Chapter L: Near-Life Experience

Image of the Day: Cracked
The car is about to explode. I am going to burn to death gruesomely in a gasoline/brake fluid inferno. The police will need to get my dental records from Dr. Shern to identify me...

Irrational in retrospect maybe, but it's my first car crash, and I don't know what to think.

I mean, all my experience with car crashes so far had been vicarious, through movies and TV. And that's what happened in movies--you crash, and then have 30 seconds or so to frantically crawl out of the car before it becomes a giant fireball of death. I can almost see the leaking gas dribble slowly, inexorably toward a fire. Just like in Crash.

A moment passes and the car fails to explode.

Through the haze, I realize I am not going to die. My next thought: 'So that's what airbags actually look like.' I'd never actually seen them before in real life, and they aren't the billowy fluffballs they show in car commercials. No, these were floppy, deflated things, drooping out of their compartments like a grandmother's breasts. They weren't soft either, but coarse like canvas. And dusty.

I have no idea what to do next.

A large man in sunglasses appears at the window, which I had rolled down to let out the smoke. Are you all right? Yeah, I reply. Your lip is bleeding. Did you hit your head? No, I don't think so. OK, you're going to have to pull over to the side of the road. Can you move the car? I'm not sure. Try to.

To my surprise, the car is still semi-operational, and I pull to the side of Interstate 405, by the Fairview exit. There are two other cars parked there. Apparently, when I smashed into the Ford Expedition in front of me at an ungodly speed, I shoved it into the back of the pick-up truck in front of it.

The man in sunglasses comes over again. You're sure you're OK. Do you need an ambulance? No, I'm OK. Did you not see that I had stopped? No, I saw the brakes lights, but it was too late. It happens. Do you have insurance? Yes. Is this your first car accident? Yes. OK. You'll get through this.

I have to kick the door to get out of the car, still half-expecting it to explode. The pick-up truck drives off.

I'm Bill. What's your name? Jerry.

Bill told me the driver of the pick-up had been rear-ended in the same spot a week ago, and no further damage seems to have occurred, so I probably wouldn't be hearing from him. Bill isn't hurt, but he needs his bumper fixed. It is my first time exchanging insurance information, and I don't know what to write. Your name, insurance policy, driver's license, and a number where I can reach you.

We sit in his car until my dad arrives. Bill tells me that he did the exact same thing on a different freeway twenty years ago, driving home from a USC/UCLA football game. Fast lane. Traffic stopped. No time. Smash.

It happens. I thought it was the end of the world, but I got through it. Your parents may want to kill you, but you'll be fine. Don't worry.

My parents come. Bill leaves.

Then the tow truck. 'How much will it cost to repair?' they ask the driver. He gives the car a cursory look. About five thousand dollars...conservatively speaking.

Totalled.

Fuck.

It could have been a lot worse, my dad says on the drive home. You could have hit an old lady in a Civic. Paralyzed or killed her. Gotten your ass sued off. We would have been in deep shit, lost the house maybe. And then there's the guilt--no amount of money can make that go away.

It's funny. After all is said and done, the only person angry at me seems to be...me. I had just gotten used to the idea of having a car, and I can't help but to bitterly self-recriminate. Why didn't I brake sooner/swerve into the carpool lane/pay more attention? I just don't know. 'It all happened so fast,' I believe is the popular refrain.

I think I've learned two important things from this near-life experience. The first is that I'm not invincible and that it's important to be careful on the road and blah blah blah blah blah. You've heard it all a hundred times, but I'm serious. I thought I was a prudent driver before, but there is a certain alertness that you only get after you've been in an accident.

And secondly, I learned that there are considerate people in the world who realize that making someone feel like shit after they've made a mistake is pointless, because they already feel like shit and it doesn't help the situation. And that's reassuring.

It seems I am a pedestrian again... although Diana would say I never stopped being pedestrian at all.

Chapter XLIX: Illusion of an Allusion

Image of the Day: My Letter to the World, that Never Wrote to Me

A long time ago, in a post far far away (Chapter XI: A Glitch in the Matrix), I described the benefits of explaining an allusion right after you make it. On one hand, if the person I'm talking with is uncultured and misses the allusion, he will now grok it. On the flip side, if he thinks I am uncultured, I can dispel his suspicion that I alluded inadvertently.

Today, I read something that makes me wish the writer had followed my advice. Specifically, I'm not sure if a certain title in a magazine is supposed to be an allusion or not.

The publication in question is Men's Health Magazine. As an aside: For many years, whenever I passed the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble, I would wonder what kind of idiot bought those hideous fitness magazines--the ones that put oily, musclebound freaks of nature on their covers. As of last Saturday, I officially became that idiot.

To my credit, it's not an issue of Men's Health per se, but more of a book put out by the editors of Men's Health. It's titled Amazing Abs and actually contains quite a lot of useful information, especially regarding diet (when/what/how much), so I decided it was a good one-time investment.

Anyways, on page 41, there is a small inset under the heading "Waiting For Jell-O" that explains waiting forty minutes before eating dessert after dinner (to let blood sugar levels stabilize). At first blush, it appears to be a clever allusion to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot (pronounced 'guh-DOH'), punning on the rhyme.

But on closer examination, it isn't so clear. To begin with, 'Jell-O' and 'Godot' don't actually rhyme, since the stress is on the first syllable in 'Jell-O', and on the latter in 'Godot.' Furthermore, there are absolutely no other literary allusions in the entire book, much less allusions to a work as relatively obscure as Beckett's existentialist tragicomedy.

Besides, such an intellectual treat would be non sequitur in a book where the author tries to make every point with a veiled reference to sex. Regarding overtraining: "There is only one thing most men would do a thousand times every day if it were physically possible, and it isn't crunches." Regarding rep pacing: "Each rep of an ab exercise should last slightly longer than you lasted on prom night--4 to 6 seconds." Regarding the benefits of ab training: "ABS WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE." You get the idea.

Was I wrong to imagine a Jell-O/Godot connection? Is there anything else it could be a reference to? Paint me confused... Someone rescue me.

A final note: Besides the Jell-O/Godot conundrum, there five allusions in this post. If you got them all, kudos. If not, they're listed in the first comment.

Chapter XLVIII: Que Seurat, Seurat

Image of the Day: Scan of pointillist maple tree, using maroon, yellow, and red gel pens. Click to Enlarge













What color is Georges-Pierre Seurat's hair? You may have no idea, but you have, at some point, seen his most famous painting, titled "Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte." The 1886 tableau is regarded as one of the most remarkable artworks of the 19th century, and is widely alluded to in popular culture. Just last night, I saw it featured prominently in a TV ad for Acuvue brand contact lens.

It famously uses pointillism, or the application of varying densities of discrete dots to create an image. In all, "Sunday Afternoon" is composed of over three million individually applied dots of paint and took over two years for Seurat to complete the 7' x 10' canvas. He didn't choose this grueling method on a whim, of course, but was trying (unsuccessfully) to use new developments in optical theory**.

A couple weeks ago, I got some taste of what a pain in the ass pointillism can be by producing what you see above.

I have no idea how many million dots I used, but it took six hours. My hand and brain went numb at the same time and I transformed into a pointillism zombie. Seriously, I only thought about three things in that entire period--'maroon,' 'red,' and 'yellow.' In any case, I'm reasonably happy with how it came out and when I have time during the summer, I plan to redo it on heavier 18" x 24" paper (this was 8.5" x 11") with four colors instead of three. Zebra SARASA, the brand of pen I used, now also comes in orange.

**Specifically, it was discovered that contiguous dots of contrasting color merge to form a single hue in the viewer's eye (more vibrant than if a single color had been used). However, Seurat's dots were actually too big to achieve the dithered effect at normal viewing distances, hence the appearance of graininess that is trademark Seurat.

That's all.

Chapter XLVII: Frequently Asked Questions

Image of the Day: Nothing Rhymes...

Q: When and why did you start blogging?

In my junior year , I started posting daily recapitulations in my AIM profile, focusing on humorous or bizarre incidents. These have since been lost in the mists of time (i.e. the Great Harddrive Formatting Accident of 2004), but off the top of my head, I can recall writing about my grandmother's goldfish named Gorbachev, being sent to detention every day for a week, stupid things my French teacher would do, etc. I guess I wanted my peers to think I was clever, while hiding the fact that my life was actually pretty fucking shitty. After the AIM profile format, I moved to AIM Subprofiles (remember those?), a brief foray into Xanga, and then offline into Notepad, until one fine day in August 2005, when I was browsing the "more >>" tab on Google and came across blogger.com.

Q: Why do you call each post a "Chapter?"

It's just one of my pretentions, as if this blog were the "story of my life" that I am writing one chapter at a time. I considered using "Episode" instead, but didn't, because 'episode' sounds too much like 'octopode' and I fucking hate octopodes.

Q: Who is the intended audience of your blog?

Hmm, that is a very good question. Different posts ("Chapters") have different target audiences; possibly me, people I know personally, poker aficionados, the faceless Internet, or some combination of the above. I usually delete the embarrassingly introspective or boring rants that I later realize only I would read, and only because I wrote them. On the other hand, I don't want to concentrate so much on being funny/relatable that I don't feel free to write whatever is on my mind. I tend to write inductively--starting with a personal experience and then generalizing it.

Q: What happened in November 2005 that prevented you from writing a single entry?

*Shrugs*

Q: Are you really gay (cf. Chapter XLIII)?

Yes. I look up gay porn all day long. <-- A Faustian bargain: I'll get page hits from horny guys typing "gay porn" into Google, but they won't stay to read anything.

Q: What do you have in mind for the future of this blog?

I'm working on a visitor poll to put in the sidebar, as well as concepts for organizing posts for ease of navigation. Perhaps I will change the post format so that the Image of the Day is included in the post summary. Also, I will be opening a mailing list so my regular reader(s) won't have to check in every day, but can get my blitherings delivered straight to their inbox! And finally, regularity.

Q: What is regularity?

"Regularity is defined as the easy passage (without straining) of well-formed stools (neither too hard, nor too soft) at least once every two to three days without the use of assistive devices (such as laxatives). A well-formed stool is soft and flexible..."
- http://www.fruit-eze.com/regularity.htm

With the minor amendment of "stools" to "blog posts," the above definition is suitable for our purposes. I'm going to aim for about two posts a week, released on Sundays and Thursdays, hopefully without straining or resorting to laxatives. I'm trying to become a better writer, and writing more is the first step in that direction. Posts may also become more literary as I experiment with short stories and poetry.