Behavior Modification, Marriage Edition

           I had this album. Note Gary's expression.  Cue my future.  Premonition?  One wonders.

We watch a lot of stuff from the YouTube channel here.  Oddly, one of our big faves is watching guys turn wood burls into various shapes, usually bowls, but not always.**  It's really fascinating, and some of these guys are incredibly brave and innovative, making things that seem to defy physics, that look more fluid than solid.  This is not your hippie aunt's live-edge wood bowl. She sold that for .50 at her last garage sale.  See footnote.

The problem is, the Biker and I have totally different interests when it comes to what we like to binge watch.  Me, I'll listen to that robot British voice on the Reddit videos for hours.  Him?  Cars.

Now I've bitched about this before and I'll bitch about it again, I promise.  This guy will literally watch anything as long as it is car-centric.  FOR HOURS.   I've already mentioned the 437,916,y73,975,697,832,100000 car wreck compilations; talk about visual torture. They're just cars.  Any cars. Getting in wrecks. And there are thousands of these compilations online.  Note to self: Cancel that trip to Russia.  All the Biker sees is cars, not human tragedy, not vodka, just cars.  

Anything will do, he's not at all picky.  He'll watch videos of cars in parking lots. Literally some guy with a cell phone rambling around in store parking lots making video about the cars he walks past.  That is a thing.  Cars on streets.  Cars in car collections.  Cars being auctioned off.  Cars sitting in the weeds. New cars. Old cars. Trucks (technically cars, apparently.) Cars being dropped from cranes. Cars falling off cargo ships.  Cars being test-driven; and not high performance cars either, just sedans and shit. Cars going up mountains.  Cars going down mountains.  Cars...just...going places. Cars not going places.  Fixed cars being broken.  Broken cars being fixed. 

I have to admit that there's some interesting and even entertaining stuff out there in the Mr. Fixit's Garage genre.  But the vast, vast majority of the 'My Home Shop' shows are some dude with a voice like a goddamn dial tone wrenching away endlessly on some rusted hulk.  And just...no commentary, no nothing.  Just a depressing, messy garage with oil stains on the floor and some guy jacking away at a stuck nut.   

This is where I'd put a provocative and tasteless picture 

gleaned from the internet after a leading comment 

like that.   

One of the less than entertaining subsets of the Mr. Fixit video genre is Annoying Host and his Shitty Cars, AKA Wow I'm So Wacky Look At Me Return This Yugo//Trabant/Pinto To Showroom Condition!!!

No!  Let's not!   

Nine times out of ten the host is trying way too hard to be a yokel, hyuk hyuk git'er done yee-haw, I am such a character.  This alone is enough to make me want to throw something through the screen.  Or, the host is a characterless lump who is literally and un-ironically, hour after excruciating hour, episode after interminable episode, throwing money at a turd.  And my husband will watch this shit without judgement or complaint.  

One of these 'restore a dog' goons is called Scooby.  His big thing is restoring 'hoopties.'  Sounds enticing, doesn't it? Scooby is 85 pounds of I Abuse Coke with this super sad 'STAR' attitude that is just embarrassing, like those guys who had Sunday-only shows on local television and acted like the joint would fall apart without them.  Eeesh. It is tough to watch.  And ol' Scoob doesn't wrench on his 'hoopties' either...his acres and acres and warehouses filled with 'hoopties'.  No, he has a mechanic he calls 'Wizard' who does all the heavy lifting, and he refers to the poor dude as 'Wizard', and then just ponces around talking about his 'hoopties' and pissing me off.  Fuck this dude.  And fuck the idiots who made him YouTube famous too, as long as I'm at it.  Get off my lawn.

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One day, after I had to pull over to the side of the road on my way to Everson to let a big truck pass me because it was a big truck - not too close, driving safely, just a big honkin' truck in my rearview mirror, but it was FREAKIN ME OUT - we here at Rancho FirstNations had A Discussion about the fucking 156,385,638.999,999,000000 car wreck compilation videos.  This discussion helped, but our recent trip to Anacortes is what really put a stake through the heart of that obsession.   

Here's what I'm obsessed with staking through the heart. Thanks for ruining the Pacific Northwest, assholes.    

It took place right before we  went to Anacortes. We were both nervous for that whole trip.  (Fun fact:  After a steady diet of 285,630,563,8680000 car wrecks, your peripheral vision becomes just as acute as all the rest of your vision, including inner vision, your vision statement, psychological hypervigilance and clairvoyance.) 

It doesn't help that the traffic to Anacortes on Highway 20 is all huge trucks, nervous swabbies with high performance cars they don't know how to handle, and regular Joes cannoning their way toward the ferry terminal - or the casino, Gawd.  They just can't go fast enough to throw their money away, apparently.  And this describes a completely normal trip, average traffic flow, no accidents, no problem.

...or it would have described his perception of an average car trip - previous to his having discovered "Wrecks A' Plenty" videos.

I was kind of sneaky on that trip.  See, I just had a feeling that I wasn't the only one who'd been appalled and frightened by all the images of sudden disaster on the road.  So I angled the rearview mirror on my side so that I could seem to be looking out my window at passing scenery while I was actually watching the Bikers reflection in the back-up bubble-mirror. 

Stealth optics:  This is was 34 years of marriage leads to.  

That man was shitting bricks every time a semi passed us.  He'd flinch.  His grip on the steering wheel was viselike, and tightened whenever a car merged, or changed lanes. By the time we got to our little hotel his shoulders were way up around his ears, and he just dropped his luggage, laid on the bed and stress-breathed for awhile.

"You OK?" I ask.

" I'm just lying down, geeze." (Which I expect.  Mere stress dare not visit such as he.  It is a foreign concept, invented by the weak.) 

His hands were still in the 'clutching the wheel' position. 

Me,  I went into the bathroom and listened as he groaned and wheezed trying to make his limbs assume the lying down flat position. I am not too proud to admit that I made 'conducting an orchestra' gestures in the mirror.

See, I've heard this composition before.  It's the "I Must Drive At All Times Requiem", and it plays after a while spent on the road behind the wheel. Previously it would have taken an all day stint; say,  driving over Snoqualmie Pass, to cue up the orchestra. It was now playing after just a little more than an hour's worth of normal traffic.  

Mmm-hm.

(Believe me, the "I Must Drive At All Times Requiem" beats the Top Ten hit "Just Checking The Speedometer Constantly and Putting On the Passenger Brakes and Clutching Wildly at Interior Parts While you Make a Slow, Gradual Sweeping Turn" song, the one that plays while I drive and he fails to passenge correctly.  I finally decided 'Screw it'' and let him do all the driving. He's a bigger road hazard than anything outside the car because he's constantly gasping and panic-reacting and then denying it and pissing me off, which isn't worth me deliberately running high-speed into a bridge support, so I just let him drive - and let him pay the piper.  Because 34 years of marriage, kids.)

So here at the Rancho we are blissfully entering the 'Post-498,569,836,986,905,6366665836 car crash compilation' phase of our relationship.  All indications bode well.

Next in my sights?  "Inbred rural dork repairs a Lada using sheetrock nails."  

Watch this space.

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**(but seriously, how many frickin' wood bowls does the world need?  I find these things, once beautiful, high-dollar objects, at garage sales going for a dollar or less these days, all sprung and cracked from from being let to just sit and gather dust near a forced air heater.  If you're going to invest in an $800.00 burlwood bowl, for fucksakes take care of it, otherwise it'll be worth nothing in about five years.  Yeah. No shit.  I see you out there abusing your burlwood burl.)