Yaaaay! Money’s gonna be tight this month! (Now would be an excellent time for the philanthropists in the audience to take a look at the commission page.)

So I’m looking at Craigslist for job openings, and because I’m strongly considering selling my fake drums. (Shameless as this is, anyone in the Denver area can email me and see what $200 will get you.) Anyhow, I see this ad for a dishwashing position, which says to send them a resume in Word format. For a dishwashing job. What the fuck? Okay, here’s my resume:

Skills:
Can wash dishes
Managed to send this resume to you despite your insistence that I use the proprietary format of a $200 program
Can also dry dishes

I feel that covers it. And I’d have to send a half-dozen files because the different iterations of Word aren’t cross-compatible, from what I hear. Because god forbid I use an RTF. Why use a format that’s impossible not to open in any Windows computer sold in the last 13 years? (I already know it’s a foregone conclusion that business types couldn’t handle a .txt file. The lack of formatting is a sure sign of satanism.)

The real bitch is that this was the dealbreaker for me, and not the fact that it’s, y’know, a dishwashing job.

Firefox 3 is very, very nice, though I had to go to developer websites to get updated versions of two of my extensions so that they’d work with FF3. So way to go, Mozilla Update. Usually works so damn well, too…

As an update on my bitching and moaning on the subject of my car, I will just state that everything (well, mostly, I still have to go to the DMV for plates and registration) should be worked out, god willing. (I’m still waiting for proof that the insurance is sorted out, but it should be.) So, I bought this car on Memorial Day weekend, May 24 I think, and I’m just now getting to the point where everything is good to go. Hell of a way to bust my metaphorical cherry. Assuming the world doesn’t end before then (this car won’t be paid off until sometime in 2013), I feel kinda sorry for the next guy I buy a car from, because this one has all but exhausted my patience with car salesmen.

That said, this is a really nice car, and it’s a hell of a lot more convenient than my bike. And disregarding the fact that I wouldn’t need to deal with them without this car, I’d be pretty much SOL because it seems I can’t get anything done with my insurance or dealership unless I go there in person, about a twenty mile round trip for either.

Also, driving up to Lakewood to see the insurance people is very strangely like driving around in one of the smaller towns up in the mountains. (Specifically, it reminded me of Canon City and Manitou Springs, both in Colorado, but that’s hardly interesting to anyone besides me, I expect.)

Also, I almost forgot, I’m planning on getting started on TNP and/or this little side project I’m planning sometime soon. TNP may take a while, as I’m still dicking around with the story (I keep changing shit, so I pretty much have to start all the scripts and such from scratch) and the side project is still in the planning stages, and I’m planning on collaborating with some friends who are about as prolific as I am. So don’t expect anything soon, but there will be something around here eventually.

As mentioned earlier, I bought a car. And I’m still finalizing everything. Once I got paperwork A taken care of, I still had to take it back to get the damn radio fixed. After the second attempt at the radio, I had to take care of paperwork B, insurance. (Incidentally, don’t let your dealer do your insurance. I had a quote in hand, just needed to double check that I had the requisite amount of coverage, and I had to wait a couple of hours just to sign the paperwork because they talked me into going through them for it instead. And it gets better.) I then try again at the radio, only to find that the electronics guy wasn’t there that day. At this point I should note that it’s damn near impossible to get a hold of these people over the phone, so most of these items were taken care of by driving ten miles to see them in person. I try a fourth time, and it then takes a day longer than expected. The upshot is that I got a brand new radio (or deck or car stereo or whatever) at no charge to me. I finally get home, freshly installed radio playing The Beatles’ Revolver, and find a letter telling me that the insurance was declined because the dealer signed me up for some package or another that requires me to have a license for at least three years. They are fully aware that I have had a license, to date, 13 days. So I have to get my own insurance before the 20th of this month, and then go up there to take care of paperwork C because they fucked up.

That said, I’ve long since gotten over the sheer terror at the obscene amount of money I now owe these people, and now that I have my MP3 player plugged into the stereo, I finally feel like I have my own car, as opposed to taking a week-long driving exam. (Incidentally, my test itself took all of ten minutes. Kind of a letdown.)

Lastly, I guess people actually give a damn about what other people are driving? You’re all weird. But it’s a 2002 Pontiac Bonneville, 4 door, V6, in that odd reddish-purple that’s alternately called “maroon” and “burgundy.” A childhood spent watching Bugs Bunny prevents me from calling it “maroon” myself. And I will say this: for such a big car, this thing is pretty damn speedy. Probably because I learned to drive in SUVs.