Crackwhores and Crappy cars

Today's haiku was actually elicited about 2 weeks ago. I have to drive by some....questionable neighborhoods on my way in to work in the morning, and I frequently see women who are either failed strippers who figure since they cannot get currency for showing off their cooter that they might as well share it for free, or they are crackwhores. Sometimes their garments are not the best at covering up things that no one should ever have to see, and so without further ado...

Ode to the Crackwhore

Oh silly crackwhore
Please stop showing me your vag
it fries my eyeballs


The Diplomat

OK so over the years I have had some truly shithole vehicles, and the drive home in the hot rod Escort with the scotch taped on headlights (I promise I will put a pic up later) got me remembering my old Diplomat:

It was 2000, and I had just gotten my GED in order to get a better g-o-b, and I decided with my taxes I would purchase the finest car I could with my vast newly accumulated 700 dollar wealth. This led me to the local public auction, standing outside in the beautiful Kansas City February rain/sleet/snow/ice/human feces drizzle/storm/tornado that we all know and love.

I walked past the Crown Victorias and Mustangs, intent on finding a true gem, and then I saw it, nestled snugly between a Mercedes that required a special key to unlock that no one had and a completely crushed Pontiac Grand Prix that ended up going for 10 dollars: a 1986 Dodge Diplomat. My father-in law was a Mopar fanatic (still is) and so I knew if I purchased this ride I would be able to trick him into some free auto mechanic work. It looked admittedly a little rough, with an inexplicable hole in the corner of the hood and no headliner, and under the hood the previous owner had (for racing purposes no doubt) removed the oil fill cap and stuffed a dirty rag in the hole, presumably to lose some more weight at the drag races. Well it had the after effect of shooting 10-W40 all over the inside of the engine compartment and inside the hood. At that point I saw the genius of the hole in the hood: it was to make it look like the car was steam powered!

Anyway, I won the car for 250 dollars, and it drove right home, smoke billowing out of the top of the car the whole way. I noticed a few other issues: The front windows would not roll down, the car had no power but once gotten up to highway speeds would run forever, and the heat ran full blast all the time. This was awesome in February, not as much in July and August.

The part of the car I wanted to share the most with you, dear reader, is it's personality. You see, all cars have a personality. The Escort is a hooker that has been beaten up too many times to pull down top dollar but still will do whatever she's told with no prodding required, I had a Crown Victoria that would not start unless you pressed the gas down 3 times before you started it, and so on and so forth. The Diplomat, I believe, was channeling Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Oh so the car must be fiscally sound, a compassionate conservative that is always took you in the right direction and was not really a car, motorcycle or boat?" you might be asking. And you would be a retard for asking that, since Dick Cheney has absolutely no good qualities unless aiming at an old man's face with a shotgun is considered a good quality to have.

No the Diplomat is more like the character Lil' Cheney on Lil' Bush: it is a bird killer. You see, with the impenetrable cloud of smog that would be billowing out of the hole cut in the hood because I was too lazy to wash the oil off of the engine, it would actually create a kind of vortex that would suck birds out of the sky and throw them through my grill at an alarming rate. I hit at least 4 birds every 3 months. Once I saw a cardinal flying across the highway and I was starting to say "money money money" like the old wives' tale suggested and then I heard the almost inaudible surprised "Sqwaggrgrgrgrgrgr" of the poor bird as it got mulched through the grill, and I swear right after that happened I got a little more power out of that car.

The funniest bird killing though was at the Creekwood Commons, a shopping center just North of KC. It was summer, we had finally gotten it so the front windows would roll down but not the back (screw my kids, they whined about the wind all the time anyway), and my little brother was riding shotgun on our way to get some Chinese takeout. We were sitting at the light, a bright early autumn Saturday afternoon, smoke forming a pillar of death into the sky, and my brother was trying to scrunch down in his seat so no one would see him, as he still had "an image to uphold", the loser. Anyway, all of a sudden we heard another "squawk" sound, and a bird fell out of the fucking sky, bounced off the hood of my car and died. I was not at all surprised. My brother simply said "well, that's it then", got out of the car in heavy shopping season traffic and walked away. I don't think he ever rode in that car again.