Jeff's Spleen

The Pompetus of dBASE

Don't worry--my exciting history of all the cars I've ever owned will continue shortly. Please--no panicking.

In the meantime, this entry was inspired by one Christian Crumlish, my pal and former colleague back in Ye Olden Days at Sybex Computer Books, who just randomly instant-messaged me at my desk here on this Friday afternoon with the following:

"Hey, it's the Pompetus of dBASE!"

Now, if you don't know the meaning of the word "pompetus," this means you're either too young or don't know your Steve Miller Band, either of which makes you pretty lucky. Actually, I guess the same could said for dBASE. Anyway, Christian's salutation refers to the fact that, back in the day, when I was a technical editor, I had done technical edits on a bunch of dBASE books, thus jokingly taking on that moniker in a moment of giddy self-pity and white collar hopelessness.

So, as I prepare to wrap it up for the day here and leave my office at Computer Gaming World, I raise my head to the skies and thank Teh Great J33bus that I no longer must earn my daily bread at a place where I could ever possibly called the Pompetus of dBASE again.

My third car...

was a red 1980 Toyota Corolla, which I inherited from my grandfather, Philip Green, before he passed away but after he became a menace on the road and stopped driving. Actually, he was a menace on the road way before he stopped driving. One of my fonder childhood memories is of him going about 30 MPH on the freeway in San Francisco, obliviously bobbling in and out of his lane, all the while disparaging the Asian drivers around him. "Can you believe they give licenses to these people?", he'd say.

I took possession of that Corolla in about 1982, while a student at UC Berkeley. College students and driving are two things that don't go very well together. Nevertheless, I actually did manage to not bang up that car. Someone else did it for me.

One pleasant evening in April, while I was pretending to study in my 2nd story apartment in North Berkeley, I heard outside my window the sound of a car's tire screeching, followed by that oddly satisfying crunch of metal on metal. Clearly, an automobile accident had just occurred, which made me happy because it was a good excuse to get up from my desk, as well as an opportunity to revel in someone else's misfortune.

Upon reaching the window, however, I was quick to discover that that misfortune was actually all mine, as my Corolla was now resting on its side, on the sidewalk, totalled--victim of an out-of-control Mercedes. The woman who had been driving the Mercedes was apologetic and horrified, and I ended up being the one who had to calm her down, even though it was she who wrecked my car, and not the other way around. Actually I remember that what annoyed me almost more than anything else was realizng that the Talking Heads cassette that had been in what used to be my car's tape deck was now gone forever.

My grandfather's remark, meanwhile, upon hearing about the accident the following day, was this: "I knew I shouldn't have given you that damn car."

And then he asked if the driver was Asian.

My second car...

....was a complete piece of shit 1972 Oldsmobile Cutless Supreme. No offense to the fine folks at Oldsmobile. Maybe the 1972 Oldsmobile Cutless Supremes were good cars in general, but my particular one was a piece of shit. It was even brown, just for good measure. Here's a close approximation:

This is the kind of car that gets you pulled over by the cops, routinely, just because of the way it looks. If you own one of these, you must be up to no good. I myself was pulled over twice. Once because it was around midnight, and I had circled the block where I lived a couple times, looking for a parking space, and the cops thought I was casing the neighborhood. The second time, it was because my rear license plate had fallen off the back of the car. This is actually a story all unto itself, but the net result of that was that I ended up spending the afternoon in a jail cell.

Good times!

My first car.

For some reason (senility? botulism?) I have been thinking today about all the cars I have owned in this sweet, magical lifetime of mine. Now, I guess I should say, I'm not a car guy. I hate driving, and never think even for a second about getting a car that might "look nice," because, to me, it'd be like getting a good-looking toilet, like this solid-gold beauty:

A car, to me, is just a utilitarian thing that I must deal with at times for practical purposes, such as the disposal of dead bodies, but to which I attach no feelings of pride or status or ego. Which is clear when you actually see what I have driven over the years.

To wit, my very first car, presented to me by my father upon my 16th birthday in 1977, was a used 1968 Ford Galaxie. Check this beauty out (not my exact car--mine was blue--but the best that Google could yield):

I busted this car up on the very first day I owned it. Twice. First, I backed up into a telephone pole. Since the pole was on the sidewalk, this means that first I actually had to jump the curb, then hit the pole. Then, later, while leaving an underground parking garage, I midjudged the distance between my car and the giant cement pillar I was parked next to, and scraped the car all the way around, caving in both the passenger front and rear doors. (Being 16, the scraping sound didn't clue me in that maybe I should stop after caving in the first door.)

Soon after that, one of my friends drew a face on the passenger window with an orange permanent marker, and wrote the word "Myron" underneath. From that day forward, until the car bit the dust two years later, that 1968 Ford Galaxie became known as the Myronmobile.

Blog-a-rific!

Although I am not even remotely posting as much as I would like to, credit for the continued existence of this blog at all must be given to one Cecil Vortex, whose boundless creative energy serves as an inspiration to us all. At least on good days. On bad days, his boundless creative energy is kind of annoying. Nevertheless, here's to Cecil Vortex. Yay!

Speaking of vortexes, let me also direct your attention to the recently launched, stunningly brilliant Monkey Vortex Radio Theater, to which, not coincidentally, I am a contributor and member. I have a couple voice-acting parts up there (listen for the nasal, whiny guy), and soon my very first radio play, based on a story I wrote in college, will be posted in all its horrid glory. Aren't you lucky?

And finally, while I'm in a self-aggrandizing mood, be sure to check out my work-related, computer gaming blog, now available in preview form on the Ziff Davis Game Group's soon-to-be-relaunched website. Just click here for now, which should work, I think, for more fabulous brain excrement from yours truly. You're welcome.