to the rescue. Remember when you smoked cigarettes? Vaping gives you 50,000 different flavors and buzz levels. Remember casino slot machines with three reels? They got SO complex they couldn’t even be mechanical anymore. They had to be virtual reels on a touch screen.

I’m old. There, I said it.

Black Knight Of The Highway

Posted by anachostic on March 8, 2018 No comments

I had an incident a couple of years ago where I was involved in a collision on the highway. I was going full highway speed and got rear-ended by someone going much faster. This morning, I had another collision, with slightly different circumstances.

I’m doing my usual morning commute to work and just about ready to turn off at my exit. Something catches my eye and I look in the rear view mirror and a semi truck is right on my ass. The truck had moved into my lane to pass another semi that was to my left. I look in the mirror and say, “You motherfucker. Why don’t you get a little closer.” So he did.

Now, I’m saying, “Whatever, fucker. You can wait until I get off in a few seconds.” But he didn’t seem to care. He got even closer. Even more pissed off, I put on my turn signal to let him know I’d be out of the way soon. What I did not consider is that I am a tiny, tiny car. He is a massive semi truck. Not that it’s any absolution, but he probably never even saw me. His huge hood probably blocked me from his view entirely. And so, it’s probably no surprise what happened next.

I got bumped. My car swerved to the right, into the exit lane and he pulled up alongside me. I’m still not sure if he even noticed me at this point. I sped up alongside him and blared my tiny, tiny horn at him, but I doubt he even heard it. The median guardrail was coming up quickly, so I had to abort and stay in the exit lane, leaving him to go on his (probably) oblivious way.

At the stop light at the end of the exit lane, I immediately jumped out and checked the damage to my car. It’s just some very minor scuffing on the bumper that can probably be polished out. I went the rest of the way to work and it was at that time, I realized I left my phone at the house. This will be a great day.

But you know what? I have a dash cam. Granted, it doesn’t have a rear-facing camera, but I still have evidence I was hit. Just as an aside, a rear dash cam would be outrageous. Everything scary and crazy always happens behind me. So, in the parking lot at work, I saved the segment of the incident and later, I reviewed the video. The quality is pretty good. I am able to make out the trucking company name and their DOT license. Hopefully that’s enough of a lead to make this guy’s life miserable.

In the time I’ve had to think about this, my thoughts on the event have changed. My initial thought was that I got bumped because I was going too slow for this truck driver and he was impatient to pass this other truck. As I’ve thought more about it, it’s probably just that I was invisible to him. Again, that doesn’t make him any less at fault here. But, it does make me extremely lucky that when the truck moved into my lane, I was in the position I was. If I was in his blind spot when he changed lanes and he was that close to my rear when he came in, it’s not unfathomable that I could have been a foot or two farther back and he would have clipped my rear bumper, sending me into a spin. Things could have been far worse.

But, in spite of the fortune granted on me, FUCK ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! YOU SONS OF BITCHES ARE FUCKING MENACES ON THE ROAD AND YOU ALL NEED TO DIE!! LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE, LEARN TO HAVE SOME PATIENCE, LEARN THAT IT’S NOT JUST YOU ON THE ROAD! IT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING ROAD, WE ALL HAVE TO USE IT. WE ALL HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE THIS EVENT SAFE AND EFFICIENT. SAFE AND EFFICIENT! GOD DAMN IT, YOU BASTARDS! I FUCKING HATE ALL OF YOU!!!!

Let me be clear. I don’t hate you as people, I hate you as drivers and the people you become when you start driving. Seriously, you do not think of what the consequences could be. Every time you change a lane, that is an opportunity to sideswipe someone. Each time you are checking the lane you want to get into, you are not checking the lane you are in and the cars in front of you. Every time you speed up into a passing lane (especially to the right), you have the chance of finding traffic stopped in front of you in that new lane. If you’re a large truck, you need to look beside you and not just behind you when changing lanes.

And you, Mr. Red Truck, working for Trimac Transportation Inc., you’re going to hear from me very shortly.

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Anachostic