white pimples around poodle anus

So, it turns out someone came to my website by searching for "white pimples around poodle anus".

Thanks Google ANALytics! I didn't know that I'd ever even USED any of those words in a post. Well I have now. Thanks for the inspiration, unknown Internet user! (I hope you found a good vet in the meantime.)

[Clears throat, shakes head, recovers.]

So my rat-bastard car, almost 15 years old, and just in time for Christmas, has just cost me more money. Is it a money pit? Yes. Are all cars money pits? Yes. But I need a car to get me to the hills where I can ski, and to get to banjo lessons after work, and to blah blah blah it's just so boring.

I wrote to my dad about it with the subject line "your daughter is a moron", because he's been urging me for a while now to dump the death-trap tin-can '92 Honda Civic and get something more reliable. But my mechanic says the frame is still good and safe, and that I can probably get another 6 months out of it before the next mondo repair. So I'm going to try to get it through the winter.

I guess I'm just not car-proud and never want to be. A good thing too, because here are the curses of the Rolling Tumour, with all its scabs and seepage*:

- floor on driver's side, always wet
- no A/C and when vents are turned up, mysterious clicking sound
- little door over gas cap now permanently loose
- rear hatch release permanently broken, now can only open back door with key
- slam door too hard, chunks fall away from car's haunches
- automated car washes impossible for similar reasons (those high pressure jets are too punishing)
- smallest bumps result in music skipping (this is new; CD player used to be fine)
- web of cracks in windshield on passenger side obscures view, makes passengers nervous

(Note: For a while there, volume of music would unpredictably and spontaneously rocket upward to ear-drum bleeding levels, which was kind of cool, if satanic; friend took apart faceplate and soldered something back together.)

But here are the blessings of the Red Rocket:

- miraculous gas mileage (at highway speeds I can go 5-6L/100 km and it's only slightly less good in the city) and therefore less pollution
- spill crap in my car and I laugh
- poke holes in the upholstery with your ski poles or fingernails or steak knives or laser-eyes and I laugh
- web of cracks in windshield on passenger side obscures view, makes passengers nervous (friend confessed he spends whole trips with me suppressing nightmare images of shard of glass suddenly flying loose and penetrating his wind pipe, I told him windshields SHATTER in a spray of glass, ha ha ha, relax)

*I mean this figuratively, it isn't actually leaking anything. Somehow.