ESP: Extra-Sensory Poopception

My roommate is a Bathroom Psychic.  He is the Miss Cleo of Poops (except, you know, without all of the ironic personal bankruptcy).  Between the hours of 7am and 10pm, if he's at home and I need to eliminate nitrogen, this is what I will see when I open the door of my combination bedroom, workstation and personal spanktuary:

A sad, sad, closed bathroom door.  My bladder groans in protest.  My sphincter tightens.  Have I left myself enough Hold Time to wait him out?  Or shall I make the mad dash upstairs to the other porcelain filth receptacle?  If the upstairs John is occupied, I shall perform the tinkle dance of the five-year-old.  It is not a manly dance, nor is it a proud one.

He keeps me on my toes.  Literally.

Update:  Both bathrooms were full this morning, so I went outside and marked my territory like a wolf. 

Metric Chunch Spanner

I like to think of gynecologists as vagina-mechanics.

They put you up high, climb under the hood and tinker around with their own special set of tools (chunch-spanners) and jargon.  Seriously, they could make up anything, how would you know?  "Oh, you need a new ovary drop tray, yours is rusted out."  I figure that in North America, they need both Metric and Imperial chunch-spanners, and that every so often, women have to go in to get topped up with fluids and have their filters changed.

Fascinating, mysterious and beautiful creatures, you ladies. 

Why is there plaster in this?

The wall across from me has a grouping of new bricks, roughly the size and shape of a certain large, friendly, anthropomorphized jug of fruit punch.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it?  OH YEAH!!

I will be the best dad.

In class, on Monday, my professor was telling us about her perceived lack of time management skills (this was by way of an example, about how one stray negative comment can colour our perceptions more than years of positive reinforcement).  She went on to tell us about a friend of hers with amazing scheduling abilities - a woman with a spreadsheet for her life - and how when this woman had a baby, she tried and failed to add that baby to the flowchart of her life (in an orderly and predictable fashion).

I thought to myself, "Pfft.  I could flowchart a baby."  So I did.  Enjoy!

note:  due to old scanner being old, some minor 'shopping of the pixels has occurred.

Weekday Update, with Kev-Inn Kneel-On

I am sitting in the basement of the D wing of the engineering building at the University of Saskatchewan, trying to make a laser-driven scanning particle size analyzer stop being a useless piece of crap.  Oh, don't get me wrong, when it works, it's a wonderful piece of mid-nineties technology, in all of its retro, "install my software with twenty floppy disks," glory.  At least it's not beige.  Remember when everything that plugged into a computer was beige?  Imagine a beige iPod.  A beige flat-screen monitor.  A beige printer/fax/scanner (that one shouldn't actually be too hard, they actually used to be beige, and enormous).  God, now I'm picturing modern Apple products with a beige finish.  A beige iMac. Ew.

Align, you art deco, science artifact, oblong hunk of ostrich feces!

Grr.

I could be done testing these samples by now.  Instead, the Mastersizer (actual product name) is hemming and hawing, and will, perhaps, deign to function after some unspecified time interval.  When it's DAMN WELL GOOD AND READY AND YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT.  

Le sigh.

Not a bad way to spend my first day back after taking some time off to attend my Grandmother's funeral.  She was 85, fiercely independent, and a tiny, little, perma-tanned, old-lady-raisin.  The tan was from years and years farming and gardening, not from a fondness for tanning beds.  The funeral service was Ukranian Catholic, of the Byzantine bent.  What that means is that the priest was from the Old Country, everything was lavish and ornate, there was a butt-ass load of incense, and the prayers were long, mumbly, tonal, repetitive and had very little to do with the person who had actually passed away, and a lot more to do with praising the Lord.  That has always seemed odd to me, and really self-centered of the church.   The priest was ever-so-slightly derp, as well.  Derp, in this context, referring to the pupils of the eyes having a slight tendency to skew outwards from centre.  I shall Google you up an image:

Religion, hooray! 

The important things, though, are that we buried Granny in accordance with her beliefs, and that loads of family and friends were there to say goodbye.  It wasn't all bad.

While I was away from the lab, sexual harassment happened!  Well, technically, it crossed the border into assault, because there was a solid and distinct boob honk.  I hope it was the best boob honk ever, because the culprit was a post-doctoral researcher, and a professor back in India, and he just flushed his career down la toilette.  That's French, for, "the toilet."  Just in case you weren't sure.  Also, note the emphasis on, "was,"  as he no longer is.  Can you say, "fired"?  I thought you could.

[Update:  I finally got the thing to align properly, and have written a new operational procedure, accordingly.  All who follow in my footsteps to use this machine shall find that I have eased their burdens significantly.  Mooching pricks.  Also, it takes a while to scan things, and I have used this time to regain my mastery of Freecell.]

I wanna be like you-oo-oo

I had lunch with my friend @SmaleChange today, during which time, and among other things, we talked about what one might do in the city of Calgary.  I mentioned the zoo, and he replied that that might be a poor choice of venue, given that his lady is a vet student, and that the Calgary Zoo has an iffy sort of track record with their animals.  He listed a few examples including my favourite:  A gorilla that got ahold of a box-cutter.

I now have a very vivid mental image of a standoff between five or six zoo employees and a gorilla brandishing a box-cutter.

"Easy, easy!" Says one of the tan-pants wearing men.

"Ooh, AAAH!" Says the gorilla, swinging the box cutter back and forth and making cutting motions.

As an aside, pertaining to yesterday's post:  the adding of the viscous binding agent did NOT make things sticky and difficult to clean up after.  Go figure.

Densified Biomass! A.K.A. Pellets! A.K.A. Oh wee oh wee oh! A.K.A. International Waters of Love

After approximately two months of jerking around with a complicated apparatus that I cobbled together from old bits of science paraphernalia, I am finally sitting and working with a different complicated apparatus that was cobbled together from bits of new science paraphernalia.  It is computer controlled, by this very computer, and it is wonderful.  It produces reproducible results, and it makes force-time graphs all by itself.  I am in love with its science bits.  None shall stand in the way of our love, except possibly laws against mechaphilia.  On an unrelated note, I will be taking a short vacation to international waters with a varied selection of clergy and an Intel Core Duo 2 desktop computer. 

I am certain that our love will stand the tests of time, although I am uncertain it will stand the portion of the testing where I have to add the viscous binding agent.  That is not a euphemism.  An euphemism.  That seems grammatically untenable, somehow.  Anyway, the binding agent.  It will make the process sticky and hard to clean up after.  Oh, quiet you.  Dirty, dirty mind. 

I'm just going to stop talking to you while I'm ahead.

Drama Llama

I hate drama. 

Now, when I say this, I am not hating on theatrical productions.  I love those.  Well, except for Mama Mia, that ended terribly.  My mom suckered me into seeing Mama Mia, once upon a time. 

"Hey Tim, your father was supposed to join me at a play, but he's going to be in Ottawa on business, would you like to take his place?"  Said my mother.

"Sure, I like plays."  Said I, the unsuspecting.

So I drove down for the weekend.  The unnamed play was on Saturday, and on Friday night I was hanging out with my sister (who was also coming to the play) and watching a little television.  A commercial for Mama Mia came on, and I mocked it casually, as one might expect of a twenty-something male when confronted with a production aimed at the sensibilities of forty, fifty and sixty-something women.  To this, my sister replied, "...you know that's the play we're going to see, right?"

"Mooooooommmm!"  Says I. 

The abridged is that I ended up seeing the play, being mildly amused by the first two acts, mildly aroused by some of the female cast, and then profoundly disappointed by the third act.  And, then, really, I'm not much of an ABBA fan.  Except for that one song about Fernando.  That one's alright with me.

This, however is not the point of this little number.

The point is that this weekend, while visiting friends that I had not seen for some time (one that I hadn't seen in person for six years), there was no shortage of what the kids these days refer to as 'drama.'  As in, relationship drama.  Histrionics and over-embellishments of events and casual comments into grand, tragic, personal insults and hurt feelings, with little to no actual justification for said hurts on the 'injured' parties.

The worst part, for me, is that given the relative frequency with which this has been happening for the last couple of solar orbits, clearly some of it must be my fault.  Either I've been coddling fragile people for a long time, or I myself am a fragile people.  I'm not sure which prospect annoys me more. 

I'm almost thirty.  When does this crap stop happening?  How do I opt out of this little shitty game?  Is there a form I can fill out?  A legal request?  Some sort of waiver, perhaps?

When do I get to say, with style and aplomb, "fuck it.  I'm done with this,"?

So, I got all of my marks back: I pulled off a 78 average in term 2, as a cancer patient.  I do believe that makes me some sort of brain champion.  My brain meats are superior to the brain meats of others. Oh, not you.  Your brain meats are also superior; although perhaps not quite so superior as mine.  Mine are awfully superior, after all.

Gather Your Science Nuts for the Long Winter Ahead, Children.

I am sitting in my lab, waiting for some oil to heat up.  The oil is for science, not for pouring over the battlements while longbowmen whizz shafts past my head.  That whole sentence is two or three adjectives away from some kinky sex, or possibly a scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail.  Coconut.

Technically, it's not my lab, it belongs to the University.  The oil is mine, though.  I called dibs.  You have to call dibs in this lab, or all of the science gear disappears into cupboards, never to be seen again.  Finding things is the primary impediment to my work.  It would be less of an impediment if there was some enforced system of organization, in place of Gather Your Science Nuts for the Long Winter Ahead, Children.

It took me three hours to find the parts I needed to assemble a Soxhlet extraction column, this morning.  Three.  Hours.  That's a round bottom flask, the Soxhlet apparatus, a condensing column, a heater, a stand, two clamps, some boiling chips, ten grams of my sample, and some hexane.  That would have taken twenty minutes, tops, in any other lab where like equipment goes with like equipment in drawers and cupboards labelled things like, "stoppers," and "beakers." Oooh.   Aaaah.  Mysterious.  Exotic.

I've been trying to put my finger on why this keeps happening, exactly.  Even I am forced to stash my tools when no one is looking so that I know they'll be there later.  From what I have observed, there are three primary factors:

1 - Language. 
I work with a collection of people for whom English is a second language, at best.  In some cases I would be willing to put money on English being a third or fourth language, which is actually quite impressive.  Because English is often the only common language, this contributes to caches of science stored in secret for the revolution. You have a group of very intelligent people that often cannot communicate effectively with each other.

2 - Time.
Many of the graduate students and post-doctoral candidates that come here are come only a few months.  They cram a cupboard full of samples and glassware, and then disappear across an ocean without cleaning out their hoard.  As a consequence, there are forgotten trinkets and discarded (potentially hazardous) samples in every occupiable storage space.

3 - Culture.
 For many of these students, science is a competition.  They are fighting for the credibility and funding that comes with being published.  They are fighting for their future careers, and to do that, they have to publish first.  At least before the other people who might be duplicating their work, or making it obsolete or irrelevant.

I wonder how many labs are like this.  Le sigh.  Ah well, I still love my job.

Apple Bottom Jeans. Books to Return.

I was on campus on the 28th, to hand in a term paper and return a library book.  The attempt at handing in the paper was complicated by a number of things, most notably the whole department being closed, so I decided to take the book back to the library.  While walking, I began to notice that every ass in sight was glorious.  Impeccable.  Pristine.

This continued the entire way to the library.  Bam.  Ass.  Booty.  Butt.  Cheeks.  Mmmm.  Dayum.

I walked into the library, and the cavalcade of caboose continued all the way to the checkout/dropoff desk.  Girls coming down the stairs had dat ass.  Girls walking by had dat ass.  Hell, even the girl behind the counter had a respectable portion of posterior.

As I approached the counter, she smiled at me and said, "I can take that for you!"  All chipper and bouncy and friendly.  I checked the book for remnants of bookmarks I had used while perusing it for my paper, and handed it over with a grin.

The act of handing that book over and making as if to leave the library triggered some sort of quantum shift in the nature of the ambient derriere.  From the very first step away from that kiosk, suddenly, the badonk had no adonk.  Meh at best, the entire walk back home.

The lesson here, is that Libraries Reward You With Butts.  And when you leave?   They take it away.  Big sad.

Note to self:  Renew Library Card.

Future developtments

Dear Bloomberg Businessweek,

Thank you kindly for your offer to subscribe, although I'm not quite certain what gave you the idea that I was a senior executive anything, let alone interested in business and/or finance.  Not sure where you're getting your market data from, you might need to re-examine it.

Further, what is wrong with this picture?

Look closely and perhaps you will see what I saw, in the return address of the envelope the offer came in.  See it?  That extra T in the middle of the word development?  That's right.  Market Developtment Group.

You may wish to address this for future mailings.  Cue sad "wanh-wanh-waaanh" noise.

Sincerely,

yadda yadda.

Left for Dead Rising. Two.

I just had an incredibly detailed zombie dream, in which I had to kill Patrick Stewart.

Patrick, I'm sorry!  You'd been bitten!  Everyone was watching you closely, and you were doing what you could as the military leader of the survivors before you turned.  When you felt it quicken, you turned to me and said, "You got this, Tim?"

To which I replied, "Yes."  And you bit down on my shotgun barrel, not wanting to die as a zomblebee.  It was incredibly noble of you, and a poignant scene in the complex drama that unfolded during sleepy time.  Of course, it ended up with some of your brains on the people around us because they wouldn't get away from you, because they loved their Captain.  ...yes, that was a dual reference to your rank in the dream and to your past as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.  Should I be sorry about that?  I've decided not to be sorry about that.

***

The dream began as a disjointed thing about me being at an awkward family function, in an extremely awkward house.   The house was awkward in its layout; there were wholly furnished and clearly lived in portions of it that could only be accessed through cumbersome, difficult and patently dangerous ways.  Of course, in the dream I seemed to be the only one who was having any trouble with such things, but that's not the point.  To avoid an internal family conflict, I had gone off somewhere in this giant house to play video games with some cousins.  We were playing something akin to L4D2 (Left 4 Dead 2, for the uninitiated), and at some point during that experience, that became the dream.

It was me, in a mall, running and hiding and shooting zombies.  I began with a crappy rifle.  It reminds me of the .22 Ruger I used to shoot at a friend's farm, now that I think about it.  Right about the time that I found a long lost lady love, we stumbled upon a Sporting Goods store and lucked into two shotguns and a box of ammo each.  The shotguns were five shot, pump action affairs that packed a hell of lot of punch.  She and I stayed together throughout the rest of the dream, occasionally temporarily separated, but always reunited.

I frequently encountered groups of people, tucked away in the very dimly lit stores of the mall, which was huge, by the way.  The mall was enormous, sprawling.   In the real world, it would have occupied kilometers of space (or miles, for you cute littler fellers still using imperial measurements).  There was an expansive basement and tonnes of stores, although I only recall there being two floors, with railed walkways on each side, separated by a huge open space that was occasionally punctuated with fountains.  ...it may have borne a striking resemblance to the mall from Dead Rising, only bigger, darker, and punctuated here and there with Things that were on fire.

Said Lady Love and I moved from place to place and group to group, frequently fighting off large groups of zombies.  Sometimes we fought them alone, just the two of us, saving a whole group of people for the moment.  Sometimes we fought them with a lot of help, with the occasional jammed gun or botched reload raising the heart rates of those involved.  I'm not sure when, but we started moving aimlessly through the mall with a large group of survivors.  In the middle of a skirmish with the undead, men in military uniforms with Big Guns and Precision Aim burst onto the scene from around the bend, taking out the zombies that were plaguing us, and they took us with them to a cordoned off, moderately fortified area in the mall.  Safety.  Ish.

That was when I was introduced to Patrick Stewart as one of the people responsible for the safety of a large group of others, and one of the lucky few to have found a worthwhile gun and ammunition.  He was the leader of these military men, and he introduced me to his lieutenants and included me in the decision making.  And then he began to turn, and I had to blow his head off.  RIP, Patrick.  You will be missed.  Your epitaph will read, "Make it so, my x-men."  Or possibly, "Dude could really rock a chrome dome."  I honestly can't picture you with hair, Patrick.

Afterwards, I fought off a wave single-handedly, because I was the only one at that point in the perimeter with a gun, picking off several zombies at a time with my shotgun, which was closer to a shoulder mounted flak-cannon at this point.  I'm sure that when I walked over to those stairs with the new commander, that he'd been carrying an assault rifle.  In fact, I'm certain that there were a number of men there with Big Guns, but the when the undead came shamble-running up the stairs, it was all down to me.  *Blam*, several more *blam*s, a reload, two more *blam*s and it was done.  I was basically the main character.

And then, a lull.  A long one, in which I toured the refugee area with the new commander, and searched for my Lady, who'd gotten separated from me when we arrived.  The refugee area was huge.  It stretched out almost as far as the eye could see, on both floors of the mall, with thousands of people.  Like I said, it was a really, really big mall.

I can see now that I've left out a lot, like how there were objects and goals that we had to try to find, early on, when the dream was still holding the form of the video game I'd been playing.  I left out almost all description of the darkened, trashed conditions of the mall, and I really didn't even describe the zombies - which were fast movers, but stupid as hell.

Unfortunately, the dream is fading, so this'll have to do.

Teehee

Woke up giggling.



"Help!  I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory!"

...

IN BED!  Amirite?  Amirite?  Aww, yeah.

brog rog log snog dog frog hog pog remember alf? he's back. in pog form.

This is going to be a little heavier than most of what I put up here.  I don't talk about this very often because I'm usually doing quite well, and because most people can't relate. But.

I’ve been… Off, lately. It’s got mostly, if not everything, to do with that other side of my day, the one where I’m neither a student nor a writer, but rather a cancer patient. On that side of things, my treatments have been hitting me harder, I’ve been sleeping incredibly poorly, I’m all screwed up dietarily and frankly I’m pretty damn tired of the whole process. I’ve got roughly a year left on most of my treatments before I’m essentially free and clear, based on our current estimates, and I don’t think knowing that is helping me at all. Rather, it’s a tantalizing fruit, hanging just out of reach. It is a watched pot. It is toast in the toaster, while I stand there waiting to spread my topping of delicious choice.

This is compounded by a couple of breaks in my treatments in the last few months, to make room for finals, to deal with side effects, that sort of thing. I got a taste of what it was like to actually be me again, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. Going back on my interferon, resuming my phototherapy? Sucked very much bad.

I’m going to let you all in on a little bit of my life.

This is what I bang into my subcutaneous fatty tissue three times a week:

It’s called Intron A. More properly, it is interferon alpha 2b, prescribed as an immune system remediant. What that means, essentially, is that through repeated injection, it will force my body to hit the reset button on my immune system. Why is this important? Because that’s what’s wrong with me. I have a non-Hodgkins lymphoma called Mycosis Fungoides. The technical version is that the CD4+ recruiter t-cells specific to my dermis have an indeterminate tissue residency time; this means that when an immune response is prompted in my skin, it never fucking stops. This is why I have had significant trouble with my skin for the last decade, and quite possibly why I’ve had skin trouble my whole life. When I say trouble, I mean big red patches that tended to flake skin and itch like it was my job to scratch. Yes. Sexy.

These days, I am doing rather well from a dermatological standpoint. Or rather, the net damage from my phototherapy treatments is much less pressing than the damage from my cancer. I moisturize a lot. Much of this recent progress is due to the interferon injections, of a certainty.

So why am I so put out by this medication? Aside from the obvious fact that I have to inject myself with it? Which isn’t that bad because, in spite of the panic attack I almost had when doing it the first time, it’s just a little dial-a-dose pen like you get for insulin these days; just a little prick, really. No. The reason I’m talking about interferon is because of the list of side effects. There are three kinds:

Reported by most (7/10)

Reported by some (7/100)

Rare but troubling (7/1000)

I'd list the side effects individually, but that would add another page to this thing.  

The most prominent and persistently troubling side effects are temporary depression and massive irritability. I have days on this stuff where I would just as soon glass you in the temple as say hello, because you are In. My. Way. And that’s not like me. I’m not violent, I’m not angry. In fact, I’m tolerant to the point of detriment to my own well being.

But then there are the sleep requirements. Even though I am on what has been described to me as a very low dose, it still requires ten to twelve hours of sleep to deal with the primary effects: Full body muscle aches, persistent sinus headaches, and general crap-assing malaise. I basically feel like I have influenza three times a week, minus the fever and chills. Though, there were fever and chills for the first two weeks, while my body was getting used to the stuff. That’s because your body naturally produces interferon of its own in response to viral infections, and interferon is the stuff that is largely responsible for the symptoms you feel when you have the flu. It makes me pee a lot, too.

On interferon days, I am tired, irritable, depressed and generally disinterested to varying degrees. I don’t want to do anything, and moreover, I don’t care that I don’t want to do anything. That’s three days a week where the only saving grace is knowing exactly why I feel the way I do; having something to blame eases the burden.

I have One More Year left on this stuff. The treatment arc is almost always two years long.

One more year.  What's one more year, really?

Boycott? Really? REALLY?

Have you seen this "don't buy gas on X date" crap that has resurfaced on facebook, again? Am I the only person on the internet who understands why this can't possibly work?  Am I the only person on the internet who remembers that chain letter crap like this is always fake and/or idiotic?

1) Pump prices are primarily derived from crude oil prices, which are insane because the Middle East is imploding on itself. You not buying gas for a day won't fix Libya or Iraq.

2) Just not buying gas for one day will not affect anyone's bottom dollar as long as you are still using the same amount of gas over the same time period as you always do. All you're doing is shifting it around.

3) ARE YOU RETARDED?

Imaginary Temperatures

Oh, and also this:

http://fuckyeahnouns.com/

It's currently this times root i.  Yeah.  It's math joke cold.

Laced With Vague Annoyance

Whoever it was that managed to get shoelaces changed on the vast majority of shoes from flat and willing to stay tied into round little Che Guevaras of shoelace independence, I hate your face. I hate you in the face, and I have done so since that first pair of round-shoelaced shoes that refused to stay tied when I was an annoying little pubescent thing. You raised my pudgy thirteen-year old self’s ire that day, and it has continued to this day (though I am markedly less pudgy and also less thirteen).  Why should I have to spend extra money on functional foot-strings if I don't want to stop to tie the preexisting strings at an increased rate?  Fail.  Blah.

Verbatim Conversations With My Sister #1

Her: Did you know there are gluten-free chocolate chip cookies right through that door?

Me: I did not know that!

Her: You should go find out!  And bring me one while you're at it.

Me: But I'm not hungry at all.  You should get your own cookie.

Her: Don't tell me what to do! *laughs*

So much potassium.

When I was really young, back when my brother and I used to share a room, he used to talk in his sleep.  It was infrequent, occasionally memorable, and often having to do with him having ingested dairy.  My older brother, you see, was so lactose intolerant that he would actually hallucinate.  He used to see stuff that wasn't there, on a very very regular basis.  I think I was about four or five, for this particular instance.

He started doing this, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh..."  Slowly getting louder and louder.

I woke up right away.  You become a light sleeper when you share a room with an older brother who considers you a convenient source of entertainment.

I sat and watched, entranced, as his volume increased to the point that he woke up mom and dad, in the room next to ours.  They appeared in the doorway, in their pyjamas with a look of concern that soon faded into incredulity and hilarity, mixed roughly evenly.

"Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh..."  For two solid minutes.  Louder and louder.  "Buh-Buh-Buh-Buh-Buh!"  Louder and louder.  "BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH!"  At the very top of his lungs.  "BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BUH-BANANA!"

He bolted upright in bed to shout banana, and fell back immediately afterwards.  Just *wham* BANANA *bam*, asleep.  


We died a little.  Bricks were shat.  

The Old Man In the SUV

note:  the following was written on January 2nd, at about two in the afternoon.

As a result of events that took place on Dec 31st, 2010, I am experiencing something new:  I am anxious as a passenger in an automobile.   This is not that story.

The reason I am sharing this is because moments ago, while a passenger in a car being driven by a friend that was actually borrowed from another friend, a close encounter of the GMC Yukon kind was had.

I am now a little tense.

While approaching an uncontrolled intersection on the way back to my house, the Yukon barreled into view, exceeding the posted speed limit by a good 20kph.  We braked.  He slid through the intersection, did an unnecessary evasive action and narrowly avoiding clipping a tree, after narrowly avoiding clipping us.  Noting that no significant impact had occurred, the friend driving our vehicle elected to continue on.  I probably would have stopped and checked on the other driver, but we were running behind and he had a flight to catch, and this is all in hindsight, anyway.

We were actually about a half a block from my house when this happened, so when we parked and began pulling this friend's bags from the car, it was not terribly surprising when the Old Man in the SUV pulled up to talk to us.  What was surprising was that he considered the incident to be our fault.  Words were exchanged.  Having recently been in an accident, I took over the conversation from our side, and while what I actually said was that he had been speeding and had failed to observe the rules of an uncontrolled, 4-way intersection, what I meant was that he could go cram it up his cram-hole.  He stood there for some time while we went about the business of transferring bags from one car to another, without saying a word, and eventually left.

Insurance information was not exchanged and no animals were harmed in the making of this blog, though I may have lost a year from my life due to stress.


Addendum:  Further inspection of the tree in question has revealed that he actually did abrade the tree with his motor carriage.