In which reality and Twitter are both dumb

On July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

So seeing this tweet from Kirsten Gillibrand got me all het up at first. There is no way in the universe that Citizens United is going to be overturned in Hillary’s first 30 days in office. It’s a literal impossibility. Even with the most compliant Congress of all time, it’s not going to happen, because it can’t. It would require either another court case to make its way through the system that would challenge United (but would likely not result in an overturn, since the court’s not that much different now) or an actual amendment to the Constitution, which cannot happen in a 30-day timeframe.

I had the blog post composed almost immediately, all full of Dammit, if Trump said something this stupid it would be because he doesn’t know how the government works, but I know you know better, so this is just a lie and a bunch of other similar critical-of-the-person-I’m-voting-for sort of stuff.

Then I clicked on the link, which I had actually missed on my first read of the Tweet, because I was eating and distracted while looking at Twitter, and what Gillibrand means is that Clinton will call for an amendment during her first thirty days, and that the “working to overturn” will start within the first thirty days, not the actual overturn itself. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing and while perhaps not politically possible is at least a thing that the President is capable of doing.

So there goes that post in a puff of “do your reading, asshole” and Twitter brevity. Sigh.

I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to the Republican convention and don’t intend to start now. So I have nothing to say about that.

I actually went and looked at a car this afternoon, and pretty much ruined the salesperson’s day by refusing to buy anything. The 2017 Escape does ride really nicely, though, and while they offered me what I’m pretty sure actually represents a good deal. He said I wasn’t allowed to take the offer sheet they gave me home with me, but then left me alone with it for a few minutes so of course I took a picture, because seriously, dude, it’s 2016, don’t leave me alone with the damn thing if you don’t want me to have a copy.

Nonetheless, I will not be buying a car until I’m certain I can hand over the down payment in cash. Which I can’t do just yet. But maybe by wintertime? We’ll see.

We’re supposed to see a 110 degree heat index on Friday, so all this is entirely moot, as the world will have caught on fire and I will have died by then. So… I dunno, try to get laid in the next couple of days? Because you may not have another chance.

In which I spend money I don’t have

On July 14, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy6 Comments

No, I didn’t buy a new car, but I’m thinking about it: I’m at a Ford dealership right now getting a recall repair done (for free) and literally just as I was sitting down to write this post I got an email with an estimate for all the repairs they think the car needs and it’s roughly 1 1/2 times the actual value of the car. It’s running well for something that is about to fall the fuck apart, but even the shit that’s in BRIGHT RED SCREAMING HOLY SHIT YOU’RE GOING TO DIE font adds up to “may as well total the thing” territory. So I’ve been sitting here in the dealership for an hour already and there’s possibly as much as another two before I can leave, so fuck it, I’m researching new cars.

I don’t really need another SUV. I was driving a two-door Toyota Yaris (which I loved) when the boy came along, and upgrading to something with four doors seemed like a critical necessity what with several years of car seats in our future, and we’d been through a spate of scenarios where we’d had to borrow other people’s cars to move stuff right around the same time. The Yaris, despite being tiny, rode really high, and I quickly discovered that after driving that and then an SUV I don’t ever want to sit down in a car ever again, eliminating virtually every sedan on the market. I want to climb into my seat so that I don’t have to grunt like some sort of animal when I get out of it. Despite its age, I’ve been pretty happy with the current (’01) Escape, so replacing it with another seems reasonable. I just sat down and priced one out on the internet, and discovered to my mild amusement that I could put myself into a new Escape for a lower monthly cost than a Kia Soul (my other leading choice) would end up being, despite the Escape being a few thousand dollars more expensive. Plus: union-made, a big plus.

(The punch line is I probably could afford a new car if I could just curb my comic book habit and dial back on how often I pay for meals. That is insane, but true. Today’s post was very nearly about how comic books are better now than I remember them being at any point in my life. It’s crazy how much money I’m spending on comics every week. Crazy.)

I am aware used cars exist, mind you. And I know the current car was bought used and worked out okay. I just… nah. I know about driving shit off the lot and it losing half its value and all that nonsense. And every computer I’ve ever bought has been obsolete when I bought it, and my Xbox will eventually be on sale for half what I just paid for it, and blah blah blah. Shit loses value. Welcome to reality. I don’t plan on trying to resell anything I buy in two years; this is not worth worrying about at the moment.

Maybe I should get working on the new book before I do something stupid.

Dicks in cars

On May 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy9 Comments

I’m going to start walking to work. (*)

I don’t know what the deal has been lately, but twice in the last few weeks I’ve been the subject of angry tirades from dickbags who think the world revolves around them and, crucially, also don’t understand that if I don’t comply with your dickbaggery immediately then it is very unlikely that I’ll comply with your dickbaggery later if you decide to escalate things.

Examples? Sure. There is a Taco Bell near OtherJob (which, I suppose, I ought to start calling OnlyJob by now) where the drive-thru lane funnels you into about thirty feet where the building is on one side and there’s a curb encircling a grassy planted area on the other. In other words, once you’ve ordered food, you’re stuck in that line unless you want to hop the curb.

So I’m attempting to order food and it is taking ridiculously long for whatever reason. The car in front of me gets their food and an extremely apologetic employee tells me it’ll be another couple of minutes before I get mine. I wait. Sure, whatever. The car behind me is not so patient and starts honking her horn. I glance in my rear-view mirror and I see that, somehow, she’s yelling at me, gesturing that I need to move forward so that she can pull out. Now, I’m driving a small SUV, and her car dwarfs mine. She can easily get over the curb, she just doesn’t want to. And if I pull out of this line, the cars behind her are going to move forward, and then there’s going to be a clusterfuck, because I’m not going to be able to get back to the window.

So, no, lady, I’m not going to be accommodating you on this. So I ignore her and stay where I am, but continue to glance in the rear-view from time to time. Note that I can’t actually hear her, but I can see her continue to yell and gesture. No. You hop the curb. Or just be patient. This is ridiculous.

Eventually I get my food and she roars away.

Yesterday, again on my way to OtherJob, I’m second in line waiting for a red light in a left turn lane. I’m maybe a foot off the bumper of the car in front of me– not up his ass, but close enough that there’s clearly no way to squeeze in between us. To my left is one lane of traffic. To my right, the going straight/right turn lane and then an entrance to a parking lot for an apartment complex, which is probably closer to the light than it should be, so even though I’m only the second car waiting for the light it’s basically immediately to my right.

A bigass yellow pickup truck turns right off the street I’m trying to turn onto. He wants into that parking lot, so he just stops, the rear end of his car blocking traffic on the cross street, and starts hollering at me to back up. If he just completes his turn there are a dozen different places within a hundred yards where he can loop around and turn right into that lot, but no, he wants to turn left. Through my car, and eventually through the car to my right that wants to go straight. But no, we can’t do that, so I’ve got to holler at the guy who wants to turn left to back up so that I’m not inconvenienced for twenty seconds.

Again: um, no. Meanwhile, cars are piling up behind him, because he’s blocking a lane on the cross street.

At one point he actually guns his car at me and lunges a foot or so closer. This actually gets him eye contact. Go ahead, asshole. My car is sixteen years old and has 150K miles on it. It’s legally old enough to drive itself. I can handle a dent.

He literally sat there and hollered and blocked traffic for probably a minute or two rather than taking thirty seconds to complete his turn and find a place to turn around. Meanwhile, I’m starting to muse about how difficult it would be to mount a flamethrower where my running boards used to be.

Ah, humanity.

(*) There is absolutely no chance that I’m going to start walking to work.

Tinted back window with a bubble in the middle

On April 29, 2016April 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

51NDuZehByL._SY355_.jpg My car is a 2001 Ford Escape with just over 150,000 miles on it. I got it when I traded in my beloved Toyota Yaris (shut up, it was the perfect city car) for something with a backseat big enough to put a car seat into. I literally walked into the dealership with one car and walked out with another; the Yaris was paid off and we did an even swap off the lot. I traded a relatively new vehicle for a much bigger, older one.

Calling it a hooptie is probably overstating things. It actually runs pretty damn well for its age; there’s an oil leak deep in the engine where it’s not worth the money to fix, and the brake lines chose a surprisingly convenient (that’s not a typo) time to blow a couple of years ago, but it’s done well for a car that is itself actually old enough to drive.

The running boards were rusted out enough that several months ago I tore them off the car barehanded. For the last little while, then, these ugly, rusty, sharp brackets have been hanging off of the sides of the car where the boards used to be attached. I finally got around to trying to remove them myself last week and my ratchet sheared off on the first bolt, so today I took it in and had professionals remove them. My car looks 50% less garbage now than it did this morning, which is nice.

There was a television in the waiting room, which made the experience way more surreal than it ought to have been. First of all, I’m so glad that the primary is just a few days away and that our usual television-watching methods don’t involve commercials, because holy shit does Ted Cruz have a lot of commercials. And he’s simultaneously running against Trump and Clinton, which is kind of hilarious. There was one Trump commercial and what seemed like a hundred Cruz commercials during the hour or so I was waiting.

The actual program being shown was the Today Show. The Today Show was celebrating 90s hiphop for some reason. Either that or I took some very serious drugs this morning before dropping my son off before school and then forgot I did it, which… might be possible? I guess? I brought a book, and was buried in it when the first verse of Ice Ice Baby broke into my brain, and I looked up to see Vanilla Ice dancing on a stage with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And the word live was up in the corner.

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I thought, for a moment, that I was either hallucinating or had gone back in time. Only the crowd, filled with old white people, managed to convince me that the body shop hadn’t warped back to 1993.

A performance by Salt n’ Pepa followed, which was also weird, as I could have sworn that at least one of them had sworn off rap forever. Kid n’ Play were interviewed. Fucking Kid n’ Play.

This is why I never leave the house, guys.

I am not very bright: part 398103 of an endless series

On February 18, 2016February 19, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

Take a look at these three symbols:

I am nearly forty god damned years old. I am aware that there are many, many people who are older than me and who might even think of forty as young. And for certain things, I would be young. If I were to win a Nobel Prize, or become President, for example, or if I were to die of old age, I would be young for those things.

But in most ways? I really ought to have gotten my shit together by now. For example, I need very badly on my pay attention to the information in front of your Goddamned stupid face instincts, and my do not ignore shit and assume it will go away or change instincts. Possibly I should replace them with pay attention to information that is literally, and I really do mean literally, right in front of your Goddamn face and recognize when you do not understand something and do things about that lack of understanding.

With all that in mind, let’s tell a story about my fifteen-year-old, 150K-mile car, and about how I’m stupid.

Two years ago– two years— one of those three lights began appearing on my car dashboard for precisely the first two minutes and twelve seconds of any drive. If I was driving to work, it would blink off at exactly the same intersection every morning. I know it was two minutes and twelve seconds because I timed it.

The car, as near as I could tell, drove just fine, and the light never reappeared when the engine was hot. If I parked it for a while– particularly if it was cold outside, and it first started appearing in the winter– it would reappear, usually for the full 2:12 but sometimes for less than that.

I was told by someone who generally knows cars that it probably meant that my battery was helping the engine more than it ought to, and that I should get the battery checked but that the worst case scenario was that I’d need a jump if I ignored it until it became a real problem. The battery was, at the time, brand-new.

Naturally, I ignored it.

And lo, it came to be that I needed to take a road trip, and I decided that getting stranded on a road trip wasn’t a great idea. The light had, as of recently, been staying on for longer than the previous rock-solid 2:12, and that was rather alarming. But the car was still running fine and starting fine. I decided to take it to a local auto parts store and see if I could either buy or borrow an engine code diagnostic thing-a-ma-jigger.

You may have figured out by now that I’ve been thinking that the light was the check engine light. Now, I know what the check engine light looks like. It’s the yellow one, and I think on my car it actually says “check engine” on it. And the check engine light had been on for a couple of alarming periods of time during all this. Turns out, I need to do my best to not leave my car outside for long periods of rain, because the water gets into something and the engine starts skipping heartbeats until it’s dry. That’s alarming, of course, but the solution is literally “keep the car in the garage,” because the car needs to be cold and rained on for hours before this is a problem.

Turns out that the auto parts store does diagnoses for free, and it is as the man is hooking up the system that I realize that, no, that’s not the check engine light. Because, again, my “this is the check engine light” theory is existing in my brain at the very same time where I know the check engine light is yellow and in a different place. Somehow. I become very apologetic for my stupidity and describe what’s been happening, and he tells me again what the other person told me: your battery is helping the car too much, and you should get that looked at, but worst case is you’ll eventually need a jump and then you’ll HAVE to take care of it.

I continue to ignore the problem, and take my road trip. My car actually does get rained on for a substantial part of the trip, but it turns out okay somehow.

Fast forward to roughly now. Yesterday, specifically. At this point the light’s basically on all the time. But the car is still running fine. Never any problems starting, no rough running, nothing. You’d think I’d at least have had to crank the key twice at some point. I have, in fact, at this point actually decided that the problem is the sensor or a short with the light itself, because there’s no way that light could be on for two years without something going wrong if the light actually indicates a problem.

For no good reason at all, while running errands last night, I comment to my wife on my theory that it’s the sensor, and say something about at some point having said sensor replaced.

My wife looks over and says “that’s not the battery light. Haven’t we had this conversation?”

No we have not had this fucking conversation. And I immediately see the actual battery light. My eyes go right to it. It’s not lit. It’s never been lit.

These two motherfuckers look too much alike, is what I’m saying.

“Find out what the hell that goddamn light is,” I say to my wife. It comes out as slightly more of a command than I really want it to but what the fuck, brain.

It’s the engine coolant light.

How the fuck have I been low on engine coolant for two years? I know ferdamnsure what the coolant temperature light looks like, and it’s never been on. If I’m out of engine coolant, shouldn’t, I don’t know, maybe the engine have overheated at some point in the last two fucking years?

We get home and I wait for the engine to cool down and check the antifreeze. It is, indeed, low. Not, mind you, bone-dry. Just low, and I assure you that oil changes have not affected this light.

This morning, I added an appropriate amount of antifreeze. In fact, I accidentally went about half an inch over the “fill to here” line, so hopefully that won’t be a problem.

The light is no longer on.

I look forward to the car blowing up later today.

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I Don’t Know From Cars: A Hogwarts Story

On January 21, 2016January 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy7 Comments

I’ve said this before: I could send my kid to his school for the next nine years or I could buy a new car every year for the next nine years, or a really nice car every two years, which might be a bit more reasonable. My current vehicle is old enough to drive itself and has 150,000 miles on it. It looks good for its age, honestly, but anything even vaguely resembling a close inspection will reveal certain, oh, let’s call them beauty marks that make it clear that if I tried to trade this thing in I might well have to pay the dealers to take it off my hands.

I went to pick the boy up today and there was apparently some sort of athletic event going on, because the lot I parked in, which was usually empty, was full. I get a weird sort of class anxiety whenever we go to big school events because you can tell from the parking lot that most of the people who send their kids here have tons more money than I do. (And I should be clear: everyone there has always been perfectly nice. This shit’s in my head.)

However! It is mid-January. In northern Indiana. Everyone’s car is covered with road salt and sand and shit and looks like hell. No one’s car looks nice in northern Indiana in mid-January. Go ahead; take it to the car wash. It’ll look like shit by the time you get it home.

I glanced at the car behind me, a dark blue or black station-wagon-lookin’ thingy, as I was heading into the building. See? I thought. That person’s car looks like a piece of shit, just like mine. You’re being ridiculous. Stop it. Those folks are like you. Nobody rich drives a station wagon.

And then I got a closer look at the hood of the car.