Saturday, September 29, 2012

Texas Drivers No Survivors

A customer said a cold front was coming to Corpus. I looked forward to it until 20 gallons of water poured into my window onto my guitar in thirty seconds. A cold front is what they call a monsoon. It actually wasn't cold at all and the humidity is currently unbearable. I'm certain my COPD is caused by chronic humid conditions that have crippled my lung capacity and led to a rasping wheeze. So, the drought is over in seconds and the waves wash over the front of my fender. I'm indifferent to the speeding cars and swerving trucks. Go ahead and hit me. Who fucking cares? Now the futile pick up trucks with nothing but sand in the bed make sense because the water can rise to two or three feet in a few minutes and these trucks plow through it to the next stop light or to get to the strip club. When I hit a puddle the water splashes under the engine compartment and irrigates the popcorn seeds I have growing under my seat. It's a sparse landscape of the bleak morality we call patriotism.

Billion Dollar Review

I drove my shitty Datsun 200sx into Beverly Hills to meet with John Updike's literary agent in a building that smelled like F. Scott Fitzgerald's spilled whiskey. I forget the agent's name now but he wanted to hire a cute, charming, 25 year old girl with great phone skills who would entertain his big name clients and cover scripts on the side and provide some eye candy for the slow days. Well, I've talked to cute, charming 25 year old girls, so I figured I was a good fit for the job.

Friday, September 28, 2012

COPD

"Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common lung diseases. It makes it difficult to breathe. There are two main forms of COPD: Chronic bronchitis, which involves a long-term cough with mucus ..."
I have been crippled with asthmatic conditions since my swim in the polluted Gulf of Mexico (fuck you BP all those pop up ads on The Onion will not redeem you motherfuckers. May all your children drown in refined oil) and my wrists are broken from fighting off the West Nile infected mosquitoes. I sleep in my mosquito net but it's 200 degrees now and the sweat fills my ear like syrup on pancakes giving me infections and deliberate Blepheritus and Halitosis of the mind.

Vocal Harmony Galore

There may not be a sabbath but there is gospel music which gladdens my heart. I almost wish I had once been awash in sin (gay sex in seedy motels, heroin use, spousal abuse) so I could be born again with conviction. As it stands I would merely be giving up the occasional naughty cheerleader video and taking the Lord's name in vain. Yawn!

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Minor Victories

The Firebird is growing on me as it is an introduction to modern vehicles (1999) It has 280,000 miles on it which makes me wonder why the owner wants to keep it alive. It ran badly and part of the problem was an EGR metal hose that I had never seen before so I didn't know that I had probably broken it when I forced it out of the fitting. It's a $50 part that I was luckily able to buy for $5 at the scrap yard down the street. The scrap vehicle had been in a head on collision with certain fatalities with the engine pushed over the EGR hose so I spent an hour getting it out. I reimbursed myself by stealing some special harness connectors that I broke, an oil pressure switch, and some fuses for the van. I also asked about a job. That sorted some of the vacuum problems out but the misfire continues so we ordered a coil pack and will see if that solves the main problem. It's now running alright. Everyone basically was saying it was bad gas and the parts needed to "mesh together" which is total lazy mechanic gibberish.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.