No iPod This Week

Regular readers (both of you, ha ha) might be wondering what's become of my "I'm getting a new iPod" campaign. I still don't have a new iPod, so what's the deal? Was I lying? Am I just lazy?

No. I just need tires.

I picked up a finish nail in the right front tire of my car, and it sat unused for most of the July Fourth weekend and went completely flat until we decided to go to the store Saturday morning. Our house is at the end of a gravel road. It's pretty good as gravel roads go and contributes a nice sense of rurality (is that a word?) but it's the shits for "feel" and I didn't even notice that we had a flat until a neighbor literally called us and said "You may want to check your tire."

By then the tire looked about like a Blimp after an attack by a bunch of flying hedge trimmers. The tire was so ruined Ho Chi Minh couldn't even have made sandals out of it. Not even Mitch Hedberg could have said anything fully about it. The guy at Discount Tire described it as "cool" but I think he was merely humoring me.

I hate buying cheap tires. I bought cheap tires once and they almost killed me. They kept forming bubbles and sidewall separations, and I had them blow up violently on me three times, once on the freeway, though the nasty vibration had warned me that something was up and I was down to about 40 miles per hour when it went bang and left behind a tremendous cloud of black brake dust. I bought the original set of four, and ended up cashing in to the tune of about eight more because they were so defective they'd fail in highly unusual ways before ever wearing out. They were terrible, so terrible that I hesitate to name the manufacturer because the manufactuer has a halfway decent reputation with everyone but me.

So I bought four new Pirellis, and that, as they say, that knocked my iPod fund onto its ass. It's always something, isn't it? I hesitate to think what it'll be next, but it'll probably involve tungsten carbide in some strange way.