Serial Killers

Currently Reading: Dexter In The Dark by Jeff Lindsay

It's Halloween season. Two weeks from now (minus a day) kids will be going door to door asking for candy, all dressed up in their costumes. Some will be really cute, some will be more macho and some (there's always some) will be thrown together and half-assed, just something they did so they could go out with the little kids and try for some candy. Some teenagers these days don't know when to let it go.

Anyway, it's also the night when we watch horror movies and read horror comics and books, all sorts of scary things. It's just what we do this season right? Well, it's what *I* do this season anyway.

With CC out of town until next week, I decided I'd catch up a little on my horror movies. When I went out shopping I hit the cheaper section of the videos and picked up Saw 2 and 3 and American Psycho. I'm really starting to be impressed by Christian Bale. He plays the title character, a psychopath lost in the halcyon days of 80's Wall Street.

Anyway, when you combine that with the books I've been reading lately you start to notice a pretty distinct pattern. I've been reading a lot about psychos and serial killers. Those three movies, not slasher flicks, not monster movies, serial killer movies. And the book I'm reading? The latest in Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series, also about a serial killer. Before that, Fight Club. Not serial killers and maybe not quite psychos but those boys certainly weren't right. Before that, How to Survive a Horror Movie and before THAT was I Am Legend. Must just be something about the Halloween season that does this to me. Something about the change in the weather maybe, some sort of unintended side effect of the rest of the great things that happen in fall. Who knows what comes after this. Slipping into winter, maybe I'll drift to crime fiction. It's not much of a leap from serial killers to just normal crime stuff right? Or maybe back to Sci Fi again. Too early to tell. I'll just go with whatever strikes me as interesting.

Speaking of interesting, nah, actually it's just more boring stuff. Today I spent a decent amount of time working on the truck. Nothing serious is wrong with it mind you, just some routine stuff that hasn't been done in a LONG time. I've got two points to make on this one.

First off, whoever designed the engine for the 1995 Ford Ranger, the 4 cylinder model, was a REAL sadist. Yeah, he'd make the Marquis de Sade proud. It's a 4 cylinder engine which would suggest 4 to 5 plugs right? At least, my last two cars before this worked that way. But the ranger? 8. Yes you read that right, this particular engine has EIGHT plugs. Four of them are easy to get to. Pretty standard stuff though the 4th one is a tight fit, it's doable. The other four, well now you're getting into some pretty weird stuff. I was able to replace the wires on two of them after considerable effort but there was no way in hell I could get the plugs out without taking apart the engine and my general rule on that sort of thing is that I don't take off parts I can't identify. SO, 4 new plugs, 6 wires and a new air filter. The truck is running much better now.

Second, when I pulled the plugs out and saw the condition they were in, I must admit, I was pretty damn surprised the truck was running at ALL. They were the most hideously fouled plugs I have EVER seen. How on earth the engine managed to turn over, how the cylinders fired with those plugs I'll never know.

I've got to admit it, the engine designer may have been a sadist but you know, the engine still works after all this time, even with the crappy plugs so maybe he knew what he was doing after all :-)

Back to work tomorrow I'm afraid. I'll have to do a little ironing too before then. Hate it when CC's out of town. I have to do her chores as well as mine and it doesn't leave me much free time on the weekends. Add to that the fact that I had to fix the truck and you can imagine I didn't have much time for ANYTHING restful. No matter. There's always next week. Besides, CC comes home on the 25th so I won't have to wait much longer :-)