Happy Mutants, Tra La La

Up north, usually I went to a drive-thru carwash, with an occasional "special" trip to the get-out-of-the-car-and-a-bunch-of-guys-leap-in-and-wash-it-inside-and-out carwash place. I usually avoided the latter because they take so long. Well, the latter type of place is all they have in LA. (My personal speculation is that it provides a large amount of employment in a luxury service industry.) So I haven't gotten my car washed very often.

I went to a place near our house and decided to get my car washed and the carpets shampooed. (All that falling coffee lands someplace.) The guy writing out the ticket offered me a package involving complete washing of the inside, which I thought wasn't a bad idea. (Some of the falling coffee never made it to the floor, after all.) Then he offered me a complete wash, wax, and detailing for a $100.00. No, I said.

"Okay, $80.00," he said.

Hmmm. I had my car detailed once, many years ago (I still worked at Apple), and it cost $100.00 and didn't include getting the seats shampooed. "Okay," I said.

Important LA carwash tip: BRING A BOOK. Or, better yet, BRING A FRIEND AND GO TO LUNCH.

I was there for two hours. I read both the Times and the Daily News in depth. Wow, UCLA had NCAA violations -- I'd better scour that story several times. I could have walked to the nearby shopping mall, visited a bookstore, bought a book, returned, and read it before the car was done, but I didn't know how long it was going to take. Now I know.

When I got into the car, I was insanely happy with the cleanliness of it. Of course, all the feh had been thrown in the trunk, which I now have to go through and clean out. Then I noticed that the clock was reset to 1:00. When I turned off the car and turned it back on, it reset to 1:00 again. In fact, now it advances very slowly if at all, so a drive from Babylonian to my house took 20 minutes in real time and only about 3 minutes in clock time. If you know what's causing this and can tell me how to fix it, please tell me.

I drove home, parked in our driveway, removed the plastic sheets covering the seats, and went into the house. Later, Darin and I went out to go to dinner (we walked to dinner! yea!) and went we passed the car I noticed that all of the windows were covered in condensation. All of the moisture still in the car had collected all over the windows.

"Dammit," I said. "Part of the reason I wanted to get it cleaned was that the windows were so dirty."

We came back from dinner and then went out to a movie. I got a handful of paper towels and tried to wipe down the windows, then I left the windows open a crack to let the rest of the condensation out.

"How is it?" Darin asked.

"A bit...fetid," I said.

I haven't gone out to look at it today, but from the window of our house I see that the windows look mostly clear, with some residue of dried condensation. Sigh.

We went out to see Austin Powers, which was stupid and had a few laughs. Best line: "An evil petting zoo?" I'm convinced that Mike Myers' raison d'etre is to take off his clothes and shake his butt in the American public's face.

Last night was also a GSP party at the Musketeers' house. I knew Darin wasn't going to want to go, which meant if I was going, I was going alone -- half an hour there, half an hour back, maybe an hour spent there. Going to the movie (spending time with Darin being kind of a priority of mine) kind of nixed that, so I have not bonded with my fellows one more time before the summer. Maybe this summer Darin and I will have dinner parties so he can meet some of these people a little bit at a time.

I'm currently reading a hysterically funny book that you should run out, read, and incorporate into your daily life: The Happy Mutant Handbook: Mischievous fun for higher primates. Well, actually, there's some stuff in here that probably shouldn't get out to the Great Unwashed, but hey, it's been published, and information wants to be free, right?

This book has finally explained those odd cariactures of political figures I've seen all over LA (guerilla political art by Robbie Conal) and talked to one "reality hacker", a guy who pulls these really obvious pranks that get covered with a straight face by the media...which then never reports the prank. This book makes me want to make a whole bunch of paper plates with happy faces on them and post them all over Los Angeles. Don't ask.