Something clever about Easter.

Conversation between me and my wife today:

Me: Some horrible pun about the road being tired because probably there was a tire laying in it.
Her: Maybe it had too much ham and candy.
Me: Now I have Marcy Playground in my head.
Her: God, that's horrible!
Both of us, singing: "I smell ham and candy..."

Yeah, this is what we're like, pretty much all of the time. It's awesome.

Also, if you don't follow me on Twitter, you missed this one the other day:

Me: Bah!
Coworker: Humbug?
Me: Nah. Wrong Jesus holiday.
Her: I don't know any ending for 'bah' that goes with Easter.
Me: ...Rabbas?
Her: ...
Her: .....
Her: ..........
Her: You win.

Oh, by the way, this totally isn't a real post, but you can always just read the one I wrote last Easter.

The system is down, yo.

So, I'm about a million years (read: a couple weeks) behind on all the shit that's happened that I've been meaning to write about. I could tell you why, but you'd probably be disappointed, so just imagine that something really awesome happened, but it's somehow top secret because of reasons, so I can't tell you anything about it, ever. In fact, let's assume that's the case every time I get too busy/lazy/depressed to write for a while. It's better for everyone that way.

Anyway, last November, HTC rolled out a Ridiculously Important System Update Meant To Fix Shit That's Totally Broken For Real, That We Promise Won't Actually Just Fuck Up Everything About Your Phone for the Incredible. Yes, the Incredible One. Shut up.

You'll probably remember how, after I finally had to force the update to actually install, it didn't fix anything, and actually did fuck up my phone badly enough that I had to do a factory reset on the fucker.

Well, guess what came out relatively recently...ish? June, maybe? um, before today? RISUMTFSTTBFR,TWPWAJFUEAYP for the Incredible TWO! (Update two, not the Incredible Two.) Like the last update, it's so full of awesome that you'll have to do a bunch of secret hacker shit to even get it to install in the first place! But RISUMTFSTTBFR,TWPWAJFUEAYPFTI2(U2,NI2) is better than the first one, because it's newer!

I was super-excited that there was a new update, because my phone is an unholy pile of fail was having some minor performance issues. Like how roughly 60% of the time I tried to call my wife, it wouldn't actually bother to place the call, just fake it for a little bit and send me to voicemail. It would proceed to do this the next six times I called, until my GAD took over and could not be convinced she was not dead in a ditch somewhere until a) I finally got home and actually saw her, or b) my phone decided to stop being a douchewagon and put my fucking call through. Or how I would get a text from her and try to reply, but it would say "Invalid Destination Address, Asshat" and refuse to send anything.

After a few weeks of wankery in which I would tell my phone to install the fucking update, then watch as it counted down from 10 and did nothing, I finally broke down and forced it to install. Here's what the update changed:

• Caused the phone to freeze every 5-10 minutes.
• Deleted all the apps, except the pre-loaded bullshit that is apparently so permanently encoded on the fucker that even it can't get rid of them.
• Disconnected my Google account.
• It would allow me to re-download the apps it deleted; however, it wouldn't actually run the motherfuckers.
• After re-downloading apps, a notification would pop up saying that an app that it supposedly couldn't fucking run anyway had encountered an error and needed to close. It then refused to close the app, waited two minutes, and repeated the whole goddamn cycle.
• It couldn't find the SD card. Again. Or still. I don't even fucking know anymore.
• It no longer did the cool weather animations, which may have been the only pre-loaded feature I actually liked.

But it did add an "App Associations" option to the Settings menu so I could change the default app to use for certain actions. Of course, it couldn't fucking run anything but the pre-loaded shit, but it was at least nice to know I could pretend to have options.

Oh, and my favorite thing of all: every time I restarted the phone due to the freezing and other assorted fuckery, it gave me this popup that said "UIDs on the system are inconsistent, you need to wipe your data partition or your device will be unstable." Instead of an option that said "OK" or "Then Show Me How To Fucking Do It, You Prick," my only choice was a button that said "I'm Feeling Lucky."

"Your system UIDs are inconsistent, punk."

After the hard reset:

• It can't find anything on the SD card from before the previous hard reset.
• It can't find anything on the SD card or its own internal storage from after the latest hard reset.
• Eight out of ten times I look at it, it's collecting "anonymous location data" because of reasons. If I turn this off, I can't use the weather app, and the map app does this.

I'll give it one thing, though—it's definitely incredible.

Battery light, motherfucker!

So, remember a couple weeks ago when I talked about how impossibly weird shit always happens to my car? Yeah, that. Times forever.

A couple months ago, my car started playing this game called Battery Light, Motherfucker! where it decided it would be hilarious to do all kinds of crazy shit with the electronics while flashing the eponymous light like a motherfucking rave. I took it to one of those Car Shit Emporium stores where they plugged my battery into an Etch-a-Sketch and told me that it was toast, but they'd be happy to sell me a new one. Hell, they'd even install it for a fee that's already built into the price of the battery free!

Ten minutes and a little over a hundred dollars later, I got into my car, backed up six feet, and started playing BLM! again. When I dragged them back outside again, they started running random diagnostics, none of  which could apparently be completed. Then they just started guessing. "I'm pretty sure that'll be a bad diode. Or, y'know, something else with your alternator. It's probably not charging. Or maybe charging too much. Whatever. Either way, it's totally not your battery. Anymore."

"Ziggy says your flux capacitor's out of dilithium crystals, Sam."

Then I took it to a real mechanic, who replaced the alternator, but also locked the (only) keys inside it when he was done, so that when I went to pick it up, I had to call AAA to send someone to help me break into my own fucking car at 11pm. Literally thirty seconds after I got off the phone with them, a random tow truck driver happens to be walking by after parking his truck there for the night, so he gets me into the car while I call AAA to cancel. Everybody wins! Except for the tow truck driver that AAA sent after they didn't fucking cancel. He lost like an hour and a half of his life. But he did get to hear me apologize my ass off for something that was so not my fault, so that's...something.

Anyway, last week, I went to start my car and...nothing. Brand fucking new battery, dead. Car Shit Emporium told me it was "charging weakly," and that it was totally a diode again, or maybe something else that wasn't their fault. That actually did turn out to be true—I got it fixed for free. After the mechanic worked on literally 25 other cars that came in after I dropped mine off. Priorities, FTW!

This isn't a real post, but I felt like I should do something to mark this important milestone. Or something.

Oh. My. Shit. Snark is two years old.

You'd think I would have accomplished more in that time.

Anyway, I don't have a real post for today, but here's the first thing I ever posted here, two years ago today (P.S. It's funnier if you imagine Lewis Black's voice when you read it):

Someone told me today that the Census Bureau has a PSA featuring Dora the Explorer. The first coherent thought I was able to have was “what the fuck?” I think that, first of all, if I were trying to decide whether or not to fill out my census form, and I saw a commercial in which a cartoon character from a children’s network tried to convince me to do so, I would throw it the fuck away. Then I would move to a country that took itself seriously.

I have to admit that I haven’t seen it yet–hence my ability still to type coherently–but I’ve discovered so far that it’s part of a campaign called “Children Count, Too,” which attempts to counteract the apparently common problem of parents who forget to count their young children when filling out the census form. Fair enough–maybe–but who are they marketing this to? Are there children filling out the census form? If so, this could help to eliminate the error of not counting oneself, a common mistake among children, especially those under the age of five, who HAVE NO BUSINESS FILLING OUT A FUCKING CENSUS FORM.

Or do they expect these children to take on the responsibility of reminding their parents to count them? If you can’t remember how many children you have, the answer should be zero, because you are a shitty parent.

What the fuck ever happened to that whole "cup of sugar" thing?

Remember that time a couple months ago when I jumped across to our neighbor's balcony to let her into her apartment because she got locked out? We never saw her again after that. One day we came home and the door was wide open and all her shit was gone. Also, there was a new refrigerator sitting outside the door. We assumed she had moved because it required less effort on our part than if she had been robbed. By a Sears delivery person, apparently.

Anyway, some new people moved in a couple days ago. Most people find out they have new neighbors through a very brief conversation with a group of strangers carrying a sofa up some stairs, which is convenient because it has a built-in escape route. That conversation goes exactly like this:

You: "Hi, I'm _____. It's blatantly obvious you're moving in, so I'm trying to find something less clichéd to say."
New neighbor: "Nice to meet you. I'm carrying something really fucking heavy, so I don't really want to talk to you right now."
You: "I'd offer to help, but I'm afraid you'll accept and then I'll also have to carry heavy shit, and one beer is so not worth it. See you later."

This is the only conversation you're obligated to have with them, ever. Then you're free to ignore each other until one of you moves out. This is not how we met our new neighbors. Instead, we go out to our balcony, and on the very same balcony I jumped across to, we see a woman and her two daughters. The woman looks pretty pissed, and is alternately trying to talk to someone on the phone and muttering about how the hell this even happened. She tells us that she had followed her daughters onto the balcony, shut the door behind them, and then found it locked—even though it only locks from the inside. Even better, the deadbolt on the front door was locked, too. I'm pretty sure this apartment is haunted by the ghost of Houdini.

Of course, this story ends with a man we'd never met before coming through our apartment, jumping across to the other balcony, and using a piece of wire to break into his own apartment. Because this is the only way we can meet our neighbors.