Oxygen sensors are the most worthless stupid pieces of shit in the fucking world.
I’m going to unplug my battery right before I get my car emission tested - that’ll reset the “check engine” light and should enable me to pass. Hey, that’s what I did last time.
I’d like to send out a quick kudos to Ken and Billy at Brooks-Huff in Cockeysville. They went above and beyond the call of duty in attempting to locate the problem between the oxygen sensor and the check engine light, and although I had to get my ass in there at 7:30 am and didn’t get the car back until two, the amount of work put into locating and fixing the problem probably exceeded the cost of the oxygen sensor to begin with. Also a kudos to them for not charging me a dime — this might have had something to do with the fact that the tech who installed the sensors last week then “fixed” them on Friday apparently misled his employers on his level of knowledge to the point where he possibly misread the check-engine light code on the operability of the rear oxygen sensor.
As things are, the check engine light popped back on about five minutes after I left the shop, and I really have to admit I’m just at the point where I will continue to live with the ‘check engine’ light. Hell, it’s been on for the last year or so, nothing new.
On the dryer, I mean.
Do you know how frustrating it is to wait an hour for one of your neighbors to take their effin’ laundry out of the dryer, and they don’t? And yours is, all the while, turning moldy in the washer. I hate taking my neighbor’s clothing out of the dryer, but I gotta be up bone-fuckin’ early tomorrow to take my car back in to try to get these fucking sensors working right and I don’t have time to do it then.
My biggest wish was that she wouldn’t come down as I’m piling her panties and bras and socks ontop of the dryer. That she wouldn’t come down until I’d sent my clothes through the full cycle of the machine and retreated to the safety of my apartment, which I have. Her clothes are still atop the dryer.
I’ve no right to complain — I’ve done the same many times, and thankfully, the building has two each of washer and dryer, so its not the biggest problem in the world (particularly during the week).
**
I’ve also noticed that when I’m in public with friends, one strong ale is enough to render me drunk. At home, folding laundry, hell, I’ve had four Yuenglings and still am able to type. Yeah, okay, the a/c is on and I’m sweatin’ a ton, and I’ve got like four versions of this monitor in front of me, but I’m nowhere as near effed up as I was at the happy hour.
And I was drinking coke then!
I swear, I’m a social drunk. Not that I drink in the company of friends, just that regardless of what I’m drinking when I’m with friends, I get drunk. As someone once put it: “Oh my god, someone cut him off on that water, ‘cuz he’s drunker than I am and he’s effin’ sober!”
Meh.
I was discussing surround-sound systems on a bulletin-board I frequent, when I was reprimanded by another member who said, “Think what you could do with that money! Hookers, man, hookers!” and I was reminded of an event that occured when I was assistant-managing a pizza shop in Hampden a little over a year ago.
One of my drivers was this crazy Egyptian dude named Mohammed, who was in his mid-forties and crazy as all get out. His nickname was “Mo-Mo”, given to him by the GM and the senior AM. He hated this name, and another Egyptian, Sammy, explained that “Mo-Mo” either sounded close or was exactly the Egyptian phrase for “mother fucker.”
So Mohammed was never happy because every time he walked in the door, much like Norm at Cheers, he’d be greeted by everyone shouting “mother-fucker!” at him.
Mo-Mo loved to describe his experiences with Hampden’s hookers. He’d show up and take out a towel from his Amigo, “Look man! Best head, $10! From the corner! Came in the rag!” He never seemed to understand that, y’know, y’want a hooker? Fine. Do you have to do it on the Papa’s dime? There’d be deliveries on the rack in the store waiting to get out and he’d be out some where having some crackhead give him a $5 blowjob. (To top everything off - at the end of the night he’d complain about making zero tips, and you’d have to go down everything with him, “You said you spent $5 for a blowjob on the hooker at Elm, then $25 in gas, you bought Indian food for dinner and told me it was $10, then you were ranting about being overcharged for a blowjob by a hooker on University…”)
It was one of those situations that seems to plague most pizza shops — yeah, you’d like to fire Mo-Mo, you just never have enough staff to actually do it. Hooker this, hooker that, he’d tell you who would do what for how much and what street corner to find them on, regardless of how many times you asked them to please, for the love of god, shut the hell up, or regardless of whether or not you were the type of person to enjoy the company of a hooker (i.e., the engaged female GM, who made it quite clear that she was certain she didn’t want the best head of her life from the crackhead down on 38th street, thank you very much).
“Crazy Mo-Mo,” we called him, because, really, this guy was really really really fuckin’ nuts.
Anyway, we had this little shit sixteen-year-old insider working on the makeline. He’d been there for a few months — typical Hampden yo-boy spending his entire paycheck on Wal-Mart brand clothes and used DVDs from Blockbuster. He was eventually fired for screaming “fuck!” into the phone when he was taking a customer’s order, but that was long after I’d left. Mike was a weird kid - he’d always talk about how his ultimate ambition was to be a pizza shop manager, but he never seemed to understand that attaining that goal would mean giving up his marijuana habits. He’d come in high, get high on his breaks, and mention often how when he managed a pizza shop, he’d offer the weed as a pizza topping. He always ran away from the counter when the police showed up — I loved my police customers, cool as hell, especially when some drugged-out shithead was trying to display an aquarium set in the store lobby.
Mike was, to say the least, not the sharpest bulb in the drawer. He insulted customers and coworkers alike, and I’m not certain he was always doing it on purpose. One of the other insiders, a wonderful girl who went to Western, spent some atrocious amount of money on a new hairstyle, and Mike’s comment was “Gosh, that looks like crap.” When she refused to speak to him for the rest of the night, his only question was, “What’d I say…?”
One incident of rather glaring idiocy sticks to my mind like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth. One night everyone was staying late to do a super-good cleaning for the anticipated arrival of the company’s founder. He didn’t show, but one of the execs did. Anyway, this 30-ish year-old black woman named Cheryl was scrubbing the wall behind the sink (doing a good job), and Mike walked past, saw her, and taunted her with, “Scrub negro, scrub!” I was up front and by the time I thought to yell, “Stop!” she’d thrown half of the (previously clean) dishes at him and he was scrambling for shelter behind a stack of boxes. Like I said: not the sharpest bulb in the drawer.
Mike had this super flashy bike that looked like a cross between a bicycle and a crotch-rocket. I really can’t describe it except it looked really expensive and it was super bright green. He’d keep it in the back when he was working. He showed up late one shift, minus the bike, explaining it had been stolen and he was getting a ride home from his aunt at the end of the shift.
As the dinner rush came to a close and I was putting away the recently-arrived commissary order, I overhead snipits of a conversation between Mike and Mo-Mo. Mike was breaking down and cleaning the make-line, and Mo-Mo was starting his late-driver sweep. The snipits were along the lines of “Oh my god, I didn’t know you could put anything in there …” “… all over her face?” “…she real cheap, discount for multiple visits…” On and on for half an hour. This wasn’t the first time they’d discussed Hampden’s hos, and trying to shut Mo-Mo up about his favorite subject inevitably led to a headache, so, what the fuck ever.
So I got the commissary put away and I was up front counting out the tills when Mike’s aunt knocked on the door. She’d stopped in before so I knew who she was, and Mike let out his typical little, “Yo, good night, eh? Later!” and went out the door just as Mo-Mo was walking back into the store from a delivery.
“I don’t believe it!” Mo-Mo said.
“Hmm?” I muttered trying to get the stupid little dollar calculator to, y’know, calculate.
“He picked up that whore I was telling him about!”
I looked at him. “Huh?”
“That woman he left with! Man, she suck dick, fuck, in ass, cheap! What … why are you laughing? You not believe me?”
When I explained to Mo-Mo that his favorite prostitute was Mike’s aunt, he too laughed with glee. “Wait until I tell him!”
I tried to disuade him when his eyes suddenly lit up. The bulb missing from Mike? Yeah. In Mo-Mo. “No! I will bribe her! I will get for free so I do not tell him!”
I haven’t seen Mo-Mo for quite some time, but every now and then I look up at the stars and imagine that, somewhere in Hampden, Mo-Mo is fucking Mike’s aunt up her ass in the back of his crappy old Isuzu parked in some desolate alley.
