On Mechanics

So, uh…what’s up, everybody? I’ve started this entry without having anything to write about today. I could rant about how Apple is now the number one music retailer in the United States, and why that’s bad for artists (Remember when I reported on how Apple wants to lower the percentage royalty earned by songwriters even further?). I could write about how Wal-mart is tired of willingly losing money by selling CDs, and now wants every album they sell to cost consumers less than ten dollars, but that would mean citing (at length) an article that originally appeared in Rolling Stone, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my valuable (read: valueless) web space talking about some fucking retarded Rolling Stone article. I could even stoop so low as to mention how there is a battle raging between two men who claim to be the inspiration for the MIT blackjack team’s mastermind. For a while, most assumed that John Chang was the man’s identity, but a guy named Bill Kaplan now claims that he was the mastermind. But that story would be long, and boring. Finally, grasping at straws, I might point you to the Entertainment Weekly article that grades the first eight episode’s of LOST this season and recaps the “Meet Kevin Johnson” episode, which I critiqued last week. But I will do no such thing…

Instead, I’ll simply free-write several paragraphs about whatever comes to mind, because I haven’t done that in a while, and it is somewhat funny. Okay, here goes nothing…

My fucking car is being serviced. I think car servicing is one of the biggest scams imaginable. I’d like to know the number of working stiffs (like myself) who pay little-to-no attention to the inner-workings of their vehicles, and just blindly go along with whatever the mechanic says is wrong when it comes time to pony up (what kind of expression is “pony up” anyway?) and pay for the service. I bet the number is high. I bet more people glance at their bill and nod silently to themselves than they do question what exactly all those abbreviations and dollar amounts really mean. I like to think I’m fairly diligent when it comes to checking the amount of oil in my car, but if I see that there was a problem with another part of the car that needed correction, odds are I had no idea the problem existed. I guess I just assume I’m being fleeced and I accept it without having to hear any equivocations from know-it-all mechanics. I remember before I drove from New Jersey to California last year talking to the Prestige Volvo guy who ripped me off mercilessly and knowing that his answers to questions such as, “Is it really imperative that I fix this right now?” were bullshit, but I rationalized it by telling myself that as long as everything was fixed, the car wouldn’t acquire worse malfunctions that would cost even more to correct. The first time I had the Volvo dealership service my car they found three or four things wrong with it and charged me $800. Then I realized that they did something wrong, so a week later I took the car back. In searching for what went wrong on their end, they just-so-happened to find three more problems that — for $600 — they could solve. Fucking thieves. Speaking of which, when was the last time you saw a story about an actual thief committing thievery and running rampant in a town or city. I’m not talking about some drug addict breaking into your grammy’s house and stealing all her cameos, I mean honest-to-goodness thieves. The kind that used to maybe be rich already, and steal things just for the adrenaline rush. Where are the modern Robin Hoods or A.J. Raffles of the world, running around in costumes and masks under cover of night, burgling priceless paintings from supposedly secure museums or mansions. All I ever hear about when I turn on the news is politics or disease or the economy. Most of the major news networks don’t even report on the news anymore, unless it has some celebrity angle to it. In fact, right now CNN is running a lead article about “What if Martin Luther King Jr. had lived?” My answer? Someone else would have shot him.