06.30.2004
My Ass
I'm just pissed off. I mean fucking pissed off, excuse me. I mean "excuse me" as in "excuse the part where I said I'm just pissed off, and not I'm just fucking pissed off." I don't mean "excuse me for saying fucking." I'm just fucking pissed off.
Surprisingly enough, my pissed-offness is related to cars. Or a particular car, that favorite of mine, that '96 Grand Am I've known as Uncle Cletus since I bought it used in 1997 but which I now know as, "you fucking asshole piece of motherfucking shit, would you DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN SIT HERE IN FIRST FUCKING GEAR?" Well maybe that's not right. Maybe I don't KNOW it as that, but that's what I say to it. Or I would if I could get any words whatsoever out through my clenched teeth.
The Car Formerly Known as Uncle Cletus has been sitting in this won't-do-a-goddamned-thing condition for a couple of weeks now. For a while there I wasn't terribly concerned. I had long ago decided that I needed to replace Uncle Cletus, I was just waiting for the right moment. I mean I was waiting for the wheels to fall off. When it got a little harder to move the manual shifter between gears, I figured something was gonna happen at some point. So when the "something" happened, I was just happy it happened in front of my house. (Well, the building formerly known as my house, presently known as the stupid piece of crap keeping me from... but I'll get to that in a minute.)
My dad let me borrow one of his cars to give me time to get another car. So I started browsing the internet for used vehicles. Then I applied online for a six thousand dollar loan from a Credit Union at which my wife is a member. I got an automatic response saying they'd call, but they didn't. So I gave up on that and went to my bank to find out what I needed to do to see how much I could get a loan for. The utterly helpful sack of stupid behind the desk there gave me a sheet quoting their loan rates, along with an application. "When you know what car you want to buy, fill this out and bring it back. We'll tell you if you can buy it within one day."
Thanks. No, really, thanks. That's great. In fact that's so great that I might not, right now, withdraw whatever pittance of money I have left in here and shove it in your fucking throat. Really, that's exactly why I came here to talk to someone. Because I wanted them to print out a form for me that I could already get on the fucking internet. Thanks a lot.
Next stop was my wife's bank. Until a few months ago she worked there, but now she's only an account holder. We talked to the main loan officer there, who told us I could apply for pre-approval. Which is what I'd hoped, and what the burlap sack with glasses at my own bank hadn't bothered to talk to me about. So we applied, on Friday night, for ten thousand dollars, asking in the application to let us know how much we could qualify for. Then we settled in to wait for Monday to get an answer.
Monday we didn't get an answer. Tuesday the lady called my wife at work to tell her we were declined. It was SOMETHING about our credit report, but the glorious gods who decide who gets what at that bank couldn't tell her any more than that.
That was sort of my fallback -- their rates started at 7.9% and went up from there, depending on whatever. So I figured at least I could have something so I'd be able to start driving some stuff. Since the fallback fell through, I went online and researched some more. Found out about e-loan (.com), and read enough reviews to make me think it was a good option. So I applied with just my information, figuring I'd not apply jointly yet as my credit's better than my wife's. While waiting, I checked the mail and found a letter from that Credit Union who I'd given up on tell me I wasn't approved for the six thousand. Too many outstanding... whatevers. Basically my debt to credit ratio wasn't right (I'd not applied jointly there either, at least to the best of my recollection.) Half an hour later I got an email from e-loan saying I was rejected. No reason given.
All of my fallbacks turn out to be out of reach. I have some money in my 401k I figured I could borrow against, but it turns out I can borrow against 50% of my vested portion. My vested portion is a little more than half of what's in there. So I can borrow half of half of my 401k, which is maybe enough to get a car that I won't really want anymore than the nearly departed Uncle Cletus.
So here's what's brought me out of my stupor for long enough to write something here: Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass. It's really goddamn funny. Maybe that's just because I'm ready to get arrested attempting to knock over an ATM machine somewhere.
I'm just ASSUMING something's going to go wrong with the car I'm borrowing from my dad. I found out Monday that I'm going to get my bonus (assuming I get one) on my next paycheck. Sometime this week I'm supposed to find out how much it is. This story is more complicated than I've explained here onnaccounta that ethereal amount of money, and the way it should be enough to pay off my wife's car, which would then leave me enough money to make payments on an actually decent automobile, if anyone would GIVE ME A FUCKING LOAN.
