Tag: bullet

Categories
Physical World

A New Approach to Alternative Energy

I don’t know about all this alternative energy stuff.  Renewable energy.  Solar energy.  Wind energy. Lunar energy. Geothermal energy.  Meteor energy.

It annoys me, mainly because the word energy has been hijacked by so many pseudo-scientific charlatans claiming to heal you with crystals and auras and mantras, except they never use the word energy.  Chancers always say energies, and they never, ever tell you what it means, because they don’t know.

However, enough railing against fake healers and ego-worriers.  Let us speak of energy.

As we all know now, the world has passed the point of peak oil, which simply means we’ve used more than half of all the oil on the planet.  In a little over a hundred years, we’ve sucked out half the oil laid down by millions upon millions of years of decaying dinosaurs.

Do you need to be a genius to figure out that this is not good?

I don’t think so.  I think not.  No.

Now, what is the principal driver of all this oil-sucking?  What motivates this prodigious drainage of hydrocarbons from within the earth’s crust?

What else?  The most powerful force ever to propel humankind.

Greed.

Instead of converting this huge global resource into useful stuff through the polymeric magic of modern chemistry, we turn it into the discarded dross and chaff that circles our oceans — the biggest man-made object visible from Space.  We burn it.  We destroy it in our haste and our greed and our personal madness.

We do more than that.  By constantly reproducing, without bound, without end, without limit, we guarantee that the oil resources disappear at an exponentially-increasing rate, which means that Peak Oil isn’t really half way at all.  If you thought we burned the first half fast, wait till you see what happens over the next thirty years.  All modern wars will be about energy or water, and you saw the start of it with Afghanistan and Iraq, dressed up as the War on Terror.  Watch this space: you’ll see lots more war on terror, but always in places with oil or water.  What a coincidence.

Why can’t we just chill?

If we relaxed a bit, if we chilled a bit, if we did less running around, and if some of us could keep their dicks in their pants, there might be hope for the future.

You see, I think shortage of energy is only part of the problem.

I think too much energy is also the reason we’re in trouble.  Too much energy put into making money and building stuff and running around and lighting cities all night and sailing gigantic cruise ships around the world, and a whole pile of other stuff that uses up dead dinosaurs.  There are only so many dead dinosaurs and we’re running out of them, so it’s time to chill.

Our local university has a degree course on sustainable energy, which I think is great.  The more we harness renewables, the less dead-dinosaur-stuff we’ll burn, and I’m all in favour of that.  Solar power.  Wind-power, which is solar by another name.  Lunar power.  Geothermal, as long as we don’t chill the planet so much we wipe ourselves out anyway, though maybe we could balance global warming against Earth-cooling. Who knows?

I have a personal interest in this because my lazy swine of a son somehow managed to gain the points he needed for college despite lying around picking guitars and drinking beer, and he expressed an interest in this whole area of study.  He has a vaguely scientific inclination, as I do myself.

Bullet, I said to him, isn’t it fair to say that you’re a lazy bastard?

It is, he agreed.

And you came from a long line of lazy bastards, as I did myself?

True, he nodded.

Well, I went on, all of this energy crisis is caused by people running around everywhere trying to do things the whole time, right?

Right, he shrugged.

So, I said, instead of researching alternative, renewable sources of energy …

Bullet isn’t stupid.  He could see where this was going, and as he lay back on the sofa, reaching for his Gibson, he cracked a can of beer.

I could research … he muttered, idly picking out a melancholy blues lick …

You could research …

He grinned, and we intoned, as one lazy bastard

Renewable sources of lethargy.

Categories
Our lives

Father’s Day

It’s Father’s Day and my children cooked for me.

Happy Father’s Day, Father, said my son.

Happy Father’s Day, Father, said my daughter.

Here’s a special Father’s Day dinner we cooked for you.

It’s beer, I said.

We know, they beamed.  Your favourite.  Packed with all the nutrients and vitamins necessary for a healthy, happy life.

I was touched.  So thoughtful, I managed, choking back a manly tear.

Not at all, Father, said Bullet.  We looked it up on the Internet, didn’t we Sister?

We did, Bullet.  We did indeed.

It’s a tradition, Bullet explained.  This is the feast of Saint Father,  the patron saint of beer and also of driving around aimlessly at night collecting teenagers from discos.  A mediaeval drunken ne’er-do-well.

I know that guy, I said.

So anyway, said my children, in close harmony, we also made you this great roast-beef dinner to go with your beer meal.

We bought it in Spiderquinn, said Bullet.  As a homage to Fatherman.

Thank God you didn’t say an homage, I replied but my surprise was genuine.  I always found the Batquinn stuff pretty good.

Ah, it’s ok, said C#1, better than Bananaquinn anyway but that’s where we got it.  I was meeting my friends there to collect my ticket.

For ..?

Yes.

Pink?

Yes.

In Thomond Park, tonight?

Yes.  Any chance of a —

Lift?  Glug-glug-glug-glug-glug.  Ooops, sorry, now I’m over the limit.

Saint Father’s Day, muttered Bullet, is a day for football and beer.

That’s my boy, I told him.  No fucking Pink for you.

No indeed, Father.

Son.  Have a beer.

Why thank you, Father.

Did I ever show you how to roll a spliff?

You certainly did Father.  I was nine, and it’s a skill that has stood well to me over the years.




A

Categories
Personal

Growing Up and the Leaving Cert

Bullet’s doing the Leaving Cert at the moment, and as usual he’s completely laid back.

What am I talking about? He’s horizontal.

His Les Paul Epiphone is plugged into a tiny practice amp and he’s  draped across an armchair, idly running off quiet blues licks as he watches the World Cup.  He has a bag of nachos beside him on the floor and he reaches down occasionally for a mouthful.

When I was his age, doing the Leaving Cert, I was losing my mind with worry and fear, and a bit of loathing, but this bastard is chilled.

Today he had the second of the hard maths papers but he seems to have handled it fairly well.  We had a good look over it and it brought me right back there, but he seems to have knocked a reasonable hole in it.

We have much in common: he loves mathematics, physics and English, as I do myself.  He’s a lazy bastard, as I am myself.  And he has no respect for authority, much like his father.

I wandered into his room earlier to wish him well in tomorrow’s exam.  He was staring at the PC, and a small vodka bottle with half an inch of dark liquid in it rested quietly beside him.

What’s that? I asked.

Not sure, he said.  I found it in the wardrobe.  Probably Jaegermeister, by the colour of it.

I nodded.  Are you drinking it now?

No, he said.  It must have been there from when I had to hide these things.

Right, I told him.  Well, go easy on the drink while you’re studying.

Right-ee-o, he grinned, and turned back to his computer.

How times change.

_________

More Bullet posts

Categories
Our lives

Learning to Drive

I’ve been teaching Bullet to drive and so far it hasn’t been too stressful.

Apart from one or two brushes with near-certain death, things have gone fairly well and I haven’t hit him, nor has he struck me.  Both of us, however, almost got out and murdered the gobshite who leaned on his horn for five minutes while Bullet struggled to get re-started at a roundabout, cutting out each time under the stress of the jerk behind us blaring his inadequate little peeper.

Right, Bullet, I said.  Out of gear.  On with the handbrake.  Start it up and ease out the clutch.  Plenty of power now.  That’s great.

Bullet is of the X-Box generation whose hand-eye co-ordination is honed to  a better level than an F-16 pilot.  The only drawback is his tendency to fire indiscriminately at people  in the street and his complete disregard for human life.

I, on the other hand, come from the keyboard school of gaming.  Prince of Persia 1 and Doom 1, wandering around NAMA-style desolation-scapes, firing a pump-action shotgun at pig-demons.  This makes me a much safer driver than the youth of today.  The only time I lose control of the car is when I involuntarily slam it into a revenant and cut it to pieces with a chainsaw.

Luckily, Bullet, though young, is into retro.  He likes Motown and shit, which is more than I did at his age, and which speaks volumes for the self -assurance of today’s kids.   That’s why he always brings a chain-gun, a pump-action shotgun, a rocket-launcher and a BFG-9000 on our learner-driver trips.  You never know when you might be attacked by a cacodemon, a mancubus or a baron of Hell while out practising your hill-starts.

A quick burst from the chain-gun quietened the fool blowing his horn but it took all the good out of the day.   We’d  been looking forward to an afternoon of reversing around corners, blasting arachnotrons and taking out Hell Knights with a super shotgun.  But you know how it is.  Some days, one small annoyance can knock you off balance and nothing is any good after that.

And so it happened that, as we approached the roundabout and I was carefuly advising Bullet to take it nice and easy, we were attacked not only by a Spider Mastermind, but also by a Cyberdemon.

Jesus Christ, some days just get worse and worse.

Look, I advised Bullet.  Pull up the handbrake.  Relax.  Start the engine.  Put on the invulnerability sphere and fire your  BFG-9000 at the Spider Mastermind.

Ok Dad, he said.

Good lad, I told him.  Meanwhile, I’ll fire a rocket at the Cyberdemon, see if we can get them fighting.

Dad?  said Bullet.

Yes son?

Is this going to be in the test?

No son, I assured him.  The most you need fear in the test is a pig-demon sitting into your car.  A chain-saw will sort that out.

Categories
Rugby

Off to Thomond Park

Right.  The hour is almost at hand.

All my superstitious little rituals are complete.

The hip-flask is full of brandy.  The dog has been soundly beaten.  I’m wearing my Peter Griffin t-shirt that says Buy me another drink – you’re still ugly.  I have my lucky Pope-on-a-rope tied to my left ankle.  I’ve had a pre-match dinner of cabbage and ice cream.

What more can I do?

It’s time to wake the Bullet and head for town.  Come on, Bullet, you lazy teenaged dirtbag.  It’s nearly six o’clock.  Get up!

And so we begin the trudge we have made many, many times before.  The long walk, in hope, expectation, and a faint whiff of brandy.  We have met, and made peace, with the visiting supporters.  We have shared a bonding pint, and a song or even two, but now it’s time for us to divide, separate and go our own ways, if not in body, then at least in spirit.

Oh Jesus, here we go again.  The nerves won’t take it.

I’ll let you know later who won.

___________________

Later.

Munster 12 – Northampton 9

You’d have to wonder about people who follow any sport.  It isn’t entertainment and it isn’t fun, at least not when a game goes the way that one did.  Down to the wire.  Last-minute possession rugby to retain a slender lead.  A grim battle, fought largely between the two sets of forwards.  Hard, grinding struggle, decided by penalties, and by the unnerving, silent respect  of Thomond Park for the kicker.

The crowd are insane.  If there was a lens capable of focussing venom, the referee would been dissolved in a pool of French terror long ago.  The crowd have gone completely crazy, and when Paulie is binned, the crowd step into the breach, supplying the extra man for ten long, dug-in, back-to-the-wall minutes.

Paulie, trapped on the sideline, is like a madman.

I’m like a madman.  My son is like a madman.  The old guy next to him is like a madman.

A man of my age should not have to put up with that sort of anxiety, and the elements signal agreement by gliding a mist, a Carpenterian fog, over the stadium.  It moves.  We watch it flow over the wall and onto the pitch.  It lives.  You half expect a pack of howling werewolves to leap from the vapour but you know this insane crowd would rise up and tear those rash  lycanthropes to twitching shreds.

What does all this mean?  I don’t know, but it seems Northampton might be back in Limerick for the quarter final, having secured a losing bonus point to qualify as leading runners up.  It depends what happens in Pool 3 today.

So we face yet another nerve-tearing, blood-pounding, eye-popping, spit-flecked screamfest, but hey.  Isn’t that why we follow it?

Categories
Film

Avatar 3D

I went to see Avatar tonight with the Bullet and neither of us had a whole heap of expectations for it.  He’s even fussier than I am, though I don’t know where he got that characteristic from.  We expected to see some pretty good 3D effects,  and probably some fairly convincing computer-generated imagery, all wrapped around a convenient, if vacuous, plot-vehicle to justify the tech-trickery and to keep the value-for-money lobby quiet.

Instead, along with another four hundred Michael Caine impersonators, we got —

a cracking yarn, a completely-formed imaginary world, utterly convincing aliens, action, suspense, drama, taut interaction between the characters and a love story thrown in for good measure.  We got a very bad baddie, an evil corporation, a gigantic battle, and the best 3-dimensional effects I have ever seen.

About twelve years ago I saw the early versions of Disney’s 3D technology during a family holiday in Florida, so I was curious to know how it had evolved.

Here’s the answer: it’s evolved beyond recognition.

In this movie, you’re right there in the middle of the action and I have no idea how they do it.  Obviously, we both stole our glasses after the show, and therefore, tomorrow, I’ll conduct an experiment by rotating Bullet’s lens against mine to see if they’re polarised or if they have an interference grid etched on them.  If not, I’m stumped.  Out of ideas.  Any clever people here know how it’s done?

The special effects are staggering.  From the early publicity about this movie, you’d think the planet was populated by a race of Jar-Jar Binks lookalikes which in itself would be enough to nuke the whole place forthwith, but no.  It isn’t.  The characters are so  well-realised, and their movement is so well-rendered, that you forget you’re looking at a glorified cartoon.  For the duration of the film, you believe them.  You get to like them.  You identify with them.

The cyphers are real, and the human actors become empty  props.  It’s Roger Rabbbit in reverse.

I’m not going to pretend that the plot isn’t a little schmaltzy in places, but Cameron’s touch is light enough, and whenever he’s in danger of straying into the lake of syrup, he steps back just in time.

Stephen Lang’s ludicrous Duke Nukem-style Colonel Quaritch evokes every US military stereotype in cinematic history, but you don’t mind because that’s what he’s there for.  Sigourney Weaver’s sub-Ripley character screams Alien but you understand and accept the allusion.

Occasionally,  the Iraq / Afghanistan / Vietnam /Emerald Forest parallel is laid on a bit too thick.  You want to tell Cameron, OK James, we get it.  Thanks, but apart from that I have no serious gripes.  I’m a sucker for action movies and a strongish plot is a bonus.  I don’t mind, for the sake of the story, suspending disbelief and accepting some of the more outlandish notions of oneness with the planet.  That’s what SF fans do all the time, unless they happen to be literal-minded, obese nerds who speak  fluent Klingon.  Throw in the best special effects you’ve ever seen and stunning 3D, and really, you know, what’s to complain about?

I’ve read sniffy reviews that don’t like the similarity in theme to Dances With  Wolves.  Other people have spoken of Pocahontas or the Last of the Mohicans.and I can only presume that they’re looking for a brand new story.  Unfortunately, the last original story was written in ancient Greece.

I know Avatar nods to the rest of the canon, but so what?  Yes, Sigourney Weaver is there — looking great, by  the way — and there are many echoes of Aliens motifs, including the stasis and the drops, just as there are hints at a hundred other movies, but guess what — this picture was made by a movie guy.  Where did people think he took his references from – cave paintings?

If you haven’t seen it already, do yourself a favour and watch it in  the cinema.  This one won’t measure up on a home entertainment system, so whatever you do, get out and see it.  Check your critical faculties at the door.  Forget all the condescending, cerebral, sniffy old bores.  Instead, get a bucket of popcorn or a tray of nachos and just enjoy the spectacle.

You  won’t regret your decision.

_______________

Elsewhere

Gizmodo

Empire

Wired

Den of Geek

Categories
Music

Some Music New To Me

When I was wandering around town over the weekend, I had an impulse to buy a CD and maybe listen to something I hadn’t heard before.

So I picked up three albums which I’m listening to in the car as I noodle around.

Seasick Steve’s Started out with nothing is an album I’d been meaning to listen to for a while but just didn’t get around to.  The more I listen to it, the more I’m inclined to think he’s a bit of a one-trick pony and that maybe this swamp blues kind of thing has already been done far better by the likes of John Lee Hooker and Tony-Joe White, not to mention the old-time greats like Robert Johnson or even Leadbelly.  Not convinced by this one.  At all.

Muse are far more interesting.  The Bullet tipped me off about this bunch.  He’s been listening to them for a while now so I bought Black Holes and Revelations.  I have to say I like their mix of close harmony, heavy guitar-hero riffs and ridiculous science-fiction lyrics.  It’s completely over the top, but you know, some days, that kind of thing is what you need.

Of the three, I think the real keeper will be Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. Anyone with the balls to make an entire album in a remote cabin with only a couple of microphones and some antique recording equipment deserves a second listen. And when the creaks, echoes and groans of the log cabin become part of the soundtrack to a set of aching, life-baring songs, and somehow it all seems to work, you know you’re onto something special.  This one will spend a lot of time on the dashboard.

Categories
Rugby Sport

Munster 43 Ospreys 9

It’s always a good sign when the day begins with a surreal moment.  Luckily I had a ticket for Bullet as well as myself, and we decided to stroll out in the pleasant spring sunshine.  As we passed a church, the bells began to peal.  The Bells of the Angelus.  Lovely.  A tune we all learned in kindergarten.

Bullet, I said, do you know that tune?

Course I do he replied. It’s The Wheels on the Bus.

I didn’t get a chance to do a report on the game yesterday because I was out carousing with my children and various friends afterwards.  Sorry.  It won’t happen again.

You probably know the result by now.  It was a massacre.  A slaughter.  A comprehensive bulldozing.

A disallowed try early in the first half turned the crowd a little ugly, but by half time Munster were completely in charge and in the end it was all just too easy as they ran in one try after another, and Paul Warwick slotted two magnificent drop-goals as well as scoring a try.  The first drop-goal was a cheeky opportunity grabbed on the fly, but the second was a gigantic kick from half way that left the crowd laughing and Paul O Connell shaking his head in amazement.  There were no passengers.  Everyone played their part and gave whatever ot took.  Mafi had a stormer, smashing through the Ospreys time after time and tackling like a lunatic.  Leamy was immense, working constantly, both on and off the ball.  Young Keith Earls is becoming one of the most exciting players ever to step onto a rugby pitch and his brilliance produced two fine tries.  O Connell is one of those rare natural leaders and I was delighted to see him going over the line for his own try.  I thought I had a video of this but it turned out all I had was a video of the back of some guy’s head, so sorry about that.  Not to worry though.  I have a few pictures of the lads warming up before the game, and for a change I think I’ll post them later, instead of any action shots, mainly because my action shots are rubbishy blurred shit.

My head is exploding.  I have the hangover of two men. I can’t write any more now, because my hands are shaking and my vision is blurred.  There’s a faint tang of poisonous dolly-mixtures at the back of my throat and I fear I might see the end of this day.  If I should somehow survive, I’ll put up the pictures of the lads.  Promise.

_______________________

Later:

Categories
gardai Policing

Garda Commissioner On The Radio

Did anyone hear the Garda Commissioner on the radio yesterday morning?

Well?  What did you think of Fachtna Murphy’s performance?

I found it dispiriting, in a time when we were never more in need of a professional police force, to hear their leader mouthing pre-digested platitudes, as if that sort of pompous old nonsense still impresses us.

What struck me most of all was the poverty of his imagination.

I don’t care how good their detection rate is.  I don’t care how many murders they solved.  It makes no difference to me how many people they caught after the fact.  Why can’t he figure that out?

I don’t care.

So they catch my murderer?  What good is that to me after I get a bullet in the head?  What use is it to all the victims of crime if Fachtna Murphy’s boys and girls found out who did it?

I don’t care who did it.  I don’t want it to happen in the first place, and when I heard Murphy going on with all this pious old shit I realised we’re in the wrong hands.

This is just another sad old Irish cop who fails to understand that reactive policing isn’t good enough.

We don’t want detection.  We want protection.

Did you ever hear such an out-of-touch old dinosaur trying to spin the failures of his management in a positive light?  Oh, wait a minute — did I say management?  Did I somehow contrive to use the word management for a police force that thinks raiding pubs will solve the country’s crime problems?

You probably don’t know what I mean, so I suppose I should tell you. Did you know that one of the central tenets of received wisdom within our police force is the following gem: control the bars and you control public order offences.

Now, the fact that this belief is entirely unsupported by empirical evidence doesn’t deter these geniuses from continuing to believe it.  Indeed not, and why would it?  After all, these old crusties who run our police force are cut from the same cloth as the venerable Fachtna Murphy.  Authoritarian, old-fashioned policemen from the DeValera age, who have all, without exception, failed to make the transition to the 21st century.

We do not have a modern police force in this country.  Let’s be clear about that.  We don’t have a police force in touch with technology, or strategic thinking, or professional management techniques.

What’s worse, we don’t have a police force in touch with the middle ground: you and me.  Our police force is far more comfortable alienating your support and mine by petty bullying, by raiding pubs, by being obnoxious to the middle-ground people like you and me, by swaggering around on a contemptible power trip, when it should be confronting real criminals.  Instead, our semi-detached police force thinks that people like you and me are the threat, and treats us as such, while psychotic, demented families have the freedom to do as they please.

Why?

Because our police force wants an easy life and finds itself far more comfortable bullying people who won’t fight back.  People like you and me.

The people who pay their wages.

______________________

More: Garda Síochána

Categories
Our lives

The Machines Revolt

Here we go again.  Once more, the machines show their hatred for me.

Out of the goodness of my heart, and because I’m an all-round decent guy, as you well know, I volunteered to build a foundation for a friend of mine who recently got one of those horrible little steel sheds you have to assemble yourself.  Or in this case, myself.

Ah well.  Let’s do it with good grace.

Come on Bullet, I said.  We’ll collect the concrete mixer I left at the back of Parkenstein’s house two months ago when I was making room for the party.

All right, he grunted.

And then we’ll go and buy six or eight bags of cement to go with the gravel I very thoughtfully picked up three months ago and dumped there with the promise to dig and pour the foundation by Saturday.

All right.

Bullet has become very monosyllablic these days, in keeping with his sixteen-year-old image.  The bastard.

So we loaded up the mixer on the back of my trailer but as I passed the Bockmobile I noticed a peculiar smell from its engine.  The  kind of asphalty, tarmac odour that tells you this engine is running very hot.  Very, very hot. 

What the –? I grunted, the way they do in the comics just before they punch a mutant dinosaur-creature in the stomach and it goes Urk!

What the — ?

But there was no escaping the awful truth.  There it is on the ground: water, and lots of it.  The fucking radiator is leaking.  Well, shit anyway, this is a pain in the arse, but we have a job to do, so I top up the water and hope for the best. Come on  Bullet.  Let’s move, I shout from the moving vehicle and grab him by the collar as he tries to scramble aboard.  With any luck, this thing will keep going for a few miles.

Do you know what’s good for a leaking radiator? I’ll tell you.  Some people swear by a raw egg.  You can break it into the radiator and it’ll congeal in the leak.  Other people use nutmeg, and I believe the best running repairs are done with pepper.

Unfortunately, I had none of these things, so all I could rely on was hope.

Come on, I keep repeating.  Come on, you can do it, which proves that I’m both mad and stupid, talking to a mechanically propelled vehicle, but it’s the way we are.  You see, I’m used to this motor doing awful things to me, like the time it burst a high-pressure oil-hose and spewed out all the lubricant in a nano-instant, resulting in the cam-shaft blowing itself to bits with a soft Boom!  Or the time the turbo blew up on me and I had to search the country for a replacement that didn’t cost the price of a small hadron collider.  And then there was the time the steering thingy suddenly went fuckways and tried to fling me over a hedge at sixty miles an hour.  So, you see, I know a sinister mechanical sound when I hear one.  I’m an experienced driver and I’ve done more than the average amount of dismantling motor vehicles and putting them back together with just a few springs left over.

So that was why, when I heard a distant Thud! I knew something had gone wrong, but it wasn’t an engine problem this time, nor a steering problem, nor a constant-velocity joint suddenly falling to bits, nor a ball-joint tearing itself to pieces.

No indeed.

This Thud! was different.  This particular Thud! was the noise a concrete mixer makes when it falls off a trailer and crashes onto the road in the face of oncoming traffic.  A new noise for me.

Fuck!

Did you ever try to hold back a busy lane of traffic while at the same time picking up a concrete mixer and hauling it onto a trailer, while a sixteen-year-old watches you with his hands in his pockets until you scream ARE YOU GOING TO HELP ME WITH THIS FUCKING MIXER FOR FUCKSAKE!!!! ?

And then it started to rain. And it got very cold.  And we still had to dig out foundations and mix a load of concrete, so we’d better get moving, strap down the mixer tightly and drive on.  And then … well … what? 

What do you think happened next?

All right.  I’ll give you a hint.  The tightly-strapped-down mixer forced its way through the rotten floor of the trailer, gouging a long horrible groove in the road and there I am like a fucking madman, wrestling it back out of the splintered timbers and what’s Bullet doing?

What?  Go on — guess.  That’s right.  He’s standing with his hands in his fucking pockets looking at me hanging off the back of a broken trailer, trying to force a big bastard of a concrete mixer out of a hole in its floor, with purple veins bursting out of my temples and my eyes bulging like a crazed Sumo-murderer, and he’d possibly still be standing there if he hadn’t noticed me reaching for a rusty pipe-wrench and realised he was in serious danger.

For fucksake.

………………………

I brought the Bockmobile to the Laughing Mechanic this morning.

Well?  I said.

Fucked, he said.  I’d say you’re fucked.

Thanks, I said.

No problem, he chuckled.  That’ll be fifty euros.

………………………

You were wondering about the foundations we were supposed to build?  Yeah, well, see, we ran out of gravel.  They’re half done.

__________________________

Also:

The Laughing Mechanic

Turbo Trouble

More Motoring Problems

When plans go wrong

Fear Not! Bock is Safe.