Check Yourself

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 9

"Evil words destroy, Godly skill rebuilds."

---

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Think there's no such thing as "evil words"?

Think again, sport.  

I bought my 2001 Volvo V-70XC station wagon on October 25th.  It's November 14th, and tonight marks the third time those fuckery little words showed up on my instrument cluster.  

ClusterFUCK!

FUCK!!!!

What the FUCK?!!!!!

Now, I don't want to panic or start obsessively rubbing gravel and bits of glass into my eyes and prostrating myself before the Swedish God of Oxygen Sensors, but I'm frightened, I'M VERY VERY FRIGHTENED!

As is the case with this blog entry, I don't know where this little vehicular tale is going to end.  When I purchased this car, it had just a hair under 90,000 miles on it, which is extraordinary for a vehicle that old.  On eBay, you see Volvos of this vintage for sale with two hundred thousand, two hundred fifty thousand, there's one or two with over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer.  So, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that, when I purchased this car I had visions of us staying together for an appreciable length of time.  I envisioned my bony ass and my scoliosis-laden back pairing up with that sculpted, heated, sumptuously and cowliciously-appointed leather seat to be a supullent, sexcellent marriage.  

Now, I'm filled with doubt.  Gout.  It's spouting out of my grout.  And so I sit here and pout, and you know what about.

About evil words.  Those two orange, evil words.  

You don't typically think of orange as an evil color, a color of the devil.  Orange is the color of autumn, of clementines, of Fiskars pinking shears.  Sorry-- my wife sews.  Hey, and speaking of my wife: orange is her favorite color.

How the hell could orange be evil if my pretty buddy loves orange?  

And yet, there it is:

  

Again.  For the third time.  First time was $310.  The dealership I bought the car from paid for that repair.

Phew. 

Less than a week later, it was $435.  That was on me.

ZING!

Now?  Who knows?  It's an expensive Swedish car.  The possibilities are limitless.  Maybe it needs a new thrånkenheuser.  Or a rotating flaçsêknävs.  Could be it needs its skleàâng adjusted.  Your Ikea-hued guess is as good as mine.  I just don't want the car to turn all Christine on me.  Because, if that lovely hunk of sheet metal parked outside is indeed going to rob me blind and rape me bloody, if those evil, evil fuckety-fuck-fuck words are going to come back to haunt me every two or three weeks or so, it's going to be a painful ride for both of us.  

That's right: both of us.