Death and Kia
4/29/2

Friday afternoon I saw our next door neighbor outside and I talked with him for a while. For refrernce sake, I�m talking about Kurt and not the Trampoline People.

Kurt asked me if I�d seen Fidlor, his cat. I said that I actually hadn�t recently but that Kiddo is hanging out in my shrubberies since Kurt ripped his out of his front bed.

Fidlor has been missing for two weeks.

Kurt�s theory is that the jerk who owns the big green pickup and drives like a maniac ran him over and hid the evidence. But being so close to Slaughter Road, Fidlor could have gotten hurt badly in traffic and is dead just out of sight.

That night, Aisai and I went and played ping pong and cards with friends. We got home at around midnight and went straight to bed, despite the fact that we had the season finale of Farscape recorded.

Saturday, I woke at 9:30 when my mom called me. I had left her a message on Thursday and hadn�t gotten a call back. I assumed they were out of town and I had assumed right. It seems my Uncle Ernie died. I�d only met him once, about two years ago, or at least that is the only time I remember. Mom didn�t call me because after she called my sister and my sister said, �So?� she thought that perhaps I wouldn�t care either.

Well, I do care. But I wouldn�t have gone to the funeral. Mom said it was a crazy funeral. That�s so odd since the last two funerals that TC has gone to have been bizarro funerals. Uncle Ernie�s funeral was conducted by Larry, his childhood best friend and Uber-Mormon. However, Ernie had told Larry that he didn�t want any Mormony stuff in his funeral. Mom said that Larry�s first words were that this was non-denominational and that there would be no Mormonism in the funeral. But later a guy wearing a white shirt with a �Mormon Missionary� badge got up and spouted some stuff too. Aunt Ina also got up and said some things about Ernie.

All that death made me want to see Jason X. I considered it great �good dumb fun.� That evening we had dinner at Aisai�s mom�s house with Tom et al and played Catchphrase which Aisai had borrowed from one of our friends.

We stayed until around ten and then ran by Hel-Mart and picked up a dessert for the church social thing we had Sunday afternoon. Church on Sunday evening was let out early since they expected severe weather. So, what do we and the college age kids do, we go eat at Wings, outside on the patio. It took forever for our food, but it did come and we managed to eat before the skies opened up. It was a pretty good storm.

We watched the season finale of Farscape, and with that I will segue into my Kia discussion.

A while back a co-worker of Aisai�s had asked Aisai what she thought a good car would be for under $5000. I even wrote a Stuffo about it: HERE. But even though I specifically said no Korean cars, she bought a Kia.

There�s the commercial out there now which goes something like this: Two women who have arrived for their 20 year high school reunion are talking in the parking lot. One is the epitome of the bland casting of a perfect woman and the other is a Springer Watchin� Freak of a gal. The perfect woman derides and insults the freak about how much more expensive her corolla [or accord, I don�t remember] was than the Kia Optima. The freak frown and says, �Well, I took Biff Lastname to the prom!� To which perfect woman replies, �That Biff Lastname?� and they show an overweight mullet man dancing to, I think, Billy Idol next to his AMC Gremlin.

Ho ho...so funny. But so tragic.

And not tragic the way you might think, little grasshopper.

Have I even mentioned that I get really over competitive in games which have money in them, like monopoly? This commercial took two things that my brain gravitates to and shook them around with some 80s music: Cars and not wasting money.

Who has the better car really? Biff does. He has a collectors item from the 1970s in near perfect condition. The car is not only not depreciating; it�s appreciating and getting worth more money by the day. The lady with the Corolla/Accord�s car is depreciating, but at least it�s a good car and doesn�t depreciate that badly. But the Kia...[shudder]...Kias depreciate at a phenomenal rate. The only car I know of which loses it�s value faster is Hyundai.

I never watch live TV you know. Even before the replaytv, we would use a webtv plus to record all our shows onto videotape. Before that I programmed the VCR manually. I don�t watch commercials since they�ll brainwash you into doing stupid things.

Like buying Kias.

[note: If I hadn't used "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" as last stuffo's title, I'd be really tempted to today, but ooh, what bad taste that would be in.]