All day at work I have nothing to do. I spend all day reading the Web for news on the tsunami. I read eyewitness accounts, check out photos, download videos- disaster porn. I notice early on in the morning that the news is playing up that a supermodel survived. Later that night, I read a Web site that has links to naked pictures of her.

When I go home I check the news. The people on Fox News are attacking the U.N. and huffing and puffing over some statement a U.N. diplomat made that he has since apologized for. MSNBC interviews Andrew Weil about health issues. Later on, Joe Scarborough comes on and also piles on the U.N. On Hannity and Colmes, somebody is attacking the Democrats for something related to the disaster. I feel disgusted by Fox but when I notice they have video footage I haven't seen before, I watch in between flipping back and forth to "Charmed." I turn to CNN and see that as the Larry King fill-in interviews experts in tsunami's and humanitarian relief, the CNN ticker breaks the news that Jack White of the White Stripes and Renee Zellwiger have broken up. When a commercial comes on squawking about a new CNN segment in which they followed several Americans as they try and lose weight, I flip to the local news to see what they have to say. It's story after story about it raining here. Apparently, some streets are flooding and there's traffic. A tree branch fell on some electrical wires somewhere and the block loses power. When I see that Comedy Central isn't showing "The Daily Show" at 7, I flip through the channels and upon seeing that nothing is on, I turn the TV off.

Was there anyone else who upon hearing about the tsunami, quickly checked out the cable news stations mainly so they could catch all the cool disaster footage? You know you did.

And was there anyone else who got a little upset when upon turning to the news channels, didn't see much in the way of footage mainly because the news channels thought it much more important to detail all sorts of Christmas travellers stuck in airports? Not to mention the all-important fact that "Meet The Fockers" broke the record for Christmas movie releases?

Oh yeah, I forgot- mainly furriners died. We here in America don't care.

One of my big, recurring nightmares is the tidal wave one, where I'm somewhere along the coast and see a big, huge wall of water headed my way. You can figure out the psychological stuff yourself- I know what it means but I ain't saying. Finding out that my recurring nightmare could actually happen is a bit scary. Like I don't have enough to worry about.

I can also say that a bunch of the places that got hit, mainly Phuket in Thailand and Penang Malaysia, I've been to. Checking out the photos online, I recognized some of the places, all of them totally thrashed. Besides being extraordinarily beautiful, I also remember those places as having the nicest people.

So sad.

I was supposed to go on a date today, but yesterday I got shot down. That day being Christmas (merry Christmas indeed). I came back from a party only to get an e-mail saying she wanted to cancel because she "met somebody" recently that she was kind of into and didn't think it fair to meet with me.

Okay, granted the heads up is always appreciated as it is much better being told than being stood up (which happened to me once and whoo-boy, was that a soul-crushing night). And it's somewhat better than having it be a Dead Man Walking type date where the other person pretty much isn't into it from the get-go and the end result is an hour or so of complete awkward humiliation. Of course, the "I just met somebody" could be a lie, the simplest way of saying "remember how I said I'd like to go out with you? I lied," especially as it came the day before the actual date.

On the other hand, if it wasn't a lie, there's still plenty of things about the "I just met someone" blow-off that sticks under the craw. Like how it could mean that she was open to having a relationship, it's just that somebody beat me to it. Like, if we would have had that date on Tuesday instead of Sunday, that could have been me. And the other thing being that what the message also says is "I'm in love and having loads of sex. You are not. Good luck with that."

Which is how I wound up seeing "House of the Flying Daggers" today, which is an absolutely breath-takingly beautiful movie. If Zhang Ziyi isn't that most beautiful woman in film right now, I don't know who is (the quote about her in the New York Times' film review sums it up- "Occasionally, Ms. Zhang bares one of her lovely shoulders. If she showed any more, the projector might catch fire."). But none of which is the point of this here post, this is- is it a sign that you've been seeing too many movies lately that you're starting to dig the Fanta commercial starring the Fantanas? I wanta Fanta.

The scene: your typical, average, small-ish Chinese restaurant. Could be anywhere. To the left, by the wall, sits grandmother. Across the table from her but sitting away from the wall and towards the center of the restaurant, is her granddaughter- a typical single woman in her late 20's, early 30's. The grandmother stares into her food, leisurely taking bites. The woman stares off into space and into the kitchen with a far-away look in her eyes, taking bites of her food while never taking her eye of the distance. Every once in awhile, the silence is ended by the grandmother making some sort of comment to which the granddaughter gives a short reply back. When the short burst of conversation ends, the grandmother goes back to her food and the granddaughter back to staring at into the kitchen. Silence returns

Gotta love the holidays.

Love going to other people's homes, looking at their Christmas Card collection and realizing that a mutual friend sent a card to them, but not to you. Thanks, dude. Of course, maybe I'd get more if I actually sent some out myself, but I don't. Because I'm me, I don't see the point in sending some generic picture with generic holiday greetings to a bunch of people with a message in sending it that pretty much says "Hey, you're on my Christmas Card list" but that's just me. And if any friends who sent me a Christmas Card this year, please disregard above statement. Love those cards and keep them coming!

Besides, it's not like I could really put anything on one of those cards. I have no kids, have no wife, don't even have a pet. What could I put on the card? Me? That's a little cheesy. I could put something on there with me and something that means a lot to me, but I don't think many people would be that excited to see a picture of me and my TV.

Sorry, I'm a little late to this, but did you see how some people put up a Festivus display at some city-sponsored Nativity scene?

That's awesome.

As was the South Park "Woodland Critter Christmas" episode, easily the funniest bit of offensiveness to ever air on TV. It's amazing (and heart-warming) that in the year of the faux-"won't somebody think of the children" outrage that has marked the year (think Janet Jackson's boob) that an episode which climaxes in Stan and some mountain-lion cubs (don't ask) performing an abortion on Kyle to rid him of the anti-Christ airs on TV with nary a word aired against it.

For those who haven't seen it, the episode is, as they say, so best.

Tonight, I went to the corner store at 16th & Valencia to buy some milk after I came home from house sitting. As I paid up and started to leave, the woman who works there (I'm guessing she's the wife of the guy who runs it) tells me to hold on. She pulls out a receipt and $7 and tells me that several weeks ago, they over-charged me for a few items and that they owed me some money. Since I'm in there all the time, they left the money behind the counter and waited for me to come in again so they could give it to me.

And that's pretty darn cool that they did that.

For the past few days, I've been house/dog sitting for friends. Even though I'm pretty darn close to my own apartment and still kind of in the neighborhood, it feels like I'm on a mini-vacation. Except instead of warm, sunny Chile, I'm in cold, freezing Noe Valley.

The dog I'm dog sitting for occasionally wakes up in the middle of the night with a doggy nightmare. She's been doing this for awhile, even back last year when I was dog sitting her. So I wonder, what makes a doggy nightmare? Are they dreaming that they're chasing after a frisbee but can't run? Is it where they show up to doggy training school late or realize it's the finals and they haven't even begun to comprehend what the word "sit" means? Or are they dreaming that they're showing up in public wearing clothes?

Speaking of dreams, I've been having some weird one's lately. One of them is where I am about to get married and it's a couple of days before the wedding and I suddenly get panicked, wondering what the hell I'm about to do feeling like I'm trapped into making a big mistake. It's a pretty weird dream to have when not only are you single and not dating anyone, but living a carefully planned life in which you're pretty much not commited to anything. The other one is a twist on the old back to school and not able to study thing, except that in this one I am trying to study, but I keep on getting distracted by other people. Other than the obvious shout-out to Sartre's"hell is other people" meme, this one is weird because I don't particularly feel that way about anything. In fact, I can say that while I have a project management type job, I'm not that frustrated with anyone in it right now.

Which makes me wonder- since I'm in one of those strange places where I'm not particularly stressed out about anything nor upset about anything, why am I having these dreams? Is there something lurking underneath or does the subconscious play re-runs when it has nothing going on, kind of like how networks show repeats during the holidays and summer? All of which brings me back to a conversation I had with a friend over the weekend, how people tell us that we worry about everything. Isn't that what you're supposed to think about? What does one think about when they're not worrying? Is it all puppy-dogs and rainbows? What's it like?

Seriously. What's it like?

More great moments in cell phone usage- guy at the outdoor brunch place that I went to who got on the phone the moment he sat down and then kept on talking on the phone not only while he ordered, but as he ate too.

Hope he enjoyed his meal.

There's been a few stories in the news lately about the various government agencies who are in charge of such things thinking about allowing cell phone usage on airplane flights. While this sounds like a good idea at first, once you think about it, it becomes obvious that this could just be the worst idea in the history of mankind. For this would mean being trapped- trapped!- on five hour flights with all your best cell-phone types: high-powered businessman making sales calls, angsty twenty-something girl with the commitment-phobic boyfriend problems who calls every single one of her girlfriends to relate the latest big issue in the relationship in every intimate detail, way too exciteable ex-Sorority Girls calling every girlfriend they're about to visit on their trip to talk about like how awesome of a time they're about to have, and the ever popular hi-tech engineer guy who spends all of his time on the phone dealing with server issues.

Hell, people. We're talking hell.

Today was the big office holiday party. No, not lots of drinks and bad drunken behavior, more like pot luck and cheap present giving. It was a "white elephant" party which is the kind of party where people bring whatever they have lying around and present that as a present. All the presents are put on the big table and one-by-one, people go up and choose a present. Or, they could grab a present somebody else got and then the person who lost their present got to choose.

Now there were two bits to in the e-mail invitation about what consisted of a present for a "white elephant" party. The first bit was about how it was something you owned and wanted to get rid of. The idea being that people wouldn't go out and spend money on anything. I read that part. The second part was about how it's supposed to be a goofy gift. I missed that part.

As the party progressed, I noticed two things- that most people went out and bought something and that most people brought something that was goofy. I didn't buy anything and my gift wasn't goofy. In fact, it was kind of good- two used books that I actually enjoyed. So you can well imagine how I'm feeling as gift after gift is opened up and presented to everyone on the floor- most to howls of laughter- and I'm sitting there thinking how much my little gift isn't what I'm supposed to bring and how it's going to be totally embarassing when somebody opens it up, and finds two non-goofy used books, all to defeaning silence. All of which kind of happened, but with a little sarcasm thrown in when the person thought it was a joke at first and sarcastically pretended to be excited about his gift.

I love Christmas parties.

As for my gift, first I got a John Waters Christmas CD. Yee-hah. Luckily, somebody traded up with me and I grabbed some sort of tacky mushroom light which would have looked totally cool on my desk. That was taken and so I wound up with a box of See's Candies that I could never finish by myself not even if I sat down and forced myself to try it.

A friend got into a fender-bender while waiting to pick me up. She was backing up in the median and a cab driver was busy darting across the median to make a U-Turn (totally illegal, by the way) and slammed into her. She's alright and the car is only a little bit banged up, but it was a pretty stressful thing. When I got down to the street, totally oblivious to what happened, it took me a few seconds to realize that the car that the cab was smashed into was hers, still diagonal in the street, blocking traffic.

What happened next was the kind of expected fun that one expects in a city known for it's love. There was the traffic slow-down, caused, yes, by the cab being half-way into the lane, but I could tell by the amount of people straining their necks as they rode by that there were other reasons for them to slow down. A couple of minutes in, some lady who stopped in her lane to pretty much yell at my friend and the cab driver to get out of the way because she was causing traffic problems, a problem made worse by her stopping in the lane to yell at everyone. I wasn't sure she was being bitchy because she was concerned or just pissed because she couldn't park in that spot of the median. While she was yelling, there were two other things going on. One was a pedestrian who was watching. He started mouthing off towards the woman in the car, but then when she drove off, started mouthing off to my friend. It's always good to criticize someone who just was in an accident. Good way to not add to everyone's stress.

Then there was the bus. A few minutes after I got downstairs, a bus came by and stopped. The driver measured things up and after seeing if she could make it, passed the accident and went on the way (with me guiding her by- yep, I was guiding a bus). A few minutes later, another bus came by. This bus driver also stopped to see if he could make it, but this time, he just stopped and let everyone out. And there he sat, just waiting, cars backing up behind him. I went up to him to try and get traffic moving along (I'm sure with everything going on, knowing that you're causing a major traffic back-up on Valencia isn't going to help) and told him another bus made it. Driver said he didn't care, he still wasn't moving. So I tried again and once again, he said he wasn't going to move. Why? Because, as he said "I'm paid by the hour, it don't matter what I do."

And that's today's big, exciting blog posting...

Last week I went to the big Super Mondo Corporation trade show event. Kind of big deal only in that it after years of hearing stories about what these things are like I finally got to go to one. I know, a boy can dream, can't he.

Anyways, the big event of the evening was a performance by noted 80's has-beens Tears For Fears. And yeah, I do so love the '80's. Now, first of all, I know the kids love the 80's music, but does their love of 80's music make it such that Tears for Fears is seen as a great party band? Cause you're throwing a big party with maybe a thousand people and listening to "Shout" and "Mad World" doesn't sound like something that'll make everyone boogie down. Oh yeah, and remember how back in the '80's or 90's when we saw bands like Starship and Foghat and the Beach Boys play and we'd all think "why don't they just give it up?" Why is it okay to say that about Foghat but not Tears for Fears?

Anyhoo, the crowd loved them. The drunks in the front of my friend and I were even swinging arm-in-arm through the concert, with hot drunk girl getting on some guys shoulders to rock out to "Shout." And as I'm watching this, I'm thinking to myself just how much alcohol it would take to be in a band and find yourself playing some corporate gig. Isn't corporate gig a step up from a Puppet Show (and side note- when I made similar side crack to Marketing Manager and AE at Christmas Party, it drew a blank response. What do you do if nobody gets a fairly obvious Spinal Tap reference?)? And not only would I be drunk, I'd probably be hitting the wah-wah pedal and distortion box every ten or fifteen seconds just to lay down some sort of subervsive element to it. Because, after all, nothing says rock n' roll like heading the crowd in a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday to the companies Senior V.P. They even said those dread words "and now, for the first single from our new album" without any hint of irony. How could you not be drunk when you say those words?

The thing about Tears For Fears too was that they were obviously very comfortable in their early 40's, pre-Middle Age years. The main guys both looked like they like nothing better to do than drink tea and watch the telly, not try and rock out the crowd. Which makes it all the more disconcerting when they tried to play all their big, "we're English and we're brooding and depressed" songs that made up most of their hits. The song might be saying "Everybody Wants to Rule The World," but their demeanor was more like "Everybody Wants To Tend the Garden and Diversify the Portfolio."

There was also a U2 cover band that played that night. They were pretty good, but, again, a little disconcerting. They did a pretty good job of sounding like U2 (the lead singer even spoke with a fake Irish accent during songs) but they looked nothing like them. The lead singer was dressed in Achtung-Baby era the Fly black, but he had curly hair with a receding hairline, making him look more like the lead singer of the Scorpions than Bono. And the guitar player, who dressed exactly like the Edge in ski cap and numbered "Beautiful Day" era t-shirt, was kind of doughy looking. The thing about seeing a U2 cover band, though, is that while U2 may be all sorts of good, they don’t lend themselves especially well to the whole cover band idea. Cover bands, after all, work when there's a healthy dollop of irony involved. You can't do U2 ironically, even ironic U2. It's hard to sound earnest and sincere when you're playing at earnest and sincere. Being heartfelt at being heartfelt isn't the same thing.

Cover bands always make me think about the weirdness of it all from an identity stand point. Do the guys on stage see themselves as themselves or as Bono and the Edge? Do they think of themselves that way off the stage too? And I'm sure they have groupies because everyone with a guitar who gets on stage has groupies (well, except for me back in college, but that's another story). Are the girls who get with them getting with them or with the people they're supposed to be? Like, is Cover Band Bono Groupie really wanting to hit it with Sigmund or Horst or whatever his name was or do they really think they're hitting it with Bono? And when they're getting it on, how many times has the girl screamed out Bono's name instead of his?

And we're back. I think I had what is known as a snark blockage- when the feeling of the blahs gets so overwhelming you just don't care about a thing. Well, I got my snark back- at about 2:30 at night Thursday night- which is why I'm here, posting again. The three of you reading should all be so happy.

And with that, here's what's we're feeling cranky about right now.

-Those poncho thingies women are wearing these days. They were kind of cute when they first came out and they can look really good on women but that was before every woman started wearing them, some like every day. day. At this point the whole poncho thing reminds me of back in High School when it was deemed Hawaiian shorts were the big thing. First a few people wore them, and then everyone else did, and soon it got to the point where I showed up for school one day and realized I was one of maybe three or four people who weren't wearing Hawaiian shorts that day. And for that, I was considered a loser in High School

-Hotmail has been SUCKING for the past few weeks. I know they're doing some tweaks to the site right now, adding some things that are probably for the best (more size) and things I could give a fuck about (calendar) but does it really take two weeks to tweak all that? Don't they realize that a lot of people rely on Hotmail for their e-mail and taking down the site for two weeks goes from a minor inconvenience to a pain in the frickin' ass? The most annoying thing is they don't announce that they're going to be making the tweaks and to let you know that the site will be kind of wonky for awhile. So you think everything is fine except for the fact you can't log in all day. Or you get the third or fourth e-mail in an e-mail chain but don't get the first or second e-mail. Or when you get e-mails on Friday that were sent to you on Tuesday.

-The feigned outrage at the recent story that not only the fact that the troops in Iraq don't have enough armor or that Donald Rumsfield is a dick. Tell me something I didn't know. There's a thing called a newspaper, people. Read it sometime.

-All this saying talking about how steroids is baseball's problem. Like 400 pound lineman running the 40 faster than I ever could happens because of fitness and training. And another thing- when celebrities are celebrated for doing some sort of surgical thing to make themselves look more attractives and politicians are celebrated for looking like they're real people when they're all a bunch of Ivy League millionaires, why are we getting all huffy about athletes doing the same? Face it, we got fake celebrities, fake entertainment, and fake politics. Steroids in baseball is just another shoe dropping. Not that I'm that thrilled with the news and I am taking the Bonds' thing harder than most Giants fans that I talk to, but still.

-Speaking of steroids, the fact that the Giants constantly whine about payroll and as a result become infatuated with players nearing 40. Step on up the plate, people- it's all or nothing, shit or get off the pot, Sydney or the Bush. You want to win, win.

-Women on online dating sites who respond to initial e-mails, but stop responding after that. Is there something someone can say after one e-mail that can turn someone off? If you do things like that, shouldn't you also start cruising pet adoption sites for the cats who'll be your only life-long companions?

Report: Jackson prints found on porn mags

Wait, they can test for things like that?

Yeah, I know. I haven't posted in awhile.

Sorry.

I think I got that Seasonal Affective Disorder thing. You know, that mental thing that didn't exist up until twenty years ago and allows doctors, psychiatrists, and drug company CEO's to upgrade from a sail-boat to a yacht. Screw the Plague, small pox, and AIDS- how the hell have we progressed as a civilization with things like Seasonal Affective Disorder out there? But what can I say? It's pitch black when I wake up, pitch black when I get home and pretty friggin cold and rainy the rest of the time. It's hard to have any joie de vivre when you're huddled underneath every blanket you own trying to keep warm.

I think I also have a wee case of the post-vacation blues. You know, that feeling you get after returning from a great trip abroad only to realize about a week back that it's pretty much same as it ever was upon returning except you have a tan. One minute everyday is an adventure and you're mind is getting blown all over the place, the next day you're lamenting the fact that both "Friends" and "Seinfeld" are repeating episodes you've seen way too many times and "Charmed" isn't on because TNT is showing a Bobcats/Hornets games.

Of course, it could also be because I recently read this:

Dubya won in the Electoral College by 34 electoral votes, or 29 electoral votes more than his electoral-vote margin in 2000 (five electoral votes). The popular will was not thwarted. But that's only because, if Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is to be believed, President Bush won Ohio by a mere 118,775 votes, which works out to a little more than two percentage points. If John Kerry had gotten 118,776 more votes in Ohio, he would have claimed Ohio's 20 electors, giving him 272 electors to Bush's 266. For want of 118,776 votes, John Kerry lost the presidency.

Sigh.

In other words, I think I'm taking the rest of the week off. Be back blogging next week.

Man, I'm freaking exhausted but it's a weird kind of exhausted as it's mainly about just recovering from the trip. It's a stress free exhaustion if that makes any sense. I know, I had ten days of vacation, but take those ten days and sandwich them with two all-night plane trips, lots of time spent touring, never-quite-dealt with jet-lag, and the sheer amount of energy it takes just to deal with family for ten straight days and you got one exhausted me. Even worse, there was a bug going around the wedding party and I might be fighting it off. It's hard to tell because I'm so tired, but I do know I'm feeling bad enough that I'm staying off coffee and trying to stick to tea, an idea which ain't really working that well.

The thing about the bug is that the person who first got sick was Sister-in-Law's mother. She, of course, had to do all the functions because she is, after all, the mother. But we're talking about South America and we're dealing with South Americans so that means there's a lot of kissing involved, and get your mind out of the gutters, I'm talking the peck on the cheek kind of kissing. It's true, South Americans love to kiss. There I was, not more than four hours in the country, going to a family BBQ of a family I've never met and the moment the big huge security door opened, I'm getting kissed. I don't know who these people are, yet I'm kissing them. Fine, I can deal. Whatever. Except Sister-in-Law's mother is sick and she's kissing everyone and I know she's sick. But what am I going to do? I can't say "sorry, no kissing today, you're sick" and I can't avoid her and I can't blow her off (see "Seinfeld") so I've got nothing to do but get kissed.

Which could be why I'm not feeling so well.

Yeah, it's the Wank of the Week. Frankly I'm a little tired tonight and a little burned out on this thing to care about it much, but as this week is the super-fabulous State of the San Francisco Music Scene issue ("I know more unknown bands than you do and I've seen more cool-ass shows than you ever will!"), I had to. Besides, check this beauty out:

But then I don't buy into that West Coast-East Coast paradigm, that old battle, which I suspect those groups did. Maybe it's myopia, and maybe I'm just a Pacific Rim baby, loving and hating Island California, allergic to tie-dye, apart from the Chun metal-grunge years, and admiring the always resurgent curiosity, the passion for the new in this green world. I may be an Anglophile, but I'm just as much an Asiaphile, and when I look for guidance or validation, I don't turn to the East, Europe, or the Far East, for that matter, but instead check a complicated compass that's both internal and communal. And in that sense maybe I'm a lot like the folks who make up the current incarnation of the San Francisco sound.

Side note- year after year, we always hear stories about what a great scene we have here and how many wonderful bands we have playing and what a huge influence we are around the world and how we're just as cool as New York and blah blah blah. But how many of those bands actually amount to anything? And how many just don't disappear into the ether within two or three years? And how many of those bands that do actually make it, are then attacked and ridiculed for making it? Eh, but what do I know, I spent the past week in Chile trying to track down the new U2 new album, finally buying it in all it's chimey-Edge guitar goodness my last day there. Who wants to be like U2 when you can be some super-cool arty type band that plays to the same 50 people every month at Kimo's?

Last week I took little sis to the beach to teach her to body surf. I figured I had to since that appears to be my role in the family- I'm the One Who lives in California. Which while not much of anything, is still much better than being "The One Who is Unemployed." And what says being Californian more than teaching someone how to body surf? Besides, Little Sis was born in California but as she has spent the past for or five years in the East Coast, is slowly losing her California-ness and there's nothing more important to retain than someone's inner California-ness (something I knew I succeeded at when she refused to leave when we were supposed to because she was having too much fun swimming in the ocean. How much more Californian can you get?). So, anyways, off we went to the beach, me driving the rental car.

When we were done, we went back to the car and unlocked the door. Car alarm goes off. Okay, no big deal, this has happened before, I knew what to do. The rental car had those new fangled car keys in which you can unlock everything by pressing a button. I pressed the button. Nothing. Car alarm still blared away. I opened the door, hoping that would work, but it didn't. So I shut the door and quickly locked it, hoping that would work. It did. I stood there and pressed every damn button on the car key at least four or five times but everytime I opened the door, the damn alarm went off. I even went so far as getting into the car and starting the engine, but the thing wouldn't shut off. Turns out the key thingy was jammed and so wasn't working anymore (whether or not it was caused by my accidentally leaving the keys in my pocket when I first went into the ocean is open to debate).

What to do? Futz with the car some more or make a run for it, alarm blaring away? After about ten minutes of standing there, trying to figure out what to do, I decided to make a break for it and we got into the car to drive off, the alarm blaring away. For the entire ten minute drive back to the hotel, the alarm wouldn't stop, pretty much alerting everyone on the strip of road we were driving that something was amiss with the car, a thing you always want to have happen when driving a car in a foreign country. Not conspicuous at all, no sirree.

We made it and got out of the car. Thankfully, the car shut up once we left and we told my dad what was up. He called the rental agency, which didn't give him much good advice as it was all in Spanish and he just opened the door to the car and cut the chord to the alarm. That worked but had a bad side-effect, or at least one bad but not as bad as the fees he was eventually going to have to pay for breaking something in the car- the sound the car makes when it's turn signal is on would constantly play over and over again. Always a good thing to happen when going on a two hour drive back to Santiago.