journal features

car rental hell

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2005.09.02

I'd been hanging on to the scratched rental car so that my girlfriend and I could get out of town for the weekend. But pulling out of the parking spot to move the thing to another parking spot, I somehow misjudged the room I had at the front of the car, and wound up crushing the quarterpanel of the fncking thing on a neighbour's bumper.

I did minimal damage to the other car, and the neighbour (who was home, thankfully) told me to forget about it. Angry with the whole situation, and now depressed at how much this fncking car rental was costing me, I returned the thing.

The neighbour called later in the day (another calling card put to oh so good use) and told me that she'd need to get the paint on her bumper fixed because a lot of the paint had chipped off when she'd gone to get it cleaned for a better look.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot