Bad News Central

I’ll freely admit that I know absolutely nothing about cars.  Whenever I take my car in for a tune up, I fully expect to get royally fucked up the ass.  I accept it, bend over, and pay my bill.  My talk with the mechanic afterwards usually goes something like this:

Mechanic: “So, that’s $60 for the oil change and tune up.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
Mechanic: “Plus another $40 to replace your air filters.  They were pretty clogged.”
Me: “Of course.”
Mechanic (realizing I have no idea what he’s talking about): “We also had to rotate your tires.  One of them was on backwards.”
Me: “Oh no!”
Mechanic: “Yeah, so that’s another $75, plus $20 for replacing your lug nuts.  They were pretty corroded.  Another 10km and they would have burst into flames.”
Me: “That could have been dangerous.”
Mechanic (getting more confident): “Plus another $50  to adjust your ailerons.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
Mechanic: “And your flying buttress was covered in marmalade.”
Me (frowning): “That’s what I thought.”

So obviously I’m no mechanic.  Neither are the fine folks who work for Fountain Tire, apparently.  I took my car in to them today for a quick oil change, and now the engine won’t start.  I’m not even sure how that’s possible.

I dropped my car off at 9am, walked the half-hour trek back home, and made some breakfast.  Right as I was finishing up, I got a call from Fountain Tire.  They needed to replace my air filters (they always need to replace your air filters, even if you just stopped in to use the bathroom), and they told me they were going to clean some gunk off of my battery terminals that was causing a low voltage.  It seemed pretty reasonable compared to the usual gouging I get when I take my car in, so I agreed.  It looked like I would have my car back in no time.

An hour or so later I got a call from the mechanic again, although this time he seemed slightly distressed.  I needed to bring in my remote starter right away.  Things had gone horribly, horribly wrong since I had dropped my car off nearly two hours ago for a routine checkup.  I rushed right back to find that my car wouldn’t start, my remote starter wouldn’t remotely start, and my remote locks would no longer remotely lock.  My battery was dead.  My car’s computer was spilling out of the dashboard, and there were meters hooked up to everything.  You know those hospital scenes in war movies, where they show some guy with his guts hanging out as half a dozen doctors pump him full of morphine and wheel him behind a curtain?  That’s what my car looked like.

Let me remind you that I was having my oil changed.

According to the manager, this wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t mine.  This was just one of those things that happen from time to time.  Then he let me fix my own car right there in the drive bay (using my own tools) as the rest of the staff went to fix a problem with the Fountain Tire Courtesy Shuttle.

I swear to God I’m not making this up.

A customer came in to have a flat tire fixed, but they waved him away because they were too busy fixing the Courtesy Shuttle.  I needed to look up a certain company so I could get help rebooting one of my car’s components.  They didn’t have the white pages handy and the mechanic didn’t seem to understand Google, so instead I used the yellow pages and spent an hour playing “guess the category listing”.  My car still wasn’t working by the end of the day, so I had to call up a client to tell him I couldn’t make it to his house for our appointment, thus costing me several hundred dollars in lost work.  Then the helpful Fountain Tire staff put my car into neutral, rolled it into the parking lot, and went home.  So did I, but I had to walk.  Apparently I hadn’t quite earned Courtesy Shuttle privileges.

I’m supposed to be driving to Las Vegas next week, but as of right now I don’t have a car.  I can’t go to work either, because I’m an electrician, and they don’t allow you to take a hundred pounds of tools and wire reels on the bus.

On the other hand, maybe I don’t need all those tools and supplies to do my job.  I could always just do it like I was a Fountain Tire employee - go into the client’s house, pull the lights out of the ceiling, turn off the main breaker, and leave.

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Articles, My Life is a Sitcom

I was walking to the train a few days ago when a man stopped me on the street and asked for bus fare.  I told him I didn’t have any, and attempted to continue on my way.

He stopped me again, this time saying that he needed to take the bus to the hospital because he had been stabbed.  I told him again that I didn’t have any money, and again attempted to go on my way.  I’m not an inhuman dick, it’s just that he seemed to be in perfectly fine shape aside from a scar on his face.  Besides, getting stabbed is one of those things most people call the ambulance about.

He got my attention one last time and rolled up his jacket sleeve.  He had a massive knife gash across his wrist, and the skin from his wound was folded back along his arm.  His whole arm was soaked in blood.  I took a look over him, and noticed that the blood had seeped into his pant leg and went all the way down to his knee.  He lifted up his shirt to reveal several more stab wounds, bruises, and welts.  One of his hands was puffy, and every finger was broken.  According to him, he had been punching someone at a party, and glanced down to see someone stabbing him over and over again.

Alarmed, I tried to call an ambulance for him.  He declined.  I gave him some spare change, and he asked if I had any drugs to numb the pain.  I didn’t.  He followed me to the train station while making small talk, apparently forgetting about the whole “stabbing” thing.  He didn’t have enough money to buy a train ticket, but I told him that the transit cops would probably make an exception for him if he rolled up his shirt.

The last I saw of him he was riding the train downtown.

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My Life is a Sitcom

It really says something about the quality of your possessions when people break into your house and they don’t take anything.

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My Life is a Sitcom

I’ve never lived in an apartment before, so I’m still getting used to having so many different neighbors.  When you live in a house, you get used to having the same few people around for years.  In an apartment, though, it’s a constantly changing roster of characters that would seem right at home in a sitcom.  I’ve never met the guy who lives across the hall (who apparently only comes out late at night), but from what I can tell by listening, he’s actually a burlap sack full of pots that somehow gained sentience and learned to roll around. 

Back when I lived in a house, my neighbor was a crotchety old woman who seemed bound and determined to drive every single person on the block out of their homes.  She flung mudballs at the house acros the back alley for no discernable reason.  She threw her garbage over other peoples fences.  She would trim every reachable branch on her trees and pile them on our car.  She thought my mother spent all day spying on her from the shadows.  She accused me and my brother of poisoning her flower garden.  She accused people of gang-raping her cat.

On one hand, I think senile older people like that should be placed in a home; on the other hand, I kind of wish I could act like that now.

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My Life is a Sitcom

You know what the best feeling in the world is?  It’s when your girl rolls over in her sleep in the middle of the night and puts her arms around you.  Best goddamn feeling in the entire world.

My ex used to roll over and punch me in the face.  She’d just stick her arm up, roll over, and *WHOMP*.  She was a, uh, bigger girl, so she was packing quite a bit of momentum with each blow.  I tried to rectify this by moving up in the bed when I could hear her start to shift, but this just ended with her cracking me in the chest and knocking the wind out of me.

If they told stories like this in sex ed, there would be much fewer teenage pregnancies.

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My Life is a Sitcom