Lajango

Reed Goes to the Laundry Place

2011-08-14T20:03:00.000-07:00

Sounds really interesting right? Going to the Laundromat? Well this is my first writing after moving to the city. Hopefully these columns will give anyone who cares insight into my musings in San Francisco. Having just moved down to the big city, I have a lot to learn as you’ll soon find out.

First things first, I Google map “laundry” on my iphone, two places come up, one which my roommate had told me about earlier. I decide to check that place out as it’s only a few blocks away. Well only a few blocks away on a map feels like a trek through the Amazon when you’re carrying an enormous load of laundry uphill. Now the weather apps (yes I have more than one cuz two is better than one) said today would be about 63* or so which I judged as not t-shirt worthy. Well the shirt I decided to wear is apparently made of wool and now completely soaked in sweat as I ventured up the Broadway tunnel hill.

‘Ah, at last. Victory!’ I reach the Laundromat only to stare puzzled at this thing on the door, it looks like a lock but that can’t be possible cuz everyone does their laundry on Sunday and only a complete idiot would shut down a laundry place on Sunday. Just to be sure I kick it.. yes it is definitely a lock. “Sunday: closed.” ‘FML I am going to kill somebody. Ok chill out there is another Laundromat a mere 10 or so blocks away in the complete opposite direction, no worries.’ Making a mental note to never come back here again, I begin my descent down the hill wondering why I think sarcastically to myself and eventually get to Van Ness and turn left.

I should mention that carrying a huge laundry basket full of soiled chonnes and other delights down a busy street is a little awkward. I tell myself ‘this is the city, everyone has to do laundry so I am sure people walk down the street with their stained clothes hanging out of a basket and nobody cares.’ As I’m writing this I am still unsure if that is normal or not but it’s what I had to do so eat your heart out San Francisco.

Anyway, I arrive at the next laundry place only to see yet another locked door and some sign saying you have to schedule your laundry.. Sorry for my language, but who the fuck schedules laundry, I mean do these people make it so you have to schedule a time to come and use the coin machine too, or maybe I was late to that appointment because I missed my appointment to pick up my coffee, what are these people thinking.

By this point my girlfriend would be face palming because I didn’t call beforehand, so learning from my mistakes I dial the next Laundromat. A young guy answers saying they’re open and that they have a coin machine which is good cuz I require one. I stand up pickup my basket and I’m off, smooth walking my cool hipster San Franciscan ass down the street with my headphones around my neck and my laundry in hand. Seven or so blocks later I arrive. Beads of sweat dripping down my face, I plop down my laundry with a sigh of relief and take a breather. That’s when some guy turns to me and says ‘Hey I forgot to mention the coin machines are out of service.’ Without so much as a response I moan, pick up my load yet again and head out the door, only this time I am on the hunt for the nearest ‘anything that has a cash register.’ I spot a coffee shop across the street.

Not really knowing the coffee shop-laundry basket- sweaty back etiquette I casually enter the shop and put my laundry down by the door. I got a couple of eyes from the patrons but at this point I was so beyond caring I hardly noticed. I grab the first drink I could see out of the fridge and slam it on their desk and said “quarters.” The cashier was a nice lady but she wasn’t taking to my unkempt, brutish pitch so I had to collect myself fast. After serenading her in Italian opera, err being nice and asking how many quarters I could have she gave me a couple dollars’ worth.
I pick up my laundry and confidently stroll across Van Ness to the laundry place. The sun is shining, I got my quarters, I’m so sweaty right now that I’m started to get wind chill and feeling good. ‘Ok which machine should I use..hmm.’ ‘Well they both look the same so whate-- wait wtf, these two are identical and one says “$2.25” and the other says “$4.50” and yet another says “---.---‘What the fuck is this, why are they the same, they have different prices and one is just broken or something? wtf.’

At this point a normal person would just go with the cheaper one and be thankful that they all aren’t $4.50. Well apparently I’m a freak because this discrepancy drove my brain into a fit. I sat there for about two minutes staring at each machine perplexed as to the differences between them. I opened one and looked inside, checked the detergent inlets to see if one only takes some type of premium detergent or something weird, I moved the machines out a bit to check the back, read over the instructions three or so times, fucking ANYThING that would make one of them twice the price of the other but I couldn’t find anything. Finally after about 10 minutes of this I conceded defeat.. to a laundry machine.

Which one is $2.25, $4.50 and ---:---? Can't tell?

Naturally I went for the cheaper one, loaded up my laundry and grabbed my- ‘wait wth, where’s my- oh dammit I forgot my detergent, oh well no worries they have a dispenser here let’s check it out.’ The dispenser has Clorox, Tide and Cheer. ‘Well which one’s better, I mean it doesn’t even show a price. One could be more expensive than the other and this Aloe Vera drink only netted me so many quarters from that coffee shop.’ Again a normal person would just pick one and move on with their life, but I have all day and I want to get my bang for my buck so I whipped my handy dandy iphone and logged into Consumer Reports. ‘Ok, so consumer reports gave the Cheer BrightClean HE the highest score of 51/100 whichhh is kinda shitty but oh well, this one is Cheer so they’re likely similar whatever it’s the best I can get.’

Armed with my 51/100 Consumer Reports scoring detergent, Aloe Vera drink purchased coffee shop quarters and my well-tanned laundry, I am ready to launder. I shove my clothes in the space shuttle window, pour the laundry detergent- ‘wait, which, wtf.’ The laundry detergent thing has three slots to put detergent in each with an amazingly intuitive logo of some space robot laser ship. ‘Left to right is a safe assumption, makes sense, ok.’ With my detergent poured into the left receptacle I chuck in the quarters only to find I am one short. ONE twenty-five cent piece is all that is keeping me from finally doing my laundry. Needless to say I shit a brick.


Space Robot Laser Ship.

Ten minutes later I arrive back at the laundromat with fresh, mocha purchased quarters. Now I’m on a mission. No confident, leisurely stroll across the block; I have one singular purpose in life and if this fucking laundry machine doesn’t wash my clothes here in about five minutes it’s going to be Armageddon San Francisco.

Armageddon.

I put the last piece of shit quarter in and start the machine. Water begins pouring through the middle receptacle! I frantically try to hand-shovel my detergent from the left to the middle one before the water stops flowing! ‘SNAP shovel shovel shovel shovel!’ I get most of the detergent over, wash my now bubbling hands in the running water and sit down and relax. About a minute after feeling better I realize it usually takes a couple minutes to fill the space shuttle window with water and I needn’t have hurried at all.

Well this is the end of the story, nothing eventful happened after I got the initial load going except some guy raging over the broken coin machines and hitting the washers to make his coins go down, he was really close to throwing a fit and I had my iphone ready but alas he calmed himself.

The end.

Open Mind

2009-02-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

Recenlty I've been in a slump, as I am sure u can tell by the dates of my posts i go through binges of posting. Unfortunately this tells of a bigger problem which seems embedded in my personality, I am very much an "all or nothing" type of person and it sucks. It has prevented me from doing many things I would have loved to try and attempt because I simply wanted to do them right. Among these ideas are making music, techno rap beats etc, making a frag movie for cod and tf2. All of which I think about and get inspired to do every now and then when an idea lodges itself into my head, but never do because I would have to do it 200%.

This mentality has seeped into my column writing as well. Not to say that it wasn't there before, but now I read articles online that will inspire me and give me ideas, but I want to be original. I can easily rehash a huffington post political piece and bring it to the SSU campus as something original, but I want to do it right.. This often ends in 3-4 hours of reading opinion pieces on the net while getting no writing done myself. If I am going to write it then I am going to do it perfect, but recently I have become extremely frusturated with the lack of original thought Ive been coming up with. I guess you can call it writers block, but I won't fucking settle for rehashes as every god damn news site seems to be content with.

Ideas for future articles:

~ why america hates techno (I am sure somebody has written about it but I haven't seen anything and I am sure most ppl haven't either)

~ In a style identical to my Technically Speaking column for last years news section, do the same thing except for recent political news. (this is the strongest of my recent ideas, this way i cant take other topics that have been heavily covered and skip amongsts them with original angles and humor)

We'll see what happens, but I was damn scared the other day when I wasn't motivated to write anything. That has never happened to me before and I don't want it to ever happen again.

Mycal Felps

2008-10-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

Self Improvement Help

2008-10-25T16:36:00.001-07:00

Fuck everything you ever thought you knew about self help. Self help is ridiculous because the majority of the time you do not know what you need help with. Somebody other then yourself has to point out what is wrong, it is just the way humans are.

Self Improvement however, now that is something separate.

I suggest anyone reading this blog to checkout this excellent article on self improvement by Scott Young. It's a pretty simple concept and the listed tips could bring about a "change" (hail Obama) in your life, the likes of which you've never seen.

(Thanks to Christopher Gonzalez for linking)

The 8 Phases of Dating

2008-10-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

I duno who they are or how they came up with these webpages, but whoever they are- I love you.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - spread amongst adults!

2008-10-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Trevor

2008-10-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Iphone? Cell phone? Touchscreen computer? Nope.. REFRIGERATOR. Yep, we wrote this using a touchscreen LCD built into these girls refrigerator.. More to come about this house we partied in tonight. Most.... spoiled I would say.

btw, trevor it was michelles idea ^_^

Self Proclaimed "Dirty Cock"

2008-10-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Just feel happy you didn't see him when he was "hanging out"

@_@

Journey into the WoW

2008-10-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

For my Sociology final graduation project, I will be doing a qualitative participant observation in World of Warcraft. The purpose of the study is to explore video game and internet addiction. I will be putting myself in the thick of the most addictive game on the planet of the earth, will I myself become a subject of study? possibly, we will have to see.

WoW begins this weekend @_@.

coma white

2008-10-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

by marylin manson.

feeling good, *remember. please.

theres more i would put if I knew employers would never read this blog HEYYYOOOOOO!

but i know some probably will so i will leave it for my anonymous blog, which if found and linked will ruin my entire life.

you looking yet? ; )

camera phone

2008-10-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

I just realized I take about 4-5x the amount of pictures with the camera on my phone, as opposed to my Powershot SD630. I take my camera out but I always forget to take pictures, tbh I hardly ever do. The camera seems to be one of those things I love having around but rarely use, its space taking abilities bring me a high degree of pleasure though, maybe thats just cuz im a packrat though.

Anyone else only take pictures with their phones camera mostly also? meh

alarm (iphone)

2008-10-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well this marks the second time I have been picked up, buttered up and anally RAPED by my iphone alarm not going off. Yes I know the phone is completely unstable right now and actually bricked itself, then unbricked itself a few months ago. I made 100% FUCKING SURE that the alarm was on, AM set and the icon showed up, but low and behold it doesn't fucking go off and I wake up 2 and a half hours after I was supposed to.

Yet another thing I have to buy, despite having 20 dollars for the rest of the month. A fucking alarm that will work, I'll see if my computer can do it though. Forever Young remix would be amazing to wake up to, but then again my comp is unstable cuz I haven't reformatted..

Tom

2008-10-13T02:17:00.000-07:00

My roomates friends are quite the crowd. Don't cause a raucous and then pass out at my place early or ^ might happen.

wrkout

2008-10-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

Working out is one of those things I know makes me feel great, but never really think to do it when I'm bored or depressed. It's pretty obvious this is so when I always want to call people afterward just because I am in such a elated gregarious mood. Call em endorphins but the feeling is both chemical and physical.

I need to make sure I start considering a workout when I am depressed or sad or just plain bored, it really is a panacea of sorts.

procrastination

2008-10-12T17:27:00.001-07:00

..I wonder what my life would be like if I could get work done before I absolutely had to. Probably something similar to the irish before they discovered alcohol-

money

2008-10-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

its pretty terrible that i have ~$3k gaming rig and a bumpin speaker system, but can hardly pay food and gas atm. MUST LEARNN TO SAVEEEEE