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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   hatchback dissection day one
Thursday, April 17 2008
It was another lovely spring day, and while Gretchen was giving the dogs their morning walk, I was attempting to siphon gas from the totaled hatchback, whose tank had been nearly full at the time of the accident (and no, despite this, there had been no spectacular explosion). In the past my siphoning methods had resulted in my swallowing gasoline, but this time I used a manual transfer pump. Unfortunately, though, the Honda Civic features anti-siphoning technology in the pipe connecting the refueling cap to the tank. I could get my hose down a certain distance and was even able to reach some gas, but never enough to prevent air from getting in the hose. To get to the gas, I'd have to siphon from the engine's gas line.
In the meantime, I focused on tearing out the most damaged components under the hood: the metallic remains of the bumper, the engine radiator (which was broken and leaking), and the air conditioning radiator (which was only slightly bent). The air conditioner had never worked on the hatchback and in the course of today's dissection I found out why. At some point in the car's history the refrigerant pump had seized up and someone had removed the belt that drove it.

Meanwhile Gretchen and I had been scouting Cars.com and Ebay for a replacement car, ideally a Honda Civic hatchback of slightly younger vintage. (The dead car was from the 1997 model year, although having spent the bulk of its life on the coast of New Hampshire, salt spray had rusted it beyond its years.) For a time today the stars seemed to align in our favor; Gretchen found a nearly exact replacement in Kingston on Craig's List. But by the time we could go in to look at it, it had already been sold to someone else.


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