Back in the day the word “Roadtrip” meant freedom, wild times, and heaping handfuls of illegal enhancements. Now-a-days it means visiting our aging, remaining parents and getting the oil changed.

And that meant going to the Honda dealership. I tried once to get our Hybrid’s oil changed at one of those “Spiffy Lube” places, but they turned pale at the thought of servicing our Civic. I guess Hybrid oil is radioactive or something. So we’ve always done it at the dealership, where we’ve had all of its regular maintenance done.

(Well, full disclosure: Hymie the Hybrid has also been recalled twice. Both times were for software upgrades. Welcome to Modern Times.)

My 9am appointment was for an oil change. I sat down with Bob, my “Service Advisor” who made me sign 18 different contracts for this while he made other suggestions. No, Bob, it doesn’t need a tune-up yet. No, Bob, it doesn’t need a 70,000 mile service because it only has 67,000 miles on it. No, Bob, I don’t think the windshield needs replacing….Then I nabbed my bike off the back of Hymie, rode to work, and waited for the phone call. You know, the one with the ‘problem’. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Well……” Bob says, “We’ve found a problem…….” This in a tone doctors use when they tell new parents that their baby was born with three butt cheeks.

“Yes…..?” I reply. “Did you run out of radioactive oil?”

“No. Nono. What? No. We were just doing a systems inspection…….” His tone dropped again to the Doctor Kildare register, “…….and we found a problem…..”

Systems inspection. Right. “Yes, Bob?”

“Your battery failed its visual inspection.”

“What, is it upside down? In flames? What?”

“It needs to be replaced.”

“Right. Well let’s hold off on that until I talk to the car’s owner. I’ll call you back.”

I emailed Admiral Karen. Sensible Capricorn replied “WHICH battery? It’s a hybrid for crying out loud. There’s about 18 of ‘em in there.”

I called Bob back and he was a bit tongue-tied. “You know, under the hood, the front one. The one that runs the radio.”

“Ah, I see. And what will this run us today?”

He perked up. I could his chair creak as he sat up straight. “That will run you $110.00 for the battery and $54.00 for installation soshallwegoaheadandtakecareofthisproblemforyoutoday?”

“Whoa. Hold on, Cowboy. Lemme call you back.”

I hung up and dialed Kragen. “What does a battery for a 2003 Civic Hybrid run?”

I could hear the pages of the catalog flip, and somehow I loved that Kragen still used the ‘wall-of-binders’ method of parts inventory. “That’ll runya 80 bucks for the battery, but we’ll give you 10 bucks back if you turn in the old one to us.”

“Uh-Huh. How about installation?”

“Installation? It’s a car battery for crying out loud.”

“My thought exactly. Thank you.”

I re-dialed Bob and told for him to nix the additional service.

At lunch I rode back to Hondaworld. I walked in the service door, nodded at Bob scowling at his desk and headed for the counter where Sheila, the cashier was. She dug out my 18 contracts and started flipping through all of the systems that the service guys in the back had ostensibly checked during my “Oil Change”.

I waited quietly. Flip, flip, flip, flip. Finally she turned the whole sheaf back to the top. “Well, looks like everything checks out just fine!” She said with a smile. Behind me I heard Bob’s chair creak as he sat up straight.

“Really?” I said with big, wide eyes. “Nothing, you know, about, say, the battery?”

She frowned and opened the stack of pages again. Flip, flip, flip, scan. “Nope. Battery checks out!”

Bob sprang to life. “Um, Sheila? Is that file still open? Don’t print anything out yet! I have, um, a couple more Service Notes I wanna add in here.”

I waited at the counter, smiling at Sheila, listening to Bob type like the wind and fill out a form with a pen at the same time. He handed the form to Sheila, brushing past me without a word or a glance in my direction.

She glanced at the form, glanced down at the electronic receipt on her computer screen and hit ‘print’. She stapled these together, I signed both and walked out with a straight face, not sure whether I wanted to laugh in Bobs face or punch it.

But on my way back to work (after Hymie started up just fine, natch), I began to wonder about my feelings. Car dealership attempting to rip off its clientele? That’s hardly news. It’s almost expected. So why was I angry? Was it the bland attempt to foist a 50 dollar fee for a car battery installation? Something a six-year old with three butt cheeks could perform in 10 seconds? Naah. That was actually pretty evil, and hence worthy of respect.

No. What was pissing me off was Bob’s fumble of the ‘Service Notes’ and the falsified visual inspection form. I mean, if you’re gonna try and cheat the customers, ya gotta have the paperwork in order! He obviously made up the battery story but neglected to tell the technicians about it. They inspected it, turned in their paperwork, and he spaced it until he heard Sheila tell me that everything checked out just fine.

I guess I like my Evilness do be done with a degree of style. A certain smoothness is called for when attempting to rip-off the unsuspecting. And I felt cheated that my nemesis was so ham-handed in his attempted fraud. I didn’t expect anything less from a car repair place, but somehow I also expected more.

--------

One of the other notes that Bob had frantically typed in had to do with something called a ‘Skid plate’. Something about how it was loose and missing a few of its bolts. I didn’t pay it any attention, figuring he had just thrown that in – whatever it was - to cover his tracks.

So we start on our roadtrip to L.A. to visit some of Admiral Karen’s family. We got halfway there, about 150 miles, when the skid plate gave way and Hymie suddenly sounded like the Harlem Globetrotters were having practice under the car. I took the next off ramp and parked it in front of an abandoned entrance to some sort of camp.

We got out and looked under the car. Hymie now looked vaguely like a Formula One racer with a front spoiler. Except that this spoiler was made of hard plastic and had reduced the car’s front clearance to about negative one foot. We couldn’t continue this way. While we were flat on our backs in the dust, discussing our options under the 95 degree sun, we were surprised to see a gigantic armored personnel carrier turn the corner and head our way, with two grim-faced jarheads in full combat gear staring at us. We froze and watched this armed behemoth advance straight towards us on clanking tank tracks. I pictured my head being turned into Spaghetti Os by this war machine.

Instead it abruptly stopped about 20 yards from us, sending a dust cloud billowing away. We stared up. The Jarheads in their enormous black visors stared down. A long moment passed. A moment in which I neither breathed nor blinked.

Then the Personnel Carrier abruptly turned around on a dime (as only tracked vehicles can do) and the machine quickly disappeared back the way it had come. Karen and I looked at each other and then we both turned to look at the sign over the locked gate that we had parked in front of.

The sign said “Camp Roberts – National Guard and Army Reserve”. So here’s a pro-tip for you all:
If you have car trouble, DON’T park your car in front of an Army Base. The people inside are learning how to kill other people who want to blow them up with CAR BOMBS.

When our breathing returned somewhat to normal I tucked the skid plate back up into the engine, placing it on another hard plastic plate that forms a lip in front. I hoped it would stay up there until we made it into L.A.

No dice. As soon as we reentered the 101 the Harlem Globetrotters decided to run the magic circle again under our car. I left at the next exit, which was the one for San Miguel. The town apparently consisted of a gas station on the right, a café on the left, and a few dozen houses down a steep hill. What I wanted though was a curb. I turned around in front of the French Bistro – apparently in a town of 1,500 there is a biting need for Basque cuisine – and parked our flapping car on the edge of the sidewalk.

Tools. I would need tools. And here’s where I utterly failed guy training: There wasn’t a single tool in the trunk. But hey, It’s a Honda – nothing ever goes wrong with these things. A quick inventory of our resources produced one old, chipped fake Swiss Army Knife. I opened the one remaining openable blade on it and was faced with an edge that would have difficulty spreading butter on toast.

I wiggled under the car – sandwiched between hot engine and steaming blacktop - and surveyed the task before me. There was no hope of repairing the skid plate – three of the six plastic bolts that hold it on were long gone. I would have to pry out the remaining three bolts and take the whole thing off. The closest one popped out fairly quickly. I wriggled across and began to work on the bolt on the far side. This one was tougher. As I was working on it – trying to keep the blade from closing up and chopping my fingers off - I began to smell something. Something delicious. Maybe we should hold off on the In-N-Out Burger and try this French place. Then I realized that what I was smelling cooking was ME. Eventually, sweating and cursing like Yosemite Sam, I managed to pry the second bolt out. But there was no way I would be able to reach the center bolt with this clearance.

I wiggled out from the car and sat on the curb and cooled my smoldering back for a bit. Eventually I realized that Admiral Karen was looking at me strangely. Part of it was concern for my overheatedness: a fair-haired Celt like myself has no business working on a car under these conditions. But there was also some arousal in that look. I am not a man who normally enjoys using tools, and so I had forgotten how much most women enjoy watching men use them.

When both us had cooled off a bit I moved Hymie across the street to the gas station. At the border of a field and the asphalt parking area there was a taller curb for me to put the car up on. I got out my untrusty knife and slithered under the car again, ignoring the ground covered in stickers, dirt and rocks. My hand could just barely reach the bolt this way, which was an improvement, but not enough to actually get the job done. I poked at it though until I had run out of energy, sweat and swear words. Karen then dragged me out by my feet and insisted I step inside the gas station snack shack to lower my temperature. I agreed and we walked across the parking lot with me looking like I had just been drug behind a horse for several miles.

Inside the store I tried out several cans of soda on my forehead until the guy behind the counter gave me a dirty look. I then retreated to the rear of the store where the motor oil display was. Next to this, I was delighted to discover, was a small peg board display of tools. No saws, no knives, but there was one slot screwdriver left and it had a long handle. Close enough. I may not be much a tool-using ape, but I am one hell of a tool-buying ape.

I slid under the car again, whipped out my sword like an automotive D’Artagnan, and stabbed the end of the skid plate around the plastic bolt about 100,000 times. Eventually I could smell my back cooking again. So I dropped my screwdriver, gripped the skid plate with both hands and ripped it off the bolt with one mighty yank.

I slid back out from under the car and into the blinding sunlight until my breathing quieted. The sun was then blocked and I looked up into Admiral Karen’s pretty face bending over me. She smiled sweetly and said, “Maybe it’s my turn to drive.”

I spent the rest of the journey picking stickers out of my pants.

The family visit was fine, and just long enough. Fish and Family go foul after 3 days and we were gone in 2. On the way back we stopped at the In-N-Out Burger in Atascadero to have lunch and do the ritual hand off of the driving.

This was the first time we had encountered a parking lot since we had fixed the car, and sure enough we tapped the concrete bumper and jarred the plastic shelf that once held the front of the skid plate. It flopped down as we zoomed down the on ramp and made a horrendous screeching noise. We stopped and looked at it. This was going to be a bigger job, as the hinges for this plate disappeared up deep in the engine. Hmmm.

Of more immediate concern was the fact that an onramp is no place to have a breakdown. But if a Double-Double burger is good for anything it is good for Courage. We got back in, strapped the seatbelts tight and I backed UP the onramp, into oncoming traffic, did a U-turn where they simply weren’t done and landed neatly in a K-Mart parking lot. Ta-Da.

I bought a serrated blade and simply sawed off the piece of offending plastic. We completed the journey North without incident, the skid plate, holder and our small stash of tools in the trunk.

I can’t wait to go back to the Honda dealership and show it all to Bob.

Angus McMahan
Angusmcmahan@gmail.com
7/21/09
2414 words

In this dream I wasn’t a character but simply an audience. The setting was China, a green valley with a wide, shallow river bisecting it. Little shacks dot the hillsides, Chinese people are out working in their fields. A small, winding road leads to a long suspension bridge across the river.

In fact the whole thing closely resembles the miniature golf course cake that I saw on the Food Network before going to bed.

In one of the shacks (one with a windmill on the roof actually) is Stephen Stills (circa 1968), who is listening to a shortwave radio. Out of a window he is watching a plane coming down the valley. It’s the Spruce Goose, and it is painted dark green, except for a bright red star on the tail. Inside is Chairman Mao. The plane is coming in very low, about 50 feet off the ground and is slowly losing altitude.

One of the small farmers points and says: “Mao is going to try to fly under the bridge!” This farmer is dressed in denim overalls and a straw hat but is minus his skin, so his eyes bulge out alarmingly. (This is probably due to the show “Bodies…an Exhibition” that I saw in Vegas last weekend. All of the cadavers in the exhibit were Chinese.)

The skinless farmers and Stephen Stills all watch the huge plane slowly descend, heading for the bridge. It almost makes it but bottoms out, lands in the river and skids to a stop in a huge splash of water. Stuck.

Stephen considers the situation and then picks up his acoustic guitar. “Gotta help Mao get out of there…..” he mutters to himself. He plays a few random lines on his guitar, singing little snatches of melody. After a minute or so he grows frustrated and is about to put down his instrument when suddenly the ghost of Woody Guthrie appears. He’s in black and White and slightly out of focus. He puts a leg up on Stephen’s bed (making no indentation), gets his guitar ready and says: “Try this. It’s called ‘Float the Buddha’”. And he begins playing a jaunty ragtime tune. Stephen watches for a while and then picks out the chords himself.

(Unfortunately I don’t remember any of the words or the tune but I remember liking the song in the dream.)

Woody, still playing, looks out the window and sees that the Spruce Goose is wiggling in the mud. He nods to Stephen and says: “It’s working, but we need more Ooomph.” Stephen shrugs, leans over, and flips on his shortwave radio, broadcasting their song to the world.

Cut to a montage sequence where stages and audiences all over the world fall silent and listen to the shrill and choppy song float across the crowds. Angus and Malcom Young of AC/DC put their heads together, listening intently and then begin playing the chords of the song. The rest of the band joins in, and the crowd sways and sings along.

Back in China Stephen and Woody watch the plane out the window. They can also hear all of the different bands playing their song over the open channels of the shortwave. They smile at each other. Suddenly a Mickey Mouse balloon pops out of the sound hole of Stephen’s guitar, floats across the room, out the open window and down to the wriggling airplane.

Stephen keeps playing and more and more multi-colored Mickey Mouse balloons pour out of his guitar, down to the river and attach themselves to the Spruce Goose.

Soon the plane begins to float on the balloons. It rises to a level above the bridge and then it magically flies away from a standing start. The balloons dissipate in the air and disappear.

Stephen looks away from the window, nods and turns off the radio. He looks back to Woody, who is flickering. Stephen attempts a fist bump with Woody but his fist goes right through and Woody evaporates.

The skinless farmers watch the plane gain altitude and then they return to tilling their miniature golf fields.

So……interpretations?

Angus McMahan
angusmcmahan@gmail.com

So I’m sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. Well, supposedly I am in New York, New York, but you can’t get a decent bagel here, the people are nice and the place doesn’t smell like urine. So my suspension of disbelief is gone. The signs say Times Square and Coney Island but I’m pretty sure that I’m in the Nevada desert, playing cards at the cheap tables.

I’m sitting in the fifth chair – the one the dealer deals with last. Sitting next to me, in order, are 29 Palms, La Habra, Orange County (frat boys identify themselves by their hometowns), Maria and the Rotating Guest Chair of Death. The boys and Maria are friends and all are positively decoupaged with booze. The boys are all drinking frozen daiquiris that come in gigantic plastic tubes that are shaped kinda like oboes. Plastic oboes in neon colors with Krazy Straws sticking out of the tops. The daiquiri mixture is mostly gone now, but they are adding to it by ordering a variety of hard liquors from Jen, our dubious waitress, and then pouring these back into their plastic oboes. The smell from these things is searing to the eyes. I can’t imagine what it tastes like, but “Fiery Death” would seem to be close. I mean, it’s like a Zombie-Harvey-Screw-on-the-beach-during-a-Hurricane. Blech. Even Tracy, our veteran dealer is turning green. Down the table Maria is downing a tumbler of peppermint schnapps every 15 minutes. At the end of an hour she is asking Jen for “another peppersh*t pops, pleash”.

The frat boys were at the “Party on – Excellent” stage of inebriation. This is the stage just after the “airing of the grievances” and before the “cranking up of the Enola Gay”. Due to a communication error during our introductions (La Habra belched and farted at the same time) the frat boys thought I was gay. But this was not a problem at all for the Three Muscatels. Maria looked disappointed though, which was nice. Somehow I had completed the tribe and Santa Cruz (as I was known) was in the house, representin, kickin’ it old school, and keepin’ it real. Whatever all THAT means.

What became obvious though was that they were losing and I was winning. Not suddenly, not dramatically, but slowly and steadily. Over the course of our three hours together the four fuzzy friends lost between $200 and $300 per hour – per person. The many short-timers in the Rotating Guest Chair of Death adding in another $100 - $200 per hour. Me? I walked away with $200 bucks profit, not counting 50 bucks in tips to Tracy the dealer and Jen the cocktail waitress.

Around midnight though, 29 Palms (who was nearest me) had a moment of relative clarity and asked me – in the 90 decibel whisper that only drunks can achieve – how I was doing it. And by ‘it’ he meant winning when he was losing.

Early the next morning while I took my daily constitutional, strolling through the empty bars and closed restaurants of New York, New York, watching the janitorial crew picking pieces of barf out of the slot of a slot machine - I thought about 29 Palms’ question. Why WAS I winning when they were losing? It wasn’t as simple as they had sauteed their brains in formadehyde while I had not. And I realized that over the years I had concocted quite a few rituals and rules about playing blackjack.

So for you 29 Palms, and for La Habra, Orange County and Maria this is Santa Cruz’ rules to gamble by.

1) Stay sober. So obvious it apparently needs to be stated in 30 foot high letters of fire. The odds are against you by rule. The house is against you by design – and that design is pronounced “Al-co-hol”. There is a reason why the drinks are free, the cocktail waitresses wear push-up bras and why casinos install bars every hundred yards. And that reason is pronounced “Pro-fit”.

2) Play to have fun. Sitting down at a blackjack table with the intent of winning is a sure recipe for a short night and a long face. The necessary mindset is to play freely with the money you have set aside for this purpose. If you lose it (and the odds are that you will), then you had a good time doing it. And there is no way to win without the mindset that you are not afraid of losing.

3) Know the game. If you want to have fun at blackjack, it behooves you to do the math. Know the odds for each situation beforehand: This will help you break even. And know when to Split and when to Double Down: this is where the opportunity to profit comes in.

4) Play the last position at the table. This way you see a lot of cards before you have to make a decision, which greatly increases your odds. You also have extra time to decide what you want to do. And being on the wing means that you only have a smelly drunk and / or smoker on one side of you.

5) Play at the appropriate table. If you only have $100 to spend that night don’t go to the $25.00 table – you only have 4 minimum bets, you’ll be tense, and you’ll play conservatively and lose. That is what happened repeatedly at the Rotating Guest Chair of Death. And why it was known as such.

6) It’s is an art as well as a science. Under the hood Blackjack is a simple spreadsheet of odds. But that’s not much fun. So I also go by feeling. I vary my bets. I take risks occasionally if the energy is right. It is this mix of the coldly calculated and the deeply mysterious that make casino blackjack so fascinating. The opposite of this of course is playing frustrated. If you get mad at the table you start playing recklessly and voila you lose real big and real quick and you get really mad at the dealer. And then the Security goons repel down from the ceiling and drag your broke ass away and break it some more.

7) Pocket your profits. This is THE key. I play at the $10.00 tables mostly, and whenever I get a winning hand from Splitting or Doubling Down I am rewarded with a different color chip. These go immediately into my back pocket, where they stay. So during the whole evening it appeared that I was just breaking even. Just once though, when the pitboss was changing the cards, I asked Tracy the dealer to ‘color me up’ because it was getting uncomfortable to be sitting, literally, on all of these profits. When I pulled out my stash the frat boys gaped in astonishment and then set up a deafening chant of “Santa Cruz! Santa Cruz!” When Tracy the dealer stopped laughing she gave me a pretty purple $500.00 chip and I put it in my back pocket and sat down on my stake again. And that shut up the frat boys – for awhile.

8) Stay focused. This would seem as obvious as staying sober. But casinos will go to any extreme to grab your attention AWAY from your rent money on the table. Above each table at New York, New York is a big screen High Definition TV tuned to a sports channel. And each table is tuned to a different one, so in view for each player are about 3 different sports highlight shows. Add to that the thumpin’ soundtrack pulsing throughout the casino (Tracy and I harmonized on the old Culture Club and Scorpions songs), the super hot cocktail waitresses and the concoctions that they provide and you have the perfect storm of distraction: Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll AND Sports. Oh, where did all my chips go?

9) Play the tables, not the machines. Blackjack machines are boring. And boredom leads to frustration, which leads to the “Max Bet” button, which leads you to wonder why you sat down here in the first place. You may lose less at the machines, but you won’t have any fun. And fun is why I am here.

10) Be nice to your dealer and don’t piss off the pit boss. Face up blackjack means that you never (and I mean never in 30 foot high letters of fire) you NEVER touch your cards. Once your bet is in it’s little circle you don’t even put your hands on the table. Instead you indicate your intentions with a couple of simple hand gestures. And there is a reason for this. A reason that the pickled frat boys kept forgetting. They kept announcing their intentions, loudly, until Tracy had to lean over and proclaim very distinctly: “The. Camera. Can’t. Hear. You.” And that shut them up. For awhile.

11) Walk away when you’re done. Have fun and lose your gambling money. That’s what it’s for. Then go see the shows, ride the rides and campout in the buffets. When the chips in front of me are gone I call it a night, whether or not I have any profits in my backpocket. Furthermore, I have a set amount for each day that I gamble, so I don’t blow it all on the first day. This time though I had to leave because after 12 Sprites from Jen I had to pee like nobody’s business.

So that’s it. My 11 rules of having fun at Blackjack. Of course this wasn’t what I told 29 Palms when he asked me why I was winning and he was losing. He wouldn’t have understood my strategies in his advanced state of marination. So I told him I was winning because I was gay. He considered that, took another hookah drag of his milky brown cocktail of crud, announced “OKAY!” and gave me a fist bump.

All in all it was a great evening for everyone. I had a blast playing cards in my favorite environment, which was my sole objective (though I left with $500 more than I came with). Tracy the dealer had a great time because she didn’t have an empty table to stare at for 8 hours. The New York, New York casino had a great time because by my calculations they took in about $1,000 an hour in profit from our one table. And the Frat kids had a great time, even if they would pay for it the next morning – and the next month when their parent’s Visa bill came in.

Angus McMahan
angusmcmahan@gmail.com

P.S. Unpacking I found another $100.00 chip. D’oh!

There is one good thing about New Years'. I mean afterwards, when you're cleaning up after yourself. As you totter about, picking up bits of crepe paper, squashed noise makers, spilled champagne glasses and mysteriously empty CD cases, consider this, the one good thing about New Years: It's mostly recyclable.

So, as you drag your party detritus out to the curb with sour stomach, pounding head, and thickening body try and feel good about yourself. Try to ignore those freshly broken resolutions that also get recycled, year after year. And consider this:

The reason that new years resolutions keep getting swept up is that they are merely 'resolutions'. Not laws, not commandments, but a term that sounds like the first paragraph of a grant proposal. Re-solution seems to indicate that you've failed at it once already. Might as well be new years ideas - or whims - wishes.

Another reason why resolutions die faster than the Christmas tree is that they are made spur-of-the-moment, giving them all the force and gravity of, say, a balloon.

Still though, the classic cliche of solemn year-end promises carries some curious cultural weight, which is why they bring such universal misery. It's a test we fail every year because we didn't study.

But not this year. No, this year I wrote out my new years resolutions right after Thanksgiving, before my Christmas list. They wouldn't become binding for five weeks or so, but in that time I could weed out the unattainables (world peace / no red lights, ever, for anyone / my own thought controlled radio station), research the rest and get some emotional oomph behind them. Rather like casting a spell, but with more of an anal/guy flavor.

By Yule the graphs were done, copies made, friends told. Equipment checked. Calendar prepped. Anxious little squares waited next to eager crayons. The new year couldn't come quick enough - I had to force myself to be bad those last few days. No fair growing ahead of schedule!

So now we're into it, and I won't say it's been a breeze, but it's pleasing work, if that's possible.

This year I resolve to:
-Not give money to bad street musicians.
-Do the dishes once a day, rather than once we're out of everything. (When you dine off of a saucer using the pickle fork and a souvenir spoon from Hoover dam - you're out of control.)
-Take the credit cards out of my wallet, put them in a sealed envelope, in a cage of wolverines, in a safety deposit box, in a faraway town that I don't even like - and then lose the key.
-Not waste time on bad music, bad conversation, bad food, bad TV, movies, religions, sports, thoughts, or feelings.
-I resolve to finally have the courage to laugh out loud when people say: "Do you see what I'm saying?"
-How 'bout deciding which program to watch before turning on the TV? Attaching a 5lb. weight to the remote?
-I will buy more materials and ingredients and less products. If you buy it, you own it, but if you make it - it's yours.
-I resolve to do my laundry before I'm reduced to wearing my raingear and Christmas stockings to the laundromat.
-I will cut up the rule books and make lemonade. No. Wait.
-I will be intolerant of intolerance.
-I will park my bicycle in front of my car, the book case in front of the TV, the guitar in front of the stereo, and the stationery in front of the phone.
-And I solemnly vow to lose the same ten pounds over and over and over again.

Some of these may be easier than others.

Angus McMahan
angusmcmahan@gmail.com