The 20″ wheel debacle has come to a close. $700 in $650 out. I think the $50 dumbass tax is fair. I should have looked closer and not bought the wheels. Every one had curb marks, the center caps were ruined, oxidation marks and fading chrome was easy to spot on all 4 wheels. It was pretty stupid all around. At lease I didnt end up with a Range Rover this time.

The guy who contacted me for the wheels seemed nice enough on the phone at first. Then he started to haggle with me and offer me almost no money for the wheels. I just wanted to be rid of them so I was willing to put up with a certain level of BS to just close the deal and move on to other important things.

I met up with the guy in Torrance. What a shit hole. I hate the beach cities. 1 block of coastal homes are nice and the rest is inland empire and white trash. Sometimes both.

We first met at a gas station where he climbed all over my car looking at the wheels making comments “They have some dings, just like you said, you know I’m not knocking them, I’m just saying…” and it went on and on and on. He wanted to talk me down even further. I told him “look I paid 700 for them, i just want out for what I got in for” His wife beater shirt and greasy thinning hair made me want to leave even more by the minute. “hey man, you know I have like $580 on me now, are you sure we cant settle on that”, “no, look I told you I’m not interested in getting low-balled after you said you would pay just under what I was asking”, “no, no dude, its not like that” blah blah, wife, blah blah, a guy owes me money, cant go to ATM and shit like that.

After a shitload of his stupid yammering and making racist comments like “I like them but I dont want my car to look too n**ger.” I was at the end of my tether. I pulled it together and went over to his apartment to finish the deal where he continues to look over the wheels as if he were adopting an eastern European orphan. “Do you think they stick out too far? are they all evenly worn? Does this make my car look to ‘hood’ like?” Asshole.

The hour I had spent talking to this jackass was an eternity. Once he handed me the money I was inching toward the car. He continued to try to have a conversation with me. This and that about just getting divorced “Oh man, you’re getting married? Don’t do it, women are lying whores.” , “Thanks for that, I’ll think about it”

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the company of such an unpleasant and subhuman jackass. His punishment is that he gets to wake up every day and be him.

Sometimes its difficult to control my impulses. I spent a week trolling Craigslist looking for a deal on some 20″ rims for my Yukon, hoping that I could beat out the other dub seeking bargain hunters. I manage to enter an obscure search term that seemed to benefit me and may throw other off the trail. The guy was very congenial and had a great tale of woe. His son returned a lease, left some 20s in his garage and since they have been sitting for 9 months, he just wanted rid of them. Visions of bling-bling danced in my head like stars for the next 16 hours.

It took about 45 minutes to get to wherever in LBC / OC the wheels were. I didn’t have any photos so just about anything could be waiting for me. When Joe opened the garage doors, I was greeted by some pretty nice looking wheels. Very dirty but seemingly in good condition. Rather than spend some time inspecting them, I pretty much handed the guy $700 and threw the giant wheels in the back of my truck. The sinking feeling slowly settled in the car. I knew I had rushed the deal and there were going to be problems.

I unloaded the wheels at the wheel store near work and they told me the wheels needed some surfacing and chrome. Great. $600 on top. Oh, I needed new wheel caps. All 4 wheel caps. $200 more dollars. Great. Fucking great. If I’m lucky I can re-sell them for what I bought them for. As a bonus I got to spend 2 hours picking them up and transporting them all over the LA basin. Sweet.

I love music nerds. I honestly do. They are the great equalizer in the war against corporate music like Nickelback and Christina. The only problem is that like the good old commies, its never quite enough for the nerds. There is never quite enough Doves or Modest Mouse or Sleater Kinney for their taste. There is something good about having that opposite force in effect keepping the KISS FM from McMusicing the whole planet with its tripe.

http://www.laist.com/archives/2004/07/20/wall_of_voodoo.php

If you have a Fry’s in your city, you know that it has nearly everything you can think of except helpful people. I don’t know what it is but I’ll assume they only post jobs at the welfare office.

I went there today to get a replacement drive for an exec laptop that died. I wanted an excuse to go to that part of town and swing by Golfsmith to hit a few drivers. So I get my ya ya’s out hitting the Callaway ERC 9* driver and head to the DMV-like atmosphere of Fry’s to find something I was pretty sure they may not have. The laptop in question has a micro-drive which isn’t terribly popular. The first problem was that I didn’t have the right tool to remove the last screw in the drive housing. I walked up to the “service” desk. A woman who looked like she just got her first NA chip last night looked at me and gave me “what the fuck do you want” face,

“Hi, I was wondering if you carried any micro-drives for laptops”

“I don’t think we have those”

“Hmmm, do you know for sure either way?”

“no”

“ok, so I’m trying to figure out what replacement drive I need, would you mind unscrewing this, I don’t have a small Phillips”

“We don’t do that”

“You don’t do what?”

Sucking her teeth at me “We don’t do that”

“uh, ok, how about I do it, can I use your screw driver?”

“We don’t lend out tools”

“I done need to BORROW it, I just need to use it right here, for a sec”

“no”

“Wow, you were amazingly unhelpful. Thank you very little”

During the entire exchange her facial expression never changed except to roll her eyes.

With laptop in hand I wandered over to the hard drive area where a number of name-badge claded people were chattering.

“Hi, do you have any microdrives?”

“I don’t think we have those anymore”

“So do you know either way? I kind of need it”

“Um, I don’t know”

So he moves past me and starts looking down the aisle on the shelves. I assumed he was looking for himself to see if they were there. We were nearly down the full length of the aisle when I realized he was off looking for something else.

Having completely grasped the level of apathy in the store, I figured I would just help myself to some tools and at the very least get the drive out.

In the tool aisle there were a few Fry’s sales asshats standing in front of the small PC tools. They were a bit confused by being pushed to the side where I placed my laptop on the floor and started pulling tools off the wall and opening their wrappers. They could sense that asking me a question could very well be the last thing they would do on this earth so they just kept a safe distance and watched me.

The check-out was little hassle. At that point the look on my face was keeping people moving briskly.

This fancy interweb just makes me so freakin happy sometimes I just want to smack people. Evite made sending out the information on the who what where so simple. In spite of including all of the info some asshats don’t bother reading it and ask me questions. Questions I spent time answering in advance. I hate people sometimes. I hate them more when the people asking the questions are people who we only invited to be polite, knowing they aren’t going to make it. Jackasses.

Gill and I have about 15 friends showing up. Very small gathering. Mom invited about the same number of her friends. Oh, it started small, “Just 6 of my closest friends, no more, thats ok right?” Which turned into “Well, all my friends know and I can’t not invite them!”

Like I said before, they can come if they bring a gift but I’ll be a pretty annoyed if they up empty handed. Let it not be said that people were not warned.