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drizzle in LA
Tuesday, August 29 2000
I was amazed to see a wet street this morning. I could have been wrong, but this seemed like the first rain that has fallen from the sky since I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles back in late March.
But to call this phenomenon "rain" is to vastly exaggerate the condition of the weather. While it's true that the morning traffic reports carried news of an unusually large number of accidents, this always happens whenever the day is anything but sunny and warm. In the aftermath of my morning shower, my ever-lengthening hair was actually dried by the process of biking to work.
The evening was unusually cool and overcast on the bikeride home after work, with temperatures in the mid 60s. But still it was difficult to forget that I was in Southern California, especially when I came upon a discarded surfboard in an alley a half block southwest of the intersection of Santa Monica and Centinela. But I couldn't carry it; I was already hauling a pair of alley-provided folding chairs.
I told my housemate John about the board after I made it home. He's been talking about the need to start surfing since the day he moved in, and now, it seemed, the alley gods had blessed us with a board. He was eager to retrieve it.
John's old girlfriend from back when he lived in Vermont, a petite dark haired hippie chick named Sharon, had flown in today from her new home in Seattle. "Sorry about the weather I brought!" she chuckled. She's a conversationally positive girl, often acknowledging things that others say with a quick succession of three instances of the word "right." She also has an unusually open mind. Otherwise she wouldn't have been so impressed with all the things John had shown her that I'd found in the alley. Indeed, she was eager to join us on our quest to get the surf board.
The board had a little damage: a missing fin, a few dents, and a small chunk of missing surface. But this was nothing a little epoxy resin couldn't fix.
Of late there have been lots of ants marching into the house in column formations. Last night some were walking on John's face as he tried to sleep. I don't know what to do about this; I've made a point of cleaning up after myself when I eat. But still they come. It must be a characteristic of this part of California at this time of year. I've seen similar columns marching through the men's room at work. In addition to dead insects, they seem to be attracted by hawked-up loogies.
Another from the 'advertisements I hate' file:
A small boy walks up to a Land Rover Discovery and asks, in that age-old way that small children do, if another small child can come out to play. There's a mom sitting in the driver's seat and she responds by unrealistically rolling up the window and disappearing into the back, presumably to search for her child. It was apparent from the start that this was going to be an ad showcasing the enormous size of the vehicle, but of course, the point hasn't been driven home yet for all the idiotic large SUV coveters watching. After the voiceover we cut back to the mom, finally rolling down the window.
"Still lookin'" she says in a moment of particularly unconvincing acting. I can't see how such an ad would work on anyone but a retard (the sort unlikely to have the money to buy a Land Rover Discovery). Its fatal flaw is the extent to which it belabors the point it is trying to make.
Discuss the ads you love or hate.
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