January 27, 2008
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The Daily News
1 Happy stuff, everybody!
2 Whew.3 I watched this DVD called The U.S. vs. John Lennon last night. Pretty unsensational, but just fine for a rainy afternoon.4 It was a pretty gift-wrapped look at Lennon's political battle to maintain his U.S. citizenship when the Nixon administration wanted him out.
5 At the time, the war raged, and it outraged Lennon so much that he began touring and protesting loudly, with a simple message: peace.
6 But his influence on literally millions of people scared the daylights out of the Nixonian white house, even though publicly they blew him off.
7 Anyway, to keep it short, he clearly was being handed deportation papers due really to his political dissent rather than any real reasons.
8 Well, he beat the big boys and was given permanent residence on his birthday AND on the exact day of his son Sean's birth.
9 Elated, reporters advanced on him, and Lennon met the throngs with his usual acerbic wit. Here's the passage:
Reporter: Mr. Lennon, do you feel any antagonism toward the people who have attempted to have you deported?
John Lennon: Absolutely not. I believe time wounds all heels.10 Amen.11 Moving on: Yesterday I thought it might be a good idea to try to fix things. I was inspired when my niece, Amy came and visited, we sold her one of our Toyota's. It needed wiper blades, so we took off to Kragen's.
12 It's been a while since I changed wiper blades, so naturally I figured by the year 2008, they probably have made advancements on how to change a wiper blade.
13 Wrong.
14 I figured by 2008 you could buy a replacement, and it ought to be as easy as replacing an ink cartridge.
15 Wrong.
16 It came with an entire erector set neck that had to be assembled with screws the size of rice grains, and which required about forty special tools, an 80-page manual in fourteen different languages, and a CD-Rom.
17 Just perfect for the guy trying to put one of those on a window in the driving rain.
18 Because when DO most people change their blades? During storms, of course!
19 Okay, so it's a bit of an exaggeration.
20 We also went over to the gas station to put air in the tires.
21 Now here's something I'd like to know: why do tires a) put any pertinent information about them in black, and b) put any information other than how much air you have to put in them ON them? Who cares about anything except amount of air?
22 I put on my reading glasses and knelt down to read the PSI info. My knees got soaked and I finally got it. I put the nozzle over the little air thingy and it began rapidly to deflate. My pants got soaked at the knees, and the tire nearly went flat, but I recovered like the champ I am and blew it up to the size of a balloon.
23 Eventually it all evened out, Amy got the car safely up to Sac, and I decided to take fixing things to the next level, and decided to fix the driver's seat belt in the TOOOOOONDRA.
24 The driver's seat belt in the TOOOOOONDRA has come to look like a long, twisting piece of taffy, as you'd see coming out of a machine at the Beach/Boardwalk in Santa Cruz. Sometimes it's so twisted that I just throw it over my shoulder to fool cops, at least until I can get it home and screw with it.
25 Coming right off the experience with the wiper blades, I was ready.
26 I went to the base of the thing, popped the cover and saw that the mechanism of the thing was straight and correct.
27 So!
28 All I needed to do was to follow its straightness up through the loop and untwist it.
29 I moved slowly, decisively, and with meticulous attention to detail, I began untwisting the thing from the bottom up. It was working; it straightened right out, and as I moved slowly toward the apex, I began to notice that it twisted so tightly that the entire thing came to look like a corkscrew. I jammed it by tugging a bit too hard, and as of this morning, it looks as though I'm going to need to wear it as though I'm a military officer.
30 Oy.
31 A day of one mechanical delight after another. A day after me own heart.
32 Ah, vuttevuh.
33 You all have a beautiful Monday.
34 Peace.
~H~
http://www.xanga.com/bharrington
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