On driving.
As previously tweeted (or twittered, or twat, or whatever past-tense
verb form you, dear reader, personally prefer, as far be it from me to
get all prescriptivist on you), I always feel a little beat scammed
when I pay someone to change my oil. Something about the fact that it
takes less than 10 minutes, and that I know for sure that people do it
themselves, all the time, with no problem leads me to feel just the
slightest bit like someone is pulling something over on me. But then,
it's never quite strong enough to make me want to learn to do it
myself, and I've been assured by several people who know about such
things that it's really kind of a pain and not all that much of an
overall benefit to do, so I guess I'll just have to feel slightly
gringo-ish every time. It's the same way with everything automotive,
really. I've got kind of a complex about cars, being as how there's
this cultural stereotype that mechanics are basically subhuman in
their level of duplicity, second only to the guy that sold you the
damn car to begin with (and possibly also behind lawyers). Added to
this is that in a general sense I love tinkering with things, so
probably I could learn how to do car shit myself, but it just doesn't
quite click for me for some vague reason (probably because I don't
want to end up ruining something that costs more than anything else
I've ever owned and that I can't afford to easily replace). But
anyway, there it is. I hate cars, and everything dealing with them. I mean, if you think about it, it's an odd thing, the whole
relationship to cars anyway. You've got several of the most
stereotypically loathed and distrusted occupations, you've got the
most expensive thing that most people will own apart from a house, and
they probably have no idea how it works. The number one example of
inefficient and maddening government bureaucracy in most people's
minds is the DMV. The whole endeavour of driving is tied to the price
of gas, which is almost totally outside of anyone's actual control and
leads us to wars, international incidents, and generally every kind of
bad diplomatic situation that's ever occurred. It ruins the
environment, clogs up our cities, leads to (sub)urban sprawl and
generally makes the world a worse place. And yet, contradictorily, it also allows our modern society to
basically exist. And driving is kind of a hell of a lot of fun, as
I've recently re-learned, at least when you're not always driving with
someone who inveterately screeches back-seat-driving at you. When I
was a younger person I was consistently amazed that I could get in my
car and within a relatively short period of time, be somewhere
completely different. There's this whole infrastructure of highways
and gas stations and rest stops and everything else, and you can just
DRIVE. Off you go. Stop wherever you want. Or don't. It's basically
amazing. So I guess I kind of see why we do it.
verb form you, dear reader, personally prefer, as far be it from me to
get all prescriptivist on you), I always feel a little beat scammed
when I pay someone to change my oil. Something about the fact that it
takes less than 10 minutes, and that I know for sure that people do it
themselves, all the time, with no problem leads me to feel just the
slightest bit like someone is pulling something over on me. But then,
it's never quite strong enough to make me want to learn to do it
myself, and I've been assured by several people who know about such
things that it's really kind of a pain and not all that much of an
overall benefit to do, so I guess I'll just have to feel slightly
gringo-ish every time. It's the same way with everything automotive,
really. I've got kind of a complex about cars, being as how there's
this cultural stereotype that mechanics are basically subhuman in
their level of duplicity, second only to the guy that sold you the
damn car to begin with (and possibly also behind lawyers). Added to
this is that in a general sense I love tinkering with things, so
probably I could learn how to do car shit myself, but it just doesn't
quite click for me for some vague reason (probably because I don't
want to end up ruining something that costs more than anything else
I've ever owned and that I can't afford to easily replace). But
anyway, there it is. I hate cars, and everything dealing with them. I mean, if you think about it, it's an odd thing, the whole
relationship to cars anyway. You've got several of the most
stereotypically loathed and distrusted occupations, you've got the
most expensive thing that most people will own apart from a house, and
they probably have no idea how it works. The number one example of
inefficient and maddening government bureaucracy in most people's
minds is the DMV. The whole endeavour of driving is tied to the price
of gas, which is almost totally outside of anyone's actual control and
leads us to wars, international incidents, and generally every kind of
bad diplomatic situation that's ever occurred. It ruins the
environment, clogs up our cities, leads to (sub)urban sprawl and
generally makes the world a worse place. And yet, contradictorily, it also allows our modern society to
basically exist. And driving is kind of a hell of a lot of fun, as
I've recently re-learned, at least when you're not always driving with
someone who inveterately screeches back-seat-driving at you. When I
was a younger person I was consistently amazed that I could get in my
car and within a relatively short period of time, be somewhere
completely different. There's this whole infrastructure of highways
and gas stations and rest stops and everything else, and you can just
DRIVE. Off you go. Stop wherever you want. Or don't. It's basically
amazing. So I guess I kind of see why we do it.
