Author Archives: Steve Mays

Road rot? Where?

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When I purchased my 1977 Ford F150 pickup truck it was comparatively rust-free, having spent it’s life in Colorado where — I’m told — they add corrosion inhibitors to the salt they put on their highways. Had the truck spent those same 40+ years on Missouri highways, it would have rusted away long ago. But my truck did have (does have) some rust spots which I’ve successfully ignored. But the two holes in floor of the cab are getting bigger and sucking some cold air in.

My buddy George Tergin — the master of the automotive hack — suggested I patch these using old license plates, silicone, and self-tapping screws. Before and after photos below.

Hadn’t planned to do much about the other rust spots until Mr. Wolf pointed me to POR-15, a rust preventative coating that I can “glop on the other rust spots. Like so many things in my life now, the pickup only has to last as long as I do.

It is the Tao

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“He, like everyone else, […] is exactly where, exactly what, exactly when he is meant to be. It is the Tao.”

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties but that line didn’t hit me until I came across it today. Timing, right? American democracy on the ropes. Millions dead/dying from a global pandemic. The planet gasping for breath. And here I am, exactly where/what/when I was meant to be. Seriously, this is the most peaceful I’ve felt in months.

Termination Shock

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Set in the near-ish future, Neal Stephenson’s latest novel (Termination Shock) charts a world gone haywire with the aftereffects of human-driven climate calamity. Like the last couple of novels I’ve read, it incorporated COVID into the storyline as well as the January 6th insurrection.

“…before you knew it there was a white guy in red-white-and blue war paint sacking the U.S. Capitol in what the media described as some kind of Viking getup but Rufus knew perfectly well was a Plains Indian-style bison headdress. And just like Comanches with their raids, those people didn’t stick around and try to plant their yellow rattlesnake flags on the Capitol dome. They just wandered off, having counted coup on democracy and taken a few cop scalps, and melted back into their nomadic trailer park encampments.

This excerpt reminded me of some of his descriptions in Snow Crash.