Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Pretty Ruddy Unlikely

I think there's a gremlin following me wherever I go.  I'm talking food after midnight kind of shit.  But it's never anything major.  It's always just a series of minor inconveniences that seem to go wrong at the exact perfect time to screw up my whole day.

Today was the start of my second full day living in Los Angeles.  I woke up at 7 in the morning, my body beginning to adjust to having gone three hours back in time.  I immediately started searching for jobs and apartments, all set to head out and build my new life out here on the West Coast.  But the gremlin had other plans.  I thought I would go outside, get in my car and park outside of my current base of operations.  You know, for easy access.  But during the night my little gremlin friend crawled under my hood, hot wired the car and killed the battery.

At this time I did not suspect the gremlin.  Things just go wrong.  It's a part of life and as a mature, well-adjusted adult I should be able to handle this.  So, I get my friend to try and jump start the car.  We push it across the busy four lane road and into a parking lot.  But what I hadn't realized at the time was that the gremlin had drained the battery completely dry.  So, defeated, we pushed my car back out onto the street and I called AAA.

Now, my AAA card only exists digitally.  In order to actually be able to get the tow I needed a physical copy of my card.  I set about printing it out, but, alas, the gremlin had it in his disturbed little brain that this simple process had far too few complications.  He crept on into my computer and gave the printer such an erroring that I couldn't even delete it from the queue.  It just stayed there, like an old dog being put to sleep that was just too stubborn to die.  Then when I tried emailing it to a friend so that she could print it the gremlin decided that the email should fail for absolutely no reason.  With enough time wasted the little bastard decided that the flash drive I transferred the file to should just go ahead and work.  So, with card in hand I headed out into the bright sun ready to greet the tow truck driver.

It was at about this point that I began to suspect the gremlin.  Because all of his plans, his tireless and ingenious scheming, were all leading up to this moment.  Just as I approached my car I looked at the other side of the road to see the tow truck pulling away.  I desperately flailed my arms, waving the piece of paper that my card had been printed out on, somehow believing that this was the international sign for "Don't drive away!  I'm here!  Take my car!"  But it was all for naught.  And as the driver turned his truck down the other road I swore I could see that son of a bitch hanging off the back, his eyes gleaming red, his long fingers stretched high, grinning and waving.

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