Yesterday morn I was cruising down OceanView Drive in my 86 Escort, listening to the Go Go's on my AM radio - the little speaker on my dash turned up to 10. I had the cardboard removed from the place where the window is supposed to be - allowing the wind to whip through both my hairs.

Needless to say I had it going on.

All of a sudden I go over a bump and hear machine gun fire coming from beneath my ride! Sweet mother of fuck, I thought, the blokes from El Quadia have finally tracked me down (REMEMBER 9/11!!) and have begun their assault on me. Oh sure, I knew it was just a matter of time before they would try to silence me, an Internet SuperHero and the worlds most influential blogger. Frankly I thought the GOP would get to me first, but I guess they're not as sharp as the El Quadia blokes.

The machine gun fire would come and go, yet I didn't see any bullets coming up through the floorboards of my ride, I guess the El Quadii ain't sharpshooters, eh? At this point my plan was to pull into the parking lot at McMurphies then open the car door and attack the terra-ist blokes with my mp3 player (the only thing I had handy) thinking the element of surprise would give me an advantage.

Well, heh, it turns out that it wasn't El Quadia after all, or the GOP, but rather some little heat-shield thingy had partially fallen off the exhaust system and was periodically hitting the road sounding like an AK47 in the jungles of VietRaq. Look - anyone of you could have made the same mistake and I'd like to point out that this sort of thing brings the Space Shuttle to it's knees, yet my 86 Escort never once caught fire and sploded, so pants off to the Americian auto workers!

At that point I had two options:

1) Call my mechanic, Mr Zebronowskovitch, then sell my plasma to come up with the mucho dinero to pay him to fix er up.
2) Take a snow shovel from the utility building at McMurphies, crawl under the car, then repeatedly whap the hunk of metal with the snow shovel handle until it fell off.

I chose option 2.

Problem Solved.

God dammit I hate cars. Not the Band The Cars, mind you, I rather like some of their toe-tapping type hits, but rather cars in the most automotive sense. Oh sure - I could move to Europe and buy a bike-cickle and some tights and do without - but that would wear pretty thin the first time I bought a bunch of crap at the grocery and had to find a way to get it back to my flat. Not to mention the fact that you're screwed when it rains. Or snows. Or hails. No sir - I fear the Man has us under his thumb in this regard.

Bah.