Daily Bread

Today I bought transmission dipstick & a quart of transmission fluid. Transmission fluid is pink. It helps your car’s gears shift. Transmission sticks are short. They should be checked with the car running said Alfred, the guy who did my smog check. He’s Middle Eastern and has 19 credit cards and tapes little scraps of paper with how much he’s spent to the face of each card. He’s going to flee the country in two months.

My car passed the check. We were both happy. Me ‘cause now I can renew my registration and drive my car into the ground as I originally intended and I can continue to have the gasoline/carwash/insurance expenses which I’ve become accustomed to and therefore bring me comfort. Much. And, yes, Alfred is happy too because he doesn’t have to deal with me eyeing the failed smog test report and saying (not-at-all-insinuating-anything) “but it passed two years ago” and him having to say, “look lady, two years ago Saddam Hussein was still in power, I still had a full head of hair, and I didn’t have an army of prescription drugs to take and you had 10,000 miles less on your odometer…”

Funny. How time is always changing things. Funny how much of this week I’ve spent trying to revive my Nissan Stanza after many months of neglect. The lessons of this year are manifold, but one for sure that keeps asserting itself is this: Life takes maintenance. To think otherwise, is to be the dumb headless chicken I’ve been for most of my life. For some reason, contrary to your education and basic observational powers, you think that everything’s resilient as worms. Auto-regeneration. You get offended when your car starts rioting after you haven’t given it an oil change in 9 months. You wonder how your love handles got to be so plush. You’re bewildered by tartar. See, I have this tendency to treat upkeep like it’s this terrible waste of my precious time. Like errands are for sissies; defragging your hard drive -- for the weak. But it’s foolish to think this way cuz neglecting the fact that entropy happens, that food molds, that in LA, fan blades get tarred and feathered spinning all that cool smog-infused air into your living room, means you inevitably end up dealing with AFTERMATH. And suddenly you’re devoting your Precious Time to putting out fires that could’ve been avoided – if you just retired that policy of cumulative neglect.

So, I’m working on it. On breathing deeply while I drive east on Hollywood Blvd with real live palm trees flanking the streets (I’m a real citizen of LA!) and feeling good that I’m on my way to North Hollywood to pick up a transmission dipstick. I’m working on liking to get up and brush my teeth when my body’s already collapsed on the couch whoop-assed from a day spent rehearsing with bands comprised of people I have the honor of really loving (Alanna, Kim, Mike, (Me)) or an afternoon building balloon websites for the unequivocal Addi Somekh. Lots of work and working on.

On good days, I remember not to whine.

In the next issue of chickengate: Alice processes the Eagle and Talon Bye Bye Bush and The Heavenly Service of Mindy Chiu shows that went down this weekend and helps the world to understand the wonderful burgeoning music scene that's in LA and the best way to slaughter procrastination. Stay tuned.

Love and sprockets,
alice