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mathc2003
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Name: Joe
Birthday: 5/28/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: Computers, MetalCore, Hardcore, cars, and anything that goes really fast or explodes. I'm not a big fan of art anymore. I work out, run a slight amount, and piss off women in my spare time.
Expertise: watercooling. turbocharging. punching trees until my knuckles bleed. playing quake 2 until my eyes get all bloodshot and my head hurts.
Occupation: Military
Industry: Computers (Hardware)
Message: message me
Member Since:
6/17/2005
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| "fate is real, fate is you, fate is built." - The Acacia Strain
brushed touches feel the paint fade beneath fingers
it has surged forward too long on four bent loops
lunging every time it is asked with fresh bloodlust
sucking thousands of chitinous spatters into its maw
never purposed for pickup, bred and trained to kill
call it a rental car all you like, it lives for adversity
the black bald hitman lurks on freeways and tracks
spitting a backfired curse at sorostitutes on the lot
blaring double-kicked bass into weakened ears
it is a spartan desert for lovers of heated leather
a bed of spikes for pathetic creatures of comfort
with growls and screams it instigates their fear
runs them like roaches into their safe little corners
a hooded handler in seat glares menacingly at the normals
symbiotically adapting attitude to mimick the machine
another life was spent clinging to a cliche paradigm
social norms forcing gentle speech and bright clothing
absence allowed acknowledgment of innate tendency
the minds eye calculating component gain and cost
finally allowed to use its desired capability for creation
admitted alone but alive and whole beyond belief
the only approved passenger is a glowing screen
its needle stitching red light between rich and lean
divining passage into respite from the petty player's game
pure protection from future suburban familial farce
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| [RANT]
ok. pilot training sucks. there, i said it.
there's 20 other people in my class propping up their heads because they have swollen to three times their original size since they found out they are going to fly. Ego makes me pissed.
I want to fly something fast, and not to fucking say i fly something fast. It seems like there are some jackasses who just want something to make themselves look cooler and pick up girls at bars. So, of course, they want fighter jets and of course they're going to stab people in the back to get there. ....when they asked me what aircraft i was here to fly....i said whatever will blow shit up and kill people. I'll still be pulling knives out of my spine this time next year.
Someone called fliers an "elite fraternity" about "how hard it was to get here"......don't give me that line of bull. I'm here to fly planes, not for a way to say "i'm the greatest".
If I could apply myself to the plane like my car, I'd be fine. I've worked 12 hour days and gotten frustrated as hell on the little SRT but i don't regret a moment. And I go back and do it the next day. And I do it on the weekend while you're getting blitzed and making half-assed passes at club rats.
i'm trying to concentrate on the academics, studying, being a good boy and getting my shit together.
but usually i just end up screwing off and thinking about how i'm going to build stuff and make the car go faster. I avoid studying. I just see the douchebaggery and i even hear a drunken slurred voice saying "heyyyy baby, i'm a pilot" when i try to open the books.
every hour i wonder: who is in this to be a pretty boy, and who's in this to fucking split skulls and cheat death?
[/RANT] | | |
| white walls are my new hell. these are not rooms, but machine closets...the kind you throw computers in after they exceed their lifespan. colder than a hotel room....no personality between the empty spaces, the neutral colors, and the pale brown wood. drained of life....every sound echoes a death knell off hard bulkheads. i slam a 25 milligram patch onto my shoulder...a pink swatch of plastic so big it covers my scar. this isn't a matter of quitting, i just can't afford to lose time...precious seconds that must be dedicated to every item of information they deem appropriate. seeing the academy before this has left me colorless....soulless. the only moment i was myself in the past two days....running a dodge in a pack of fifteen hondas down academy boulevard. my old release has worn....as thin as the air up here. i saw my old horse dressed in the wall's pale shade...naturally aspirated....popping vtec with a loud scream and roasting two punks in a volkswagen. i stayed slow at 45 just watching...knowing my demon could catch them both with a simple downshift...yet my resolve fades like these azure-carpeted hallways. i even sweat cold, i swear little pieces of ice would hit the floor if i wiped my brow. Is this what I must be to complete? Must I lose everything i gained by leaving....clothed in drab green, my only company the papers in front....the instrument representation tacked to the wall. my phone is even lost, wailing about a lost SIM card, no signal and no outside input. I should cut it off if i want to succeed. Every line of communication must be destroyed, no input save the knowledge needed for aircraft control. become the winged fleet....absent of emotion and waiting. identical to the rest of its counterparts, a clone just like these 200-odd rooms. scarily similar to those old hallways, the same faces and a tag on my jacket saying i belong here, plastered with what might be the last smile i ever show. Static X breaks into my soul.....trance metal....mechanical industrial noise..."this is not my life....this is not my home...this is not me...i hate this" A machine i must be...tear the organic from the frame and force a more powerful engine inside....replace the chip for something more controllable, every facet set in integer value. i gasp as their dialysis renders my blood clean of the little pieces that bound me to my former self. be what they want you to be or be destroyed. what will remain when i am reorganized in this manner? as every absent warmth fades to absolute zero....my breath fogs. my eyes search the empty ceiling for hope....and the only thing i find are traces of warmth i knew in the night, of sweating through summer days beneath a lone tree in an empty field ....a memory of a voice whispers quietly in my ear, and now, somehow i will sleep. something of me must survive the leaching. can a soul remain in hibernation, coated only by a thin veneer to mimic their bland sedation? it did for four years....and maybe that is the test. | | |
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Here's a few things you might not know about a car guy....not a professional mechanic but the backyard do-it-yourself type with love of the game
1) You may think the grease and cuts on our knuckles is disgusting. To the car guy, this is a badge of honor. Especially when there's a sick new part going under the hood that's going to really make the sucker faster...or when the clutch blew out the morning before your date and he replaced it himself.
2) IT IS NOT NOS...or NAAAWWWWS. It's nitrous oxide. 2 molecules of Nitrogen, 2 molecules of oxygen. It acts as an oxidizer to help fuel burn more quickly and produce more power. Same thing as laughing gas, but under a lot more pressure...so don't try to huff this stuff. You will blow your lip off or your lungs out. It will hurt.
3) Contrary to the perception formed by certain movies....a wing does not make you faster. It can, however, increase a car's stability when travelling at a high rate of speed by using aerodynamic forces to push the car's rear to the road. It is <not> necessary for a stock Hyundai, Geo Metro, Honda, or Mustang V6.
4) If there are a lot of stickers on the car with words like "Mugen" "Zex" "Ground Control", etc, on the rear window or door of the vehicle, chances are none of the advertised parts are actually on the car....only about 10% of vehicle owners actually put the parts in when they slapped the sticker on the side. The excuse that it's a list of things you are going to do to the car is bogus, write your shopping list on a sheet of paper.
5) The Fast and the Furious series is, however exciting, the most technically inaccurate movie ever created. In a drag race, no driver will shift 9-10 times. This is reserved for Mack Trucks which have many different gears. In reality, the intake manifold welds are the last place to worry about....try the piston rings, apex seals, connecting rods, valves, etc. When such damage occurs, the aluminum floorboards will not fall out of the car and make sparks. There may, however, be bits of metal on the ground, oil everywhere, smoke, and loud cursing.
6) Wangan Midnight and Initial D are animated, but not considered anime. The translations may be a bit off, but both series discuss real racing/drifting techniques such as feint drifting, trail braking, and even brake boosting. Watching either series does not necessarily mean the car guy wants to watch your episodes of Love Hina, One Piece, or Tentacle Sex 9.
7) The first option for lowering a car is NOT taking a hacksaw to the suspension springs. Doing so will mess up the suspension's damper and cause the damper to blow out, making the car lose oil pans over speed bumps. Use a set of coilovers, or lowering springs with upgraded dampers.
8) The Folger's Can Exhaust does not add power. If the engine is not huge, or using forced induction, a 3" diameter exhaust with a 6" tip does nothing more than make a weed-whacker noise. This is not a shot at Hondas, their engines can sound extremely sexy when used with a proper exhaust and muffler...which actually makes them sound throaty and raw.
9) If the car guy says don't put your ass on his paint, respect it. Maintaining a proper finish takes time and patience to properly wash, wax, and claybar(when needed). Many hours are spent making the paint look like a colored mirror. Placing your rear end on the hood may cause swirl marks, scratches, and/or the wrath of the owner.
10) Jason Statham once said to respect a man's car. This is especially true for the car guy. Watch how gently he treats his baby. He may even talk to it sometimes. If your the car guy's girl(assuming he has time for one), just remember he wants you to be seen rolling around in a nice car. It's actually a compliment to you! Would you be caught dead in public wearing a striped tube top, stripper heels, and sporting a Farah Fawcett hairdo? Probably not. For some guys, being seen in a poorly maintained/abused/riced car is the same thing.
11) Car guys can and will blow a paycheck on parts. Some are even comfortable eating only ramen noodles/pop tarts for months on end to save money for a huge new modification in the process. This is his passion, and if you are the discouraged female on the other end...he's not telling you to lose weight. Add up how much you spend in makeup/clothes/shoes: the result may be very close to the money he's using on the car.
12) The brand new Mustang GT sitting in the driveway may look cool and be darn quick in the 1/4 mile, but look at an import driver who's done an engine swap himself and/or added a turbo to his car. The import driver may not always be faster, but either way he's a helluva lot more knowledgable about his vehicle than Johnny Quarterback whose rich daddy got him a new toy. The import driver may actually be more careful, especially when he knows he can't afford to wreck his vehicle. To the Mustang owners: I don't hate domestics, and maybe I should have said Corvette, Audi, or BMW but the rich kids i knew in high school had Mustangs.
13) If you don't like going fast, get out of the car. Tell him to drive slower, but yes, you may not be invited on the next run. He doesn't want you to get hurt, but he likes the rush. He will slow down with you in the car if he's got sense, and he will go solo on the late night runs down the highway. Don't say "slow down" after the third honk on a highway roll, put your foot down sooner. This is equivalent to cockblocking. Posting traumatic videos you found on Youtube are not acceptable methods, because they're basically emotional blackmail. He may have already seen someone die on the road right in front of him. Messily at that. If he can tell you what a mixture of coolant, oil, and blood smells like....he probably already knows his risks, and accepts them.
14) If he's on a crotch rocket in flip-flops, shorts, and a sideways baseball cap....doing wheelies....then he's a squid. Limp Bizkit's Rollin' may even be his theme song. You might want to stay away from him if you don't like the sight of gravel embedded in flesh. A good present might be some body armor or a new brain.
15) If he laughed at you when you paid someone to change your air filter, you probably deserve it. It's a 5 minute job and may not even require tools. Next time you might suggest going to the parts store with him, get the part, and watch him put it in. He may even teach you how to do it yourself. You WILL be made fun of for paying 120 dollars in labor to change spark plugs and wires...don't get indignant.
16) The lover says:"It's me or the car"...Really dumb move. The car was probably there before you were. When he picks the car, you only have yourself to blame. The car is metal, and while it may rust or break down, it is always there until the moment it's destroyed or sold. It is loyal. It will not cheat on him, complain when his hair's messed up, his breath is bad, or get really bitchy when he comes in late at night.
17) Rather than complain about the time he spends on the car at the first opportunity, try to understand the passion he is placing in the vehicle. Borrow a helmet and take a ride with him at the autocross or the drag strip and feel the changes in the car with each upgrade. You might be impressed. Watch him fix something, you might learn a thing or two. If you happen to be the girlfriend, he's at least not chatting up other women when he's elbow deep in the engine bay. Girls don't come running to a guy with a bitchin' car...they do however, tend to gravitate to a pretty boy who is "popping bottles" in the club.
18) If the car smells like gasoline, grease, and air freshener...he cares about the vehicle and is working on it all the time. You'll learn to deal with the smell, it signifies dedication.
19) Drifting is not really racing. Some of the techniques are necessary to negotiate extremely tight corners in places like mountain passes or the gymkhana, but if your friend thinks he is going to be faster by popping the emergency brake on a wide sweeping turn at 90 miles an hour....give him another Ritalin and tell him to stop watching Fast and the Furious movies.
20) There will be car parts in the bedroom. There will be car parts in the closet. There may even be car parts in the bathroom. He'll clear a place for you to crash if you need it, but don't move anything. Everything was placed in a certain way so it could be found at a later time. Disrupting that order....gets ugly.
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a strange noise softly echoes across the yard,
its tones blending with the slow wail of a distant train.
two eyes strain in the darkness to focus
on a dark blotch in the top of the old pine.
speak to me wise owl
you must know the secrets of the night
a faint recollection of your farm cousin
he was a streetlight shadow on the gravel
a fluttering echo in the silo's concrete chamber
little pieces of bone and fur in piles on the floor
two large orbs in your head give you perception
a sense i lack even with my pupils fully stretched
since you see all when the moon flies high
tell me of the ones you saw before
or a story of things that will never be
anything but what's happening now
this tale is growing duller by the day.
i see myself as a sheet of paper
two sides of land and air
somehow inanimate front and back
forever i will lay flat, devoid of thickness
but in this single layer i am content
my two reasons are still purpose
that is what your cold gaze has shown me...
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