smacky and bucky

Have German mechanics been bred to have tiny ewok-like hands? That's the only way they could reach all the little screws and bolts in the engine compartment of the new Volkswagen Beetle. I thought I'd never loosen the bolt holding the battery in place! I was able to fit a wrench in there, but with the tubes and hoses running around it, I had a turning radius of about 3 degrees.

I think the real answer is this: German engineers are freaking geniuses, and design everything so you need to let the dealer fix even the smallest problem. Everything inside the interior of the car is simple, clever, and intuitive to the driver. But everything under the hood is crammed together and unreachable. Do you think it's a coincidence that over HALF of the items described in the manual suggest taking the car to the dealership rather than attempting to fix it yourself? Remember about a year ago when I talked about changing the headlight bulb? The manual doesn't even tell you how to do it! It only says take the car to the dealer. I called the dealer and they said it would take an hour and cost $100. One hundred dollars to change a $3 light bulb! I instead found the instructions in a forum online and did it myself in 15 minutes. The second time I had to change a bulb in the other headlight, it took less than 10 minutes.

I finally loosened the bolt and took the old battery to the store and got a replacement. The car now runs, but of course still needs transmission work. At least I can drive it to a garage now.

My wife's mother was driving through town after visiting my wife's sister, and she stopped by, taking wife and dog with her to the river. Leaving me alone with the cats. Nothing exciting about an evening alone with work the next day. I did see something I want to spread the word about (I did see something about which I want to spread the word. See? Good grammar sometimes makes you sound like a retard speaking English as his third language...):

I watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on FX. I caught the pilot when it premiered and didn't think it was funny at all. Last night though, they aired two fantastic episodes. In the first, the daughter gets mugged and decides to get in shape and learn boxing. But it's too much work, so when someone offers her steroids, she takes them like crazy. And goes crazy. Also in the episode, three friends decide to make money in an underground fight club, but none of them can fight. So they get drunk and train one of the friends to take physical abuse, figuring if the guy can take a punch, he'll last long enough in the fight to tire out the other guy. Oh, and the father of one of the guys and the girl is Danny Devito. And last night he was going to box the guy that played Carmine Ragusso (The Big Ragu) from Laverne and Shirley, who is now a big fat old guy. The ending is a brutal parody of Million Dollar Baby.

In the second episode, they decide to serve underage kids liquor in their bar (long story). They all end up living out their fantasies of being the cool kids in high school, even though they're now about 30. Three of them end up with dates to the prom, and the fourth guy is jealous as hell no high school girl asked him. I'll be adding this show to our Tivo list.

Here's a clip called Banging :