More Car Stuff
What the dealer said about water in the car was not correct. For one, more water appeared on the driver’s side floor when the car was not being steam cleaned. There aren’t many ways to get water in the car when it’s not actually raining or you haven’t been careless with your Poland Springs bottle. In this case, we believe the airconditioner condensate drain is responsible. Even though it’s November, the a/c has been on because we didn’t understand some of the details of the climate control system. In Honda Civics any setting that involves the front windshield defogger will turn on the a/c, and pushing the a/c toggle will not turn it off. If not for this, we might not have noticed until next summer.
We have an appointment for the fairly inept dealer to look at the car on Monday. In fact, I’d rather our shop deal with it, but we’d have a hard time getting them to pay for it, while the lemon law requires them to fix it to my satisfaction. I did talk to a manager who seemed to grasp how annoyed I am about it. That said, a clogged drain should be easy to fix, and taking up the front carpet and cleaning it adequately should be possible even for these guys.
A use for Asperger’s Syndrome?
Having Asperger’s sucks. I’m not into the big “proud of who I am and won’t change” thing, and if there was a cure I’d take it in an instant. I’m tired of constantly embarrassing myself and not noticing until weeks or months later. However I may have found a use for it: torturing used car dealers.
As I wrote previously, I lost my car in an accident. This sucked. We’ve been using Zip Car to get around, and it’s pretty cool. However, winter is hovering, and we’ve been starting to think that having a car again would be nice. And warm.
My previous car purchases were sleek, black sporty things. But I do so little driving myself (because of the headaches) these days, and my spouse is completely uninterested in the finer points of cars. They’re just a way to get around. With that in mind, I hit the internet to shop for used Honda Civics.
Everything you’ve ever heard about buying used cars is true. I have some edge in that while I’ve only bought one other car myself, I’ve watched my dad torture dealers before, which is pretty easy for him since he knows more about cars than most dealers do.
Our criteria made things a little harder. We don’t care about much, but we wanted a car that had never been smoked in, ABS, and a manual transmission. It turns out that all Civics after 2000 have ABS. While I’ve had some trouble getting private sellers on Craig’s List to answer questions about smoking, it turns out that dealers these days only have unstinky cars on the lots and send ones with smoke smells straight to auction because they are too hard to sell. Manual transmissions, on the other hand, are awfully hard to find.
After a couple of weeks of fruitless questioning of car sellers, I found a likely prospect on cars.com. It is a white four-door, 2001, with a standard transmission. It also had a rare clean one-owner Carfax report. I made an appointment with the dealer, and we rented a Zip Car to go look at it.
It was a perfectly reasonable car, except that it smelled. Not of smoke, but of mildew. What probably happened is that it was steam cleaned but not allowed to dry out properly. This was pretty darned lame. However, it wasn’t a deal breaker, because smells can be cleaned up.
I had a Buddha-like lack of attachment to buying this car. It was the first one I looked at. I wouldn’t mind not having to look more, but I didn’t care either way. This is a good attitude to have when looking to buy something expensive. The dealer, on the other hand, didn’t want to let me out of the place without extracting a deposit. More fool them.
The car had been listed on the web at $7700. This is just about the blue book price (something easy to check on the web). Word from the dealer is that they’d originally listed it at $9900, to which I can only say I want what they are smoking. The car had been traded in two months ago and sat on the lot ever since because no one wanted a manual. The hapless car guy asked me what price would make me sign an agreement to buy the car that day. I’d been doing some thinking, so I told them $6900.
Now we get to the part where I unleash the full powers of Aspergers on the unsuspecting manager. I have to work hard to get along with people in the best of circumstances, and I do not care one bit whether or not the manager of a car dealership likes me or not. Thus when he said things like “You’ve got to meet me half-way here!” I answered with things like “Why?” The manager tried asking me if I’d seen any other cars at that price, with full confidence that I hadn’t, and that the logic of it would force me to relent on price. In fact, I hadn’t seen any other Civics at that price, but I didn’t see that as a reason to agree with him when I’d only looked at one car. My spouse thinks that this was the funniest part. It doesn’t sound funny as I write it, but that’s because you can’t see the manager’s face. Since nothing he said to me accomplished anything, he finally caved. I signed an agreement with some big, fat contingencies on it.
One of them was that we get the car checked by our own mechanic. The dealership tried to talk me out of doing this because “Your mechanic isn’t a certified Honda mechanic, and ours is!” Right. It turns out that their certified mechanics has overlooked belts, hoses and a thermostat overdue for replacement, a leaking axle boot, and a pressing need for a coolant flush. By then the guy we were working with looked like he was going to cry. I got them to agree to do all the needed work. They’ve been dragging their feet on it a bit, but we expect to have the whole thing wrapped up by Friday.
Assuming nothing happens to derail the sale, my next big decision is whether to apply a Darwin fish or a Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem to the car’s rear.
Wired Hard 4 is out at Circlet.com
One of my editing projects, the latest installment of Circlet’s gay speculative fiction anthologies, Wired Hard 4, is now available. Check out the link for purchasing information. There’s a not safe for work excerpt on Circlet. Here’s another!
Free Smut: Story on Fishnet
Hi all. Or as “all” as my readership gets.
Today I have a free one for you folks. My story Waiting for a Train is available on Fishnet, a wonderful source of free smut on the interwebz.
More Zombie Sex News
According to Google Analytics, posts about zombies and sex are the most popular on my site. Mind you, this isn’t saying much, as the total number of visits is quite small from day to day, so that it’s not possible to say much about my blog traffic that isn’t lost in the margin of error. Even though I am not a big zombie sex fan, I feel a need to report zombie sex news when it comes to my attention. If anyone feels that they can do better justice to the subjects of zombies, sex and erotica, please let me know and I’ll post a link to your blog.
Zombie sex fans will be pleased to know that Dan Savage’s sex advice column Savage Love addresses zombie sex this week.
ERWA Reviews “Up for Grabs.”
The Erotica Readers and Writers Association, one of our favorite destinations on the web, has reviewed our gender-queer anthology Up for Grabs: Exploring the Worlds of Gender.
The reviewer says, “[a]fter reading Up for Grabs, I have one complaint. It’s much too short!” Read the whole review here.
Porn Parody Contest Winner!
You may remember that I proposed a porn parody contest once upon a time. After an agony of indecision, I have chosen a winner–Julie Cox’s story “I Want to Suck Your…” Without further delay, I present the winner for your enjoyment.
The Word Fuck in Dictionaries
There’s a cute article in Slate about sex words in dictionaries. I remember my Latin 201 teacher patiently explaining the complex meanings of “irrumo” to counter the Victorian editors of our Catullus text. They had footnoted it as “bastard.” Compared to the Roman taxonomy of profanity, I’ve always felt that American profanity is pretty weak.
Now That’s Publicity
Recently I was puzzled upon reading an author’s rant about publicity in the era of social networking. She was unhappy because her publisher expects her to maintain a web site but doesn’t pay her to do so. Isn’t publicity the publisher’s job? Well, she might have had a point, but then I read this article about author Joe McGinness, who attempted to bid over $60,000 for a dinner with Sarah Palin before being disqualified on the grounds that she doesn’t like him. Joe McGinness has written books on Nixon and the Alaskan oil trade, and is working on one on Palin. From now on web sites so that fans can look up an author’s other works are totally passé. I’m going to expect my authors to shell out thousands of dollars on dinners with (in)famous people or I won’t take them seriously.
For Filthy-Minded Philologists
If you enjoy words, especially dirty words, check out The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (that’s a hypertext version, but you can get plain text and other formats if you google around).
Pick a rude word. I went with vagina (though in fact I had to search for “a woman’s private parts.”)
Now search for all the synononyms in the dictionary.
I got bumbo, Carvel’s Ring, cauliflower, cock alley, commodity, doodle sack, fruitful vine, madge, money, muff, notch, quim, water-mill.
Now you try it.
If you feel like posting your words, you may wish to do so on the main blog instead of LJ so you don’t duplicate someone else’s search. On the other hand, I don’t get such a big volume of comments that it matters much. But there’s a linkback if you wish.
