Nate Beaty's Brainfag

"Mad" at the "doctor"

posted in Home Jabber on October 22, 2005

Soon Bok and I rented a fancy red Neon for a two-day getaway on the coast. (See some new photos in Newport.) This is the first time I've rented a car and a test of sorts. Besides dealing with the mumbling superbitch blond "Brittny" at the counter, who informed me they'd put a $1,000 hold on my card because I had no insurance, and the ridiculously inept method of waiting on the third floor of the parking garage for freshly washed cars from the second floor to drive up -- with no means of communicating between the two as to whether an econocar was scheduled to arrive in five or fifty minutes -- it was a fine experience.

If you've ever put your life on the line by riding the Valley Retriever deathmobile from Corvallis to Newport, which is now the sole means of getting between the two fantastic towns since Greyhound backed out of a good portion of its smalltown routes, you may begin to understand why I'd embarrass myself by renting a car for a few days to get to Newport. The usual Valley Retriever driver is an insane, wiry, thick-spectacled, tinny-AM-country-radio-listening, MANIAC who manages to make the midsize bus with its aging, squishy shocks move like an meth-overdosed sperm whale in heat along windy highway 20.

We also braved a trip east into the car-pumped, pedestrian-unfriendly streets of Gresham to hunt down America's Best (award for biggest misgnomer of the year) for their suspicious & rightly-so deal of $70 for two pairs of eyeglasses and an exam. I actually got my last two pairs of glasses at the same ghetto optician almost five years ago (a testament, at least, to the durability of their bargain goggles). What I lacked this time around is a decent, valid prescription to replace the useless output of their 3-minute exam by a minimum-wage flunky, topped off with a 30-second "here, read the bottom line with this arbitrary set of lenses" final step with the "doctor". I'm serious, the "doctor" didn't even try any other sets of lenses. I've had a LOT of eye exams in my life, and they typically run an hour, with dozens and dozens of variations of lenses until the doctor finds the closest combination to aid your ailing eyes. The prescription lenses I drove away with 5 years ago were so strong that I was immediately sick and almost wrecked Jeff's car as my depth perception was so out of whack. I returned a few days later with the prescription an optometrist student had timidly determined after over 1-1/2 hours of examination courtesy of Oregon Health Plan (gawd I"m cheap), which America's Best used to rightly fill my frames at no charge (amazed me too).

Soon Bok pointed out that there was a constant stream of people coming in to complain about their eyeglasses while we were waiting. It's no wonder: turns out the new "prescription" the "doctor" came up with was the exact same one they gave me 5 years ago. I paid my $85 (they talked me into a wholly unsatisfying glaucoma test which played like a really boring, epilepsy-inducing Space Invaders, which the "doctor" later assured me had "perfect" results), and promptly made an appointment with another, slightly more respectable, optical goods outlet so I can avoid being ill and crashing into things with my new spectacles.

On the walk back to the MAX, some boiling mad redneck who had hurt his meaty paw trying to fix his big truck stared us down and mumbled "look at the fag and the gook" as we walked by. Well, Soon Bok thought he talked shit about her, and I thought his mumbling halfass taunt was about me, so we decided it was both. Regardless, he was too big to beat up, so we settled with ridiculing him behind his back for the next few hours. Not ten minutes later, a frightening, nazi-looking freak with iron-cross boots, a cane & dark glasses (tho obviously not blind), and suspiciously wispy hair, sat down across from us, got up, and moved down the car to find a seat where he could stare at us all the way into Portland. Ah, Gresham!

I'm about 5 pages into Brainfag 10, which I'll hopefully finish in a few months. I'm hoping to get caught up enough with computer work to (mostly) take November off for painting, comics and just general non-computer existence. I think 3 straight years of work deserves a month off. This will be the final issue of Brainfag. No, really. I mean it.

In case you hadn't noticed, I put up some of my original drawings for sale, mostly in the Willy illustration folder. If you see anything else you like, I'll see if I can track down the original and put a price on it.