Adventures in Truck shopping

I’ve been looking to buy a car recently. Since I have a motorcycle that sometimes needs towing, and other big shit that I often carry around, I decided to get a truck. A small truck, that wouldn’t be too bad on gas, but would tow all that I needed, and would be kick ass to take to the drive-in theater. My budget is $2,000. I’m not looking for anything fancy – dings, dents don’t matter – so long as the engine is good and running.

In Lynn I found a woman selling a 1997 Ford Ranger with a straight 4-cylinder engine. Ford’s straight cylinder engines are notoriously long-lasting, so although this car is 10 years old and has 150,000 miles… For less than $2 grand, what can you expect? I came by for a test drive with my buddy John. Outside looked great by my standards. It started up without a hitch, and we popped the hood to inspect the engine which also appeared to be fine. All visible belts were looking good, all the fluids were at their proper levels (although it needed an oil change pretty badly). I took it for a test drive around the neighborhood to test the acceleration, braking, etc., all of which seemed to work fine. I ended up buying the truck for $1,500.

I paid her yesterday. Today, I spent my morning buying insurance and registering the car. I made a down-payment on the insurance policy in the amount of $406, and since the agency I work through it run by old ladies, I spent about an hour and a half in there setting things up. After my fun in the insurance office, I sat through traffic to get to the RMV. Where I spend another hour waiting in line, filling out pointless forms, and shelling out another $203 for my title, registration, and sales tax. As if the government couldn’t give me any more reasons to hate it – I had to pay $50 for a new title. That’s right, $50 for a fancy sheet of paper that says the car belongs to me, and another $30 for the plates. I never had to pay for my motorcycle plate, but for some reason you have to pay for car plates. And you know it’s just outrageous – prisoners make those plates, I can’t imagine they’re paying them very much, or that the metal they are made of is expensive. Those damn plates probably cost them less than a dollar, and I have to pay $30 for them? Grrrr!

If I had to pay for an inspection, I would’ve been throwing another $50 at the car. Luckily, I guess, I never got that far. Shortly before getting on the highway to get home, I noticed the transmission slip a little. I thought it was just a fluke and kept on driving. Pretty soon, the clutch disengaged and the car was just rolling. Hitting the gas would make the engine rev and nothing else. I pulled over to see what was going on. Stepping out of the truck, there’s a nice big puddle of oil beneath the front-right tire, as well as oil all over the wheel well and tire and just everywhere. I popped the hood to inspect further. The engine oil was fine, just as dark as before, but at the proper level. The transmission dip, however, was bone-dry. There’s yer prahblem! You ain’t got not transmission fluid! I couldn’t see exactly what went wrong – whether there was a hole in the transmission itself, or if it was just a leaky line. But the fact remains, there was no oil in that transmission, and I had been driving for a bit without any of it.

A state trooper comes along to see what’s going on. I told him I had just bought the car today, and all of the transmission fluid has just leaked out. Another guy pulls up behind in an unmarked car and civilian clothing, he’s a cop too. I repeat the story to him, adding that I planned on towing the car back to the seller’s house and getting my money back, so I was removing the plates. Snappily he says to me: “If you leave that there without the plates, that’s abandonment of a vehicle, I will arrest you.” Giggling at his reaffirmation that cops are useless assholes I replied: “are you deaf? I’m going to pay for a private tow to put this piece of shit in her driveway, I’m not abandoning it.” He told me not to get mouthy with him, and the trooper called in a tow for me. The trucker told me the tow back to Lynn would cost $120. Since I, like most other normal people, do not carry that much cash with me, I offered to write a check, but he wouldn’t take it. I called the seller a few times, and she agreed to pay for the tow.

Now she’s going to have a mechanic look at it and see what’s wrong. But I know what’s wrong lady, there was a big leak in the transmission, there’s no fluid in there. I’m no mechanic, but the odds are that that transmission is completely fucked. Even if the mechanic comes back saying it was a leaky tube or some such thing (which is impossible, for that much oil to leak that quickly, it’s got to be a complete rupture), I’ll be asking for my money back and hopefully she won’t put up much of a fight.

I paid you $1,500 for a car that you said had no significant problems. A transmission leak is pretty fucking significant. The car didn’t even make it to my driveway, you owe me at least what I paid for it, if not all the other money I spent on insurance and registration as well.

I’m waiting for a call back. Updates to come.

Men (or Women if you are one) Are Not Machines.

There are benefits to understanding and applying science. They are innumerable – medicine for the body and mind, understanding of nature, predicting storms, peering into the stars. But I think science has a limit when it comes to the essence of what it is to be human. Such questions can only be pondered dialectically, philosophically, with the mind. Love, compassion, hate, greed, ambition, jealousy.

I don’t think psychologists will ever pick apart the physical brain enough to ever understand why we fight and hate, or why we love. Ultimately the physical search is futile. I’m finding it hard to explain this at the moment. I’ll just finish off with a quote:

… Although the workings of the world never contravene mechanical considerations, they only make sense, and become fully intelligible, in the light of metaphysical considerations; that the world’s mechanics subserve its design.

If this were clearly understood, no trouble would arise. Folly enters when we try to “reduce” metaphysical terms and matters to mechanical ones: worlds to systems, particulars to categories, impressions to analyses, and realities to abstractions. This is the madness of the last three centuries, the madness which so many of us – as individuals – go through, and by which all of us are tempted. It is this Newtonian-Lockean-Cartesian view – variously paraphrased in medicine, biology, politics, industry etc. – which reduces men to machines, automata, puppets, dolls, blank tablets, formulae, ciphers, systems, and reflexes. It is this, in particular, which has rendered so much of our recent and current medical literature unfruitful, unreadable, inhuman, and unreal. (Awakenings, Oliver Sacks; Vintage Books 1999)

The Duty of Revolution

Oddly enough, as an anarchist, I seem to support a good number of my arguments with the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and writings from American revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, et. al. I also love a cold pint of Samuel Adams now and again, but I’m pretty sure the beer and the man are in no way related. Today, while reading the Declaration of Independence once again, I found a few lines to be of particular importance, considering President Bush and his never ending hubris and quest to expand the executive branch to the point of dictatorship.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

It is a shame, I think, what has happened to this country. It started out with some pretty good ideas, equality for all, power of the people. But when one looks at American history we can see that these documents have been ignored completely since the beginning. There has always been, in America, the right and the left. Today there are those still in vehement support of Bush, the ignorant willing to passively submit themselves to tyrannical rule; there are pacifists, folk who simply don’t care – they are distracted by the society constructed to distract them – then there is the left. When speaking of Democrats, the left is just as ignorant as the right in that is supports subordination, and restraints on freedom. Then there is the far left, the revolutionaries, the free-thinkers, the anarchists.

I just can’t take living in this absolutely outrageous fascist state anymore. I hope Vermont splits from the union, they have far better ideas for government than what is happening in our sorry state. Free thinking is so pre-9/11. These days any criticism of the president is taken as treachery. To this I would answer with another figure from American History, Teddy Roosevelt:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Think for yourself. Question authority.