WeeWeeJumbo's blog
The following is a true story.
The other day I went out to a local bar to celebrate a friend's birthday, had much more to drink than I ever drink, and was assigned the risky task of driving my friend home. My friend is even darker than I am, wears dreads, and lives in the same quiet suburb on the outskirts of [a major American city] that I live in. I've been a bad boy... my car is completely illegal. Insurance? Lapsed. Out of state license and registration? Suspended. Inspection? Expired. I do have an in-state license, but it's not legally tied to the car. I'm drunker than drunk; I can smell myself. I'm slurring my words.
So I drive ever so carefully past Smokey, parked by the side of the road. I remember my training from University, when I used to do much worse stuff than alcohol. Act normal. Control your breathing. Steady the wheel. Don't spazz on the gas, clutch or brake. Act normal. Smokey turns on the rollers. I stare license suspension, a weekend in jail, and unimaginably harsh lifes.tyle damage in the face; not to mention, the last time my friend got pulled over for DUI, the pigs tasered him while he sat in the driver seat. I pull over, hold my breath, kiss my freedom good-bye, and roll down the window.
"The reason why I pulled you over is, one of your brake lights is out. Do you have proof of financial responsibility?" Man, this guy cuts right to the chase. I fiddle in my pockets. Nope, no insurance there. My wallet? All it contains are my suspended out-of-state license, my lapsed insurance ID card, and my suspended out-of-state registration. "I don't think I have it on me." Smokey doesn't miss a beat. "You need to carry proof of financial responsibility at all times, sir. Show me your license." I'm lucky. I'm lucky. I've never been lucky before, but I'm lucky now. I do have a valid in-state license, which I finally got very recently after living here for the last eight months. "How long have you lived in this state, sir?" I lie. "Two weeks." My license doesn't contradict this, but that's only because I waited most of a year to get it. "Okay. I'll be right back." I expect him to run my info through Cerebro, and to return to my car with his taser drawn.
The man returns to my window in about two minutes, which must be a world record. "Okay sir. You need to carry proof of financial responsibility at all times. Get that taillight fixed, and your inspection has expired, so make sure to take care of that as soon as possible. Have a good night, sir." He walks toward his cruiser, which while we were waiting, was joined by a second cruiser. I'm urinating freely. Why didn't he give me a sobriety test? Why didn't he run the breathalyzer? Is this one of those deals where my friend and I show up in a morgue with slugs in our backs, for "resisting arrest?" I pull out carefully, and reconsider my atheism--briefly. I drive my buddy home. I return to my apartment. I exhale.
Why did Smokey not smell me? If he smelled me, why didn't he pull me out of my car? Didn't he hear me slurring? I live in a quiet neighborhood, I was driving at 3am on a Thursday night, clearly intoxicated, my friend and I are black as black can be, and my car was completely illegal. If Smokey had done what he could have done, my life would be more or less ruined; I'd have no defense at all. But he sent me on my way and I told him to have a good night; don't laugh, it just seemed to be the right thing to do. The moral of the story? If you don't want to be the victim of racial profiling or bias, do the most illegal thing you can do in any given situation. It makes you invisible to the law. Or, I have used up all my luck for the next twelve months at least.
Epilogue: Today I sold the car on Craigslist for $100 more than the price I paid for it. I've warned the buyer, an international Computer Science student going for his Master's, that it needs a hell of a lot of work. He test drove it, put the down payment on it and signed the receipt to complete payment on Friday, which is when we'll do the handoff in the parking lot of the local Greyhound bus station. From there it's a 13-hour trip to my other buddy, who's selling me his well-maintained Nissan Maxima for a super-low price. I have insured my friend's car, and will register it sometime this week. I am looking forward to driving a car that's not a wreck, that doesn't make me feel ashamed whenever I crawl through the passenger's side, because I don't have to, because all its doors open; I'm looking forward to a car with a functioning air conditioner, and a radio that works. I'm looking forward to feeling good when I drive, instead of feeling like a broke-ass loser who drives only at the mercy of any cop that wants to take a good look at what I'm driving. And I will never, ever drive drunk again.
Or ...?
I have watched several sets of friends move in to this house, and I've watched them leave, too; it hasn't always been fun. Some of these departures marked the end of friendships; the last few years have been pretty hard, and money has been pretty tight. There aren't a lot of opportunities for a man like me, in the place where I live.
So, although I don't regret walking off that cesspool of a job when I did, it's no less true that I just can't keep renting here. My roommate--who's not really a friend, so much as a friendly acquaintance I made at a different job--is taking it well, he's being very big about it. It screws him pretty bad, because he has to find a way to replace my rent or move out himself, and his work is seasonal, and winter is soon coming. I didn't mean to make things difficult for him, but I can't ask him to pay my rent for me. So, I simply have to go. There are no hard feelings; the guy's a prince, even if I couldn't say that we were ever close.
In the past few months, a number of the old gang from University--now scattered across the United States--have offered me their place to crash in, if things ever got hairy; and that's exactly how things are right now. I'm taking up one of them on that offer: the one who's closest to me geographically and easiest to reach. There are a lot of employment opportunities in the place where he lives, and I look forward to a change of pace, and neighbors; as I said, I'm sick to death of the undercurrent of bigotry that I've tolerated here, for so long; if I never come back, it'll be too soon. These people are, by and large, filth. I'm hoping things will be better, where I'm going, on that count; my friend says they definitely are. It's a University town; University towns are often full of slightly less-ignorant people.
The cost of living is lower there, and the wages look a little better. I hope I can continue the career path I started at the job I just quit; I don't want all that labor and suffering to amount to nothing.
So, this is really light at the end of a long, dismal tunnel. I've wanted to leave here for a very long time, but it never seemed like the right time; now it is the right time, as on so many other occasions in my life when I made a major change, because I don't really have a choice. You guys ever have that problem? Complacency till the bitter end?
But hey, my friend is a slick charmer who has more skills with the ladies than anybody I've ever known. Being in a University town will probably help me get back into the groove again, have a more fully-fleshed-out life again, meet people who are like-minded again. I am soon to get my car back on the road (it's been one long, dreary hiatus from driving, too), soon to live with another one of the best friends I've ever had, soon to escape this dungeon and all its cretins. My friend is a game nut just like I am, but he only has PS2 and GC; it'll be fun to show him what XBox can do! I'm ready for some big, positive changes; I just have to try my damnedest not to screw it all up. I can make it there; if I could survive out here, I could definitely thrive there.
Still, looking around this rental home, where I've spent the last seven years, almost all of my twenties, and thinking of all the friends who've come and gone, I can't avoid a twinge of nostalgia; there have been some good times. A lot of bad ones, but... some good ones. I'm the last one of us to leave. It all feels so final.
Aw, it's just life-change-jitters. I've felt them before; no big deal, really. Almost everything about my life is about to improve, and in major ways. You know, I've heard that long-term prison inmates go through something similar when they are set free; a kind of disorientation, that dislocation that accompanies a disruption of order. Still, they are free; and it is better to be free.
More later. Thanks for reading this.
A longtime friend (all of the last decade) is packing up and moving to the other side of the United States tomorrow. I moved to the place where I live now to attend University there, but I never really liked it; in fact, I hated it. My buddy Ray was one of the best people I ever met here, or in fact anywhere, ever. I sure am going to miss him.
Still, he's moving because he finally got a truly great job, after years of striving. I'm totally happy for him; he's got so much to look forward to, like, you know, interesting work, plenty of opportunities to refine his craft. Money. And with the money will come, of course, more and better women than he's ever had the chance to enjoy. Yeah, I said it. Welcome to reality.
Anyway, the gang from University got together a couple of times over the last few days, you know, a last hurrah and whatnot. It was fun, nothing to compare with the greatest times we've all had together but definitely a good cushion against the sensation of imminent loss. Check out the new Miami Vice movie, particularly if you used to watch the show. Pay special attention to the sound engineering and cinematic direction of gunplay, it's quite impressive.
Well, life goes on. Here, I guess I'll quote the Coen Brothers via Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski, their greatest movie ever:
'I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward in the wagons, across the sands of time, until--
aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.'
And bought an XBox and a mother-lode of great games. I can't really keep up with all of them; in order to play online, I'm going to have to focus pretty hard on just a couple or a few, and then try to build up my skills. Unfortunately this means I'm sure to let some of them fall by the wayside. This is pretty unfortunate because I can tell they're all really great titles.
But it isn't the first time. I've got a nice handful of PS2 games that I never finished; and after having an XBox, I'm just not inclined to pick up my PS2 again. I know that's lame, but while I might pick up Katamari Damacy every now and again for all its great music, or I might Mission Select a couple of levels in DMC 3 from time to time, I can't see myself re-learning the weird controls for MGS 2, or committing myself to seeing the end, finally, of Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I keep telling myself that this situation is perfect because there are always plenty of opportunities to treat myself to something "new" by just digging up one of my dozens of unfinished games. And the situation only arises in the first place, on the XBox at least, because I stocked up on a huge number of titles very suddenly.
But this isn't the first time. Being overwhelmed by too many unfinished games is a plague I've suffered since about the late 90s. It was in the PS1-N64 days that I first noticed my zeal for completion was beginning to wane.
As a kid playing games, way back in the 80s, completion was the mission; it was almost a kind of personal failure for me if I didn't (couldn't) beat a game I'd bought. But back then, I bought a new game maybe every couple or few months. They were extremely expensive and I didn't have a job. So even buying a game meant investing a lot of time and money as a matter of course. So maybe that's a part of it. Nowadays, games are all much easier to acquire and to play than they were back then; I suppose it's maybe a little predictable that I would lose some of my go-getting attitude.
Still, games are better than they used to be: they're better-looking, they sound better, they have better controls and in general they are much more engaging. So what's up with me? Is my attention span growing shorter over time, instead of longer?
I really want to get into a game as gnarly and intimidating as Morrowind; I'm glad there's KOTOR to fall back on when Morrowind demands a little too much from me. But I have no confidence that I'll ever finish either game. Especially Morrowind. Worst of all? On Monday I'm buying my friend's copies of Jade Empire Ltd. Ed. and Fable LC. Famously pretty, simple, accessible, that is to say, candy-ass. I'm sure they'll be fun and easy, and I'm sure I'll play them. But I don't know if I'll see their ending movies either; because frankly, my plate was full before I even got the XBox. Man, I am so lame.
My Recent Reviews
"Instant classic"
One for the history books. Continue »
"Mixed reactions"
"There is a price to pay for every thing you gain." --Ares Continue »
"Masterpiece"
Dante or Kratos? The Answer Revealed Continue »
