I know it isn’t healthy to pin my happiness to another person, but sometimes in the afternoon doldrums I just want to know there is someone who won’t have plans without me, and won’t say no to going out.

Involuntary Goodfellas

The intake interview on 3C mostly consisted of questions I had already answered four or five times that day, first at my psychologist’s asking, and then with a series of emergency room medical doctors, psychiatry residents, and finally the EMTs who were transporting me to the inpatient facility. Bob, the night R.N. who I had been assigned to at the Behavioral Health Services Center checked boxes and slid papers across the table for initials and signatures. There were no surprises for me, although my suicide plan somehow seemed new to him. Like the father Jeff Mangum sang about, I had thought about all the ways to die, and up until now, they had all been more than I had dared to try. The night before I had settled on starving myself of oxygen by breathing in the pure helium commonly sold at party stores where it would otherwise end up in balloons that at their darkest would read ‘Over the Hill’. Bob made sure to stress that the program was short term, just for stabilization.

I was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts that may have been contraband for the elastic waist (shoe strings were banned on the floor, even for visitors), and the gown I was given ten hours earlier in the ER that my psychologist had walked me down to. My personal affects were in a plastic bag with the international symbol for biohazard printed on it - I pictured the scene in every prison movie where the newly released ex-con signs off on receiving the items that had followed them into incarceration as I acknowledged with ink an LG cellphone and the more important contents of my wallet (Bob had no interest in my being 6 smoothies away from a free one, or presumably being a regular shopper at Borders Books).

The unit’s community room doubled as the dining room. By the amount of crumbs on the tables, and the amount of patients I had to assume were also suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (someone must have had a cleaning compulsion), I had just missed snack time, when the sound of the metal window being rolled up draws the patients into a mob that slowly dissipates as they each receive their two food items and one beverage. For the Cleveland Clinic, it seemed odd that the offerings included potato chips, cookies and pop, but maybe the residents of my floor weren’t to be trifled with over high fructose corn syrup or trans fat. But if an apple or a banana could set someone off, I had to question the logic of allowing us to watch Goodfellas on a television which was behind a plexiglass window smeared with body oil in a pattern that suggested someone at been shoved against it before sliding down to the floor. It had been a few years since I seen Goodfellas, but all of a sudden it was slightly comforting that pens were also off limits - I hadn’t forgotten the scene were Joe Pesci put one through someone’s neck over a trivial insult.

More picture(s) of building(s) (but not food).

Cleveland may not have a reputation as a first class city, but the controversial Marcel Breuer (Bauhaus) building always seemed more fitting for a Soviet concrete wasteland than the post-industrial demise of what once was the United State's 6th largest city, and home to Rockefeller and Carnegie.

Maybe beauty isn't only in the eye of the beholder, but the angle of the beholding.

The album is on iTunes

Years in the making, PFOC on iTunes.

My progress on the next album has been slow, but for a few more days I'm not going to worry about that.

Who knew the Grammys were so cheap?

PFOC bassist Tim Luntzel won a Grammy for his work with Loudon Wainwright III, but he didn't get a statuette, in fact, if he wants a certificate he has to send them $25.

And her screaming decay...

In an effort to get me outside of my head more, my psychologist gave me the assignment of trying to sense more. I've always meant to take more pictures than I do, and being that I'm never in much of a hurry, I've started carrying my camera much more often.

Think twice before going to the ATM in your VW Jetta

As a kid, my family owned most of the cars that the term 'lemon' was coined for. AMC Pacer? Check. Ford Pinto? We drove one from California to Ohio, and for years after. But a problem I've experienced three times with two Jettas was completely new to me, and everyone I've ever spoken about it with outside of other VW owners.

From what I have learned about the inner-workings of Volkswagen door windows, they are held up by 5 clips, that at least as recently as 2001 (the year of my Jetta wagon) were made out of plastic. I don't know much about plastic, though I did have a junior year chemistry lab where we were assigned the task of trying to identify a variety of plastics by the way they burned, which was both cool (some dripped flames) and I suspect highly carcinogenic, but I do know that plastic often doesn't stand up to significant changes in temperature well. Twice on days that were well below freezing, and once on a suffocatingly hot day, these clips have failed and a window has fallen into the door.

The first two times this happened, it was covered by warranty, or extended warranty. Yesterday, when it happened a third time as I pulled away from the ATM in Lakewood, Ohio, I thought I knew just what to do. I dropped by home to let the dog out, pick up the lap top, and place calls to find out if any of the Cleveland area VW dealers could get to the repair that afternoon.

A windowless twenty mile drive across town in twenty degree weather later I found out that Volkswagen decided their willingness to stand behind their product had run out for my 2001. The bill came to $228, the replacement clips cost a total of $7.50 for five.

If by chance you're a designer of cars, or you count beans at a car company and are always looking for ways to save a few pennies, listen to me, the consumer. I would much rather have paid an additional $30 at purchase than to crossed Cleveland windowless in winter, sat in a dealership waiting room for hours, paid hundreds of dollars, and now live with the fear that another window may go at any time.

If you're thinking about buying a Volkswagen, think twice. Besides the window, in the past year I've had the windshield wipers fail while driving on a highway during a torrential nighttime storm. In VW's infinite wisdom, they decided that access to the wiper motors should be through the steering column (a move that allows them to install massive amounts of cosmetic plastic around the engine that inevitably adds time to any repair), that repair also involved a relatively inexpensive part, and more than $300 in labor.

It's not all labor with Volkwagen repairs either. A catalytic converter ran $700 for the part, many times the cost for most vehicles.

Customer Service at VW seems to exist only to read you a script and tell you that they'll send a report on to someone they won't let you talk to. I've submitted forms to the Attorney General's Office and the Better Business Bureau, and I hope to one day be notified that I'm eligible for a share of a class action lawsuit, but I suspect the only power I have in this fight is to sling a little mud VW's way.