Having retrieved the miraculous car from the garage, I've had some time to reflect on my own injuries, lick my wounds, so to say. It's funny how we two, the car and I, are generally twained. The car is running hot and angry any longer, but, and H would agree, being in a stellar mood and of sound health should not be a prerequisite when starting off to work. Or should it? I sustained a terrible burn on my forearm, while trying the state of the boiling raditator--not that it was steaming so dramtically when I pried the cap loose. I thought I had waited long enough for it to cool down, but the cap blew off and was lost with a hot torrent of sticky anti-freeze that clung like Napalm. Of course, the burn should have been he top priority but I was not in any pain, and hours later, catching one glimpse of the ugly blister that hung off my wrist like more reverend testicles, H arranged for a doctor to see me and fix me up. Of course, after several days, it is still healing, though still without any pain. The blister skin peeled away in one great wet scale, revealing the partched, new skin below, blotchy white and pink and plasticene. The lesion, hard and smooth, reminds me of the things around the house made of Melmac and Bakelite, which I think are leagues better than modern, tawdry plastics, and Bakelite and the like are far superior in certain ways, like for insulating and heat resistance. I'll show it off, my arm, and people squirm, insisting it must hurt a lot. It doesn't though, and I wonder at my high threshhold for pain. It certainly contributes to my shoddy record of taking care of myself--I don't dislike the idea of potential pain or bad news from the doctor but moreover the bother of it all. Looking at my resined arm, I wonder if tolerance like that is purely mental, bloddy-mindedness, or is also some measure of material property. Like Mohrs scale of hardness (diamond--err, that'll be a ten and baby powder, we'll make that one), I am sure it would be very subjective.
Tuesday 9 September 2008
Saturday 6 September 2008
Come Josephine in my Flying Machine
Friday 5 September 2008
Idle Fridays--Your Tax Dollars at Work
Thursday 4 September 2008
I am so happy--in fact, I think I'll have to blog about it!
Thursday 28 August 2008
Zombie Driving
Sunday 24 August 2008
Coffee Maker--why always must it be sooner or later?
Each toting one defunct famously pad-based and portion-controlled coffee-maker, H and I must have looked rather odd proceding to the village recycling center. In fact, we're generally only seen there doing such odd-looking tasks, twice-twinned. Both these coffee-makers had given up the ghost, so to say, and though I tend to horde such things in hopes of sponetous resurrection, I had since gotten a non-portion-controlled coffee machine (which was, by the way, identical to the one H had at his home) and felt it was acceptible to retire them to the bin. There was, after all, a little old man who fished around in the broken electronics and transferred the whole lot to his barn to tinker with. I said good-bye to the pair as we dumped them in, because, like the little old man, I was a firm believer in the transmigration of the souls of machines. Perhaps they'd be reborn as blenders. I paused a second after that thought, and said to H, maybe my coffee-makers, both bought and went defunct in quick succession though no neglect or misuse I swore, had had a crisis of identity. Maybe they themselves were former toasters or plough-shares had had glimmering memories of former lives while brewing my coffee.
Friday 22 August 2008
Shooting Blanks
In an effort to disrupt domestic German food production, these insects were air-dropped over the fields. The story seems even more plausible given that I have only found such large accumulations on and around US Army bases, which were mostly created from occupied German army installations. The story never concluded that this bit of biological terror was very effective.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, environment, foreign policy
Wednesday 20 August 2008
He won't get far on hot air and fantasy.
I thought I should make mention of my miraculous automobile. For several weeks, I was having an intensifying condition while, wherein my motor would bog out if I accelerated too quickly, really anything above 3000 revolutions per minute would kill the engine. The car would then slowly coast to a halt as the oil indicator and cruise-control lamps came on and the power-steering go out. It was probably a more pressing problem than I could be bothered with this past month, but I kept putting off taking it to a shop and managed to limp dangerously along the Autobahn to and from work, convinced I could ride the slip-stream of the slow truck right ahead of me and save gas--possibly a tendency to coast to save on gas started this problem in the first place, but I formulated quite a few theories in the meantime. Besides, the car generally restarted right away and I could creep back on to the Autobahn on a conservative 60 kilometers per hour and I was going away on holiday in fancy rental car. H could have beat me for being this irresponsible, especially after a couple trips in the passenger seat, on the fenders on service vehicles and trash trucks, watching me concentrate to keep the gears from shifting higher. Cruising at 60 km/h is not stately, even for a big, old sedan. Though I formed my own theories about what expensive things could be wrong with my car, while on a vacation from driving it, I figured most problems resolve themselves. They tend to do that, and I was already convinced my car ran on holy-ghost power.
Driving back to work the first time, I could feel the same studder and stall and drove carefully. The motor did eventually bog out again but this time, even after a few minutes' rest, the car would only creep a few meters along the shoulder before giving out again. The tow truck driver was witness to this obviously major problem and pronounced it to be either an electrical or fuel problem. Those were pedestrian explanations, I thought to myself, having had time to theorize my own complex reasons. Looking back, I am glad the driver spoke to the mechanics once we arrived in tandem at the garage, since apparently I have a very vivid imagination. Or my car has Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. After a full battery of inspections with computers and a team of mechanics, followed by a vicious test drive with one of them where I gave it full gas and pushed the car pst 200 km/h, there was no shutting down and they could nothing wrong with the car. Perhaps my car just needed to mount a tow truck, and the mechanics weren't exactly dismissive but sent me on my way.
It reminds me of my old Mercedes, which had a busted odometer that was stuck just above 300 000 miles driven. During a Vermont winter, I discovered when it was bitterly cold, just above absolute zero, apparently the odometer could register sub-atomic vibrations and began again to function. I told people of this, but disbelieving, no one was ever tempted to come out in the cold to witness the miracle.
catagories: lifestyle, transportation, travel