Runaway Car

On my way to school the other morning, I swung by the gas station to fill up the seemingly bottomless tank on my car. If you think this post is going to about the high price of gasoline, you read way too much FCN. For once, we are deviating from this popular and very relevant theme to discuss another pressing issue at the pump.

But, as long as we are on the subject - and I am already prejudged a oil price junkie - my latest fill up was ridiculously expensive. I would write the total price down, but most of the faithful FCN few would find it too fantastic to believe. So, I scanned my receipt, blotted out a few private and unimportant details and posted it to the right for you to enjoy and be amazed at (click to enlarge).

A little topography before we continue: My filling station of choice is situated at the top of a small rise. It isn't any great hill or imposing mountain (I live in the central valley for Quetzalcoatl's sake), but it is enough of an elevation increase to deserve a mention.

So back to the story: I pulled in front of the pump (#5, as the receipt will testify) and hopped out of my car, locking the door behind me. I was careful to bring my keys with me. I waltzed (1,2,3-1,2,3) over to the pump and began fiddling with the "easy to use" pay-at-the-pump feature. The screen was asking me to enter something, but the morning sun behind me created a glare that rendered the request incomprehensible. I put my keys on top of the pump and used my hand to shield the sun. After I punched in my zip code, I selected my grade and turned around to begin pumping.

That's when I noticed that my car was nowhere to be seen. I'd heard about people stealing vehicles while their owners where purchasing gasoline, but I'd never been a victim of such a brazen crime. Still, I hadn't heard the car start and it was possible...

There, not fifteen feet from where I had parked it, my car was creeping forward and no one was sitting behind the wheel. My car was stealing itself!

Quickly, I replaced the nozzle in the guzzle and sprinted to the door. Locked! And in my haste to get over I had forgotten my keys! I ran over to the other side of the car and tried the passenger side door, to no avail. I tried the trunk, irrationally thinking that it might be unlocked. It wasn't. Had it been unlocked, I have no idea what I would have done, although the idea of me riding in the trunk of my unmanned car does have a flippant nonchalance, like something Charlie Chaplin might do (WWCCD?).

I looked up at the rest of the parking lot and mentally projected a trajectory for my uncontrolled vehicle. It was headed right for the road. While traffic was lazy, it was present and images of my car looking like bad coleslaw flashed through my mind.

Maybe, I thought, I could run to the front of the car and push it to a halt. I started moving away from the trunk when I remembered the gentleman in Tiananemen Square who held back the Chinese army by prancing in front of a column of tanks, but figured my car might not be as considerate as the red commies. Standing in front of an unmanned mobile vehicle is not my idea of a fun school commute.

The consternation and requisite sweat were building when I remembered my keys sitting atop the pump. By the time I retrieved them, my car had merged into traffic.

I wish they put as much emphasis on teaching cars to drive as they do their drivers, because my car didn't know the first thing about the rules of the road: It didn't stop at a stop sign and merged without signaling. People sometimes say I drive dangerously. I say my car drives dangerously - I just go along for the ride.

There had to have been some kind of providential intervention on the scale of Moses and the Red Sea or at least "No Country For Old Men" for my car to have escaped unscathed. My keys and I arrived before the police or a human carjacker and I was able to safely navigate back to the pump.

Of course, as crazy an adrenaline rush as I got from that experience, it didn't come close to the buzz I got when I paid for the gas.

Cow Bell 101

This site has cataloged my antics at my school's basketball games before, but this post centers on the behavior of another ardent fan, this one in the pep band. If you've ever been to a collegiate sporting event, you have undoubtedly been treated to the rousing notes of the pep band, rising up over the raucous cheers of the crowd with a volume that does little to disguise its own discord.

A friend who plays a very loud (and thus very important) instrument for the group once confided in me that the band practiced only two times outside of games all semester. For such little preparation, it is astounding that they are able to get so many people to play the right note at the same time, or at least a tone that is within a half step of the right note.

This is higher education: Who's to say what is or isn't the "right" note?

Our pep band has one clear standout. He is the Kobe Bryant of the court, the Bill Gates of the computer world and the Tim Berners-Lee (the guy who invented the internet) of packet sharing. No, I am not talking about any trumpet, trombone, tuba or timpani player, although, for what it's worth, all of those instruments do start with the letter "t." Rather the clear standout is the band's cow bell player.

Yes, the cow bell. You might have heard it on an Amish farm in Lancaster County or in the background at a Nordic skiing event. In these venues, the bell is wrung randomly and with no thought to intensity, rhythm or tonality, all very important qualities for the cow bell instrumentaliste.

When our cow bell player strikes stick to bell, the retort can be heard throughout the 6,000 seat stadium and the winces of the other band members are visible from across the court. You see, our cow bell player is very skilled.

But not only does he keep rhythm, he dances like the white guy he is.

As he strikes, the cow bell player moves his feet back and forth, bobbing his head to the beat he creates. He sways, bobs and weaves like Kevin James in Hitch, Dane Cook after a bad joke or our President in Africa. It's as if he has seen too many showings of Step Up or that Cowbell skit on SNL. During the timeouts, he skedaddles out to center court and continues his gyrations in full view of all.

In the middle of one of these impromptu performances, a friend of mine asked how a cow bell specialist got to study at our school's highly ranked music department. Were there even enough classes, my friend wondered, to allow a major in Cowbell Studies or Fine Cowbell Arts?

After a brief visit with our school's catalog confirmed that, yes, cowbell was an offered degree. We have classes in Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Cowbell Strikeage, Cowbell theory (including a upper division course in where best to strike a cowbell), History of Cowbell (divided up into pre and post modern Olympic games and a specialty class in cowbells of the Western United States), Cowbell Form and Motion, a cowbell capstone class and even a course in how to dance while playing the cowbell.

Too ensure a well-rounded graduate, majors have to take at least three electives from another percussion instrument including pots and pans, the serrated stick and car dashboards.

I am going tonight to watch my school's last home game of the season and a I guarantee that during the timeouts, I will be watching the cowbell player - the cowbell artist, excuse me - very closely.

1st Do It Yourself Post

Ever since we phased out full-length Wednesday posts, we've been dependably getting comments from regular readers reminding us that Life Tips and Notes to Self "don't count." It's been so regular and dependable we've actually taking to setting our watches based on the "don't count" comments.

"Hey, adrialien just told us that wasn't a real post. My watch is 3 minutes fast!"
"Well, it's nine o'clock. Where's batman?"

Much as we love the normal routine, we thought we should consider shaking things up some. The obvious choice was to just start posting Wednesdays again just like any other day. But we don't want to do that. We have all kinds of great reasons, the last one of which is actually true:

- Wednesdays are unlucky.
- We want to shake things up.
- We don't have enough content.
- Wednesday is the day when the the fish of the sea were created.
- We're too lazy.

So, in lieu of a standard post, we'd like to give folks like adrialien and batman (and the rest of you) a chance to make the post yourself. You don't even need a post idea. We'll take care of (almost) everything. Here's how it works: we'll post a short something - usually just a single sentence - including at least one blank spot. You'll complete the post by commenting with the completed phrase. We'll always kick things off with the first comment (unless you're really really quick and comment between the time we post and the time we comment - for which you get brownie points) to give you an idea how it works.

The more people participate, the better this works, so don't be shy. You don't need to be clever. Look at us. We've been running this blog for eons in blog-time and we didn't have to be clever. We just posted something and eventually people came and read it and went lol at it. That process was repeated ten times - count them - times. So comment. It takes fifteen seconds and when you're done people will say good things about you and flowers will grow and birds will sing.

Well, enough with the preliminaries. Let's make a post!

__________ is the new __________.

Life Tip #57

Don't do drugs.

If you are going to do drugs, don't make narcotics a family activity.

If you are going to do drugs and make them a family activity, don't interfere when your four year old kid gives the cops a demonstration during a drug bust.

The Top Ten Threats to America

There are a lot of people saying a lot of things about this country and it's time we sat down and cleared the air a bit.

1) Badly popped popcorn getting stuck in the back of your throat. Pieces of popcorn shell are like danger on a stick, the only difference being that they're not on a stick. We would discourage thinking too hard about that one.

2) Mothers-in-law. We're talking some major scariness here. Now many of us have great mother-in-laws and/or are great mother-in-laws and or know great mother-in-laws, etc, etc, and those sorts of things and such stuff and all the rest, and whatnot. But the fact is, mother-in-laws are scary people no matter what. I mean, they're the mothers of your spouse! That is, they are the mother of your spouse. She is the mother of your spouses.

See. Scary.

3) Orbital bombardment. Imagine if some massively advanced alien race showed up in the sky and started raining super-hot plasma bombs all over everywhere, scorching whole continents into glass and debris. We'd launch ICBMs back at them but the missiles would just bounce off their shielding and fall back onto the planet and blow up and kill more of us. That would seriously just ruin the entire day. It would probably be best to sleep in if that happened and miss the whole thing.

4) This isn't my toothbrush. If you share a bathroom with someone you know what we're talking about here.

5) Bermuda grass. Also known as cynodon or dog-tooth grass, this stuff spreads like spilt milk and is only slightly harder to get rid of than the entire Asian landmass. It has been known to hide in bushes or behind corners and jump out on unsuspecting passerby, scaring the smoothie out of them.

6) Death. We bet you didn't expect to see that one on the list! But it's a simple fact that death is very dangerous and rather widespread. About 155,000 people die every day. Don't think it can't happen to you. After all, as Cal Naughton, Jr so aptly pointed out in a movie we definitely did not see: "98% of us will die at some point in our lives."

7) Snickers bars. That's right. Snickers bars. You didn't realize that every time you bit into a Snickers you were contributing to one of the top ten threats to America now did you? We didn't think so. Well now you know. Don't let it happen again.

8) Dance Dance Revolution. It was invented by evil people specifically to take over the world. And that's exactly what it's doing. We know because we saw someone standing outside GameStop earlier today with a sign reading:

"DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION WAS INVENTED BY EVIL PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT'S DOING."

9) Stubbed toes. Just when you're really on a roll and you're off doing something, kachow! you're on the floor clutching your toesie-woesies and looking for someone to strangle. Yet another reason you should have slept in today.

10) We can't say. We know what the 10th threat is but we can't post it here because, well, this is a family friendly blog - or at least it is during the week. Let's just say that the number one threat to America starts with "Daily" and rhymes with "boss." Hint.