Driving home from class tonight, someone hit my car. His lane was closed ahead due to construction, and I guess he decided that he’d rather merge in front of me than behind me. Sadly, he ended up trying to merge through me at about 75-80 MPH, and then decided to run for it. I caught up to him long enough to get his license plate number, and then he was gone (making a fast exit from 101 South to 85 South, then running a red light to turn onto Central Expressway South).

Worse news for him: a witness pulled over and stayed to make a statement to the police, and his memory of the incident was a good match for mine.

The damage? Several deep, long scratches along the driver’s side, from about the side mirror forward to the front of the wheel well, with the finish scraped off of the tire rim in several places. The witness said my car was pushed to the right about a foot and a half by the impact, and he was surprised that I wasn’t hurt. No apparent mechanical damage, and it drove home fine.

I’m fine, and I have excellent insurance, so even if the sorry bastard is uninsured, all will be well. It could have been a lot worse. In the cop’s experience, an impact like that at that speed could have easily caused my front tires to lose traction with the road, sending my car rolling sideways down the highway. He figured that the relative size and mass (my “small” SUV versus his smallish hatchback/whatever) are what saved me.

The (surprisingly small) damage. Aside from the scratches, the door rubs a bit when you open and close it:

[update 10/11/2006: My insurance company ran the license plate number and came up with a 2000 four-door Volkswagen in Sunnyvale, color unknown. Given the location of the accident, that suggests that I got the number right.]

The Internet has failed me. Or, at least, my search-engine skills have failed to turn up the nugget of information I’m currently interested in.

Wednesday afternoon, in preparation for my upcoming vacation in Japan, I applied for a passport. The man at the downtown post office who took my picture and processed my application was really cool, and when he found out where I was going, said “man, I haven’t been to Japan since 1964, as part of the Olympic volleyball team”.

I didn’t hear his name clearly at the time, and I was in a rush to get to a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t hang around and talk more with this former Olympian.

But I’m curious. And my web search has failed to answer the question “who was on the US Men’s Olympic Volleyball Team in 1964?”. I might have to go to a library and look it up in a book made out of dead trees.

Or call the passport office and just ask him. That’d work, too.

Driving in this morning, I reflected on yesterday’s sighting of the usual group of “9/11 was a Republican plot!” nutcases on University Avenue, and felt inspired.

"Chickenhawk," you say,
to silence your opponents.
Get a job, hippie.

Here’s a nice demonstration of how the Republican Party started winning national elections, and why it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future:

In addition to winning hearts and minds, one must also acquire a clue.

12/7/2005

Oral final exam for Japanese 1. Get fitted for a tux.

12/9/2005

Fly to Las Vegas, to...

12/10/2005

Walk my sister down the aisle for her wedding.

12/11/2005

Turn 39, then fly home for...

12/12/2005

Written final for Japanese 1.

12/13/2005

Buy my first suit.

12/14/2005

Last class for Japanese 1, deliver small gifts to the teacher and her two assistants. While this could be interpreted as oseibo, in truth two of the gifts were an excuse for the third. I'm quite taken with the youngest one.

12/15/2005

Three-hour flight to Minneapolis, three-hour layover, two more hours to Dayton, Ohio, in order to be...

12/17/2005

Best man at my brother's wedding.

12/21/2005

Flying home to sleep it off.

I’m a bit fuzzy on just how many brothers and sisters I’ve acquired in the past week, a lively mix of Canadians and Ukrainians.

PS: my mother did not in fact die from the shock of seeing me dress formally twice in the same century.

I love the Internet. Whenever someone writes about how a certain group of people behave, inevitably commenters will prove his point by example. Either they’re not reading past the first paragraph, or they’re so self-absorbed that they simply can’t recognize themselves in his words.

The third possibility is that they’re just drive-by commenters who don’t even bother to read the words of someone who disagrees with them, and just regurgitate reflexively.

I’m delighted to see Intelligent Design being given the serious attention it deserves:

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

I’m sorry, but this is bullshit so raw that even a Democratic presidential hopeful wouldn’t touch it:

The parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game, the report said.

What scene would that be? The one where you deliberately send your character off the edge of a cliff, knowing that he’ll die when he hits the ground? Or did he leave a note saying that he was going to teleport to the top of the Twin Colossals and try out that cool new Parachute Cloak he picked up at the Auction House in Gadgetzan? Or did these loving parents just not pay enough attention to their kid to notice that he was suicidally depressed?

If this cash-grab fails, no doubt they’ll turn up a witness who claims that the kid was shouting “Accio Firebolt!” on the way down, and sue J.K. Rowling next.