Many guys have a motorized toy, mine is an aging convertible. It is 17 years old so it was no surprise that the original stereo was dead. I replaced it with an inexpensive unit but these days even the cheapest ones are kinda complex.
Of course it has leventy burfillion odd-shaped buttons on the face each with a cryptic marking. Apparently it would be disgracefully uncool to have a button marked “On/Off”. The markings are so many in such a small space that I might be able to read them if I parked a telescope on the trunk and pointed it at the dash.
This inexpensive unit isn’t satellite capable, but I thought I could use my phone for that. In the thousands of completely useless tricks I pay the phartsmone people WAY too much for, internet based radio services are among the few with some appeal. Since l'm already paying Verizon waaaay too much (do you smell a pet peeve here?) for service which includes internet radio I thought it might be cool to coerce the phartsmone into playing music through the car stereo. I have been told this is possible - theoretically.
Not only is this system not satellite-enabled, it also lacks bluetooth capability. I saved about eleven cents on that wise choice ! I plugged the phone into the USB jack on the face, fired up Pandora internet radio, and with combined techniques of squinting at the "manual" and old-fashioned trial & error whacking the crypticly marked micro-buttons I tried to make the car speak Pandora.
No luck. The big LED display on the front said a few entertaining things at times, though, and that alone was worth the effort.
Eventually I gave up. I disconnected everything and shut the stereo down properly by pushing the "off" button - it has a symbol found in Peruvian caves where the PhD archaeologists translated it "... then the UFO burned our antelope."
I was done with the project, it was unsuccessful, no big deal. Then I took another look at the big LED on the face of the stereo.
It read "BOOP". I panicked.
BOOP? BOOP??? Whatnahell is "BOOP"!?? Oh, shit! I've BOOPed the car! NOOO! PLEASE don't BOOP!
Again I rifled through that convoluted, inscrutable owner’s manual. No mention of “BOOP”.
I looked back to the stereo. This time it was saying “BOIP”.
Great - I still didn't understand the previous problem and now I have BOIP!
What could “BOIP” be? Well, it is the sound made by someone from New Jersey when they belch. Could that be it? This was a used car so I suppose it could be from New Jersey. Furthermore it does have gas ...
No, that is probably not the answer.
Sixty seconds later the answer came to me. The word changed again. This time it looked like “BOZP”, and I can’t even pronounce that. That is when I noticed something between the “B” and the “O”. Getting out the telescope again I take a look and what do I find? A tiny little skinny colon ( the punctuation kind, not the anatomical kind).
Eventually I realized that my panic had been for nothing. I had not BOOPed the car. It never really said BOOP, it had been saying "8:00 P", meaning eight PM. All along I had been seeing the clock. *whew!*
For a little while there it really freaked me out - two minutes of sweat-drenched panic seemed like a lot longer. All that worry really tired me out, too. I went to bed and was asleep by half past BOOP.
© 2013 Raymond Blowers
