Tinfoil Viking Science: Geographic Confluence

Situation Normal. Atmosphere Breathable. Brainstem Injected. Dialogue Engaged.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Geographic Confluence

My horrible damn car started chirping yesterday. The keening ululation outshouted my radio and clawed loose noodles from my tender brain. As my heart palpitated and my stomach churned, I heard a loud SPING! and then "clank, ca-clank, ca-clank." The sound receded as I witnessed in my rearview mirror a small circular metal object bounce away down the street. The car behind me swerved but punted it anyways. It was a miniature little wheel and it bounced away like a rubber tire from a cartoon car wreck.

I pulled into the nearest parking lot. Up went the hood. Since it doesn't stay up alone and has no hook pole, for a prop I use an intricately carved wavy wooden bolt of lightning I painstakingly crafted during my whittling phase two years ago. After propping the lid, I leaned in for inspection. One of the wheels for the alternator belts was absent. All that remained was a lonesome naked bolt sticking out like a dick at Abu Ghraib.

The belt rest on it, already starting to take damage from the few yards I'd driven without my belt wheel. Damn it all to hell. Fucking car. I hurriedly jammed all the fast food garbage behind my passenger seat into a shopping bag, tied it shut, and stashed it deep in my trunk. Perfect. Now I would not be ashamed upon handing the vehicle over to a filth slathered grease monkey mechanic.

I looked around. I was in a bank parking lot. To my right stood an auto repair shop, and across the street, the Itasca Metra station. That's right. I broke down in front of a auto shop to fix my car, a bank to get train fare, and a train that drops off a mile from my home.

Nice.

I didn't even have to wait for the train. I got home and asked after another vehicle for use on Thursday, today. It was inoperative with a dead battery. Not good. I'm due in at 6 am. I corralled a neighbor and got a jumpstart. Up and purring. Due to an apparent electrical problem I couldn't turn the headlights off. I started messing with the bright switch, which is also the windshield wiper lever. I was standing outside the car at the time, and I accidentally triggered the wipers. I managed to squirt the chemical fluid right into my eye. I always wanted blue eyes, but not like this. I was feeling a bit loopy and dejected by this point.

Finally I succeeded, and here I am. I'm going to take a nap now, before everyone gets here.

6:42 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm

11 Comments:

May 19, 2005 7:30 AM, ... said...: This must be fiction, no one is that lucky....
May 19, 2005 8:49 AM, Kerouaced said...: Great description. Oh, the horror of having something drop out of your engine. That happened to me deep in the country one night in a very creepy and isolated place. Cooter came to get my car and tried to extort money from me because Triple A wasn't going to pay him enough...
May 19, 2005 10:21 AM, Dave Morris said...: Crappy start to the day, but what are the chances you'd break down in that particular spot?

You must have accumulated some pretty good positive karma.
May 19, 2005 11:39 AM, Ray Nolan said...: So the blue stuff isn't visine?
May 19, 2005 12:26 PM, clothosfate said...: Fiction or non-fiction that kind of luck can happen... it reminds me of a time when I was racing along beside I very long drop to the river. Just as I slowed down and began to pull up a rough mountian road, really just a slightly level dirt track cut into the mountain, the truck started going "cha-chunk" as well. Opened the driver-side door just in time to watch the front tire roll away down the road. Freaky
May 19, 2005 1:02 PM, Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm said...: Actually, this one is all true.
May 19, 2005 7:05 PM, Lostinspace said...: car drama sucks. can't believe you actually made it to work. it would be my excuse to stay in. so you have blue eyes, now? :)
May 19, 2005 9:15 PM, OldHorsetailSnake said...: When u awaken, I will have the orange-slathered ribs ready. too bad you can't have any.
May 20, 2005 10:53 AM, Isabella said...: If i were you editor (which i would never be because i'm sloppy, do not always adhere -- i'm not qualified), i would tell you that the first paragraph appears to be a victim of vocabularitis and i'd replace "my heart palpitated" with something like as "my heart began its own rendition of the riverdance" or something else more in line with the brilliant lines in this piece like "a lonesome naked bolt sticking out like a dick at Abu Ghraib."

Briliant. Effing. Brilliant.
May 20, 2005 10:57 AM, Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm said...: Yeah, palpitated and churned are pretty commonplace, but I have a tendency towards the overwrought, so sometimes easy and simple is okay.
May 20, 2005 1:14 PM, Isabella said...: actually, i thought "palpitated" sounded unnecessarily complicated and wordy, the opposite of commonplace.

But wordy is my tendency, too, and, as should be evident from my most recent post, what the hell do i know?