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Any of you knuckleheads use this LJ Talk thingy?

Chemical boost

I didn't have a lot going on today, so I decided to make it a day of bureaucracy. I've been looking to get a Pennsylvania driver's license, but I've been waiting on some other paperwork dependencies before I could make the attempt. Well, I had finally gotten all my ducks in a row, so I decided to head down to the DMV today. The DMV, by the way, unlike New Jersey's MVC, here is called the DOT. Why doesn't everyone just say DMV? But anyway.

So because my name isn't on anything officially tied to my address, I had to drag roommate metalepticfit down to the DMV DOT office with me to vouch for my address. Also, because the office is in the general vicinity of Philly Chinatown, we decided to stay in the area for lunch. To our bicycles we went!

Now, when I say I had gotten all my ducks in a row, I mean it. I did my homework, friends. I had even been by the DOT office a few days previously to pick up the forms I needed and filled them out and home and everything. So after we had waited and they finally called my number, of course it turns out that I had not brought a key document, and so the whole trip was for nothing. Boo! I did, however, get them to authorize my address being vouched for, so at least when I came back to do it right, I didn't have to drag Jeff with me. So, defeated, we went to lunch.

We hit this place in Chinatown that we've been to before, and had good food. Now...a lot of times when we eat in Chinatown, after we're done, I like to hit this bakery and get a little dan ta custard thingy, because I love them. Once we were there, I was overwhelmed by a craving for one of those Vietnamese-style coffees...you know where they brew it right into some condensed milk? That is like the greatest treat of all frickin' time, and I haven't indulged ever since I gave up coffee however long ago that was for fear it would make my heart explode. Today, though, I threw caution to the wind, I got me one of those coffees.

It was so frickin' delicious. I can't even tell you. It was so delicious, it would have been worth my heart blowing up. That's how delicious it was.

Anyway, we started thinking about heading home, but then I remembered that we were out of rice, so while we were in Chinatown, I figured we should get more rice. So...I was starting to feel pretty good at this point, since I was ramping up to a caffeine buzz that I haven't felt in years. With that in mind, I strapped a 25-pound bag of rice to my back and we biked our way back home. It was great! I mean...I kind of lived in fear the whole time of snapping my pedals off, but by the time we got home, I was feeling pretty damn good.

So I picked up the document I needed, and I decided, hey, I'll just bike right on back to the DOT office and take care of things again. So that's exactly what I did. On the way, some jackass in an SUV ignored my lane change signal and tried to run me over. As he honked and passed by me, I yelled at him. I followed him a little while, and when he was watching me I stuck my arm out in a signal and yelled, "Do you know what this means?!" [Update: That's not a euphemism. ;) ] Then later I got to overtake him when he was stuck in traffic, so I felt better after that. Only a few blocks later, I was slowing to wait at the corner at a traffic signal going red, and a car behind me and to my left zoomed around me (and the pedestrians in the crosswalk) and brazenly just ran through the red light. Immediately a cop SUV that was sitting at that intersection turned the corner, flipped the lights on, and pulled him over. So that was gratifying to see.

At any rate. So I got the DOT stuff taken care of, and I'm now an officially documented resident of Philadelphia, PA. Go Eagles! ;P I just got back home, and my mind is crackling with caffeine buzz and biking-in-traffic adrenaline, so I feel like goddamn Superman right now. I tried to convince Jeff that we should go to a fight club or something tonight, but he didn't seem into it. I called him a pussy, punched him in the head, knocked over his bookcase, and left to make this blog post. He said I shouldn't drink coffee any more.

He's probably right. ;) Peace out, everybody!

What I did tonight

So tonight saw me on a rare actual leaving-of-the-house to be at a gathering-of-the-humans, which is, you know, something I don't really get up to much these days. I tagged along with metalepticfit to a screening of Joined by Divisions, this film by this guy Ted Passon. It's mostly about the shooting death of Timothy Goode at the hands of Philly police in early 2008, but that story is itself related to a bigger, more famous story of the 1985 bombing of the MOVE house. Myself, I definitely learned a lot about some important local history that I hadn't really been familiar with before. The filmmaker was present at the screening, which took place at a local bike shop, so he was around to answer questions and talk about this film as well as other projects, so...the whole thing was pretty interesting and eye-opening. The screening was also a fundraiser for a locally based anarchist newspaper, so there was a pretty interesting crowd attending, too. Plus...as a bonus to all that, we had what I thought was a great bike ride to and from the event. So all in all, I'd say it was well worth the effort of leaving the house.

I've had quite a day today. It's actually kind of comforting how little of it was spent in front of a computer. :) And yet I still managed to get all those blog posts out. Funny how that works.