It's raining today...a dripping mist really.
Sky's like a dirty dish rag.
It's cold (40 or 50...yeah Adam I know). That's our winter.
I pulled out of the drive this morning with no gas. I didn't know that 'til the truck started beepin' at me...beep, "time to go stand out in the mucky air," beeep, "clean the passenger floor board out," beeeeep, "roll your eyes and mutter because the pump's so slow, "beeeeeeeep." I hate to stop for gas. I just put it out of my mind until it can't be avoided. It's a reminder of just how high maintenance these machines are. I love what the car means. I go when I want and, in my wown peice of property, I conquer time and space. Plus, I can stop for coffe and a square whenever I feel like it; however, I hate the object itself...or maybe it's being forced to ponder the car's limitations that I hate.
Of course, that attitude leads to poor upkeep...which leads to more mechanical problems...which only fuels my purple, bleeding, hatred of the thing. It's a bulletproof cycle...the only way to avoid what I hate is to do what I hate. So why bother?
If I had the money...I'd pay somebody to sneak onot the drive at night and fill it up with gas while I slept.
I don't have that kinda bread though so...beeeep. I'm husslin' to get to the gas station. Probably the exact opposite of what you should do but, you try fightin' the urge. I knew it was bad too because the light came on yesterday..and I ignored it. Now I'm trying to make up for lost time but, there's a problem.
It's wet...and when it's wet the driver in these parts has one of two reactions. Either they take it as a sign of the Rapture and slow to a crawl..I guess in order to minimize the damage that will occurr once they disappear from the car...or in sheer terror they drive like hell to find dry land.
You're movin along at 80 miles an hour. That means that the car in front of you doing 30 miles an hour...hands at 10 and 2, chin jutted out above the steering wheel...just appears in your windshield. You can either slam on the breaks or pass 'im. That's when a streak screams past on the left...a hole in the mist. This must be what it's like driving from one deminsion to another.
I came out the other end at the Shell Station on Watkins. Suspiciously there were open pumps. I thought I might make it to work on time after all...'til I reached in my back pocket and realized I didn't have my wallet. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHH.
A quick call to the office and then back into the wormhole to risk my life on vapors...
I survived and I made it home to retrieve my wallet...even made it to the gas station where I got the tank about half full before I completely lost patience with the pump. Which means I'll have to fill up again tomorrow on the way to Baton Rouge...:grindsteeth:.
How did I manage all that before 8:30 this morning...how did I keep it all together? With a lot of this...
at full blast.
It's about the only thing that suites this crap weather.
Hahahahaha - you woose!
ReplyDelete40-50 degrees! Veritable heat-heaven! Today we have -1 degrees - a gale blowing and sleet/snow/rain...
But ooooohhhh yes! I am with you all the way on the fuel-filling avoidance... I am the woman who waits til the fuel gauge goes into beep-mania...who has run out of diesel a shameful number of times and in some way-out places...the woman whom the RAC advised should stash some fuel in the boot...
Mind you some of that is because I am mean. Stingy. Hate doling out the cash for diesel. My Passat costs a fantastic £80 to fill with diesel now. It is 139.9 pence per litre here now...
And the Rapture allusion?...sheer comic genius...
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone like filling up at petrol stations? Fecking bane of existence those things. Yeah its definately mental expensive now, but even when it wasn't, I still hated it.
ReplyDeleteI think the majority of people over here are no too nad in the rain, they sort of have to be really, but we get the same when the clocks go back as what you describe.
Suddenly, people used to commuting in daylight are thrust into journeys in the dark. This completely unexpected surprise naturally causes fear adn surprise in you average UK citizen, and the consequences result in a 2-4 week adjustment period, where by everyone drives at half the speed, brakes at the suggestion that there could be other roads users out there somewhere, and all in all causes a shit load of road traffic.
This is what I like to think of as 'walk to work month', where I would rather excercise that deal with other people, and use the lack of a car to have a beer on a friday, every year too... morons.
I'm sure Adam will be along any minute to call me Jessie...I don't care it's worth the taunts to live in a place where 30 is considered obscenely cold.
ReplyDelete"the RAC advised should stash some fuel in the boot..." hahahahahaha
I have this idea that I want to go back to Britain and drive the length of it...drop Martha and The Boy off at a chip stand and I'll do it while they place the order...then one y'all mentions the price of gas and I shudder.
I paid 3.05 a gallon yesterday...still too d*** high.
Yip - just did the calculations and realise now that I am paying the equivalent of just over $10 per gallon of diesel...
ReplyDeleteThen again, we have still got the good old National Health Service...though on my wage that costs over a £100 per month National Insurance Contributions...
Mmmmm on balance, think I am moving to the US of A!!
You snuck one in on me.
ReplyDeleteI bet that is dreadful on streets in old towns like that...one person can lock up 5 blocks of traffic. That's what it was like New Haven. God forbid there be a fender bender.
You snuck one in too.
ReplyDeleteWe would collapse...overnight...if gas hit 10 bucks.
You just come on...and you can drive to your hearts content but, watch that lead foot...they'll put you under the jail for anything over 100.
Your good dude (though definately a Jessie), I operate poorly in the heat so I reckon we do alright where we are, though It can feck off being so grey and wet at the moment.
ReplyDeleteYou think it would collapse over night if it hits $10, everyone over her said it too at it reaching £1 a litre, then £1.25, then £1.50, next it will be £2.
I grant you we probably 'put up' with more than most nations, but we are not another species, we are still gonan pop at some point. What can you do though, really? There is a general out cry about it, have been boycotts, blockades. It has made me fully realise, if a government wants to do something, there is nothing we can actually short of rebellion to stop it if BOTH political parties are the same on this issue.
Our anger means nothing anymore, and they have realised how impotent we are. I hope to hell you guys keep your lot over a barrell in that respect, because if they realise it, your fecked. Its like the Magnificent 7, (or my personal favourite remake: 'A Bugs Life') the sequel. Where the bad guys who got driven off by the masses in teh first one, then come back and remember; no, actually, we ARE bigger and more powerfull and there is nothing you can do.
Its gotta reach critical mass somewhere, somethign will give, but as per usual 'where and waht' could take some time to reach.
* They = council bastards
I always suspected that there was a cryptic clue in the Biblical nomenclature "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" - it is increasing clear that this a veiled allusion to peak oil and the future affordability of gas.
ReplyDeleteHow soon O'Lord, how soon? And any tips on investment vehicles in this difficult end-of-times market?
Adam: both political parties are the same - the illusion of choice in an age of diminishing options :(
ReplyDeleteViva La Revolucion!
"Council Bastards" sounds like it might be a Tarantino movie ... on the eve of world destruction, one man stood naked before destiny and his name was Adam ... first among men ... he loved spare ribs and never hid his modesty behind a bushel ... and he had a plan to rid the branches of local government from the brood snakes ...
ReplyDeleteOf course, Hollywood would set it in the Big Apple ...
While I'm on a theme: Mel Gibson is rumored to be filming "The Assassination of Jesus H. Christ" (working title "The Jews Did It") ... who was on that grassy Golgotha that day? ... and why won't Pilate release the files?
ReplyDeleteOkay, I adapted that joke from a Bill Hicks routine just to hate on Mel ;)
I notice you aren't going out of your way to have that Ben affleck tag stuck on everything.
ReplyDeleteI would have been mighty dissapointed if you hadn't found inspiration in the Rapture reference.
10 dollars a gallon would kill us...that'd be over 2,000 bucks a month for me...and I'm not unique in the driving I do. It's impossible to over estimate the role that vehicles play in our daily lives and our economy. ...no politician of any stripe would survive that.
There's hardly a thing from agriculture to pharmaceuticals that doesn't depend on oil somewhere down the pipe line.
ReplyDeleteWho doesn't love Ben Hairflick?
Everybody except you and Muj.
ReplyDeleteAdd that ubiquitous need to vast expanses.
I see what it does to prices everday (though gas is down right now...diesel's hovering around 3.40)...and it's not just straight fuel cost. The corn subsidies for ethonal have hit food crops like a atom bomb.
Good luck finding any black-eyed peas next year.
"...no politician of any stripe would survive that."
ReplyDeletenot in one shot, but as of tommorow if they put it up 6-8-10 pennies a gallon every few months, dropped it a couple when people gots antsy, in a few years it'd creep up on you, hell from what you have said it is creeping up over there anyway, so its already going on, you seriously think it'll every go down, or carry on upwards?
Sure, maybe if it gets a lot worse, that government gets hoofed out over it notionally, but then the next one starts doing it too, and the one after... then what?
Thankfully as you say, its not so big a country, here but then again the fuel was already at a higher base level. My pop drives 2-4 hours a day for his job... cost wise its crippling, but what alternative is there?
So who plays me in 'council bastards' Nate, surely it'd be 'city hall bastards' or some such in the Big Apple version. Christian Bale, he's a bit mental?
If it was to occur naturally as a matter of general inflation then the answer is yes...if my salary increases by 70% then a 70% increase in the cost of fuel would be acceptable. I can remember when gas was less than a dollar...and people made less then but not that much less.
ReplyDeleteWe got close to five bucks a couple of years ago and started to hit a wall. There was actually an immediate slight drop in demand. Not only is the place big but down here it's mostly a service economy and farming...all consuming huge quantities of fuel. Almost nobody I work with or know could do what they do at the prices we're talking about...as a percentage of income.
It's stayed in the threes for a long time now but i saw it today for 2.99. It could go down...it's not an impossibility...there's plenty of it out there. I'm probably sitting on some right now being in South east Louisiana. I don't know if you remember but I used to work with oil jobbers...the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is nobody is making any money with gas pumps.
I hope your Daddy can at least turn in his milage. That's a dodgy game over here. Those bloodsuckers at the IRS see milage as an open invitation to your neck. We pay a lot of taxes on gas but y'all must pay a lot more.
We do have City Councils...and Councilmen.
I was thinking more along the lines of Peter Kay.
Nat will be the tin foil hat that a decade before, via ham radio, tried to warn the people of the impending Council tyranny.
ReplyDeleteHe was apprehended by the authorities...pronounced schizophrenic and institutionalized...quietly.
Few people noticed at the time and, ten years latter, no one remembered him at all...save one man
Adam will spring you from the booby hatch as his first act of open rebellion against the Council Bastards.
Obviously this a part for Scottish historian Mel Gibson.
There was one other used to remember...who cared deeply for the young harbinger...the public defender who was assigned to represent him at his competency hearing. She was young and idealistic then...believed that the expanding power the Council meant an expansion of True Democracy...a tearing away of the privileges that for centuries had protected a system of oppression at the expense of true equality.
ReplyDeleteHer experiences with Nat in the system left her disillusioned and frankly terrified...she's hidden herself away in the bottle.
Nat has never forgotten her...forgotten what she did for him, the compassion she showed.
It is to her house that Adam and Nat, now fugitives, first seek refuge.
Who gets the role Muj?
The sister will have a role as a Data Processor (ie touturer) for the Council Bastards...she can play her self.
ReplyDeleteHopefully these councillors will be able to do something about sales reps that are always running late for one reason or another. If he doesn't make it in 30 minutes or so...it's gonna be impossible for me to get up for it.
I was thinking more along the lines of ... opening scene: while Adam is on an archaeological dig dressed in a leather jacket and stetson - worn at a deliberately unconventional tilt (he's also wearing pants BTW) - a traffic warden unjustly tickets his crew's white Ford van ... unable to prove their innocence due to a petty and corrupt council's racketeering enforcement of parking bi-laws, they go on the run for a minor crime they can't prove they didn't commit. One of them, mad "hat" natetin, due to an unfortunate incident involving a sheep, electric fence and tin foil hat, gets himself tangled up in a shocking situation and begs the others to leave him behind ... he's later apprehended by the authorities and institutionalised for having red hair (he pleads that it's only dyed and that's why he's wearing the tin foil, which they then go on to claim really is madness) ... later the rest of Adam's crew - now the "A Team" - go back to rescue natein as he's the only one who can "fly a chopper" (not intended as an obscure euphemism) ... meanwhile, E. "F for the Face" Bartlam, as part of an elaborate scheme to get back at the Council Bastards, parks up his Chevy on the hard shoulder pretending to have run out of gas ... cut to la mujer libre AKA, Amy, an intrepid investigative reporter who has been following the exploits of the A Team and is becoming increasingly skeptical of her paper's line - The Gibson Herald - on the fugitives and their supportive stance towards Alex Ferguson's managerial style ... OK! Still needs some work!
ReplyDelete... may be there's room for your sister as "Bad Attitude Bartlam" ... I say that knowing there a considerable body of water separating me from a certain five-ring-fingered pummeling.
ReplyDelete" I love it when a plot doesn't quite gel coherently together."
ReplyDeleteI couldn't do without petrol stations, as it's the only place it's socially/emotionally acceptable for me to get a good whiff of petrol. Mmmm. Beautiful electric flowers.
ReplyDeleteYou and Martha...gas huffers.
ReplyDeleteThere's a role for you too in this fight against council tyranny...you and the good Dr.
Speaking of which...I've past the point of no return with my screenplay. I like the campy angle...maybe a hideous mash up of the two. Maybe competing films like Tombstone and Wyatt Earp.
I could be the explosives expert with a heart of gold.
ReplyDeleteYou boys sure are good for the soul...mad of course...but good for the soul...
ReplyDeletecould work with that Investigative Journalist line Nat...a la a Kate Adie cross with Polly Toynbee (aka "f*ing annoying" and "ultimately useless"). Done in a Pixar/Disney/Warner Bros style - think "Bugs life" and "Pocahontas" and "The Devils Advocate"...
I actually was thinking the A-team, I reckon Nat would make a good howling mad murdoc, you'd be a reasonably Hannibal, or BA; what you like with milk and getting on aircraft, with my looks naturally I'd have to be face, I don't like it any more than you. I actually have me a Aussie bush hat I wear in the summer, and I leather flying jacket for winter (used to be essential when I drove the mini- I was the heater) so already the props are coming together.
ReplyDeleteY'all are obviously not taking this seriously.
ReplyDelete... "the explosives expert with a heart of gold."
ReplyDeleteLOL: she'll blow your mind and steal your heart all at the same time.
How about: Wild Frontiers Men and Extra Terrestrial Council Bastards ... sounds oddly familiar though?
I need to go and write us a killer sound track for this now. :p
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of which, I have been in the co-op jamming for a few weeks now, and have found a few like minds to do this on a weekly basis with. As a result, we have be beating some songs into shape, just a couple so far, but we are gonna try to commit to tape next week, so I'll be sure to youtube and link the fall out. Still a bit sloppy live, but baby steps and all that!
I been wondering where the music's gone. We'll be waiting.
ReplyDeleteJust let me know when you need a good wind up...I'm sure something can be arranged.
Are you gonna revive the blog for it?
Yeah, I think I might start to think about a clean start for it, focus on what It should be for, music and images. Post some WIP's etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd Youtube videos of driving around Lancaster...like the one's me and The Boy watched last night.
ReplyDeleteIt's gettin' silly over here man...The Boy wants your life story.
Been working on the climatic end scene ...
ReplyDeleteThe Chief Council Bastard ran, gulping like a landed fish with two twitching prehensile fin-legs, into the mayor's chamber; due to his frenzied state - and the only residual light furnished by the setting sun's reddening after-halo - he only partly recognised the mayor's sat-slumped silhouette outlined from behind the window. Grasping him by the shoulder, as if to rouse the mayor to the appropriate state of urgency, it was then he noticed, as the head fell back, a crudely sculpted hole centred in the forehead, leaking a red and grey trickle of neural dysfunction.
"Holy Mary mother of Moses!"
From the dark recesses, a graveled voice intoned, "See someone skipped Sunday School."
"Adam? Adam! is that you?"
Adam stepped forward and, in one, single-fingered fluid motion, tipped up the rim of his stetson, to reveal two eyes burning with Hades's justice.
"I'd like to sat 'it's been a blast meeting you at last' now, because the irony of that statement will be lost on you right after I've pulled this trigger."
"Wait, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Wait a minute now...brilliant as this is, and the description of the entry wound is brilliant, I'M playing the role of Big Boss Bastard and I'm not going out like that.
ReplyDeleteIf I have to go out...and I actually prefer this thing ending with me sniffing and snuffing out you dirty agitators...you need to think more along the lines of Scarface.
Mayor "Bad-Ass" Bartlam, with the recent cheers of electoral victory still snowballing white-noise into his lug-holes, after stepping on bastard toes and heads, twitched with the delayed recognition that his enemies had breeched the compound walls. With the veined eyes of purple cabbage vengeance, he pulled his semi-automatic combo grenade launching wand of death off the desk and stepped onto the landing in preparation to deliver a Southern Welcome to his uninvited guests.
ReplyDeleteFinally somebody's giving this story the serious attention it deserves.
ReplyDeleteThat's the epilogue. Cue Celine Dion, "My Heart Will Go On"
ReplyDeleteNat - I want some of what you're on...that's some serious good stuff...
ReplyDeleteYou should be able to find the new blog via the link my in my name dude, finally got a soundcloud too. ttfn!
ReplyDeleteMuj...Nat is high as Cooter Brown on Nat. Sadly, or fortunately, it can't be replicated.
ReplyDeleteI've already visited...I'm ready.
We're listening now...On the Prom. The Boy is beating on the desk.
ReplyDeleteYou know I love cars, no lets be blunt I love anything with a motor in it. Blame my Dad its all his fault. The fuel thing for me is something I stress about but for different reasons. You see I stress when my fuel gets down to 1/4 tank. Dont want all that garbage from the fuel station clogging my filters and therefore my cars performance.
ReplyDeleteI am also one of those guys that when he washes his car he polishes it, cleans the alloy rims blacks the tyres, vacuums the inside, sprays the dash and hard surfaces with protection and cleans the glass. Basically if I cant see myself in a surface its not clean enough.
Yes I am slightly OCD on this topic. But I do love driving into the city with everyone looking at the car as I drive past. Even had a cop make a comment one night on a random breath test about how nice it looked.