I found out today that I am getting about $5,100 for the car, and that I have about a week to find something to replace it with before they come and tow it away.

I don't know much about cars, so I'm curious if anyone has any insight re:

1. Good brands of car vs. consistent lemon-making brands of car? Any anecdotes or rumors of the 'X brand of car won't start in the rain'-type are also of interest to me.
2. Say I decide that instead of getting another Sunfire, I want some other inexpensive coupe. Any recommendations other than the Cavalier? (I have nothing against the Cavalier, just aren't particularly struck by it either.)
3. How about hatchbacks - thoughts re: good or bad ones?
4. If I were to look at a new car with financing, i.e. use my settlement as a downpayment, I was thinking about a Smartcar as they seem comparable to other 'cheap' new cars and I am thinking the gas savings would be worthwhile. Anyone heard good/bad things about them? My Dad is all freaked out about the safety implications, but everything I have heard/read suggests that they are no worse than other compact cars, and probably actually better than many.
5. Is it better to get an older Volkswagen or Toyota or Honda than a newer Ford, Chrysler or Chevrolet? What are the pluses and minuses of domestic vs. foreign cars - is the prospect of more expensive replacement parts outweighed by the car being better-put-together to begin with? Mostly wondering because I've seen some surprisingly well-priced old Beetles around.

Any other related thoughts would also be appreciated.

My requirements for the next vehicle are as follows:

• Automatic transmission
• Anti-lock brakes
• Air conditioning
• Front-wheel drive
• Must be 'short-person friendly,' i.e. neither so high off the ground that I need a ladder to get into it, nor so low that I can't see over the dashboard
• Prefered but not required: two-door instead of four, short enough in length to qualify for reduced parking rates from the city, cruise control, CD player. Cruise control doesn't matter much if the vehicle isn't long-highway-drive-worthy anyway though, since it is mainly when one is dealing with 3+ hours of highway that it becomes an issue.

I may add more to this later if I think of anything.

So, as per my previous journal entry: yesterday's Chimera was quite possibly the best-attended of all the regular Thursday events thus far. Certainly I very much appreciated all the crowd enthusiasm. Nice too that it was warm enough to have lots of people out, but cool enough for lots of people to stay inside and dance the whole time. It really was the perfect crowd balance for me to be able to play whatever I wanted the whole night, whether goth or industrial, and still have at least some dance floor still going.

Thanks to:

• arden_drake, e.V. and manda for helping out on the door.
• Whoever that was that was cheering so loud that it kept drowning out my last call announcements.
• The awesome staff at Soda.
• Everyone who made it out to show their support for the night.

And here is the playlist:

There were 108 people at Chimera tonight. And I didn't even recognize most of them.

Crowd-response-wise, it was probably the best event for me ever.

Playlist and etc. tomorrow.

Prof from Institution A's e-mail message: "Can you teach for us in Winter as well as Fall?"

My reply: "Uh, maybe?"

*copies to supervisor at Institution B*

My supervisor's e-mail response: "Absolutely not. Hurry up and get your research done."

My e-mail message back to prof from Institution A: "Err, apparently I shouldn't."

Prof from Institution A's e-mail back to me: "OK, here is info on at what time the course that I really really hope you will teach has been scheduled for Winter."

Yeah, ok then.

Remember how I mentioned awhile back that the "fucked-up door doggy" had been destroyed in my car accident?

The good news is, through the use of glue and 'mighty putty,' actually I have been able to reconstruct it.

The bad news is, I won't have it done - i.e. reassembled and re-painted - soon enough for it to be out in public again until next month's Chimera.

The best news is, once it is done it will probably be even uglier and more fucked-up looking than before.

Work in progres: (needs sanding amongst other things)

Chimera is tomorrow (or, since I just noticed it is after midnight, technically later today).

I just wanted to let people know that unfortunately, due to changes in liquor laws, there have been some complications with the drink specials.

The impression I am under is that it is no longer legal to advertise low prices on drink specials, and advertising or no, no drink can be sold for less than $3.

Furthermore, one can no longer have 'happy hour' after 8, which is bad for the 'early' specials since the event doesn't even open until 8.

My understanding of what is happening now is that there will still be Jagermeister shots available throughout the night that are as economical as can be managed, but I/Soda cannot actually put the special on the poster. Accordingly, I've also removed the info in question from the official Chimera website.

I just want it to be clear that the drink specials have not ended 'just because' either myself or Soda are just wanting to make more money. (I don't even make money on drinks myself, only on cover.) It's a legal matter that I'm no more happy about than you may be.

If people could spread the word about this, so that everyone knows what is going on and don't give the bar an undeserved hard time about something they basically have no control over, I would appreciate it.

Beyond that, if you're displeased, blame the stupid "duh, just because it is cheap therefore I 'must' drink more of it" monkeys at other bars who fail at self-control in the face of cheap liquor prices and thus are the driving motivation behind legislation of this nature. [Standard Satanic rant about personal responsibility goes here. ]

Re: the previous entry:

Me: "...so then I asked, if you are teaching some super theoretical, abstract subject such as analytic philosophy, how would you include a kinesthetic element to that? And no one had a good answer for me."

My Brother: "Ooh, I have an idea. You could throw tennis balls at students' heads, and then discuss whether or not they are 'real' balls, and distinguish between their belief that the ball is real and its metaphysical existence, and etc."



On a related note:

• My Mom is a school teacher, familiar with this 'learning styles' thing, and she thinks that however useful it is for kids, applying it to adults is kind of ridiculous. That made me feel better about my reaction to the whole thing.
• I just found out that I have to go to a meeting Wednesday morning, which totally fucks up my tentative plans for when I was finally going to get around to some 'occult experiments' I had in mind. Then again, my moods have been kind of odd for the last few days - erring really far on the "everyone fuck off and leave me alone" side and getting unbelievably angry at random things despite no new serious personal issues of late - so perhaps waiting until the week after will be better anyway.

Some recent events - which I won't go into in great detail because I haven't yet sorted out the "will eventually have a real job, therefore should take my real name off certain of my Internet manifestations" situation - have reminded me of a large number of things that I detest. Not that all of these were encountered recently, but many of them remind me of one another:


'Icebreaker' activities

a.k.a. 'make awkward conversation with people you don't know so that some fluffy presenter can subsequently gush about how the energy in the room is so much better now' activities.

I especially hate this when the gathering is the sort where you are never going to see any of these people ever again anyway.

It also irritates me because I have no ability personally to sense the 'energy' in question, which leads me to think that here I am wasting my time to satisfy some subjective need of the presenter that they are misrepresenting as an objective need. Or, if there is an objective aspect to 'energy' in the room, the fact remains that I don't notice it, therefore don't care, therefore would just as soon get to the task at hand.


Powerpoint presentations with sound in them

i.e. not sound that entails any actual content, but beeping and booping as things appear and disappear that is supposed to be 'cute.'

For reasons not entirely known to me, this fills me with an almost uncontrollable urge to either leave the room, or assault the presenter.


'Learning styles'

This is kind of a difficult one because I do see the value of it, i.e. of admitting that different people learn best in different ways - seems obvious, really.

However, I dislike the potential for one's 'learning style' to stand as an excuse for behavior that, as a teacher, I find rude and irritating. e.g. the ones humming and talking to themselves in class are 'auditory learners' and the ones fidgeting about are 'kinesthetic learners.' So how then do you distinguish between 'they are just learning in a different way' and 'they are fucking around and distracting people and the class would be better off without them'? Am I 'not allowed' to tell people to smarten up because my urge to do so is due to my being a 'visual learner' and thus having prejudices against such behaviors?

I find it interesting that I posed this question to a presenter today only to have it be totally evaded. Inability to get a good answer from anyone about how to include a kinesthetic element in teaching, say, analytic philosophy, was also somewhat amusing to me. Someone suggested something like 'more getting up and walking around' and I thought "what, is this kindergarden? Do they need 'nap time' after their 'little walk'?"

Today's academic meeting:

My supervisor: "How's the teaching been going?"

Me: "Oh the teaching has been going great - it's just that I, uh, sorta haven't gotten any research done at all because of it."

My supervisor: "That's okay, nobody does when they first start teaching, so I figured as much."

Me: "Ah."

Good to know that I'm not necessarily behind schedule then, i.e. the 'take another year because of teaching' thing is normal in the eyes of pretty much everyone academic-wise whom I've talked to about it.

I just got back from having my car appraised.

Apparently it will cost over $9,000 to fix, and the car itself is worth a fair bit less than that due to its age/make, so in all likelihood someone is going to come next week to take the car away and give me money.

Whether it will be enough money to actually buy anything useful as a replacement I guess remains to be seen. Which is sort of irritating to me on some level inasmuch as the car, however non-functional the trunk may be at the moment, is otherwise driveable.

This kind of thing is why I hate cars.

On the other hand, I suppose this means perhaps I needn't worry about getting the gum off the windshield.