NYC, BITCHES!

Yeah, so it's not the NYC post. Not exactly.

Iza a while ago mentioned that I should just post whatever I've done for that entry, but I didn't really have much to share. Didn't really have time to finish it. But then, today, I was looking at it sitting there on my desktop and decided, fuck it, I'm not going to let that typing go to waste. So, I'm posting the start of my NYC blog, and maybe some day I'll actually even continue it.

Besides, it's a (welcome?) change from the bullshit car-hunt posts as of late.

So here it is, with some edits since... well, it's been a while. Some things aren't relevant anymore.

...enjoy.

So hey! Look, I haven't died. Things have been stale in blogland since I really have been pressed for time as of late. In fact, yesterday I hopped online for a little bit on my laptop and struggled with the signon prompt for a moment. It's been so long since I've actually sat at a PC that I almost feel like a n00b. Strange. I finally decided that I'd bring my laptop to work and start this entry during lunch. Maybe that'll help me get a post out some time this month. Incidentally, I'm listening to the new Nine Inch Nails CD I picked up this morning... more on that another day once I've had some time to digest it. (Uh, yeah, Nine Inch Nails hasn't been knew for a while now. -Ed)

Anyway, where did I leave off? Ah, righto, I was zipping off to NYC. What an interesting couple of days that was. Actually, it was interesting even before I left Toronto, as on the Thursday night before leaving Iza took me to go see the Massive Change exhibit at the AGO. Holy shit, remembering how to make links pop up when clicking text hurts my head. I don't even know if I did it right, I guess I'll check once I post this. Anyway, the Massive Change exhibit pretty much rocked. It was really quite interesting, and if you feel like spending $18 ($15 if you can pass yourself off as a student) and can part with at least four hours of your life, this really is well worth your time. (Yeah, uh, show's closed already. -Ed)

Click around the link a little bit; there's a ton of interesting shit there too.

Anyway, Friday I left work around 11:00 and headed home so that I can pack some shit and get underway. Around 1:30pm I actually hit the road and left Mississauga.

Before I left, I got some directions to a native reservation stateside that pumps tax-free gas. Although, if it's tax-free they've marked it up quite a lot because while it IS cheaper, it's not as cheap as I would imagine it would be if the damned government wasn't taking their cut. Anyway, problem with these directions was that they were given by my dad to my mom, who in turn gave them to me... and somewhere along the way an unfortunate error was made. A highway number came up too early in the directions so as to lead me to believe that when I left the native reservation I would be on a different highway than I actually was. By the time I caught on to that error, I was off course by a fair bit and wasted more time trying to get someone to tell me where I was in relation to where I should have been.

I would have been pissed off by all this and the huge delay it caused, but in the long run it ended up being just one of many delays... I was left in a good enough mood at the end of this detour by a simple sign that I read while driving by. I almost turned around to stop at the sign and take a picture of it so I could share it with all of you, but considering how late I was already I decided to press on.

What of the sign? Well... it was one of those signs people rent to share info with others about their events and such. The one where you arrange letters on the board. The event they were calling attention to was a local rifle raffle.

...yeah. They're raffling off a fucking FIREARM. That was the first real indication that I wasn't in Canada anymore.

A smile on my face, I continued on.

...to be continued?

Car hunt...

Monday night until 1:30am saw me online pouring through used car ads and sifting through used car dealership inventories adding cars to my scrapbook on trader.ca. The scrapbook allows you to keep ads of interest to you on a seperate list for easier viewing later. At 5am, unable to sleep, I resumed my sifting. By 7am or so, I was good to go. I'd leave around 9:30 or 10am, as there's no sense running around the city during the morning rush.

I took the day off work, Iza was coming along with me, all I wanted to do was to take that list, click the button that sorts the cars from cheapest to most expensive, and print it out for quick and easy access later.

Click.

*Poof*

Every car ad was lost due to a glitch on the website.

I sat there. I threw my wireless keyboard. The mouse dropped to the floor. I sat there. I wanted to go on a killing spree. I was frustrated, demoralized, and sleepy. Shit, had I known all that ad sifting would have gone to waste, I would have slept at night and not poured though all these fucking ads. When Iza came by, I was sitting on the cement step in the backyard, broken.

Iza and I took a little over three hours to look at some more ads to make as good a list as we could so as not to waste the day. Needless to say, it's Thursday and I have no car so really the day was wasted anyway. No car, AND I lost a day's pay.

Yeah, so can I just say how much I hate those stupid fucks that waste my time with "low mileage" cars? Cars that clearly aren't "low mileage"? One that I liked was advertised as having 79,000km. Sweet! I went there to see it, and uh... right off the bat the guy mentions that the mileage may not be accurate as when HE bought it, he was told the mileage was not known. Well, 79,000 is was not. That Camry's engine was about to go, starting with a disgusting thunk and running like it was a lawn mower engine. Fucking thing could barely move the car. When I stopped the car, the car beeped as though I left the keys in the ignition. I didn't. I looked at the keyhole and saw that it was in the Accessories position, yet the key was in my hand. I then discovered that I can turn the keyhole, and even start the car, without using the key at all.

Another car that had only 130,000km, had A/C, was perfect... wouldn't start, and had obvious engine mount wear. So much so that the engine rattled around in there and contacted the body of the car. No one wears out engine mounts on an automatic Honda in 130,000km. Eventually after about five minutes of tinkering and cranking, the car started. And the air conditioner? Didn't work. The car was in rough shape, ghetto-body work (you know, body filler and spray paint?)... oh, and the kicker was what in the picture appeared to be a heavy-tint bug deflector on the picture but in real life was a hand painted black stripe along the front edge of the hood.

Another car with 110,000km strangely showed over a quarter million on the odometer. What the fuck? Well, you see, the car had a new engine put in 110,000km ago, at least that's what they told me. ADVERTISE THE FUCKING THING AT THE MILEAGE IT IS, AND MENTION THAT IT HAD THE ENGINE REPLACED. Besides, it didn't get a "new" engine. A "new" engine costs more than they were selling the car for two times over. I know. It was nearly eight grand for Ellen's *new* engine. I saw the invoice from the dealership that Acura's extended warranty plan covered. The engine they put in that car was probably taken out of another car that was wrecked with a quarter million kilometers on it too... fucking deceptive bitches.

So yeah, the car search is NOT going well.

At least I can click on the links in my last post and they actually make me smile now. At the time, they bothered me a lot more, but now after my nervous breakdown... it's all good.

Besides, who doesn't love penguins and flowers?

...Art

Used Car Shopping.

Admittedly, I got on a bit of a rant here in this post. While I'd like to think people will actually read this, I'd like to say that even if you don't read through the whole post, please do scroll down to the end and click on the links. But don't just skip down there now. Scroll down and click if you're about to give up on my post. So then. On with the entry:

Okay, god, I hate used car shopping. After sifting through prolly a thousand cars online and seeing over 100 cars up close and in person, I finally scored a car. A 1996 Toyota Camry. Black, grey interior, A/C, power everything. Nice car, drives like new, engine purrs evenly, transmission shifts flawlessly... unfortunately it's for my parents.

It took me at least a month-and-a-half to find it. Probably more. I was quite sick of looking around for this damned thing and very happy to have it all done with. My mom LOVES the car, so I guess it's all good. At least my efforts weren't wasted. On her, anyway. My dad's another story. I won't get into that now. Or, really, maybe ever.

It's KILLING me to think that I get to repeat that process for a car for myself. Losing Ellen came at the worst possible time, at a time when I was SO SICK of the used car buying process and cringed at the thought of doing it all over again, this time for a vehicle that *I* would be happy with. You guys probably all know what a prick I am and how picky I can be. The Camry ordeal was bad enough. I don't even know what I'm looking for to fill my car ownership void.

New? Newish? Shitbox? Car? Small car? SUV?

I realized as I was looking around the Camry that I really don't want a car that size. It seems too big for what I need, why haul all that extra steel and glass? I rarely carry passengers, and when I do it's usually only one person. Ellen was a good enough size, people can get around if they need to. The trunk was big enough to carry my stuff, and three snowboards can be handled easily. It even did way better than I expected hauling over 1000 pounds of ATV related stuff on a trailer. All that and the stereo sounded great. Wasn't a gas guzzler either.

So I started looking at small cars again. Off the bat, I got rid of all the American offerings in this segment. Cars like Sunfires aren't worth my attention. I also got rid of all the Korean shit. It'll be a cold day in hell when I drive a Kia, Daiwoo... Hyundai. The Europeans don't really have anything interesting in this category either. I'm not a fan of VW's for the most part. Saab's are ugly as the granny crack-whore I saw in Hamilton one day, and I don't think BMW or Benz have anything that fits my needs. And no, the Mini doesn't count.

What am I left with?

Infinity and Lexus have a few expensive rocketships that are about the right size, but not so much with the price-point. They're out.

Nissan has the Sentra, which I had as a rental and it's a nice enough entry level car. As such though, it's a big step backwards from my Ellen. The Altima's their next larger offering, but I think it might be a bit too big; it looks like a large car. Not as large as the Maxima, but still large. I might look into that, but I dunno.

Toyota... I love their trucks, but I'm not thinking of getting a truck. The Camry's too big, the Matrix and Echo ware WAY too small. Corolla's too boring, I think. It's a distant possibility.

Mazda makes the 3 which is a nice car, but it doesn't feel like it's in it for the long run. Great car to lease, I think, maybe not so great to drive into the ground.

I test drove a Honda Civic. The 5 speed felt really nice, but the non-VTEC engine was noticeably less peppy than Ellen.

Acura has the RSX. Cute car. Two door though. And it's a *cute* car. I'm sure there's a bunch of male RSX owners that would be upset with me if they heard that I think it makes a nice chick car. That is, a chick as a driver, not a chick magnet. There's a few cars in the Acura line up that I would ignore the fact that they're larger cars... RL, TL, CL, TSX. They've got some price-point issues though.

...which seems to leave the Acura EL. Ellen V2. Eight years and my process of elimination drops the same fucking model in my lap. We need more good small cars.

I thought of getting a shitbox. Something to get me to work and such. Worry about a real car when I have a real job. I thought of buying a used RAV4, that way I get all-wheel drive, and a Toyota product. But it's not a real truck, it's a pussy SUV. And it's less fuel efficient. But all-wheel drive. Ellen did quite well for seven winters on a set of winter tires though... so maybe I don't really need AWD. Maybe I'd buy a used Lexus IS300. That's a cool car. And fairly affordable. V6, probably a bitch to insure...

BLARGH.

It's driving me nuts.

...which is why finding this on the Auto Trader wasn't good for my mental wellbeing. Why's there a dog in the picture? A short while later, I found this. What the fuck is that? I noticed that they both came from the same dealer, so I thought I'd investigate.

I found this damned thing. Does this shit actually sell cars? I mean, it's not like all of their cars had this. In fact, the fast majority did not, so it's not like it's their cute little gimmick. They had the common sense not to include floating lemons in their pictures, THAT would have been bad for business, but they had floating limes! And gay-assed flowers! WHAT THE FUCK?

Then... then I saw something that made me stop and stare.

WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO PAY FOR MY THERAPY?

I need a car. FAST. I can't handle this shit anymore.

...Art
Hey Penguin! Nice suit!