The site is going to be offline for most of the day on Friday, back on (hopefully) in the early evening. Get in all of the dead-people-sex and poop humor you can before then.
Archive for February, 2007
Beltway Reopened In Baltimore County After Accident
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
WBAL RadioThe State Highway Administration says both loops of the Baltimore beltway are now reopened following an accident this morning.
Two tractor trailers and a car collided in the fast lane of the outer loop of the beltway at Reisterstown Road.
The accident happened around 10 a.m. and created a ball of flames.
Firefighters worked for several hours to put out the flames.
State Police tell WBAL Radio that one of the big rigs was carrying agricultural lime and the other one was hauling municipal waste.
Sgt. Russ Newell says the drivers of the tractor trailers were taken to Sinai Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Newell says the 82-year-old driver of the car and an 81-year-old passenger were not injured.
Newell says the accident occurred when the driver of the car stopped in the second fast lane between Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road. Police say as that driver tried to get into the next lane to get off the beltway the driver of the truck carrying lime wasn’t able to avoid hitting the vehicle. Police say the two vehicles then skidded over towards the median and were struck by the third truck.
I’m glad no one was killed, but this could have been avoided (possibly) if the driver of the car was never allowed on the road. Who STOPS on the beltway (of all places in Maryland, the beltway is the worst (excepting 495)) and then tries to turn through traffic? Ugh! This infuriates me! Just drive to the next goddamned exit, or call a fucking cab if you don’t know where you’re going. Stopping on the beltway is retarded.
People should be forced to re-apply and re-test for their licenses because we see this stupid bullshit every day. Some old people will fail, but so will some young people. And honestly, we’d be safer without them on the road.
All of the addresses left in comments from this post have been uploaded to the blogroll. Once again, only 15 of X blogs show randomly. If you don’t see your blog, refresh the page a few times. It’s like a slot machine but nobody ever wins. Nobody. I’m also accepting blogroll nominations in this post. Go ahead and throw your blog up. What? “Throw your blog up”? I’m an idiot.
Also regarding the comments from that post, nobody but the Slender Reed followed through on the Emmanuel Lewis Hamster Wheel. Shame on you! Kudos to him!
Here is it, in all it’s glory.
Notice that the internet’s power is delivered via a simple USB dongle. He he he! Dongle.
Alright, let’s see. First of all, I haven’t updated the blogroll yet. Haven’t touched it since it exploded, so I haven’t added anyone. Because? (Pointing at myself) Douche.
What else? Oh yeah, the exciting world of TAXES! Mrs. ACW and I finished our taxes this weekend. And when I say “Mrs. ACW and I” what I mean is Mrs. ACW made muffins and read a book while I did the taxes. Furthermore, I even helped with the muffins. So, in “Being married” points I have 345 and she has 8. Because I am awesome, and she pretty much doesn’t do anything around the house. Yeah. Seriously. Women were born with the genetic disposition to clean all day, and who ends up doing all the work? Me. This wouldn’t be as frustrating as it is, but women don’t understand science, so you can’t even explain to them why they have a genetic predisposition towards housework without them getting all glassy-eyed and drooly.
For example, after I finished the taxes, and finished shoveling the driveway (it snowed again), I wanted to sit down and read the new issue of Wired. But Mrs. ACW was all like, “If you’ve got nothing to do, I can find something for you to do.” Queen of the harpies, she is. Anyway, so I got up and remembered that the sink stopper dohicky in our sink has been non-functional for a few days, so I decided to fix that. The problem was that no matter how hard I pushed or pulled the little rod behind the faucet, the dohicky stopper wouldn’t move. (That’s what SHE said.) So I pulled all the crap out from under the sink. Took the dohicky apart. Cleaned it. Put it back together. And it worked fine. A bit anti-climactic don’t you think?
Why did I have to do all this? Because the task that Mrs. ACW “found” for me was to clean the sink basin, and I couldn’t clean the sink basin until the dohicky was fixed. Why did I need to clean the sink basin? Because tiny globs of toothpaste had sat there for days and days and solidified. Don’t ask me why I had to clean this mess up. When I brush my teeth, all that ever results is foam. (That’s what she said?) I have no idea how Mrs. ACW can brush her teeth and still have huge chunks of toothpaste in near-mint (har har) condition falling all over the sink basin. It looks she squeezes little blobs of toothpaste out of the tube and directly onto the sink. I just don’t understand how that can happen. It’s so weird. And yet I’m the one cleaning it up. It’s probably all part of her “2,548 Tiny Things I Will Do to Eventually Give ACW an Aneurysm” which includes the way she never puts the small plates into the small-plate area in the dishwasher (they’re the only plates that will fit there!) and how she closes ziplock bags by first randomly pinching a few areas closed before sealing it from left to right. Why not just seal it in the first place and skip the whole pinching part!?
Anyway, as I was saying, taxes. I was using TurboTax and I imported all of my info and Mrs. ACW’s info without realizing that we couldn’t file as “Single” anymore. We had to either file jointly, or “separately but Married”. So I ran us through the paces of filing jointly, and both of us filing separately. Now, keep in mind that regardless of how we file, the information remains the same. My wage doesn’t change, Mrs. ACW’s wage doesn’t change, and our $10,000 tax deductible donation to “Cat-Bloggers for Congress: Shnookums Wookums Mid-Atlantic Chapter” doesn’t change. And yet, if I file separately I owe 600 bucks to the state and federal gov’mint, and Mrs. ACW collects a modest refund. When we file jointly, the gov’mint suddenly has money to GIVE to me, and Mrs. ACW collects an even larger amount. What the fuck sense does that make? Nothing changes but our marital status.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like money; it’s what keeps the strippers from getting violent. But at the same time getting married seems awfully inconsequential in the soulless black void that is the US tax code (”Did you collect any Railroad Retirement funds? Tell us! Tell us so we can tax whatever meager earnings you make!”). Plus, the math behind it isn’t readily apparent. It’s all kind of floofy and “oh yeah, taxes, yeah, um, married, yeah, oh here’s some money, whee!”. It doesn’t make any sense.
So, yeah. This is all true.
I’ve been trying to get in touch with a guy at another company for about a week now, and keep getting directed to his assistant’s substitute, who apparently has no access to his schedule, calendar, or even his phone number. Today she was finally able to direct me to his voicemail, but I was on hold for about 10 minutes while she was (I assume) looking up the number. However, I wouldn’t put it past her, considering I’ve been dealing with her for a week, that she just put me on hold and forgot about me. But this doesn’t get to the point of my post. While I was on hold I was subjected to a recording about various diseases, their symptoms, and what to do about treatment (it’s a health insurance company).
Here are some of the diseases that were mentioned while I was on hold:
Anorexia
Bulimia
Cancer
Alzheimer’s
Obesity
HIV
Hypertension
Leukemia
Hepatitis
Schizophrenia
Lung Cancer
Malaria
Now I feel great! Nothing like listening to a chipper female voice describe finding a dark-spot in a a x-ray in a search for lung cancer. And my, she was so polite in not mentioning sharing needles during an orgy when discussing Hepatitis and HIV. Unfortunately, I was connected to the voicemail before I could hear the spiel about malaria. I’m sure that would have been awesome in a West-Nile kind of way.
Here are some of the diseases I would have liked to hear about:
Ebola
Mad Cow
Solanum
Tapeworms
Lycanthropy
Elephantiasis
Trichatillomania
Explosive Diarrhea
I finally had my first opportunity to use the restroom today at 1pm. Suffice it to say, I was more than a little “relief-drunk” once I was done, and I somehow managed to button my boxer shorts button to the button fly of my jeans.
Then I went sledding at lunch with a coworker.
I guess it all evens out.
I was recently contacted by a cousin that I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. He found me through my real-name myspace page, which I essentially set up for exactly this purpose. For people to find me whom I haven’t seen in a while. I guess it’s like a little Internet beacon in that way. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since I was a kid.
It was always a little weird with his family. All of my aunts and uncles and grandparents live within 45 minutes of Baltimore, except for my one aunt, his mom. (She wasn’t even really my aunt. She had been married to my uncle, but they got divorced, and my uncle had some sort of grudge against his parents and his siblings, so no one ever really knew where he was.) They always lived in Philadelphia. I remember his mom complaining that they always had to drive so far to come to holiday gatherings, but whenever it was suggested that SHE host something she hemmed and hawed and pretended not to hear. I think she just liked to complain, or it might have been that they didn’t live in a very nice neighborhood. (I don’t know exactly what part, but I know it was on the Westside.) The last time I saw him I think I was 9 or so. He was older than me, but he was always a pretty nice guy, as far as I can remember. The times where I got to see him we would play basketball. He’d show me how to line up shots, and how to play better defense. When I asked him why he was so good at basketball he told me that it’s pretty much all he did every day. He’d get out of school and go straight to the court with his friends.
So I asked my cousin if he was still in Philadelphia and he explained that he had moved to California. I was floored. Apparently the move took place in the middle of him being in high-school, and he’d since finished up his degree, but what really surprised me were the circumstances of the move. Apparently one day after school a bunch of thugs tried to start a fight with him and his friends, and while he was trying to get away he got roped in to the brouhaha. He said that he thinks someone in a house nearby must have seen what was going on, because a few minutes later the cops had shown up and they were dragging everybody apart. He said he got a black eye and a couple of bruises, but he was generally able to escape without much damage. No blood. No broken bones. Apparently his mom flipped out and went on a 3 day rant about how dangerous the city was, and how there were no trees or grass anywhere, or something like that. He said the next thing he knew he was on a plane to California to live with his mom’s brother and his family in Los Angeles.
He said that the thing that really shocked him was when he first arrived. He said the skycap at the airport hailed him a cab, and he was halfway to his uncle’s house before he realized that the cab stunk overwhelmingly of body odor and cheese sandwiches. He said it was like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry’s car had the BO smell and it was impossible to get rid of it. He said the stench was so overpowering that he hardly noticed that his uncle’s house was in a pretty swank part of Los Angeles, and was more a mansion than a house. He had figured from the cab that LA was a dirty city just like Philly was.
After he got settled he worked some odd jobs, and his friends from home flew out to visit from time to time. I told him that we all assumed his family had moved, or just fallen off the radar. We were never sure if we were going to see them at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or 4th of July, but we saw them frequently enough that we figured they MIGHT come back again. When they didn’t, I guess everyone just figured he and his mom had hooked up with her family again. We chatted for so long that it was about 3am here before I realized it. So we set a time to chat again in the future. I still can’t believe he was able to find me after all he had been through.
Our hosting provider unfortunately lost their power for most of the day today, and - as you might have noticed - we were offline.
We’re juiced up now, though, bitches!
