Neanderpundit

and respect his opinion a great deal, here’s a few things he said that i’m incredibly fond of.

“Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.” –Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816.

“Society [has] a right to erase from the roll of its members any one who rendered his own existence inconsistent with theirs; to withdraw from him the protection of their laws, and to remove him from among them by exile, or even by death if necessary.”–Thomas Jefferson to L. H. Girardin, 1815.

No dumbass, that old T.J. Even back in the early 1800’s.

Seriously. All four. And tonight I remembered why I didn’t change the rears last time.

I mean, it’s not that it’s hard, it’s just a pain.

First, because I have a class 3 hitch, I have to drop the spare. Well, you don’t have to, but it makes accessing the upper end much easier.

So I stick a 3/8″ drive extension in the hole and lower the spare winch. I lie down and wrestle the spare out. and slide it out of the way.

I have an impact. I do. I have a bigass air compressor. Firing up the AC for a couple bolts just seems wasteful to me.
So I grab the wrenches, a 13, a 13 deepwell, a 15, and a 17.

It’s stupid sick that I remember the wrench sizes.

I slide under the truck and smack myself in the head with the spare winch.
I tuck it out of the way over a frame member and start loosening the bottom bolt on the driver’s shock. The bolt starts turning so I put the breaker bar on the back and use the rachet on the front. The fact that I have had to do this means that the bolt is spinning, and it’s just not ordinary spinning but it has rusted to the center sleeve of the shock and is going to be a problem. I don’t know this, I just feel it, and it turns out, of course, that I’m right.

I get the nut off and give it an exploratory tap with the lead hammer. The spare winch falls down and hits me in the left temple. I tuck it up over the frame. I move to the upper bolts and loosen them, dropping one directly in my mouth, barely avoiding chipping a tooth. I spit the bolt out and the spare winch falls and hits me in the forehead. I take out the second bolt while the spare winch abrades the side of my face. I tuck it up over the frame and the shock, released from the top mount, falls on my shoulder, and the spare winch falls on my head.

I tuck the winch up over the frame and move to the other side, and then start hammering at the lower bolt. The winch falls down and doesn’t hit my head but it smacks my elbow every time I swing the hammer.

The lower shock bolt is rusted inside the shock sleeve. THis is a common occurrence, and it’s a giant pain in theass. I hit the bastard with a 6 lb lead hammer thirty times before it comes loose, and then I drift it out the last bit with a punch.

I slide back underneath and tuck the spare winch up over the frame and slip the new shock lower in place, securing it with the bolt, and cut the retainer and guide it up to the upper mount. I put the bolts in place and twist the shock a bit to hold them there while I wedge my hand in up over the evaporative fuel cannister so I can get the nuts in place As I do the spare winch slides off the frame and smacks me in the left eye, which I close just in time, and rolls around my head where the spring snags a tuft of ear hair, pulling it out painfully. I tighten everything up and tuck the spare winch up over the frame.

I repeat the process more opr less verbatim on the right side, and this time I develop a sore spot on my upper lip from repeated contact with the rusty edge of the spare winch, which I can now tuck over a frame rail by feel alone, and then check both shocks for snugness. I notice the right wheel seal is leaking, whcih i know I will have to remedy soon. And it is a loverly pain in the buttocks. I slide back out, catching my chin on the bumper and knocking the spare winch off the frame and smacking myself in the head.
I wrestle the spare back into place and the spare which, which has effectively been having it’s way with my head for a half hour, is now impossible to grasp. I fight with it while balancing the tire on the inside of my left forearm and finally get the spare winch threaded through the hole. I use the 3/8″ extension to lift the spare into place, slide back underneath to confirm it’s in place, and whack my head once more for good measure on the sharp, rusty edge of the spare winch.

barely bleed, because I apparently have Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Based on the vowels you’d have to buy to get those words right on Wheel of Fartune,(sic) you’d think I was a goner, but it apparently means my antibodies have started to attack my platelets and my spleen is busy eating them. At least my doc thinks that’s what’s going on. My spleen is a bit sensitive, but the idea that I, mr calm nature, might be a little splenetic… never occurred to me.

That was my evening. Hows bayou?

Update: For anyone who might not know, the spare winch is a short cable winch used to raise and lower the spare tire. Here’s a picture.

is you do not talk about fight club.

James Burnette has a good post here about that very subject, ignoring the first (and second) rules.

Look: Violence and death are an integral part of life. Humans have known this for ages, and that knowledge, I believe, is the reason we play games, and hunt, and race cars, and etc.

Men, by their nature, want to test themselves. Against themselves, against other individuals, other counties, other states, other nations. They do so peacibly by playing games, they do so un-peacibly by going to war. It is an integral part of masculinity, and to attempt to separate masculinity from the contest is probably bad, possibly very bad. Everywhere guys get together for a pick-up game of baseball, or hockey, or go hunting in a group, or shoot in a competition, they are testing themselves and one another, measuring themselves against each other and against themselves. Am I better at this than he is? Am I cleverer? Am I stronger? Have I improved? Am I better than I was last week? Can I kick his ass? Can I shoot more hoops? Can I hit the X ring more often?

Tyler Durdin attributes the “Lostness” of the generation. And in the main, he’s right. No, I am not anxious to go out and get pummeled, but I have had more than my share of that already. And I am not lost.

You see, if you look at Fight Club, you don’t see many guys who got off their tractor to join. Or put down their rifle to join, or parked their stock car to join. That is because the people riding that tractor, or hunting those deer, or driving that car, see, they already belong to Fight Club. They pit themselves daily against the hard soil, to make it fertile. Or the wiliness of the whitetail, or the abilities of their fellow drivers. Men- real men- have known for ages the need to brace themselves against something- some, like crab fishermen, or farmers, do so against their jobs. Some, like hunters, do so against their quarry. Some do so on the baseball diamond against other players, or on ashalt courts all over the place.

We have no great war, as Durdin says. We have no obvious foe- (Though the left is doing a pretty good job of providing us with those, these days)

A large number of the people in cities do not have the opportunity- nor take the opportunity- to engage in any kind of personal contest of skill, or strength, or cunning, and instead engage in automated video contests in the form of televised pro sports. I cannot personally think of a single thing more pathetic than “testing yourself” against others by watching any kind of sport on TV- and unless you’re out there playing it yourself, that’s what’s going on. Think you’re better because your Red Sox beat the Yankees? You didn’t throw a single fucking ball, you sat on the couch and yelled and ate nachos.

I’m not even remotely surprised that the “blue” on the map is where a lot of people live who have no outlet for that testosterone, nothing to brace themselves against but the skills of others, vicariously. Men once taught their sons to be Men. To put their shoulders against life and give a hearty shove. To put up their dukes and fight, to put the bat on their OWN shoulder and swat that ball, to tune up that car and make it sing, to lay that bike into the curve and roll the throttle on. To find the thing they most want to lean into, and lean into it.

As friends lean on one another to remain standing when their ability to stand on their own falters, Men lean into something, fight something tooth and nail, to keep their skills honed. Not a lot of people get that we fight the war against our chosen opponent because we have to, but because we choose to. We choose to see just how good a shot we are. How well we can hit that hoop. How often we can bring home dinner, quite literally. We do so because we do not want to be adrift, wanting something undefineable to justify our existence. We are not adrift. We are men. We just do it, we don’t talk much about it.

The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about fight club.