It deserves more eyeballs and more angry smart people, so I direct you to andyrut's site:
http://www.andyrut.com/home.php/1119478175
Philadelphia and New York trip photos are up:
Philadelphia and New York City 20050531
No write-up of the trip yet, but I did add detailed comments to each photo. If you view them in sequence, you'll get a narrative of sorts.
I've been getting spam recently advertising the drug Soma (well, technically I've been getting spam for "S oma", "s o m a", "s0ma", and other variants of the word. Hopefully they're chemically-equivalent-but-cheaper generic alternatives to the name-brand). What's this, now "cheep on-lin3 pharmaceuticaI" companies are selling fictional drugs?
Lo and behold, soma is being used as a brand name for the muscle relaxant carisoprodol. When combined with Vicodin it supposedly produces effects similar to heroin use. No doubt the manufacturer used the name soma for both its free marketing boost from popular fiction and because of the drug's effects.
Huxley didn't invent the word though. Whether coincidental or chosen purposefully (most likely the latter given Huxley's experimental drug use), soma is the name of a god/plant/drink from religious texts dating back to 800 BC or earlier. Far out, man.
No steaks here. Other drives seem to have the habit of Backing That Ass Up, into the side of my car. Or at least they attempt to.
In high school, my Camaro Z28 was broadsided by a fellow band member who failed to look behind her vehicle while moving it, and also disregarded my frantic horn-honking. I was trapped in a line of traffic exiting the parking lot, with nowhere to go. Crunch.
A few months back, another parking lot incident. This time it was a convenience store, and a man with a large truck decided to back into me as I was performing my own spot-extricating maneuver. In my haste to transition from reverse into first and get the hell out of the path of his reverse lights, I was too aggressive on the clutch and not enough so on the gas, killing my engine. Thankfully, he glanced backwards during his operation, stopping short of my passenger-side metal by at most 2 inches. Phew.
Today at lunch, I was making a left out of an alley, and a Saturn-pilot in an adjacent spot decided to toss it into gear and fly backwards out of their diagonal space as I was crossing behind them. Thankfully, the motion and lights caught my eye, and I had an escape route available. My reflexes took over. With a shot of the pedal and a crank of the wheel, I managed to execute an evasive maneuver, clearing their path by what was probably a scarily miniscule amount. Adrenaline surge and associated jitters for a few minutes, for sure.
People, look where you're going! Your insurance rates depend on it! And your health should I be unable to control my resulting anger!