I took a taxi to the mechanic after work yesterday to pick up my car.
“I’m here to pick up my car,” I said.
“Okay, here,” the man said, and handed me the key.

No signature, no nothing.

I got in and drove to my next appointment.

They had looked at my car, he told me, and found nothing, which is among the things still covered under my guarantee.

Driving home on the freeway, though, I found myself sticking to the right lane, and keeping an eye out for emergency turn-outs etc.

My car just broke down on my way to bring my broken iBook to an Apple dealer.

Go out to the woodpile.

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My blog has been acting up lately, maybe you noticed. I am trying to fix it.

Please to help prioritize symptoms in order of worseness from bad to good:

• iBook screen is not just going to sleep, it is narcoleptic

• iBook turns on, but hangs while booting up, and displays only blinking file icon
• iBook is refusing to shut off
• iBook is shutting off, but refusing to turn on again
• iBook is finally turning on, but screen only flickrs and then remains black
• iBook does nothing but make crazy fan noise
• iBook does crazy fan noise, plus mechanical grinding noise

When you are little we pay attention to whether you laugh or cry. If you cry we feed you until you start to vomit a little, or we change your diapers, or make sure you’re warm, or tell the clown to go bother someone else. If you laugh, everything’s A-okay.

Then you learn to talk, and it’s interesting neologisms for a while, and stories about your past lives (“I drowned right over there”) and shared dreams (“Tiger eat papa”) and, generally, fun conversation.

Then, all of a sudden, you’re a fully formed human with interests of your own and it gets hard. This is around the age of nine or ten. You are who you are, nothing’s going to change for the rest of your life, nothing big. You’re what, eleven now, you know what I mean. People think you’re a little kid, but there’s a lot less difference between you and a 49 year old than there is between you and a one year old.

You’re basically your adult self, right here, in a little kid’s pyjamas.

My dad drifted out of our lives at about that age. Once we had formed. I used to think it was because of some character flaw of his, but I no longer think so. Now, instead, I think, basically, dude, it’s really hard to pay attention to what the hell you’re talking about. You talk so fast, and it’s making sense now, and you really have to pay attention.

Little kids, you can get away with saying, whatever.

Now, though.

And it keeps getting harder. You drift further and further away the older you get. You get other interests, I get less heroic, the conversations grow awkward.

I could never get a conversation started with my dad, not really, at the end. We both tried. We lacked the time, mostly, I guess.

So don’t be freaked out if you notice me paying more attention to you.

Also, who would’ve thought my spirit guide would be a hobo spider?

It’s like, you know, Don Juan going, Here, Mig, forget that peyote, I got someone here I’d like you to meet.

A bite to the Achilles tendon.

Even after the swelling went down, and the blister healed, the immediate symptoms lasted two weeks: disorientation, clumsiness, blurred vision, headaches, thicker beard growth, libido way up, and weird ideas.

Like, ideas for houses: tree houses. Or, a hill with a shack on the top, only the entire hill is also a huge house underneath. Benefits of this: you can have goats and sheep on the outside of your house, man.

Or: RVs will soon be cheap used. Nearly free, as gasoline prices climb. Buy them cheap, stack them one atop the other, as high as you need: alternative skyscrapers.

So not a pengine (“Slide!”) and not a weasel.

MW described my spirit guide in a comment here earlier. I quote:

I can see it in my mind’s eye & it’s looking just like an old Max Fleischer cartoon

When you leave the house you wonder why you did – the sunlight seems too bright and the air is hot after the air conditioning.
Also fragrant from the surrounding forest.
You wonder why you went out. You had a reason.
You’re looking for your musical saw. There you go.
Your mother can’t find it. Either it was never delivered, or maybe your uncle received it and forgot it somewhere.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d forgotten something.
The electric cello you found right away, and the theremin, likewise the carbon fiber cello bow, which turned out to be, at best, an imitation carbon fiber violin bow.
But it would work for the musical saw.
If you had it.
It wasn’t in the garage, you looked.
You finally get the barn unlocked.
It is full of stuff.
Mostly cardboard boxes, neatly stacked. Hundreds of them, all full of sticks collected and dried by your uncle.
If civilization collapses, he’ll have something to burn.
Also, there is a saw on the workbench, but it’s the wrong saw. An old 24″ handsaw, not the 30″ bariton musical saw you’re looking for.
You look around for a while.
This is perfect hobo spider habitat.
You give up and leave the barn again. You look into the window of your uncle’s truck, but there is no saw forgotten inside.
A green tarp covers something beside the barn. You look underneath out of curiosity. It’s a pile of sticks, neatly arranged in a heap about six by fifteen feet, three feet high.
It looks like an art installation.
An old Ford tractor rusts in the grass on the left side of the barn. It was the first tractor you remember your father buying.
Berry vines grow over an old Caterpillar on the other side.
He bought objects he didn’t really need, you think, hoping something would change.