I guess my car is getting
old. Bummer. I’ve been in the sweet spot
for a while now, no car payment, no problems, no complaints. But for the first time since I’ve bought it,
something happened that upset me: CHECK ENGINE.
You know the light, you know the feeling, it’s a bummer. And quite honestly it shouldn’t say ‘CHECK
ENGINE’ it should say ‘GO BUY SOME KY’ you’re gonna need it. Nothing good comes from that light, the best
you can hope for is something not so bad, but no matter what it’s going to cost
you, and you know it.
Another problem I have with
the check engine light is that it tells you absolutely nothing. Something might
be wrong , and it’s going to cost you but other than that, you’re left in the
dark, well except the light that says ’CHECK ENGINE’. Who knows maybe when you take the car into
the shop they just turn the light off, charge you $535 and tell you it’s
fixed. I have this same thought about
car washes. When you upgrade the car
wash and get Package #2, you don’t actually see any difference other than a
light blinks towards the end of the wash that says Package #2. Are we just paying an extra 7.50 to watch the
light, light up? Could be the same scam
in reverse. Could be.
There’s very little you can
do but drop the car off and say a prayer to the car gods; well that and mosey
into the showroom and check out the new models.
Everyone’s been here before, the car’s getting a little long in the tooth,
(long in the grill?) and you wonder if this is the beginning of a slippery
slope of never ending repairs or just a bump in the road. It can’t hurt to find out what’s out there,
and what your car is worth or can it.
Turns out the new models are pretty damn nice & my car isn’t worth
very much, big shock huh? So do you
holdem’ or foldem’? Where’s Kenny
Rodgers when you need him?
Arguments for both, new car
= reliable, no surprise costs, and of course New Ride. You were expecting New Car Smell, but you’re
not getting it, I’m not really a fan of that hodgepodge collection of 100
different chemicals interacting together to bring you what should be called
Toxic#9. But I do get the association of
that smell with newness and we tend to love newness, except with tumors, no one
ever said oh boy! New Tumor! Argument
for old = paid for. Don’t ever
underestimate Paid For, those are 2 beautiful words, I love them, much more
then new car smell and tumors.
Here’s the thing, my car
(up until now) has been very, very, very reliable, (in case you weren’t
counting that’s 3 verys, high marks, even from the East German Judges) hat’s off to Volvo for allowing me run up over
200,000 miles on a car in under 7 years with basically just maintenance. I can’t complain, but I’m an American, what
can I say? I want more. The car still
looks great, still rides, still runs great and I’m only on my second set of
breaks. I know right? Crazy! But if things start going, they’re going to
start costing – a lot. I could be just
worried about nothing, but then again the new models look pretty good.
A CHECK ENGINE light can
really make you think. People have Check
Engine lights, we just call them symptoms but they are just as informative as
the cars. Go online with your symptom
and see what you got . . .
hmmmmmmm … could be a bug that
will be gone in a day, could be The Black Death! Ever notice ever since the Internet people
don’t just ‘get sick’ now they have some syndrome, disease , condition that
could have killed them, but didn’t.
Everyone goes for the most exotic illness they can find that fits their
symptoms, no I haven’t been to Bora Bora, but I’m telling you doc, someone on the internet say’s I have 3 months
to live if you don’t give me the drugs now!
I trust them, they wrote it down on the site, why wouldn’t it be true? What kind of doctor are you anyway? I saw it House MD also, yea Chase thought it
was Wilson’s Disease, and Cameron thought it was an Autoimmune but the sick guy
just happen to have sex with someone who WAS in Bora Bora and … No I didn’t have sex with someone who was in
Bora Bora but you see how it could happen. . . .
It’s really weird, when
people’s check engine lights comes on, they automatically think the worst, like
they want to face death or something, either that or there are WAY too many drug
commercials.
Do you have trouble
sleeping? Do you sleep too much? Do you
gain weight when you eat? Do your feet
get sore? After a run do you feel tired?
Do you have trouble breathing? Do you sweat? DO you have trouble sweating? Did
your parents used to call you lazy? You
could be suffering from Uzagotdat. Take
Lathohydralious, side effects include: nausea, vomiting, lack of sex drive, blurriness,
hyper tension, dry mouth, thoughts of suicide, rectal bleeding, and delusions
of grandeur.
The media & the internet
is turning this nation’s people into a bunch of hypochondriacs.
But what if it’s not just
people?
What if our cars suffered
from hypochondria? What if they
installed sensors all over the car to make sure everything was running at peak
performance? What if they connected all
those sensors to a central nervous system, umm er, CPU? And what if anytime a
sensor had a reading that was just slightly off Peak Performance it sent a
message to the CPU and then to a light that signaled the driver? What if that light read, ‘CHECK ENGINE’? UT OH
I hope my car doesn’t get rectal bleeding.
