Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Friends don't let white friends listen to hip-hop...

I'm white. I know it. I'm pretty much the poster child of whiteness. I can't dance for shit, I know it, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I love music, but I couldn't tap my foot to the beat if my life depended on it. Again, that doesn't stop me from trying.

I love my car. I love listening to music in my car. I have it wired up with so much equipment that most concert venus are envious.

This morning started an unfortunate series of events the likes of which caused the naming of my blog. (I'm such a drama queen... it isn't like anything really bad happened as a result of any of these events)

Event 1: I've been chasing down a ground-induced hum for a few months. I finally got it pretty well cleaned up. Only when I use my IPOD do I really have problems. That comes from using an unshielded IPOD adapter. I just have to rip out the dash to replace that.

Event 2: I blew a capacitor two days after fixing the ground issue. I should have had a 2farad cap in, and I only had 1. OOPS. It fizzled and just gave up the ghost. I took it out to prevent it from exploding or something. A cap is used to help prevent high powered amplifiers from sucking all the power from the car's electrical system. Without the cap, your headlights tend to dim to the beat of the music. In extreme cases... well I'll get to that in a few events.

Event 3: Wednesday is my early day. I go in at some freakish hour of the morning so that I can get off early and go see my buddy Chris. That means that I-66 is mine for the taking. I sometimes go a little over the speed limit and I almost always turn the music up loud enough to repel tailgaters.

Event 4: After hearing the song in the movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle for the last two months, I went to I-tunes and purchased the Black Eyed Peas CD "Elephunk". It contains the song "Lets Get Retarded". Just the title alone implies that the song is written specifically for me.

Disclaimer 1: I know that there should be a constitutional amendment banning white guys from listening to music like this. I'm living proof that the Supreme Court would uphold the validity of such a ban.

Event 5: I'm driving to work... a little fast... a little loud. I'm doing about 85mph and track 3 comes on. It is the song mentioned in Event 4.

Event 6: I turn the volume up a little louder.

Event 7: My car stalls. I'm at about 3500 rpm in 6th gear and moving at a fairly good clip and my car stalls. The idiot lights come on the dash, the headlights all but go out. the tach drops to zero and the speedometer needle is dropping fast.

Disclaimer 2: I knew this was coming. I wasn't surprised by having power issues in the car. I was a little surprised by the severity of it though.

End Result 1: I hit the clutch instantly. I turned the music down (it still sounded damn good even though the car had stopped running). I dropped the car into 5th gear and dumped the clutch. It roared back to life. I drove on with the volume set a little lower.

End Result 2: Daddy is going to get his baby a new deep cycle battery and a 2.5farad capacitor for the stereo system when he goes shopping next week.

Have a nice day.

Pete

4 comments:

DT said...

Ha, now that's hilarious! I fried enough electronics and killed enough batteries in high school to know all about causing electronic issues. But damn Pete, that's taking it all the way.

Your Name Here said...

Some might say it is taking it too far. ;)

It will be fixed soon, though. I'm sure the law enforcement officers in Fairfax County will be happy to know that.

Later!

Pete

Tom said...

Maybe it was your cars way of telling you it doesn't like hip-hop.

Your Name Here said...

I thought that originally, but it sounds so damg (combining the word dang and damn) good. I think it is quite the opposite. It sounds so good that it wants to pull over and get elephunky.

Pete