Richmond (Supplemental)

I'm just about ready to strangle the bitch who lives inside my nav computer. The GPS tracking works wonders as a real time dynamic minimap, and it can plot destinations and waypoint routes via specific street addresses, etc. But barring that, the CG female voice that acts as a liaison between an impossibly confused driver and the route plotting algorithm from hell is akin to a backseat-driving Jewish Princess on the rag, except without the normal human emotive intonation, or the eye candy, or the ability to attempt to reason with her. after refusing to offer any other route to Midlothian besides a few contrived innercity manuvers followed by an unnecessary toll road, the navcomp continued to bark orders at me before the instructions even seemed relevant to my current position. Also, when I made a wrong turn into a walmart parking lot and began a simple u-turn correction, the system suddenly went to confused-ass mode and dropped my route from the map claiming that "It is not possible to correct route destination cause you didn't do exactly what I said BLAH BLAH". What if the nav calculator in the Apollo 13 command craft was such a fickle digi-prick? "Unable to correct ballistic trajectory 'cause you did something entirely unexpected. Reprogram everything from scratch and hold your breath, or touch here to close this message and slam directly into the moon." This thing is never directing me anywhere again until I can find some time to go into the option settings and tell it what for. I'll just use the satmap for now, thanks.

That aside, I ate a fairly posh dinner with Pat, his Stepford-wife, his princess daughter, and his daughters navy seal boyfriend who I think may be "a little dim". I've settled down for the evening in the slick basement layout of a bedroom/half bath featuring 900 channel cable TV (at least 300 music and 100 HD among them) as a comfortable yet preponderant reminder that my dad has, over the course of his career, managed to network with some awfully well off corporate seniors. My hosts tonight were friendly enough, yet it somehow seemed ineffably disingenuous as if they didn't really want me there or they somehow identified me as "not one of them" because I was amused by the cornucopia of luxury-class standard items (the ole' silver spoon analogy, except alot of it in reality shoddy and just for looks/prestige). This environment of modern American upperclassity seems destined to cross paths with me continually because of my upbringing, even when I semi-passively avoid it. I've spent some time on the other side of the tracks in my dealings with other people before, and its not something to aim at. But these folks in this 6 figure dreamland lifestyle, they feel almost tangibly soulless due to what I can only classify as materialistic gluttony. And I personally draw the comfort line when I feel like and know that I have to put on a face in this kind of culture in order to even fleetingly fit in - it only solidifies my bias stated above. They say the middle class is disappearing in this country, and now I can say from some experience that it probably is. It makes me identify with what Ernesto Guevara went through, for godsake. Yet, unlike him and probably the folks who own this house, I know I'm not particularly guilty of anything.