Not all of them work, of course. The oldest of the three used to belong to my parents. It is, I believe, the first color television set ever made. About two years ago, after having relied on this set for quite some time, we began to notice these odd lines developing across the top of the screen. It didn't always appear; only when the set was actually on. I tried everything I could to do away with them, including turning the channel and hitting the television repeatedly on BOTH sides, but nothing seemed to help. So we lived with it. We learned, for example, that the lines were hardly visible when we shined a light directly at the screen and then squinted.

Then-- I think out of pity-- my parents bought us a new T.V. for Christmas. This was a year ago. The new T.V. was great; it had no odd lines to speak of, it came with (gasp) a remote control device, and it was "cable ready." This is a newish concept in which there is no actual external antenna. Instead, there is only a screw-in spot for the cable. This isn't too bad, because we do have cable.

I moved the other T.V. to my study so that I could watch football without interrupting the All Cartoons All The Time festival going on in the living room every day. The only real drawback, I kept thinking a touchdown was scored whenever the ball crossed the odd lines on the screen.

After about a year, the marvelous new television my parents bought decided to have a nervous breakdown. It apparently didn't like cartoons. There is a demo display built into the T.V. It's a very exciting demo. It shows us all the amazing features our new T.V. would have provided we bought it. The problem here was, we already owned it, and nobody told the television. It's been showing this demo non-stop for six months now. So we unplugged it. (This was the only way to get the demo to stop scrolling.) We moved the old T.V. back into the living room again, and the demo-happy neurotic T.V. into my study. This worked fine except we again had the lines on our main viewing screen, and also, I could no longer observe sporting events from the comfort of my own study, something I'd gotten used to. Even if the neurotic T.V. worked properly I couldn't, because it doesn't have an antenna and I don't have a cable for my study. God bless modern technology.

So I took matters into my own hands and stole another T.V. Specifically, I stole one from my parents. They had a spare one, in the sense that when I went over there it wasn't turned on at the time. It has a much smaller screen, but no lines, no demo, and an actual antenna. The stolen T.V. came in handy when I got the Legends of Zelda Nintendo game for Christmas this year. I could not get the Nintendo to work on the living room T.V. I still really don't know why this is the case. It also doesn't work on the neurotic T.V., which is still having "issues." It works fine on the little stolen T.V., but only when I turn it to channel four, which is a channel that is in use in the Boston area. So on occasion I can see what's going on on channel four while also playing Zelda. On the bright side, on Sundays, I can play the Nintendo and watch football at the same time.

The real problem with having the barely functional ancient television in the living room is the cable company doesn't believe us. I have been having a problem for more than a year in picking up channels four and seven, which happen to be CBS and NBC respectively. I described the problem to the cable company several times until they finally decided there was actually something wrong. They sent out a technician who announced he'd found the problem. It was the T.V. set. When I explained, rather emphatically, that I had the same problem with the other T.V. before it broke, he made a rather concerned face and then tested the line and concluded there was some sort of problem with the cable outside the building. But since he was the inside technician and didn't do outside work (god bless unions) he'd have to call someone else out. It's been eight months.

I solved the problem with channels four and seven by turning the knob manually. (A "knob" is a round attachment one finds on exceptionally elderly television sets. Ask your grandmother about them.) Surprisingly, this worked, because the ancient television has an antenna. I just can't tape anything on those channels because that would involve switching the VCR so that it ran directly to the TV first and the cable box second. This is impossible because the T.V. is so old it only comes with an input hook-up, rather than an input and an output hook-up, like the non-functional newer de mo happy neurotic T.V. has.

And this is just one example. There's also the phone line problem. My new Mickey Mouse phone has uncovered an issue I didn't actually know existed. It turns out our telephone picks up sports talk radio. On the other phone I had in my room I didn't hear it because it's a really cheap phone. But Mickey hears everything, and so do I. I can't talk on the Mickey phone without constantly losing track of which conversation I'm supposed to be listening to. I could be having a perfectly ordinary chat with a friend and then discover my friend would really like for the Patriots to fire Pete Carroll. It can be fairly disorienting. I'd call the phone company to have them try and fix it, but I'm not sure they'd believe me, and also, I'm not sure we're currently paying for two phone lines, and I don't want them to find out about it.

And there's my car. I drive a 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted. It has a variety of interesting and unique problems with it, such as that the radio does not work in cold weather, and the passenger door does not open, or, it does not close, depending on your perspective. But the car runs, and that's all I really expect from it, as it drives faster than I can walk. I didn't use the car all that much in the last eight months, as I had a job on the subway lines for that amount of time. But now I'm driving it regularly again.

One of the first things I did was try and clean out the interior. I have the unfortunate habit of throwing trash on the floor of the passenger side of the car, which is okay, since nobody can sit there unless they're already willing to crawl across the driver's seat, which, given that the car is extremely small, is an anatomical impossibility for many people, especially given the unfortunate location of the stick shift. Anyhow, the car has sat virtually unused for months with so much trash in it that there was no drop-off from the edge of the passenger seat to the top of the trash. Had I not left the car locked I imagine it would have made an excellent nest for squirrels. Not that they could have gotten the door open.

So I cleaned it out and proceeded to drive the car to and from work again. Presently the car began to give me subtle reminders that it needed something. This turned out to be gas. So I gave it gas. The gas station attendant, a helpful sort of fellow, took the time out while filling up the tank to point out that my car was supposed to have been inspected seven months ago. This happens to me all the time. My wife is actually very coordinated about this sort of thing. She always gets her car inspected in the first week the month AFTER it's supposed to be inspected. As she puts it, this way she pays for the inspection once every thirteen months, so that after thirteen years, she's effectively gotten one extra year for free. This is our retirement plan.

So I needed to get the car inspected. I put this off temporarily because I simply didn't have the time until the weekend, and then on the weekend, I simply couldn't be bothered because, well, there was sports on or something.

About midway through the second week of full time car use, I started to notice a smell. It wasn't a terrible smell, per se, just a slightly gassy smell. And it really didn't bother me all that much, because I'm very good at denying there could possibly be anything wrong with anything I own. If it still runs, it still works is my motto. My father is like this too. My mother makes up for this by bringing her car into the shop whenever she hears the tiniest rattle, even if she hears the rattle when she's not actually in the car. So my rationale was, the gassy smell probably has something to do with poor quality gas or something, definitely not a big deal, and so what if every time I light a cigarette the air in front of me explodes into little fireballs? As long as the flame doesn't travel all the way to the gas tank, it's actually sort of pretty. It might even be considered a bonus feature of my 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted.

By the end of the second week, the gas smell had managed to linger long enough for me to consider it a harbinger of a more serious problem. So of course I brought it right to the shop. Well, I would have, except I needed the car. I went out after work that Friday night with some friends, and that was a good deal more important than the possibility of being consumed in flaming wreckage.

On the way back from the restaurant, while driving a friend home, my 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted had decided no more hints were necessary, and it just stopped running altogether. This happened at the intersection of Alewife Brook Parkway and Mass Ave, and the only reason I mention this is because these happen to be two very large and very busy streets that would qualify as highways were it not for the occasional red lights.

We were right at the head of a long line of traffic when the car stalled. Using my keen testosterone-induced mechanical skills, I concluded that naturally, since there is a gassy smell and the car (a standard) has stalled, that the engine is flooded. Guys have a mental car repair textbook that always begins with the assumption that the car is flooded. The entire underside of the vehicle could be lying on the road twenty feet behind the chassis and we would still consider first the possibility that the engine is simply flooded. So we waited for a while, and then tried again. And again. And again.

Here's something I simply don't understand. After the first light cycle when we realized we were going to be there for a while, we put on the emergency blinkers. Perhaps there are a lot of drivers out there who don't know what these are, so let me explain. The emergencies are what you see when both the left and right turn signals are going at the same time. This does not mean that the driver has considered going right, and thought about going left and finally decided he shall go straight instead. This means the car is disabled. The revelation that this could just possibly be what a blinking set of emergency lights means came as a big surprise to a lot of people on Alewife Brook Parkway on Friday night, let me tell you. Every single time the light turned red again and cars were forced to come to a stop, SOME idiot would pull up right behind us, and then when it turned green he would lean malevolently on his horn. Do they think the horn will heal my car? Do they think maybe that was what I was waiting for? Maybe I'm about to jump out of the car and shout "Yes! It's ALMOST fixed! Louder! I need MORE HORNS! Let's go, people!!!"

Okay, I feel better now.

As for the car, it wasn't going to start. We had managed to figure out the timing of the lights rather well in the meantime, so we hopped out of the car and started pushing before the light turned green, and managed to coast across before we were killed by crossing traffic. Fortunately, the 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted is not a heavy car. Also fortunately, there was a gas station at the opposite corner. We got the car into a parking space there and spoke with Lurch, the gas station attendant, who informed us that 1: if we don't leave the keys so they can work on it, he'll have it towed, and 2: they don't work on cars over the weekend. I could have called triple- A (or, AAA!!!!!!) and had it towed, but that would have involved waiting for a tow truck, and I was frankly much more interested in getting home at that point. So instead we walked the remaining distance to my friend's apartment and took her car from there back to my house. I figured after my car had been given the night to think it over it would conclude it was just flooded, and I'd be able to drive it to the mechanic of my choice.

Lurch was kind enough to give me back my car keys the next day, and then I tried tested my theory. Still, it wouldn't work. I tried kicking it, but that didn't help either. So I caved in, called AAA!!!!!! and got it to the place we usually take our vehicles when they decide they're not just flooded.

The ride in the tow truck was entertaining all by itself. I had a very talkative driver who was kind enough to explain that he usually drives one of the newer trucks but they were afraid to give this particular truck out to a rookie because the brakes don't work on rainy days. "Maybe they're flooded," I suggested.

The good news, in all of this, was that the only thing wrong with the car was the fuel lines. They no longer existed. So our mechanic replaced them, and the fuel filter, and then refilled the tank, as all the gas I had bought earlier in the week had leaked out of the vehicle overnight. Then he informed me that he'd love to give me a new inspection sticker, but he can't until he sees a current registration. The current registration arrived by mail some time over the summer, and was subsequently placed in a safe place somewhere in my home so that I will never ever find it. This happens to a lot of things in our home. We lose our cats for days on end sometimes. Deb fortunately knows where all the safe places in the house are, and she was able to locate the registration in only two days. And, as luck would have it, I didn't get pulled over in the interim. Even better, the car runs great now. And I've been informed by my mechanic that the 1992 Plymouth Expletive Deleted cannot flood, so the next time I'll have to move right to the second item on the list of things that could be wrong: the fan belt.

The next thing in our house to malfunction has fortunately already identified itself, which takes a lot of the suspense out of this. It is our washing machine. I discovered over the weekend that the drum was not spinning during the rinse cycle, which leads me to wonder if it was spinning during any of the other cycles, and if not, perhaps that can explain the itchy soapy feeling I've been getting, and why my shirts lather up in the rain. I'm a little afraid to call the repair man for it, though, as that would mean it would be another appliance's turn to break. If it's the coffee pot, I'm doomed.

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