The Green Red Green (22 page)

The Something Not Being There category obviously includes the disappearance of anything necessary to allow the flow of water, such as a complete lack of said water; the absence of antifreeze in the water (see “solid block of ice” above); the missing drive belt for the water pump; the hoses you took off to make a tuba for your sister’s wedding.

Unless you’re driving an early experimental car that runs on wood, dashboard smoke is probably an electrical fire. In most cases, it’s caused by driver negligence: a spilled cup of coffee or even more volatile liquid, or coins dropped down the defroster vents. Maybe you dropped tinsel down there on your way home from Liberace’s estate sale. Or maybe you’ve been impatient with the radio or heater performance and have randomly kicked under the dashboard with steel-toed shoes. Perhaps you’ve driven through piles of leaves for fun, shredding dried pine cones on the red-hot heater core.

In any case, you have a short-circuit causing a wire to overheat and burn. It will probably blow a fuse and go out. Or it could go out once the wire burns and opens the circuit. Or it could turn into a massive automotive fire that totally engulfs your car. But you’ve got a two-out-of-three chance that it’s not serious, so just roll down the window and keep driving.

When you see smoke coming out of the dipstick hole or the oil filler cap, that means you have a fire in the engine crankcase. If
you’re wondering what that is, think back to the oil fires in Kuwait. That’s basically what’s going on in there, except that no one will help you put it out. The engine has overheated and ignited the oil, which is usually caused by an extreme shortage of oil, which is usually caused by you buying self-serve gas and not checking the oil for seven years. If you have a crankcase fire, pull over, remove the licence plates and all other identifying features, and find an alternative mode of transportation (see tips on hitchhiking).

Unless you’re hauling manure, this is probably a fire. Before you open the trunk lid, try to remember what’s in there. A lawn mower? Fireworks? Any type of missile? Maybe you’re better off just to keep driving and keep the fire behind you. It could be burning for a while because the gas tank is back there, but on the bright side, nobody will tailgate you.

Smoke from the wheels is very rarely a fire. It is usually rubber burning from friction, which 90 percent of the time is caused by you pushing down too hard on one of the pedals—either the gas or the brake. Ease back on your stops and starts, and that should remove the tire-smoking problem. It could also be that one of your rear wheels has locked up. That usually happens when an ordinary guy tries to change his own differential fluid. Remove the cover and look inside, and you’ll recover that wrench you’ve been missing. Take it out and everything should be fine.

If it’s the front tires that are smoking, you may have an alignment problem. Turn the steering wheel to go straight and get out and look at the tires. If they are pointing directly toward or away from each other, you need a front-end alignment. And so does your car.

If it’s a cold or a damp day, this is probably steam and nothing to worry about. However, if the smoke is black and full of charred metal slivers with the occasional multicoloured flame ball, there could be a problem. The exhaust pipe is the off-ramp for the unburned gases from the engine. Be careful what kind of gas you use. Don’t buy it on the black market from a guy with a German accent. His prices are way out of line. And don’t just assume that old cans of paint and hairspray and homemade beer will automatically work in your car. Take your exhaust problems very seriously. As all mechanics and proctologists know, there is no better clue to how things are working than what comes out the back end.

When you notice smoke coming from the back seat, you have to remember if you have thrown anything over your shoulder in the past few hours. A lit cigarette? A cigarette lighter? A propane torch? Bowls of kerosene? The Olympic flame? A BBQ? Church candles? Roman candles? Cans of napalm?

If the answer is no, then check to see if anybody’s back there. If you discover a passionate couple, find out their ages. If they’re between forty and seventy, look out—it’s smoke. If they’re under forty, relax—it’s steam. If they’re over seventy, ignore it—it’s dust.

I
know many factors make people what they are, but chemistry has to be a big part of it. And if you’re a man, testosterone must be the most influential chemical. If you take a normal man
and drastically reduce his testosterone level, you get either an ugly woman or a guy who walks funny and never shaves. Testosterone is a key ingredient in the man recipe, and that’s why I’m concerned about the negative messages that we see targeting testosterone every day. Take, for example, all those ads to promote animals being neutered.

Now, I can understand the rationale of castrating pigs to fatten them up in the belief that they’ll eat more if they have nothing else to think about, but the idea of having your dog neutered to make him more manageable upsets me. Some days I’m a little unmanageable myself, and I don’t want my wife looking at our friendly, obedient dog and getting ideas.

T
here are many great things about being married to the same person for a long time, and I’m a grateful husband on a fairly regular basis. One of the best perks is the evolution of communication between two people over time. It eventually reaches the point where words are unnecessary. What a bonus! Life is hard enough, but having to explain every little setback or accident—or why the police are in the driveway—can get very tedious. I truly appreciate being able just to go quietly to bed with a couple of aspirins and a cold compress. It’s great to be with someone who knows you so well that you don’t need to come up with an explanation. The downside of that relationship is that when you’ve screwed up so badly that you do have to come up with an explanation, it had better be a dandy.

W
hile men and women are doing more things together than ever, which is a good thing, there is obviously still a need for each to spend time with their own kind—to be with people who share their physiology and experiences and, in many cases, attitudes. Women seem to do this much better than men do. They have shopping trips or quilting bees or spa days or sleepovers. The list for men is less impressive: hunting and fishing. We seem to have to be killing something to have a good time. And men having a sleepover really gets the rumour mill going. So instead, why don’t we start a men’s club where we could relax and be ourselves and bond? Here are some suggested features:

I
was at a social event and a fat, bald middle-aged guy was pointing out all the beautiful single young women who were at the event. And he capped it off with “Just my luck, I’m married.” And he was so right.

I
f you live with someone who’s an avid shopper, you may need to be extra careful with your appearance and behaviour. A person who shops a lot knows the importance of comparing features and options, and is completely focused on getting good value. And the scariest part is that she continues to comparison shop even after she’s bought the item. If she sees something she likes better or the product doesn’t perform as advertised, she has no qualms about taking it back for a refund. This can be a dangerous pattern if you happen to be the husband of such a person.

My advice is for you to see yourself as a used car. You can go one of two ways: you can either try to convince your wife that you have retained so much of your original value that she’d never find a better unit of your vintage, or you can convince her that you have zero trade-in value and the only way she’ll get her money out of you is to run you into the ground.

I
heard on the radio this week that scientists are looking for house designs that would work well on Mars. The implication
is that we’re going to live on Mars soon because earth is getting overpopulated. I beg to differ. New York and Toronto may be overpopulated, but have you been to Alaska lately? We have lots of room left right here on earth. It’s just that most of our available space doesn’t have perfect weather or soil and isn’t close to a major highway or an indoor mall. But then, neither is Mars and it’s a heck of a commute. Maybe one day some of us will live there, but I’d take a hard look at Baffin Island first.

Y
ou can’t do a lot about your basic physical appearance, but you can enhance how you look by the way you dress and the environment in which you place yourself. Here are a few suggestions:

I
t’s hard to save money if you don’t have any, so the next best thing is to save money by finding new ways to use things you already own. For example, if you have a home with a door and a couple of window awnings and a television antenna, you can make an attractive, cost-effective patio set. In the winter, the house will look the way it does now; in the summer, it will look quite different. Let’s say you’re starting with a house that looks like this:

From now on, this is how your house will look in the winter only
.

Remove the television antenna. Nobody watches TV in the summer anyway. Now, you could climb up on the roof to remove it, but it’s very time-consuming to get the ladder back from the neighbour and climb all the way up there and then have to lie for an hour in the shrubs waiting for the ambulance. So I recommend you throw your boat anchor up on the roof and try to hook it around the antenna pole. If you have a lot of anchor rope, you might want to clear the other side of the house of kids and lawn ornaments.

Once you have the anchor hooked to the antenna, attach the other end of the rope to whichever one of your car bumpers has the least amount of rust. After you tie it on, bring the vehicle as close as possible to the house to create slack in the rope. (When removing a television antenna, you rely heavily on the element of surprise.) Nail the gas pedal. As soon as the rope snaps tight, the unit should be picked cleanly off the roof.

You have to change the shape of the antenna for our purposes. Be careful. You don’t want to alter the reception capabilities of the frequency-tuned components. Hold the antenna like a battering ram and run it into the inside corner of your garage as shown in Diagram B.