The Vroom Closet

I like to think positively of cars, for the most part. They whisk our population hither and yon at liesurely speeds of 90 miles an hour from their homes to their jobs to the stores, from San Antonio to San Francisco, and, depending on who's driving, the bottom of the Hudson River. They're wonderful contraptions of our own whimsical design, and being without one in the New American City delegates you to the Second Class, known elsewhere as the pedestrian, crawling languidly along the infinite sun-seared concrete desert while high school kids in Ford Broncos hoot and throw cans at you from their windows.
I, personally, have gradually given up use of my feet ever since I received my 1994 Nissan Quest at 17. "Why, you horrible lazy man! How could you substitute your own legs for a series of controlled explosions!" Don't you judge me. Within walking distance of my home, I have four things: Taco Bell, an empty strip mall, a 7-11, and another empty strip mall. Wild. But I won't lie to you, dear reader, these places are no more than 100 feet from my house, and I have found myself driving to these very places to the point where I do indeed question my last shotglass of humanity as I pull up to the drive-thru window. My city is laid out with people like me in mind.
Here in the Old World, on the other hand, things are different. These cities were founded at around the same time as the finishing touches were put on the Sphinx, meaning that these cities, in stark contrast to our oh-so-familiar urban sprawl, were built on the assumption that people will be walking to where they need to be. The houses are on top of the shops, the shops are next to the cinemas, the cinemas are beside to the canals, the canals are between the cafes, which, by the way, have consistently provided me with a cornucopia of the best sandwiches in recorded sandwich history.
Instead of blathering on about the apocalyptic struggle of Man vs. Machine as we've already seen in Terminator and its ilk, I'd like to wrap this shmeal up simply and succintly: One day, robots will work our fields and wash our hair for us. Until then, we in America are one car malfunction away from irrelevance.

Just When You Thought it was Safe

There's a nasty bug going around that's written for Google Desktop.
I would not recommend getting it on a netbook.

So, with my laptop down for the count until I can get it back to the lab, I am forced to write with the 15 minute deadline that accompanies the Internet Cafe I am currently using.

Hobo week has begun. With the home stretch of the trip in sight, these last 11 days will be spent blowing through the entire European continent and then hoping that's enough to put me to sleep on the plane.

There's not much else to say as of right now.

Ciao, You Son of a Bitch

The following texts were written from the grand halls of Milano Stazione Centrale Waiting Room. They chronicle the descent into madness that was...

Independence Day Weekend.

---------

Words cannot describe how much I hate J.P. Morgan's hellish apparition, Chase Bank. In fact, one of the first things I am going to do when I get home is track down the computer that froze my card and simply scream at it like a deranged species of howler monkey for a few hours before putting my foot up its cold silicon ass. I bay for the blood of this computer.

It couldn't have been more perfect. The day I arrived in Rome, I was ready to go. Things had just started looking up after the last fiasco with Chase not two days prior, and I was fully prepared to start enjoying my trip again. That is, I was going to, until I tried to withdraw 20 Euro. I couldn't read Italian, but my stomach immediately froze with dread when my card was returned with no money.

I spent the next six hours trying in vain to reach the Chase customer service line. "You bastards!" I wanted to shout into the receiver. "Unfreeze my card, you boobs!" But, alas, the international nature of the call ceaselessly stopped me in my tracks. After blowing through every phone in the tri-city area, I wandered into a grocery store. There, I overheard a horrifying conversation next to me: "Happy 4th of July." Happy day before Sunday.

All at once, it hit me: The bank and its customer service line would be unreachable for the next 48 hours. Somewhere in Hell, Satan was looking up at Chase, saying "wow". Saturday, the fourth. It's a good thing not many people in that particular grocery store understood English cursing. Although, if they could, this performance would have surely gotten a sound round of applause.

I rationed out some of my meager cash assets to send out an SOS e-mail to home, and began killing time until Monday.

---

Monday morning. I'm astounded that as I've started sleeping on wood and stone, my dreams have become more and more frequent and vivid. To my dismay, however, none of these dreams could satiate my bloodlust toward Chase J.P. Morgan. It's just been a lot of elevators with no walls and amusement parks. Don't quite know how that works into the whole scheme of things.

---

I was reminded just how fragile it all is. A simple computer command from a thousand miles away had effectively turned me into a hobo with a laptop. For the first time in my life, I was forced to hold out my hat (I had found a hat, how ominous is that) for bread money. Not something I thought I'd be doing on my trip. I had over $500 at my disposal, but a nightmarish cocktail of computer code and bank holidays had made it as if it didn't even exist. I was trapped in a country where English was closer to Esperanto than Lingua Franca, and where I was constantly mocked by lines of food and drink I knew I could eat to my heart's content in only a slight variation of my current situation. My mind continued to return to the grim specter of J.P. Morgan, his withered claw of a hand flipping the Tourist/Vagrant switch on the floor with no number in Chase Tower, Dallas.

---

When my mind was not intent on re-enacting my favorite scene from Office Space with the Chase mainframe, I thought of home. My family, my friends, my dog, and most importantly, the vast array of cheap food readily available within walking distance of any given point in the city of Dallas. A half-liter of Coke is almost $3.00 over here. I'm simply dumbfounded, as I and every other red-white-and-blue-blooded American is fully used to paying that for a 12-pack of 12-ounce cans in the States. It's the little things that put everything into perspective.

We've got it made in America. For all my heated bashing of the corporate sprawl, I am well aware of its benefits: Innovation is spread quickly and efficiently, mass-production ensures affordability, and not one person can say with a straight face that our financial institutions didn't make everything we have today possible.

This is not to say that those benefits will stop me from calling the Ghostbusters on J.P. Morgan.

---

In the waiting room of Milano Centrale, there is a blown-up child's drawing of the station. There's something pure and uncensored about the drawings of a child. Among the eight people drawn in the station, only one is smiling. The rest have looks of confusion, anger, surprise and sadness on their pink crayon faces.

I can't help but feel like I'm not the first one this has happened to.

---

Little Differences

-In Europe, Fanta Orange is yellow.

-Kroket is not just a game to play as a last resort. Kroket here is delicious.

-You cannot take glass bottles outside a restaurant.

-Packs of cigarettes and other tobacco products have creative warning labels on all sides.

-Beer is sold in vending machines, along with almost every other drink and food imaginable.

-Graffiti is almost never painted over. Why? Because they consistently look awesome.

-Either sales tax is included in pricing to round out to managable numbers, or there is none at all.

-If you cross a pigeon, it will wait for you to pass before continuing on.

-Rap music is 90% better.

-Comic books range in subject matter from ancient Egypt to the American Civil War.

-Did I mention how amazing the graffiti is?

-Black people are not under constant harassment from the police.

-Newspapers have staples.

-A 52' trailer truck is unheard of.

-Coca-Cola really has to work at making an attractive-looking can. Otherwise, people would never pay 2.50 Euro for it.

-Rather than working all day at a soulless national chain, people often work at their own shops.

-Nicotine-free tobacco exists.

-The entire Dutch language is almost anagramatic to English.

-If I could remember what the beer they serve here is called, I'd tell you.

-Nutrition facts on soda cans are divided into 5 easy categories.

-I am yet to see a 3-lane motorway.

-SUV count: 1

-This came as an unpleasant surprise, but as I've been here, the dollar has steadily declined against all local currencies. The pound was exchanging at almost 1.7 dollars.

-Grocery stores here stock a variety of delicious creations, ranging from a scrumptious spectrum of breads to a candy aisle that would put you in a diabetic coma just from looking at it. This juxtaposes the American market, where most products try to taste as much like macaroni and cheese as possible. I would like to add that Big American frozen pizza is 5 times larger than any frozen pizza I've seen in my life.

-You can get a loaf of bread for 75 cents US.

-Once my teeth stop rattling from the coffee, I'll tell you more about how good it is.

-Bus drivers in the Netherlands smile and wave to each other on the road.

-Emergency vehicles have specific melodies to their sirens.

-Civic beautification is taken quite seriously.

-Ramen is sold with a packet of oil (not that kind), giving it a creamy, flavorful texture.

-I don't know how it's going in the States, but people here are mourning Michael Jackson in a way similar to the way Americans mourned Abraham Lincoln.

-There are not bags at grocery stores. Bring your own.

-Toilets, in addition to having a flush button, are also devoid of water.