C'est Non Un Blog

So it happened again. I did some damage to my car again. Another accident. Damnit.

I’m driving home Thursday after getting out of work early because the store closed because of hazardous road conditions and you’d think that would mean something to me. Instead I’m on the Bennington bypass passing a car, driving probably faster than I should be. Problem is that in the tire treads in the snow the road is perfectly fine, but move anywhere out of there and, well, I think you can see where this is going. The SUV I’m passing is getting a little close to me so I move slightly to the left. The wheel catches in the snow to the left and then suddenly the car wants to go left. I try to correct, take my foot off the brake, steer to the right. I swing the other way. Still I’m trying to correct the car. Just going too fast. I must have gone back and forth four-five times before finally I lost control.

I spin out, do a 360 (or something, I can’t actually remember if I actually did a 360. Is that weird?) slide right and onto a pull off on the road where I fly over a snow bank.

I’m fine. Actually wasn’t really scared at all. The whole thing was rather peaceful, considering how close I (again, second time in a year) came to killing myself and someone else. The guy I passed pulled in behind me to check to make sure I was OK. He gave me his cell to call my mom who called my dad to come pick me up.

I tried (not really too hard) to move my car. I pretty much landed in mud, from all of rain I guess, so the car wasn’t really going anywhere. Plus, even though the car seemed pretty OK something was definitely wrong with it.

Another guy stopped to see if I was OK. Then one of the plows stopped. Ironic that I saw the plow three times waiting for my dad. Could have used him before. I hated it when people stopped because that meant I had to get out of my car and make a bigger mess around it, as every time I got out the snow next to my door disappeared and was replaced by mud. Good that people care though.

Funny thing was, not 5-10 minutes after the accident Ross drives by, turns around and comes back to check on me. He was in front of me on the drive down from Manchester and turned off to get gas, and when he was done with that he just happened to see me there. So while I waited for my dad we hung out in his car, which was great since my dad didn’t come for a long time.

Finally my dad got there and we pulled the car out. There was definitely something wrong with the brakes. So it went to the shop. Good thing I had Friday off, although I never got to go get my haircut like I wanted to. I’m a shaggy mess.

So I picked the car up tonight. And I really don’t feel comfortable driving it. Something just doesn’t seem right about the steering. I hope it was just the high winds and the greasy road, because if it is the steering I’m totally fucked tomorrow. I’m telling you all of this now so that you know that if there is no follow up post soon I’m probably dead, and I’d appreciate it if you all came to my funeral. Just Mapquest Hoosick Falls. My last name is the only one in the book.

In other news, Monday I went rock climbing with Ross and Harry, which was pretty cool despite the fact I’m afraid of heights. I’m wondering how many times I can defy death though…

Oh, and if it turns out my car is OK and I’m not dead, anyone know of any good cars I should be considering buying? Mine isn’t really long for this world. Hey, it’s either it or me, and it ain’t going to be me.

[PS: MSN has up this news link that reads as follows: Dozens of dogs found in florist fire. Am I the only one that finds that funny? Am I sick for finding that funny?]

Today I came up with the brilliant idea of Googling myself with the idea that once I typed in my name and clicked a button all of these weird and delightful webpages about me I never knew about would come up. I was very humbled to discover that, well, nothing came up, not even this amazing document you are now reading. Wow, that one just hits you in the gut, doesn’t it?

I think I’m about done with Instant Messenger. I never use the thing anymore. And tell me if any of you have had similar occurrences going on: Whenever I see a friend online that I haven’t talked to in a while I IM them thinking they will be just thrilled to catch up. Unfortunately the reaction you usually get is one of reluctant obligation. You get the feeling that the person you are talking to is just fitting you in as they google their own name. Then of course you get caught up in some webpage and you aren’t being very talkative, which I think only annoys the bothered person you are talking to even more. It’s usually more pain than it is worth, as much as I love hearing from these people.

Of course I think Instant Messenger is just about dead with my age group anyway. Everyone is really busy now. I know I am. When you only have a little time off, chatting online for hours isn’t exactly a lot of fun. This is probably why no one ever IMs me first anymore. (I refuse to believe it is because I am an insufferable bore.) Why bother? I rather go out and hang with actually physical people. Oi. I feel like some people are slipping away though. I should probably invest in a cell phone. I really don’t want a cell phone though. I hate people with cell phones. Kill me now.

I actually should get out and hang out with some people again. Stupid snow. My big weekend going to see my friend Josh was ruined because of the freakin’ blizzard. Since then I haven’t shown any desire to get together with anyone. My own damn fault. Sue me if I don’t like driving this time a year though. It sucks.

On the plus side I am making a dent in my DVD collection. I’ve been doing some epic movie watching. Of course that doesn’t ever really help things. They multiply exponentially. It’s sick. Something should be done. I do love it though. One thing I still haven’t lost interest in is movies. I love them. Can’t live without them. You ever want to talk movies, you know who to talk to.

Hey, it’s Australia Day!

I know, I don’t give a rat’s ass either…

OK, after my 17 days with only one day off I finally got some good time off. Four days in a row actually. Unfortunately I broke my streak of doing something cool every weekend I’ve had off. Stupid storm snowed Ross and I in from going down to visit Josh for his birthday. That just blew. I didn’t want to call it off, but I called Ross at the last minute and he agreed we probably shouldn’t risk it. When people are throwing the word “blizzard” around, it’s best you take them seriously.

So four days off, nothing to do. What did I do? You can probably guess. Too many movies. Way too many movies. At least three a day. I also watched like 16 episodes of Gilmore Girls season one (plus the new episode that was on tonight! (That wasn’t confusing at all.)). That’s it. That’s the way exciting life of Ben.

Well, give me a break. It was all snowy. Why kill yourself. I tell you, I was never a summer guy, but now that I’m finally snowed in and could actually be other places, well, winter sucks. A lot. Oh well. It was good to have a little time to decompress. Tomorrow, back to the salt mines. And to the sucky ass slippery drive into work. Fun. Fun, I tell you.

One thing I’m not going to like is shaving off the beginnings of the beard I started. Every time I don’t have to work I stop shaving, but since I haven’t had any good time off, oh ever, I never really get that far. Today will be day 6 with no shaving. It doesn’t look half bad either. I’m definitely not beard guy yet, but I do look like cool stubble guy though. With the crazy, half-neat half-longhaired wild man look I almost look like the arty film geek I’m destined to be. I have to shave tomorrow though. Damn. Here’s looking forward to a week vacation in the near future.

So the other day Jeremy and I are at work talking about dreams and the subject of sex dreams comes up. We both agree that we never have really had any good sex dreams. They’re either awkward or never go anywhere, just never fun.

Cut to that night. I’m dreaming. I meet this girl. We’re really into each other. Things start to heat up. The clothes come off. So far this is the best sex dream I’ve ever had. But just as I’m about the hit the payday, something inexplicable happens. I say to her, “Wait, I don’t have a condom.”

Wait, what?

Ben, you fucking idiot. It’s nice and all that you are a responsible person and believe in safe sex, but really. It’s a DREAM! Ain’t like you’re going to get anything from a dream.

It was in this awkward moment that I woke up. Almost instantly I started cursing myself. What a waste…

——

From previous posts you probably recall that my dog is sick. Well, yesterday my mom put the dog in the upstairs bathroom with one of those baby gates in front of the door to keep the dog from getting sick on the carpet. Then she put a big round wicker basket in front of that.

I should just let all of you who have never seen my dog know that her back right leg is pretty much useless. We got her after she had been abused and her right hind leg was broken. Well, it didn’t heal right and all the muscles fused so that it just sticks out straight and useless. I just want you to keep this in mind when I finish the story.

So the dog is locked upstairs, right? Well, when my mom gets home there the dog is, happy as can be, waiting at the front door. My mom assumes she just pushed her way through. But no, everything upstairs is just as she left it. Nothing has been pushed out of the way at all.

We still have no idea how the dog got out.

The other day I come home and look through the glass front door to see my two dogs waiting for me. Except something is off. Ally’s face looks kind of weird. I open the door and sure enough, something is wrong. Her snout is like twice its normal size. If I weren’t really freaked out she’d look really funny.

My mom is right there. “Mom, what’s wrong with the dog?” She has no idea what I’m talking about, so I show her the dog’s face. My family has no idea. It looks like the dog is having some allergic reaction or something, but the dog seems fine so we leave her be and hope for the best.

The next day I come home and the dog looks pretty normal. She’s got some weird bumps on her, but otherwise fine. Of course I find out later the dog has been puking, pissing and shitting all day long (mostly puking). Oh, that’s nice.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

——

I went to Williamstown with my sister to see A Very Long Engagement. (Interesting side note: for I think the first time ever I’ve seen two movies at the theater with subtitles back to back, having seen House of Flying Daggers two days earlier. How often does that happen?) Anyway, when we get out of the theater it had started to snow, so walking back to the car I kept my head down to keep the flakes off of my glasses.

I should have known better with my history of walking right into shit I see right in front of me. Sure enough, I walk straight into the branch of a nearby tree. Now I have this big honking red scabbed up scratch across my forehead. Classy.

——

I had someone come in the store today and try to tell me that their ear buds sounded almost as good as our Quiet Comfort headphones. It took all I could to avoid one of my classic “Ben-isms” (meaning smart ass remarks I say innocently to stupid ass comments and questions). Of course knowing that this said Ben-ism would probably cost me my job I avoided what would have probably been a spectacular end to my time at Bose.

——

Man my room is a frickin’ mess.

It’s really fucking windy outside.

Yeah, I probably should have told you folks this earlier, but last week I replaced the brakes on my car. My sister and I went to the mall to see Life Aquatic and when we got back in the car to go home and I drove to the first stop sign, my car made an awful ccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh sound. Son of a bitch. We take it in an apparently I was driving around Albany with no brakes. That’s nice. Thankfully this happened on the first of my two days off, so I was able to get it fixed before going back to work. And good thing too, because the weather has been absolute shit since then. Three days in the last week they shut down the “mall” because of bad weather. Driving in the snow is no fun. Of course driving in the snow with no brakes would be a lot worse…

I’m also in the middle of ten straight days of work. That’s just o so much fun.

Last Friday was the office Christmas party. We had a good time. One of the things I got was a twenty dollar gift certificate to the Northshire Bookstore (which is not far from our store). So Sunday night when I got out of work early I did something I haven’t done in a long, LONG time. I bought a book. Yeah. A book. I could have spent it on another DVD, but NO. I bought a book. It’s on movies, but hey, it’s a BOOK. I’m actually reading it too. haven’t really done anything like that since college.

Fate can be cruel sometimes. Take yesterday, for instance. I had been dying to go out for New Year’s Eve. I never do anything fun New Year’s Eve. This year was going to be different. Unfortunately I wake up that morning feeling exhausted. My body is fighting off the flu I got from one of my co-workers. First thing I want to do after waking us is to take a nap. My stomach is queasy. Great.

Then I call Harry up. “So what’s up man? We going out? Party at your place?” Well, actually Harry had made a mistake. When picking out his holidays he wanted off he accidentally picked New Year’s DAY instead of EVE. Who wants New Year’s Day off? So he was working that night. I call up Ross. He’s going to some guy’s house to mack on some girl. Dammit.

I end up spending the night with my family, which wasn’t too pathetic since my relatives were there as well. I drank too much and managed to get my hangover before I went to bed though, so that was fun.

What was cool though was that there was a celebrity sighting at the store today!!! Jerry Adler, AKA Herman ‘Hesh’ Rabkin of the Sopranos came into the store with his friend, who was looking at Quiet Comfort 2 headphones. Very cool.

Well, it’s the end to another interesting year. Goodbye, 2004. I don’t know if any of you have had a similar thing happen to you lately, but a little while ago I was thinking to myself, “gee, it seems like this year has just flown by.” Every year after, like, 12 has seemed to fly by. But then I got to thinking about everything that happened to me this year and all of these events in my life seem like they happened eons ago. Has this happened to anyone else? It’s getting almost so bad as to be in the “wait, that happened YESTERDAY?” stage.

So what did happen to me this year? Well, I got a job. That’s a pretty big deal. My first big full-time job where I have no plans for when I’m leaving and there’s nowhere else to go. That’s both liberating and scary at the same time.

I got my first speeding ticket this year for something that never should have happened. La-de-da, just speeding through town, oh look, there’s a cop, oh shit, there’s a cop. At the “oh look, there’s a cop” stage you’re suppose to slow down. I didn’t. Oh well.

Got into my first car accident this year too. (OK, I got into technically TWO car accidents this year, but the first one is so minor we’re not counting it. “No, dad, I have no idea where that dent came from.”) Extra bonus points for almost killing another person for the first time. Hopefully the last time. That was not good. Found out for the first time that I could drive under the influence. Also found out that driving under the influence is VERY BAD. Luckily part one of this paragraph and part two are in no way connected.

Went to a party of someone I didn’t know and I then proceeded to get both drunk and stoned in ways I never have before. I swear, for a little while at least it was kind of Fear and Loathing there.

I got a weird/bad phone call from some friends. I then proceeded to somehow make matters worse by alienating all of my friends. That was a fun little event in my life.

I made a trip down to Bard in the Spring. That was fun. Saw the Ex while I was there. That, not so much.

Made another trip down to the Bard area in the fall to see Sara. We went to go see Shawn of the Dead at the mall, got horribly, horribly lost, but still got there in time for one of my best movie going experiences. New zombie movie + Sara = blast. Come to think of it, we saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead in the spring too. Then we went to her sister’s art opening in Hudson, which was both surreal and good.

Clancy made it up to my house. We got lost in Albany. We got beers in Bennington. We watched a muy fucked up movie. We got some awesome Angus burgers. And along the way I found out a whole lot of stuff that I would have never found out had I not had the chance to chat with him. We should do this more, Mr. Clancy.

I’ve almost put in a whole year at Bose and it’s been pretty crazy. I’ve gotten in a feud with my Assistant Manager, watched way too many people leave the store, worked overtime with only four people on staff (including myself) all summer long. Of course I made lots of money and now have like one of everything from the store. And the job doesn’t suck yet, which is always a good thing.

Went to my first strip club. God, almost forgot to write that down. Now there was a surreal experience. Thank God for Harry Moore. If it weren’t for that goofy bastard, well, I’d have no one to hang out with when I’m not working. Now that’s a depressing thought.

All and all it’s been a pretty good year. Lots of other great stuff happened that I just forgot to write down. Oh well, here’s hoping to an even better 2005.

Now, for the statistics. I know you all secretly want to know how far my madness has spread. This section is just for you:

Total # of movies I saw 2004: 352
Total # of movies I saw 2003: 362

Total # of movies I saw in the theater, 2004: 59
Total # of movies I saw in the theater, 2003: 57

Total # of movies I saw for the first time, 2004: 291
Total # of movies I saw for the first time, 2003: 246

Damn, just missed 60 movies at the theater, and I was only 9 new movies away from seeing 300 new movies this year. Now that’s a damn dirty shame.

Total # of CDs I bought 2004: 211

Total # of DVDs I bought 2004: 286+
Total # of DVDs I own: 576

I’m not quite sure on the total number of DVDs I bought this year, since I think I started the tally after the New Year started. For those of you doing the math though, that’s right. I roughly doubled my DVD collection this year. Also kind of frightening is how close the number of DVDs bought is to the number of movies seen.

Well, that’s me in a nutshell. So long 2004. Happy New Year’s everybody!