I’ve always loved cars. In fact, my love for cars often betrays my budget, my sense of self-preservation and even my dignity. To make this point clearer, I drive a 70s Lancia Fulvia. I can’t tell you what year it’s from exactly (and to quote Morpheus) because I honestly don’t know.
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| Take the Blue Pill if you're a pansy ass momma's boy. |
I paid R15000 for it; an amount equivalent to two ripe cabbages and a turnip in most first world markets. Suffice to say there were bound to be issues and low and behold there were.
On the second day of my ownership, it blew a gasket. Upon repair, the alternator (the thingie that makes the engine charge the battery) stopped working, along with the battery which was cannibalized from a canal boat by the previous owner. Finally, having spent roughly the price I paid for the car, it then started every time although it decided to not idle on random occasions. Furthermore, the choke handle simply turned it off which is the very opposite of what choke supposed to do.
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| Unless you're choking a person. |
Seeking improvement, I decided to consult the possibly Satanic gurus at Power Balance. This company manufactures magical pieces of rubber awesome that are said to use holographic technology to work with your body’s natural energy field - basically giving you sight beyond sight, speed beyond speed and the balance of Jesus himself. That was direct from the user manual by the way.
Fuck me – Super Saiyan in wristwatch form that's endorsed by Cristiano “2 Sexy” Ronaldo himself!
And sure enough, whilst holding the Power Balance in my hand I suddenly recalled the scene from the original Mask movie – “With these powers I could be A SUPERHERO. I could fight crime; protect the innocent; WORK FOR WORLD PEACE! ... “
But first... I had to fix my car.
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| ...before it started SSSSSSSSSMOKING! |
So, I attached the Power Balance to my Lancia (I tied it to the rearview mirror ‘cos I wanted people to see it). My thinking was that if the little rubber wristband could balance my chi, chakras, energies and other mystic shit, then it’d do the same for my car. And if it could turn me from meek copywriter into Jet Li in The One then it’d surely turn the 100 horses lurking beneath the bonnet into 100 Seabiscuits!
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| Not very apt but Seabiscuit was an Amazing Horse. |
I turned it on. Magic happened. I drove around town at 7700000 miles per hour, soaring above the skyscrapers of the Cape Town cityscape, doing loop-de-loops and high-fiving pterodactyls and angels in the perfect blue sky!
These feats of magnificence were easy as the tyres had been replaced by little nimbus clouds – the very offspring of the very cloud that Goku used in the original Dragonball (he then inexplicably forgot about it forever once he learned to fly in DBZ although Gohan borrowed it to go to high school with once).
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| What ever happened to poor Flying Nimbus? |
Wishing to catch a seagull, I found an entire flock in the corner of my eye. I streaked ahead of them, engaged the handbrake, put the car in neutral and pulled out the choke. Now, if this failed I’d have dropped out of the sky like a bat out of hell but it wasn't so. To my amazement the car idled there! WTF!! I was so chuffed that I forgot about the seagull hunt and resumed my loop-de-loops. I could do this forever as my car no longer ran on fuel but on Happiness. Thanks to Power Balance my car became the Cloud Car from Care Bears - only less gay.
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| Fuck yeah. |
This morning, instead of parking, I left the car airborne outside of the balcony attached to the adjacent office (my office doesn’t have a balcony). I can’t wait until home time – I’ll visit the ruins of ancient Sumer and water the hanging garden!
Of course none of this story is true in the slightest. Power Balance is a scam.
