More From The Work Front

I was on a road test today, and I saw one of our customers driving in her car. She's a nice woman, a bit eccentric, about 60. She drives a Volvo 240, and the car is beat to shit. On the exterior, the car is dirty and dented. On the interior, the car is a mess. I don't claim to have a perfect car, but this customer's car is just a nasty jumble of odd bits of food, old clothes and everyday junk. I know that it sounds a little unprofessional for me to describe a customer's car in such a manner, but some times you just can't beat around the bush.

In this customer's car, there are yellowed, brittle newspapers in the back seat and in the trunk that date back years. Whenever I work on her car, I pull out one of the newspapers, look at it, look surprised, and say something like "Whoa! I didn't know that the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees! When did that happen?!" There are apple cores on her front passenger's floor that are beginning to sprout and put down roots. I'm sure that the newly sprouted trees are drawing nutrients from the assortment of composting french fries, candy wrappers and crumbs that form a rich litter on the floor of her car.

On the road test, I saw this woman eating a big, juicy sandwich. She had one hand on the wheel, and one hand wrapped awkwardly around her sandwich. "Oh, man," I thought, "I just know where to find a pice of wilted lettuce next time that car's in the shop." It's going to be on the side of her driver's seat, right by the door. MmmmmMMMMMmmmm.

There's another customer with a similar car. This customer is a very nice guy. Quiet, with a glint in his eye that might make you wonder what planet he's been visiting recently. He's very Berkeley, with a mane of white hair, and a white beard. He takes his coffee black, and he takes it very seriously. For a while, he used to carry his coffee cup on a caribiner, attached to a belt loop on his right side--the Caffeine Cowboy. I'll hand it to him, I'm a caffeine addict, and if I could, I would carry my coffee cup in a holster. In fact, I'd have a coffee bean bandolier and a coffee bean bullet-belt if I could swing it.

Anyhow, this customer, the Caffeine Cowboy, drives long distances in his detritus-packed ride, and to make things worse, he sweats like you wouldn't believe. It's not uncommon for him to pull into the shop on short notice, on a hot day, with a life-or-death complaint about a noise or a performance problem that might cause an inconvenience in his tight commute schedule. He'll pull into the shop, get out of the car, and you'll see it--his back is drenched in sweat. There's a big "U" of sweat on his back, and there are wide, swooping semi-circles of dampness under his arms. The topper to all of this is that he has sheepskin seat covers. If you're unlucky enough to sit in his car on such an occasion, you'd think you were sitting on a damp, dank dishcloth. And if you thought that, you'd be thinking in the nicest of terms.

It's not like this happens every time he's in. Sometimes, he's unrushed and dry. But those occasions when he does come in completely soaked make you think twice about wanting to step into his car, even in the best of circumstances. I'm generally okay with the dry occasions, and even on the damp occasions, we do have seat covers that help with some of the dampness. I personally get in, shut up, hold my breath and do what I need to do, whether that's simply moving the car, or taking it on a road test.

One can never be too certain, though. There was a recent dry visit where I let my guard down. I was moving The Cowboy's car into my stall, after an uneventful but funny-smelling road test, and I happened to put my hand on the passenger's seat. Remember, sheepskin seatcovers. The result: unexpected dampness. I immediately shuddered, and resolved not to touch anything except the steering wheel, the shifter, the emergency brake, the seat belt, and the door handle. Even the radio was off-limits.

I'll say this about the Neurotic Newspaper Collector and the Caffeine Cowboy. They are two of the best customers we have. I enjoy the reality they bring into the shop. They're working people, interested in maintaining their cars for practical reasons. Their cars are not extensions of their personalities or personae. Each of them is part of the fabric of Berkeley, and each of them is the kind of person that makes the world an interesting place to live in.

Some Thoughts From Work

I've been working on cars, on and off, for over twenty years. I've been in a lot of cars in my day. Having been in as many cars as I’ve been in, I’ve managed to see a lot of interesting stuff.

Today, I worked on a car that was well kept. The seats were clean, the exterior was clean, the floor was clean, there wasn't a lot of clutter in the center console, the glove box was clean, and the trunk was nearly empty. I like these cars. They bring a sense of calm to my day. The clean cars, if they have a clean engine compartment, make for a smooth, easy job. I could be simply changing the oil, or I could be replacing the clutch, but if the car is clean, any job is a pleasure. If I get in a clean car, with a bunch of neatly folded maps in the glove box, I always think, "I could go on a trip. Right now." It's hard not to want to just leave work, and drive around in the calm, soothing cleanliness of some spacious Toyota Camry. I'd feel free enough to go anywhere--as long as it were on one of the maps in the glove box.

The only thing wrong with this particularly clean car was the fact that it had an air freshener. You know the kind I’m talking about. Most of them hang from the rear view mirror, and look like little pine trees. I don't like air fresheners. I don't particularly care for those air fresheners that look flat little cardboard tress and smell like pine. The cardboard is always chintzy, and the pine smell is often so overwhelming that my nose burns when I even get near the car.

My least favorite air fresheners are the ones that look like beer coasters and smell like a cherry- or lemon-flavored fart. Some customers have air fresheners that have a picture of an Ankh on them. I have a hard time with these, as well. I often see these air fresheners and think that they're going to smell like a mummy or a Pharaoh’s tomb. The last thing I want to do is drive around in a car that smells like the inside of a sarcophagus. Plus, Ankhs always make me think of the film "Logan's Run," and I hated that film.

We haven’t had any customers come in with one of these yet, but there are air fresheners around nowadays that look like little cans of cat food,. They have a pull-top, like a can of Pringles, and they contain a little hunk of porous grey crud that gives off a scent. I'd feel sorry for someone who mistook a can of cat food for one of these air fresheners. Imagine if you popped a can of Little Friskies open in your car, anticipating a fresh, spring breeze and all of a sudden your car smelled like tuna and liver or chicken and salmon. And you thought cats crawled all over your car now? Just wait.

Anyhow, back to the clean car I was working on today. The air freshener was not a pine tree, or an Ankh, or a beer coaster that smelled like a cherry-flavored fart. It did look like a beer coaster, but it had a picture of Spongebob on it. I saw this even before I got into the car, and I began to worry.

I’ll admit I’m not very big on the pop culture. I don’t have cable TV, and I don’t watch a lot of ordinary, non-pay television. I don’t go to that many movies, and I don’t listen to a lot of mainstream “Top 40” or “Modern Rock” type radio stations. The last thing I saw that was even close to being like Spongebob, was “Ren and Stimpy.” I know Spongebob by osmosis. I’ve seen Spongebob seat covers, Spongebob lunchboxes, Spongebob Frisbees, Spongebob birthday cakes and Spongebob diapers. I can safely say, though, that I don’t know what the hell Spongebob is, except a sponge with pants on. Actually someone should tell Spongebob that he looks like one of those cartoon pieces of cheese that cartoon mice are always trying to run away with. He doesn’t look that much like a sponge.

To be quite frank, when I saw the Spongebob air freshener, all I could think about was the nasty sponge sitting on the shelf above my kitchen sink. It’s grey, it’s been worked like an NFL lineman, and it probably smells a lot like one as well. That’s what I thought of when I saw the Spongebob air freshener. “Oh, man, this clean car is going to smell like ass,” I thought. Well, it didn’t, thankfully. I think that Spongebob had been all scented out. All he could do was grin at me with his hole-y body and his big, buck-toothed smile. “Thank you, Spongebob,” was all I could think, “thank you for not smelling like you look.”

I'm Agnostic, But...

If I could take communion with Twinkies and Kool Aid, I might consider going to church. Transubstantiation, the belief that the wafer and wine taken at communion are the body and blood of Christ, requires quite a leap of faith. Would it be too far to leap, relatively speaking, to believe that a Twinkie and some Kool Aid are the Body and Blood? I doubt it. This would be popular. Who wouldn't want a little creme filling in their Jesus? Here's the other thing that would really get me into church: If, when communion was about to be served, a guy in a giant Jesus costume broke throught the back wall of the church and shouted "oh YEAH!" after the pastor yelled "Hey, JESUS!" like those kids do in the Kool Aid commercials. Very cool.

Oh, and if hymns were commercial jingles, I would be in church at every opportunity.

Sung to the tune of the Honeycomb Cereal jingle:

"Jesus is big, yeahyeahyeah
Gotta big taste yeahyeahyeah"

Sung to the tune of the Juicyfruit Gum Jingle:

"Eucharist, the taste that moves ya
So soft to chew, it gets right to ya
Eucharist, the taste the taste the taste
that's gonna moOOve ya!"

I don't have faith that this'll happen any time soon.

A New Beginning

This is the start of what I'm hoping will be a larger piece. I want to submit the entire piece when it's finished. If it's published, I'll post a link. If it's not, I'll post the rest here, and resubmit it someplace else.

Here it is:

I live an unholy existence.

I was not baptized, nor have I taken Communion. Ever. Not even with grapejuice.

I don’t do Chrismas. Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are just days of the week to me. When people discuss Lent, I think about drier screens. I think about the corners of my hallway where dog hair likes to eddy and the stuff in my ears that causes me to hear “Lent” as “Lint.”

I don’t want to make it seem like I’m playing denominational favorites here. I’m not. In case you’re wondering, I don’t do the High Holy Days, Passover or Chanukah. No Feast of the Eid, No Ramadan, and no Hadj for me. Mecca is one city that will not be on my travel itinerary any time soon. As long as I don’t pay any mind to that God of Abraham guy stomping around in the apartment above me, I doubt that he’ll have me up to shoot the shit any time soon. So, scratch the Kingdom of Heaven from my long-term travel plans as well.

To say I’m Godless is not to say that I’m without ritual in my life, though. I have plenty of rituals. I have rituals that the doctors tell me I should take medication for. Hand washing, for example. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, and it so happens that I wash my hands. So, Big J and I have a certain something in common. We like the cleanliness. I tried to draw this tenuous comparison when I was talking to one of the doctors at the St. Francis Medical Center. “You know, “ I said, to my sandy-haired, stone-faced psych doc, “OCD is really kind of New-Testament when you think about it, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Worth,” the doctor said, “Jesus had 12 disciples. That’s 12 individuals, and 24 feet. I’m fairly certain that He did not wash His disciples’ feet 50 times an hour. And, I can guarantee you, Jesus did not return to the sepulcher ten times within ten minutes to check to see if He turned off a gas burner or to see if He locked the door.”

No, I wanted to tell him, the tomb was left wide-the-Hell open! Can you imagine?

“I think that these will help,” he said soothingly. He handed me a sample pack of six, cream-and-green 20mg Prozac capsules and a prescription for 50 more of the pills. “Take one tablet in AM,” the prescription said in Doctor hieroglyphics. So, this was going to be a new ritual in my life. Prozac indeed!

The Road To Hell...

So, it was my intention, as someone pointed out to me recently, to write daily. I made that promise to myself, and then I went ahead and broke it. Well, I'll try to re-commit to that. Starting...tomorrow.

Okay. Maybe I should try starting today. Right now. With this post, as short as it is.

I went to a writer's group today, and felt completely blocked. I had to write though. What else was I going to do, walk around someone else's house, picking up their stuff? No. Wouldn't have been good.

This is a (re)start and a recommitment to doing something every day.

My Name Is Morgan, And I'm...A Talkaholic

Talking is addictive.

It’s not a proven fact or anything, but I’m sure it’s true. I have the pseudoscience to back me up. Here are the…uh…facts. I once took a sociology class in college that I got an “A” in. Freshman Sociology. Sociology 101. Remember, I did say pseudoscience. The professor, a tenured old piece of academic detritus, was very fond of the sound of his own voice. He would go on for a time, relating an anecdote about his trip into class that morning, and then he’d fire off a few tidbits of relevant information at us. He’d pause occasionally, during his lectures, to laugh at one of his own jokes. He had a gasping, raspy Kool cigarette laugh, and if you sat in the front row of his class, you would catch a whiff of his minty, smoky-smelling corduroy jacket . He’d been doing his shtick for about 30 years, and he knew just what it was he had to give the class in order for us to know what we needed to know for the bi-weekly bluebook exam.

In between laughing fits and coughing jags, my professor threw facts about brain chemistry and socialization at the class. He told us that lab studies had indicated that human interaction increased the level of neurotransmitters floating around in the brain. I can’t remember which neurotransmitters increased with human interaction. I’m guessing serotonin was one of them. If you’re interested, you can do the google search. I’m sick of checking this shit out. I’ve googled norepinephrine, serotonin and a whole host of other neurotransmitters. I found a really interesting study about LSD-25 and serotonin production, and one about dopamine and schizophrenia, but neither are germane to our elevated discussion here.

Talking, as we all know, is a vital component of human socialization and human interaction. I’m sure that talking must stimulate the production of some sort of neurotransmitter that acts somewhere in the brain to cause mild euphoria in some people. So, my thesis here is ”Talking produces chemicals that the brain grooves on.” If I were presenting this topic at a scholarly conference or a scientific circle-jerk, I’d say “remember, people, this isn’t rocket science. It’s pseudoscience. It may even be pseudo-pseudoscience.”

I’ll touch some more on my “talking is addictive” thesis in my next post. A fuller elaboration on this thesis can be found in my forthcoming book “I’m Not An Intellectual, But It’s Fun To Pretend: A Few Whole And Partial Essays About The Inconsequential.” Don’t look for the book on Amazon.com because, if this blog is any indication of how quickly I get things done, that book won’t be around for quite some time. It’s a book in theory, only.

Next time:
Talkaholics in action: Case Studies of chronic and acute talkaholism.