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It was a Dodge Cal­iber, and it looked pret­ty much exact­ly like this:

1. It was orange.
2. Its speak­ers were woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. I like my music on the loud side, and I enjoy the bass. This would let me do nei­ther, trag­i­cal­ly, with­out sound­ing like all four speak­ers in the car were blown. Every­thing from Bare­naked Ladies to Corb Lund to KMFDM caused dis­tor­tion. It did­n’t make me happy.
3. Its rear-win­dow wiper was a god­send on the dirt roads around my grand­pa’s farm.
4. Its cruise con­trol, when told to RESUME, would actu­al­ly take me up to 5km/h faster than I had set it to, and then slow­ly ease back off on the ham­mer. I had a car that used to do that, once. It was a 1988 Tem­pest. I think cruise con­trol tech­nol­o­gy should by now have evolved to the point where RESUME means what I think it does — take me back to the speed I was going before, not faster, not slower.
5. It had four wheels, four doors and a hatch­back, and as far as I can tell, four cylinders.
6. It had cup hold­ers that lit up when the head­lights were on, for no rea­son I can think of. (Well, that’s not true. I can see the engi­neers say­ing to each oth­er, “Hey, you know what would be cool…” Too bad they missed #10.)
7. It had a “rac­ing style” gearshift to make you think you were dri­ving a high-per­for­mance car, and…
8. its cruise con­trol con­trol was set up like a rac­ing-car pad­dle shifter on the steer­ing wheel, to fur­ther devel­op the high-per­for­mance illusion.
9. It had decent acceleration.
10. It had the worst vis­i­bil­i­ty out the rear win­dows — I dread­ed chang­ing lanes, because all I could see when I shoul­der-checked was car inte­ri­or. Not a clue what might be lurk­ing in my blind spot. As far as I can tell, this was due to the sub-port­hole-sized rear­most win­dows, and the fact that the dri­ver’s seat head­rest and the back door pil­lars got in the way.
11. It did not con­form to my stan­dards of an attrac­tive car.
12. Since it was the long week­end, it was half-price.
13. And it was what they had left down at the rental place.

So no, I won’t be buy­ing a Dodge Cal­iber any time soon.

• Doug got lazy. Sort of.
• Steph likes the 80s
• Mike’s First Time
• Post a com­ment and I’ll link you up!

1. Eat ’em with a lit­tle salt and pepper.
2. Make a sandwich.
3. Make sal­sa.
4. Make soup.
5. Make sal­ad.
6. Make pas­ta sauce.
7. Take pho­tos of ’em.
8. Fail to come up with some­thing clever for #8.
9. Throw ’em at peo­ple you don’t like.
10. Per­form div­ina­tion based on the pat­terns of their seeds.
11. Dye cot­ton.
12. Make ketchup.
13. Repeat list, because you plant­ed a dozen plants and they’re all doing incred­i­bly, stu­pid­ly well.

13 weird things that I enjoy:

1. Primus. I first heard Tom­my the Cat on the sound­track to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Jour­ney, and I was instant­ly hooked.
2. Crushed-up soup crack­ers in choco­late pud­ding lends that need­ed extra crunch.
3. How I miss Freaka­zoid.
4. Top of the Food Chain–one of the fun­ni­est spoofs of Gold­en Age SF movies ever. Set in Excep­tion­al Vista, which ain’t been right ever since the nut fac­to­ry closed down.
5. Ter­ror of Tiny Town–not the movie, which I’ve yet to see, but the now-defunct punk­ish band from Van­cou­ver, so obscure I can’t even find ’em on Google. They had a delight­ful pol­ka (with accor­dion!) called “Kim Phil­by”:
   

   Now Phil­by and his friends, Lloyd, Burgess, and McLean
   They were the upper-class pride and joy
   Bri­tan­nia nev­er sus­pect­ed until they defected
   She’d get screwed by a pub­lic-school boy

6. I’ve always enjoyed walk­ing back­wards. I don’t know why. As a youth I prac­ticed doing it till I did­n’t have to con­stant­ly look over my shoul­der. It’s kind of handy in judo, so I guess it all worked out.
7. Some­one Comes to Town, Some­one Leaves Town is eas­i­ly the weird­est nov­el I’ve ever read. I enjoyed it, too. As opposed to Doug, who seems to have dis­liked it for some of the rea­sons I liked it. Oh well. Dif­f’rent strokes etc.
8. The Nature of Nicholas was one of the creepi­est movies I’ve ever enjoyed. Not hor­ror, not com­plete­ly, but sur­re­al in a crawly way.
9. I’m a fan of ety­mol­o­gy, and so when my sis­ter and her fam­i­ly bought me The Oxford Dic­tio­nary of Word His­to­ries, I was beside myself. My wife just kind of rolled her eyes.
10. I don’t real­ly care much for the myths of Rome and Greece, but I’m huge­ly inter­est­ed in the myths of the north. I sup­pose that’s not so weird…
11. Jesus Christ: Vam­pire Hunter, a weird and off­beat lit­tle film from Ottawa. Best line: “If I’m not out in five min­utes, call the Pope.” (Although my wife’s par­tial to the Vir­gin Mary’s line: “Les­bians, God love them. They get so much done in a day.”)
12. Leaf let­tuce, straight from the gar­den, rinsed and then sprin­kled oh-so-light­ly with sug­ar, is delicious.
13. And the last one, inher­it­ed from my father: French toast with but­ter, salt and pep­per, and straw­ber­ry jam. I always assumed this lit­tle gour­mandic odd­i­ty came from the Welsh side of his fam­i­ly tree, but no; appar­ent­ly he start­ed eat­ing it that way up in the north so no one else would try to steal it off his plate. Who knew?

Things that make me smile. Rea­sons to be cheer­ful, as they say.

1. My dar­ling wife:
   

This one’s a lit­tle image-heavy, so I’ve added the “Con­tin­ue Read­ing” link.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Thir­teen smiles” →

1. Sep­tem­ber 13^th is my anniversary.
2. 13 Engines’ Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine, alt-rock from 1994, rocks.
3. Half of the Fri­day the 13ths that fall are pay­days for me.
4. The oth­er half are not.
5. But that’s okay because my wife’s pay­day is off­set from mine by a week.
6. Her­cules, a well-known and easy-to-find con­stel­la­tion in these north­ern lat­i­tudes, con­tains the glob­u­lar clus­ter M13.
7. There’s at least one hotel in Win­nipeg whose floor num­bers skip from 12 to 14, omit­ting 13.
8. My most recent address was Apart­ment 31. The apart­ment num­bers on the sec­ond floor went 11, 12, 31, 14. I sus­pect they swapped the dig­its, what do you think?
9. Before I could move into the apart­ment, work­men had to clean up and touch up the ceil­ing. The whole ceil­ing came down as they worked on it, which meant that they had to re-do the whole shootin’ match. For­tu­nate­ly, I was mov­ing from a one-bed­room apart­ment to a two-BR in the same build­ing, which meant I did­n’t have two land­lords to deal with.
10. Up until that point, I’d nev­er viewed 13 as par­tic­u­lar­ly unlucky. (I still don’t, real­ly. Peo­ple who let num­bers rule their lives are rather nine­teen.)
11. My wife’s read­ing Lemo­ny Snick­et’s A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events. Book 12 was titled The Penul­ti­mate Per­il, which leads me to believe that the 13^th book will end the series.
12. The Gob­lin King’s clock in Labyrinth has 13 hours.
13. And who can for­get Homer, peer­ing at the mis-print­ed cal­en­dar on the 13^th hour of the 13^th day of the 13^th month, and mut­ter­ing “Lousy Smarch weath­er”? Not I, apparently.

[ps] You can tell I’m not an Amer­i­can because it only now, hours lat­er, occurs to me that there’s 13 bars in the old stars ‘n’ bars. (That, and my insis­tence on insert­ing that “extra” u in words like colour and vapour.)

Links to oth­er Thurs­day Thirteens!

1. Car­men
2. Day­By­Day4-2Day
3. Doug’s movie quotes game
4. Aman­da
5. Dar­la’s Tow­el Day 13
6. Jayne miss­es junk food
7. Urban Mum­my’s list of ideas
8. Post a note in the com­ments, and I’ll add you here.

Get the Thurs­day Thir­teen code here!

The pur­pose of the meme is to get to know every­one who par­tic­i­pates a lit­tle bit bet­ter every Thurs­day. Vis­it­ing fel­low Thir­teen­ers is encour­aged! If you par­tic­i­pate, leave the link to your Thir­teen in oth­ers com­ments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thir­teen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to every­one who par­tic­i­pates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Track­backs, pings, com­ment links accepted!
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