Garage Monkeys. That is how Pirsig and Crawford describe them. Each writes about a different species: Pirsig about repair techs who lack arete and Crawford about the middle managers who stand between vehicle owners and vehicle repair techs. They are adjacent parts of the modern automotive service-shop organization and both offend something at my core. …
It’s one of my favorite parts of a repair job: a symbolic transition, instantiated in the physical act of switching the ratchet from “loosen” to “tighten.” In terms of the sense of satisfaction it brings, it is rivaled only by the moment a newly-repaired mechanism starts and operates properly again for the first time. For …
I want to write about grading – but not the kind of grading that results in scores or letters A-F (excluding, for whatever reason, ‘E’). I have something to say about a kind of grading few people think about anymore – and even fewer understand. If you have lived your life on paved roadways, you …
I feel constipated. I know, I am not supposed to talk openly about such things in polite company (whatever the fuck “polite company” is). But the truth is that I am backed-up and the pressure and discomfort have been building for a while. Actually, it feels like the pressure is exacerbating the issue now: like …
What is it… I’m doing here? It’s hard to say. I don’t mean that I am unsure what I am doing. I’m pretty clear in my purpose. It’s just difficult for me to articulate, because what I am up to here is more intuitive than rational. I have this sense that there is something important …
Eddie Van Halen died a couple of weeks ago. What follows is, I suppose, something of a tribute to him – though that is not why I wrote it. I had actually written this more than a year ago and it has been waiting for me to make space to do something with it. It …