i told myself i would only post this if it said i was someone cool

yeah, lady, you're gonna need a whole new flux capacitor!

those who know me know that i have abominable luck with cars. part of it is my own fault, but part of it seems to be some karmic hex. a friend once suggested that i was a crooked mechanic in a past life and was working all that negative karma out this go round. i am beginning to agree.

my car was sounding loud, so i brought it in to meineke to get a new muffler. in addition to the loudness, there was also a rattle, which sounded like it was coming from the exhaust system somehow. i was totally prepared to have to buy a new muffler. i was not prepared for what they told me. bearing in mind that meineke is about an hour away, over the mountain and through some extremely curvy roads, imagine how i felt when they showed me my two back tires with about an inch wide strip of metal showing through. so i got 2 new tires, an oil change, and an alignment. the exhaust problem was that the after-market ties that someone had used to put the muffler back on after some major collision that i have determined occurred at some point during the life of my car were the wrong kind, and the muffler and tailpipe were vibrating against them. the mechanic did some heating and bending to alleviate the problem, but said it would not totally be fixed until i replaced the entire system.

something else interesting? vw's have two mufflers cause they're so fucking loud. so the cost will be around $400 to replace them both. and the {mumble} plate inside the muffler which is supposed to dampen the sound has completely rusted out, which is why greta is purring extra loud these days.

so i left still having roughly the same problem i did when i got there, though no longer in danger of imminent death driving back home. however, there is now another weird thing happening. on the drive to the car place, a tiny wisp of smoke arose from my steering wheel where the wheel meets the steering column. at the time i was alarmed and tapped the wheel, thinking that the car was about to burst into flames, casino style. didn't happen. there was only that one tiny wisp. but apparently something in my steering is fucked. the wheels seem to adjust slightly to the right or left every now and then, and i am continuously having to adjust my steering slightly. so what i said earlier about not being in imminent danger of flaming death? probably not true. and i have to drive an hour back over the mountain to meineke to seee if it was something they did or they can fix. it's probably that my wheel is bent. that will probably cost me approximately one arm and one leg.

my friend's hypothesis is sounding more and more likely.

maybe she can parlay her notoriety into some teeth

there was a story on local news tonight about a family being menaced by a skunk, and granny crabtree gettin bit by it. seriously, the woman spoke some words in the snippet they showed to get you to watch the whole story at eleven, but it was some secret appalachian recluse language.