They Said Taylor Was A Good Girl: Rest In Peace (2001-2005)

Brace yourself. This is News with a capitol N.

Just in:

Bill claims he can speak three other languages. They are, in no particular order, British, Ireland, and Latin. I'm getting really curious about what they are putting in kids cereal today.

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Pictures from the week will be up by tomorrow.

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My car broke down about 10 miles out of New Orleans. One radiator, 6 hours, and a few hundred dollars later I'm ready to try again. This time though, I'm following Myles example and taking an audio book with me. Cracker Barrel, in addition to sweet rocking chairs, has a vast (read: miniscule) selection of books on tape. I picked up Life of Pi, which is about a boy (not the 3.14 non-sense that haunted us in high-school geometry).

After a ship wreck, the boy is stuck on a raft with a Bengal tiger. The only thing more horrifying than being marooned on a life raft with a ferocious tiger is of course being trapped on a raft with the aforementioned non-sense number and a stack of geometry books. I once told this ill-fated joke to the guy sitting next to me in Algebra class and got about as big of a laugh as I did after you just read that. Crickets.

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This just in (this one's big!):

My Dad just walked in, mid-blog, and told me the broken radiator's fine. What's not fine, however, is the front end shocks. And by "not fine" I mean they are gone. Zilch, nada, zero, missing in action. Visibly curious, he said, "I've never seen something like this happen. They have literally been destroyed and no longer remain."

Hearing this, I felt two things: Sadness, since this is the coup de grace for my beloved Taylor, and pride, since I somehow manged to decimate my front end shocks. Perhaps it was the James Dean license plate, a morbid omen to be certain, that caused these unfortunate events. And by James Dean license plate I mean my utter lack of any regard whatsoever in regards to my driving.

I remember my Dad putting that license plate on. James Dean, leading the way at 75 mph. Talk about foreshadowing. He offered to just go ahead and cut my brakes while he was at it.

That Jeep, somehow in the last fourv iolent years of my life, transcended the physical make up and became a living and breathing friend. Hoses pumping oil became veins pumping blood; a cracked windshield became the keyhole into lifes meaning. That Jeep was my destiny. My purpose. My Captain.