It's All About the Benjamins

Jump to Comments Hahahaha, daily blog entries? Yeah, that’d work, if I were on a bloody routine of some sort.

So, it was decided some how or another that El Baile and myself, as well as our Maternal Units would go down to register for college in the new Range Rover on Wednesday. IN A QUOAH-TAH OF A MAI-LL, TAKE THE SECOND TUHNING ON THE RAIGHT. In other words, the Rover’s crazy British GPS Naivigation man got us there pretty effieintly although we did occasionally have to suffer through reports of “YOU AH LEAVING THE REGISTAHD ROAD NETWORK.” 90% directions correctness and 95% accurate maps are pretty darn good for driving assistance in my book, though.

So, on the way down there, we stopped at Wendy’s in some forsaken place in Illinois for lunch (#2 meal with a coke), and “Marshall’s: Home of Throwed [sic] Rolls” for dinner. At least, I think it’s Marshall’s. Well, whatever it is, the food is darn good, the rolls are indeed thrown ‘throwed’ at you, and Fresh Fried Okra is served toyou randomly by waiters carring large steel pots. That’s my kind of restauraunt right there. Chicken Fried Steak was awesome, the green beans were decent, and the peaches were fresh and enjoyable. The speed limit in Missouri is ludicrously high (MDOT: Semi-limited-access Divided Federal Highhway? 70 sounds good. 2 Lane Road? Oh, 65 oughtta do it.) but I got to drive through it, which was fun in the Rover. We also flew through clouds of insects that impacted the windshield at a rate similar to rainfall at night. Of course, unlike rain, wiper blades do not clean off bug splatter, so by the time we got to Circe Searcy the windshield was almost to the point of being ‘translucent’ as opposed to ‘transparent’, but not nearly as it got on the way back. More on that later.

We stayed that night in the Best Western Country Haven Inn on Rand Street, Dan and I in one room, the moms in the other. Good beds, decent rooms. didn’t really do anything that night, except watch people make really crapulent paddle boats on an American Junkyard Wars, which always suck compared to the ones in Britain. Not to mention that they abuse Anglicisms in hopes of making it seem like it’s still the original show, like calling alittle rear-wheel drive Suzuki proto-SUV a ‘Four wheel drive’ along with other things, such as using ‘whilst’ and ‘amongst’ entirely too much. Oh wells.

AFTER THE PARTY IT’S THE WAFFLE HOUSE, IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN HERE YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALIKING ABOUT — WHERE PEOPLE DON’T DANCE, ALL THEY DO IS… uh, use rap lyrics in their blogs. So, uh, anyhow, we went to the Waffle House and had some breakfast. Pretty danged tasty. I’ll have to eat there on Saturdays or somesuch. It was pretty good. After that, El Baile and I spent the afternoon getting slips of paper and listening to old people and the like. During this afternoon into evening, as is the norm, my best friend apparently met half a dozen cute girls while I was doing exiting things like “trying to get my mailbox to open” and “talking to teachers”. You know how I do. We did meet up with the Megs and Kelly sometime during that afternoon, as they came in from Civitas Cincinnatis for who knows what reason. OH! Since this pargraph already has the whole ‘Our Bennyfactor tries to use his George Washington looks to come off as Hip-hop’ vibe anyhow, I might as well mention that The for of us pusedo-college students rolled out and bumped in the Range Rovah to get our dorm rooms for our overnight stay. Dog, we were ballin’ it up in that phat ride, eventhough we realized that we’d never be able to do that again. Which, of course, made it all the more fun.

I roomed with a nice fellow from Northern Arkansas who I later found would be in my elementary French class. As well a being nice and pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Young Mr. Carter shares my interests in the ever important field of World Domination (see last blog entry). I feel this may well have been the beginning of a most excellent friendship.

On Friday, among other things, I registered for classes. I’m taking 17 hours worth of crap first semester. If I can remember off the top of my head, it’s two honors gen ed equivs– hnrs 201 & 202 (MWF 4 hrs total), Spanish 303 Grammar (MWF 3 hrs), Elementary French 102 (MTuWThF 4 hrs), Kineseology 101 (Tu 2 hrs), and PolSci 203 (MWF 3 hrs). That looks right, because it comes out to 17. And none of those classes start until 9:45. HOO-HAH.

We travelled to Marion, Ill Freitagnachmittag, because we didn’t want to get home at 1AMish. On the way back through Missouri, the bugs were even worse than before. The windshield was completely plastered. We eventually pulled into an amoco somewhere and Dan and I to the window washer instruments to it during a refueling. We never actually saw the vehicle dirty from the outside when we got to Circe Searcy as we immediately took it through a car wash. When Dan and I got out, the front end of the car was awful. Big bug hits here and there, but the grill, bumper, headlights, windshield, mirror housings– anything vaguely forward facing and vertical– was absoulutely covered with little irridescent green bodied gnats, or something. To clean just the windshield, the wipers, the headlights and the fogs of this madness took the time to fill the tank, pay inside, buy drinks, and me talk to a random chap of African descent who was interested in the merits of the styling of the New Range Rover. I was glad to talk to him, because, honestly, the only thing I noticed the other times we stopped would be the local yokels giving funny looks at it, as well as myself. That vehicle can do just as much work as any given full-size pickup, it just does it in style and with better gas mileage. Sure, it might look siginficantly sillier with hood-mounted steer horns, but none of the trucks had those, anyhow, because we weren’t in Texas.

We stayed in a Drury Inn, because there was no room at the Hampton. I’ve never been in a Drury Inn before, and never heard anything about them, but I see them from time to time, and the room was quite nice, eventhough the bed was somewhat hard. Dan said I talked in my sleep that night, but I cut him off before he said about what. Hopefully it was completely incoherent. Wegot back at about 1PM today, and I summarily slept the entire afternoon.

BONUS
Here’s excepts from a convo with the Nazz from a few minutes ago, which I found enjoyable.

[me] (23:24:16): Hi there
[him] (23:35:23): Hello
[me] (23:35:32): You been to caltech yet?
[him] (23:38:39): Yeah
[him] (23:38:51): I have decided to go there.
[me] (23:39:06): I was going to ask how it was, but I think that answers it!
[him] (23:40:11): It was nice.
[him] (23:40:22): 4x the size of Harvard.
[him] (23:40:32): “Pahk fo cahs in Caltech yahd!”
[me] (23:41:38): More like “Dude, where’s my car? Oh yeah, it’s in the Caltech lot! Surf’s up!”
[him] (23:42:20): heh
[me] (23:42:22): Not that people at caltech are surfer dorks, but at the same time most people that attend Harvard don’t speak Bostonese…
[him] (23:42:27): Say…
[him] (23:42:37): if you come visit, we could go to The Price is Right 😉
[me] (23:42:44): HOORJ
[him] (23:42:49): Then you could meet Bob Barker and get the colors changed back.
[me] (23:42:52): DUDE I’M SO VISITING YOU ALL THE TIME
[him] (23:43:07): lol
[me] (23:43:18): You can like, come to Arkansas and, uh, look at the trees, or something.
[him] (23:43:32): People in California are scared to death of cancer.
[me] (23:43:42): OH NO! CANCEEER
[him] (23:43:49): let me pull something up I wrote earlier on that …
[him] (23:45:01): 1 – Hardee’s, a burger fast-food chain across the nation, is apparently called Carl’s Jr. in LA

2 – People in California are scared to death of cancer. The first warning we saw was on a cigarette ad, so that was understandable. “This product contains chemicals that are known to the State of California to cause cancer.” Then we saw it on lead crystal (glasswear that contains ~20% lead). Understandable, but a bit paranoid. Then we saw it on bags of L.A. beach sand. “This sand contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”
[me] (23:46:21): XD
[me] (23:46:48): THIS MESSAGE IS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CONTAIN CAPITALS
[him] (23:46:54): Heh.
[me] (23:47:03): It’s like “Big Brother knows this is bad”…
[him] (23:47:33): As I said, they’re environmental bent has get them paranoid about carcinogens.
[him] (23:47:38): *their
[me] (23:47:49): Well, that’s one thing, but the wording is another.
[him] (23:48:08): The wording is, as you said, BB.
[me] (23:49:16): “California State Law requires this product to be labeled as containing carcinogens (cancer causing agents).” would be vastly more acceptable.
[him] (23:49:25): “Welcome to DisneyLand! The happiest place on Earth!”
This theme park is known to the State of California to operate heavy machinery that could result in injury or loss of life.
[me] (23:51:44): Because, you know, it’s known to more people than the STADIUS CALIFORNIENSIS that the thing is carcinogenic. It’s not like they’re some sort of magical priesthood that has Divine Knoweldge of what is and what isn’t bad for their loyal subjects. Oh, wait, they actually think that.