Atomictumor

So, I’ve been pondering the car situation in my head.  I’m not as excited about getting one as I was in those early December days of yore, but I still believe that its the prudent course of action.

Now, my ramblings about getting a muscle car have subsided.  The thing that really did it for me was Stormare Mackee’s mentioning of poor sight lines, which is something you never hear about in car reviews, but something that really blows a deal.

So, today I hooked myself up with a subscription to Consumer Reports, and then discovered you have to pay MORE money to get the used car guide, which I then got, which resulted in vague feelings of being used, cheap and tawdry feelings that I had to drink away, and then I looked up cars.

I think I like the Mazda3.

Now, hear me out.  I know, I know “AT, get the 6 if you get one”.

Bollocks.

It doesn’t look as cool.  The thing I like about the 3 is that it has 27 MPG as tested, over the Accords or 6’s 23.  Crash tests weren’t quite as good as the other two, but were still acceptable.  Reliability was ranked highly.
I can get an 06, with low miles, for under 16 grand, which I like.  And not just the vanilla one, we’re talking spoiler and sunroof, baby.

And the steering wheel looks bitchin, which is important, as thats what I spend most of my time looking at.

So, Tumorites, do your worst.  Does the car suck?

OK, when last we discussed cars, I was thinking that a VW would be nice.  You guys all pretty much turned me around with regards to that, so now I think they suck.  Woot for having malleable opinions!!

In a decision that would shock and anger the me of 6 months ago, I’m kinda thinking those Chargers make a bit of sense.  They’re somewhat roomy, they certainly have some sort of curb appeal, and they go fast.  In a hurry.  I mean, all cars go fast, but this seems to be one of those fast off the line things.

Problem is, the damn thing doesn’t fit any of my earlier criteria.

It only comes in manual.  I mean, it has that stickomatic thing, but what the hell good is that?  Its like drinking o’douls or something.

The gas mileage sucks.  The Hemi engine’d one is measured by gallons to the mile, as I understand, and the more conservative 6 cyl 3.7 engine gets something like 19 in the city.  Not too exciting there.

Dodge reliability sucks balls.  I’ve never heard anything good about Dodge transmissions.  On a related note, Bullet tells me that the resale value for Dodges is poor.

Its a hair expensive.  Used, I’d be putting about 20k into it, which isn’t outside the range of possibilities, but would get me back into a higher payment.  Again, not what I’m paying for the van here, and about what I figured the VW would cost, but still more than I’d like, which is if it were free.  Like, if somebody with a dealership told me that this one “fell off the truck”, and is mine for, say, 50 bucks and some web design.

Yes, that’d be wicked cool.

But in that world, waterfalls would flow with honey.  People would fall up.  Everybody would dance to where they’re going, instead of walk.  I would have rocket shoes, and, because of that, wouldn’t need a car.

Yep, all sorts of things would be different.

Hmm….

—

My enthusiasm for the car situation has dimmed somewhat, as it has for moving, and everything else.  The idea of change isn’t the balm that it was a week ago.  The tidal pulls of my emotions are massive and quick, and that takes some getting used to, for sure.

Perhaps next week I’ll be wanting to join a French mime college?  Who knows?  Its weird in here.

The idea of keeping doing things the way they are seems way too hard, tho.  Thats the problem.  Going to the same old job (although I was recently told about an opportunity for a higher paying job with the company, I turned it down because I don’t think I’d be able to apply myself worth a damn), driving the same old cars, taking the boys to the same old schools, it sounds really hard.

However, as I sat on the back porch, I was thinking about how much I like that weird little town, Oak Ridge, and how much I’d hate to lose what we’ve built in there.

Hell, who knows.  Where I was excited by the realm of possibilities open to me, now I just get discouraged and angry.  I’d love for BJ to be here to tell me what to do, because she was smarter than I.  Problem was, her answer was always “whatever you want to do”.

I can just pretend she’s saying that now, for all the good it was!

So, this morning I’ve been laying in bed (lying in bed?), in a blissfully quiet house, with just the tinge of a headache from last night, and researching cars.

Uh, cars suck these days.

Seriously.

OK, heres my problem… I’m too aesthetically picky.  I LIKE the VW stuff because I like the design they put into the cars.  For like 20 years now, theres been crap for car design.  Crap.

I also like the fact that not a lot of people have one.  I like smugly driving, and I smugly drive best when nobody else has my car.  Theres been another white turbo Volvo 240 running around town, and I think I have to smite him (”Theres only room enough in this town for one white turbo 242, mister.”)

Indeed.

So, lotsa people say that the VWs suck with regards to reliability, which certainly removes from that smugness factor.  Its difficult to be smug when your car is broken down on the side of the road.

I didn’t say IMPOSSIBLE, just difficult.

So, heres what I’m looking for, in roughly the order I’m looking for it, and now I’ll make you guys work for me.  Here goes:

• Manual transmission.  For reals, no deals.  Don’t lay no auto on me.
• Pizazz.  Look it up.
• Low milage.  I’m not adverse to a new car, although I’ve never seen the sense in buying a new car, since its like taking the few thousand dollars in depreciation and flinging it into the woods somewhere.  Incidentally, thats where the Leprechaun pots of gold come from. Now we’ve both learned something
• Uh… how do I say this gently… not domestic.  Wait wait wait, don’t lynch me, its just that American cars look… well… lame.  There.
• Not so the crazy about Japanese cars either, because they all look pretty much exactly the same
• Oh yeah, gotta be big enough for 3 fairly largish sized bodies.  I figure this car’ll see me for 4 or 5 years, so MastaG will be sprouting body hair by then and talking in a crackly voice (its a shame, because BJ couldn’t WAIT to make fun of that).  Yeesh.
• Um, I think thats it.

What you should be taking away from this, is that I’m a man who judges me on my car.  I like the Volvo.  I liked the 74 cutlass I had.  Wasn’t so crazy about the Subaru wagon.  So, there you have it.

—

Seriously, what are you still doing here?

I’m turning into my mother.

Well, without the boobies, I guess (and there go the internet filters).

No, I hate prefabricated holidays.  Halloween, to me as a youngster, was a great time to go out and cause mischief.  And the mischief we did cause.

Lemme tell you a story.

Halloween, 1992-3ish:

Me and me mates were out at their house in East Brainard, and bored, on halloween, so we got the idea that we were going to go try and get some candy by singing christmas carols (yeah, I know, edgy).  We were all punk rockers, with the hair, and the safety pins, and torn T shirts with slogans like “Be Warned: The Nature of Your Oppression is the Aesthetic of Our Anger!” (which I still don’t really understand, but it looked cool) all over them, so we really didn’t NEED to wear a halloween costume.  We were ready to roll.

And roll we did, son.  We headed right over to the apartments, and sung bad christmas carols, and some people were amused.  Some people weren’t.  Kids were scared.

Well, we got sick of that REALLY quick.  Isn’t it funny how an idea that seems really great sitting around with your friends turns really sour once implemented?  So, we turned to that old standby when we’re bored, petty vandalism.

I mean, really petty.  See, there was this one guy in the neighborhood who was one of those lawn nazis.  He yelled at the little kids if they edged his yard to avoid walking around the block to get home.  He watched like a hawk the hired foreigners who did the lawn, while standing on the back porch.  He was an ass.

Let me stop here, and tell you about the car we used.  My friend (who I won’t name, just in case he’s trying to recover from knowing me in the past) had a POS Tercel, but the car tended to accumulate the oddest things.  Once, we got pulled over for erratic driving in Downtown Chattanooga, the officer walked up to the car, and this is what he saw scattered about the floorboards:

1 large bag confectioners sugar in ziploc bag
2 baseball bats, aluminum
1 mini chainsaw
1 air pistol
3 high power mortar style fireworks
1 pair nunchaku
1 knife, butterfly style
5 plastic dart guns
1 lifesized plastic baby Jesus doll (it was hard to find)
1 roll garden bags, black
1 short handled shovel
3 cans of mace
assorted wrappers, drink containers, empty cigarette boxes.
So he shines his flashlight around the debris, in the faces of the 4 hoodlums in the car, back around the debris, and waves us along.  Didn’t even get a ticket.
Good think he didn’t look in the trunk…

So anyway, the Tercel was home of all sorts of stuff, and on this particular day, for what reason I’ll never know, it had 4 of those large garbage bags full of leaves.

Now, the lawn nazi’s house was next to a parking lot which was attached to a Subway.  I didn’t care a lot of Subway then, but beggars won’t be choosers, so we stopped by there to get some dinner.

The guy behind the counter was a jerk.  I don’t remember what the circumstances were, but I concluded that the problem could be solved with explosives.  So, we left Subway, walked out to the car, and I grabbed a handful of M-80s that the car provided me with.

We had a precision plan.  I was going to light the M-80s on the back door of Subway (it sounded like a good idea at the time), while Jon, the car’s owners little brother, was going to drop the leaves in the yard of the Nazi.  Yes, this will show the world.

This is one of those moments that stretch 5 or 6 seconds into 10 minutes or so…

The plan went wrong.  I lit the fuses too late, he tossed the leaves too early, the fuse was too short, and BANG went the M-80s.

Walking back to the car, there was another BANG, which was the owner of the jewelry store kicking the door open with the biggest shotgun I’ve ever seen pointing in my direction.  Somehow, in my hindsight, I’m able to see both the shop owner, and the faces of my colleagues in the car, and their mouths look as round and big as the hole at the end of that freaking shotgun.

I leap into the car as it peeled out of the parking lot (and out of shotgun range).  I don’t think the shopkeeper ever got off a shot, and I doubt that he would, but it still made for an interesting halloween.

Now, I’ve gone completely backwards and forgotten what the hell any of this has to do with my mother.  I don’t think she ever got a shotgun pulled on her.

Furthermore, I don’t think she’s heard that story…

Pigpen: Quick! There’s a dinsosaur after us!

Me: Oh no! What’ll we do?

Pigpen: We gotta get out of here!

Me: How about we throw it a big cookie?

Pigpen: Flings arm, makes crunching noises The dinosaur ate the cookie!

Me: Whew!

Pigpen: Oh no! There’s a dog after us! What are we going to do?

Me: Throw another cookie!

Pigpen: Flings arm, makes crunching noises Now there’s a talking car chasing us! His name is Lightning McQueen!

Me: Quick, throw a cookie!

Pigpen: Flings arm, makes crunching noises He went away!

Me: We’re safe!

Pigpen: Oh no! There’s a … dancing potato after us!

Me: …