I’d like to know if garbage removal people aren’t aware that their trucks are noisy. I don’t even mean the City garbage removers, or whatever you call them… ok, they’re doing their job, one that most of us would gladly pass on. Plus they do it extremely fast, so you hardly notice them when they pass by your street at 2 in the morning.
I am, however, talking about those companies that rent these huge debris containers, so that you can do house work or renew the roof of your building (which is what’s happening in this case, two buildings down the street), and leave all the debris in the container (it’s illegal to leave it anywhere else, which is a very nice deal for these same companies). At night they come retrieve it.
This of course means no sleeping for anyone in the street… or… at least not for me.
We’re talking a relatively large truck that has to maneuver for 15 minutes to park correctly in front of the container. Since my street has an inclination of about 45 degrees the engine is going like mad, making the loudest racket possible. Then, the same diesel-driven engine has to work the crane, in order to get the container from point A (on the street ground) to point B (on top of the truck).
…Now, this is particularly noisy. Imagine the biggest, dirtiest diesel engine in neutral, while you put the pedal to the metal and let it roar for about five to ten minutes. It’s not a long time, but if you add it to the time it took parking and mention it was 4 in the morning in an otherwise completely silent neighborhood…
Sometimes I wish this was actually the US, because then, I’m sure, I’d be able to sue the ass off of this particular garbage disposal company… but then again I’d have to actually be an american… ugh…
But life isn’t all bad… at least it’s the last day of August and as much as Summer struggles to stay until late September (which it usually does), nothing can stop the planet from actually tilting and moving away from the bloody Sun again, ending this miserable heat. I can’t wait.
Last Saturday I’ve returned from my short vacation. At first the feeling was nice, to be back home, to take care of my cats, to see everything was still where we left it and to fire up my computer for some e-mail reading.
Soon enough, however, the feeling of utter boredom with civilization returned (not Civilization – the computer game, civilization itself). Swamped with work but not exactly drowning in money I returned to my day-to-day routine of annoying myself to near death.
In a pathetic attempt to recapture the week spent in the sun, careless and fun (what a nice rhyme), I leave you with the short story of my summer vacation…
Day one:
Woke up in the early morning to get ready to leave, feeling unsure about actually going and leaving everything behind for a week, especially work and the cats. Anna’s car pulls up by the door at around 11 am, we lock the door, down the stairs and into the car.
Stopped by a drugstore to buy eclipse sun glasses.
On the road: the car rolls at a nice speed, traffic is scarce we make it south in about 4 hours. My other aunt and cousins await us. We have arrived, let the vacation begin.
Since it’s the middle of the afternoon we put on our swimming suits and go take a dip in the pool, it’s nice, although a bit windy. Out of the water and into the cars we go to town for dinner. Clams and steak. Nice.
Back at the house my uncle James arrives.
Day two:
Morning at the beach, afternoon in the swimming pool – this would become the daily formula for the week. At night we cooked a nice barbecue, but mainly we ate shellfish. I started drinking beer, which I never enjoyed before… odd.
Day three:
There was a Sun eclipse today. It was utterly uninteresting, if you ask me… from where we were there was almost nothing to it, except that weird light when it was halfway through. It must have been nice, though, in those places of Europe where it got 100% covered.
The days slide by easily, I’m still not sunburnt, so it’s ok. My uncle James went back to work.
Day Four:
Can’t really remember any details from Thursday.
Day five:
Nothing special to be said… the routine was steadily installed… beach in the morning, swimming pool by the afternoon, dinner, playing games late, usually pictionary or trivial pursuit… talking… sleeping.
Except dinner on this day was particularly annoying as we had to drive for almost 2 hours to get to a silly restaurant to eat some form of chicken which everyone seems to like a lot… oh well.
Day Six:
The last day. The weather got better on the day we’re supposed to leave. It’s been fine so far (a bit windy), but now it just got perfect. We get to the beach fairly early, and there we are for a while… I start to find the beach utterly boring. Plus I’m already sunburnt despite all the sunblock I wore during the week… So we took a walk, talked, swam (although the water was ice cold)… Went to have some sandwiches by the beach for lunch and when we returned there was a huge red oil stain covering the water and approaching the shore.
We left.
Swimming pool, obviously. I like it a lot… I can jump in, swim or just sit on a floater and enjoy the sun. This particular swimming pool was also empty besides us.
We went out at night for dinner in town (by this time my uncle James was back again), we had a big final meal of seafood and steak and by this time I had three beers, which is very odd, considering I always hated beer. Something changed.
Back we drove during the night… four hours, again. And… well… here we are.
That’s it… short vacation, not much to tell… nice anyway, although I will strongly consider a different form of vacation for following years… perhaps we’ll rent a small house by ourselves…
With my aunt and her boyfriend, my cousin, my sister and my wife, I set out to go see “The Mummy”. Light entertainment… a nice fun movie, a good way to spend a nice time.
The theatre was full except for a few seats, two of which, to the right of my wife’s chair. We sat… we waited.
A couple of men came and sat on the free seats. It was immediately obvious to my wife that the one closest to her stank. He simply stank. He smelled so bad, that, soon enough, I was feeling it, two seats away.
Just before the movie started I, like a good gentleman, offered to take my wife’s place next to the stinker and endure the pain. I had no idea that it would actually be painful.
I can take it – I said to myself – after all… how bad can a person smell?
I had no idea. It is indescribable… describing smells is very difficult, it’s what makes Suskind’s book “The Perfume”, so good… he can do it. But I can’t… so I’ll never be able to fully explain the nausea, the sickening feeling I had throughout the film.
The stench reached such levels that the man sitting to the right of the stinker, simply left – to get another seat, I suppose. I couldn’t leave… I mean I wouldn’t, I was there with my friends and not about to go away. So I took it like a man.
What an experience!
As soon as he left I could tell the difference, but I was still sick for at least an hour. How is this possible? I mean he looked OK, nicely dressed, new clothes, his hair looked fixed, his face shaved… so how come he didn’t bathe? Why are people disgusting? This man hasn’t had a bath for months! He smelled so bad, I couldn’t even tell what he smelled of! I mean… if he’d been working, got off and decided to go to a movie for relaxing and smelled a bit of sweat, I could understand… it isn’t nice, but OK, maybe he didn’t have time to go home and wash…
But this guy stank of something else… of everything else… combine every bad smell you ever felt and this is what he smelled like! This is a guy that has paid 4 Euro to come see a movie, but, apparently, couldn’t afford a soap and a bit of water!
With examples like this… no wonder Americans think Europeans don’t wash! (of course Europeans think Americans don’t have brains, but that’s another story).
At the end of the movie I did something you can try yourselves for a nice laugh… As my aunt, sister and cousin sat quietly reading the titles, the room still dark, I crawled on my hands and knees through the row in front of ours (which was already empty)… with perfect timing I jumped up screaming, just like… euh… a mummy! :)
They freaked out, obviously. It was worth the stench-torture.
It 32 bloody degrees at 11 a.m. It must be about 40 indoors at night. I’m dying here! Please give me air conditioning! Please let me move to Sweden!
Today I decided I definitely want to have Linux running on my PC. So I picked up the Suse manual and started reading… I read and read, and although I pretty much understand 99% of it, I can’t really bring myself to risking an installation yet.
I can’t risk screwing up my whole system and be left with nothing can actually work with. If I was to simply install Linux by itself I’m sure I’d manage… but because I still need windoze, just to keep on the safe side… I am somewhat reluctant to try it by myself.
Bah, I’m sure I’ll have it someday…
Anyway I’m downloading the latest Matrox Millenium G200 drivers… I wonder if it’ll make any difference. I’m really sorry I ever bought this video card… It’s no good, simply put… Better image quality, they say… fine! But why o I want better image quality if I can’t actually crank my 3D games to 1024 X 768? It’s just to slow… Now I have my heart set on an nVidia card… but they’re still too expensive… I’ll wait.
Monday, and another meeting. This time with a painter who wants to exhibit his work on the internet. It’s all right. His work, that is… I kinda liked some of it, which isn’t at all bad when you know that I think art is dead by suicide.
What is art?
More importantly… what is art today? Buggered if I know.
The truth (as you know I am the carrier of the Ultimate Truth) is that there simply isn’t art anymore. Art was a form of communication and expression, it became a professional activity and a trade, and more recently it became a product. It simply isn’t fun anymore.
Why should I paint anything, or sculpt anything these days? So it’s sold? How can paintings be worth millions of dollars? This doesn’t even compute with my brain I’m afraid.
I think everyone should just stop being artists, I mean painters and sculptors… they should quit and go home. Become carpenters or dog trainers… there’s no point. It’s all been done, it’s been done to bloody exhaustion by now. Let’s stick to commercialism which is what our society can deal with right now. I’d hate to be a painter and know that I’m selling one of my paintings to an ignoramus that picked it because it matched her living-room carpet. I prefer to make a cool poster and know that I’m selling a million of them because they match the buyers carpets, curtains or simply because it covers a patch of badly done wall.
Let’s just stick to cartoons and illustrations, simple things with a simple purpose… and, of course, sit back and enjoy all the great works that have already been done… it’s ok now… put down that brush… take a deep breath. You don’t… need… to… paint!
I’d like to know if garbage removal people aren’t aware that their trucks are noisy. I don’t even mean the City garbage removers, or whatever you call them… ok, they’re doing their job, one that most of us would gladly pass on. Plus they do it extremely fast, so you hardly notice them when they […]
– a summary of a short summer vacation- Last Saturday I’ve returned from my short vacation. At first the feeling was nice, to be back home, to take care of my cats, to see everything was still where we left it and to fire up my computer for some e-mail reading. Soon enough, however, the […]
With my aunt and her boyfriend, my cousin, my sister and my wife, I set out to go see “The Mummy”. Light entertainment… a nice fun movie, a good way to spend a nice time. The theatre was full except for a few seats, two of which, to the right of my wife’s chair. We […]
Blast it’s hot! It’s bloody hell hot, it’s flaky-flukey, dingy-dongy, blinkin’ hot! It 32 bloody degrees at 11 a.m. It must be about 40 indoors at night. I’m dying here! Please give me air conditioning! Please let me move to Sweden! Today I decided I definitely want to have Linux running on my PC. So […]
Monday, and another meeting. This time with a painter who wants to exhibit his work on the internet. It’s all right. His work, that is… I kinda liked some of it, which isn’t at all bad when you know that I think art is dead by suicide. What is art? More importantly… what is art […]
