Eat S*** and DIY

As I sit here sweating, my fingertips still stained a grayish-black, even after a vigorous scrubbing, I'm pondering exactly what the penalty would be for hunting down and killing whoever it was that designed the headlights on the 2003 Hyundai Elantra.

It seemed the easiest of do-it-yourself tasks, even for a car-retarded know-nothing like me: changing the bulb in my headlight. So first I consult the manual. (Actually, not true. First I bought a new bulb at Wal-Mart, unwittingly committing myself to completing this job, despite my recurring desire throughout the project to simply smash the headlight with a baseball bat and then bring it to someone else to fix.) Anyway, the manual says: "The next paragraph will instruct you on how to change the bulb." The next paragraph proceeds to tell me that I should now change the bulb. These are the instructions? Were they just poorly translated out of the orginial Korean? Or does someone actually think that constitues "directions"? Allow me now to briefly interject into my own rant so that I may give you my award winning recipe for roast duck:

Step 1: Get all the ingredients and make it. Bon apetit!

Okay, we're back. How was the duck? Succulent, I hope. Anyway, being a resident of the 21st century, I consult the Web for answers. A complex picture-laden tutorial (not from Hyundai, incidentally) tells me how I can get this thing changed. Near the end, it says, you should now have eight bolts/screws taken out. This was the mantra I kept repeating to myself out by the car as I froze and wondered if this could really be good for the cold I was unsuccessfully trying to fight off. Eight. Eight. Eight. In my mind, I sounded like an alternate take of the Beatles' "Revolution 9" which would have been cool and kinda trippy, but I was preoccupied by only having seven bolts/screws.

Finally, I spy the final bolt, way way down below. This first requires removing a piece of hard plastic tubing that looked like an extension to the vacuum cleaner hose. As I haphazardly yanked it out, I considered what kind of job it might do on those hard-to-reach places behind the furniture. I tossed it on the ground. At this point, mind you, I had several car pieces on the ground around me, and I was having a bad fantasy about this turning into a stupid sitcom/cartoon moment where I finish the job only to say, "Oh yeah, and these parts were left over ... but I'm sure it's fine."

And here's the next problem, Bolt No. 8 is so far down, it seems impossible to get at. I'm working with some old adjustable wrenches (lacking one of those cool clickety ones that doesn't need a lot of space to work...ratchet? is that what it's called? I know, I know, I'm a goddamned moron). Anyway, reaching down there to try to turn this bolt -- which is on tighter than Tim Hardaway's butthole in a prison riot -- and it's about as easy as trying to get a stuffed animal out of one of those claw machines. At least I'm not wasting quarters trying to change this bulb.

After a combination of various tools and both of my hands (alternating as they became tired) I finally get the last bolt off and liberate the entire headlamp from my car. Sweet, sweet victory is finally mine as I pull out the old bulb and carefully insert the new one, making sure not to touch the acutal bulb, which the aformentioned Web site told me could ruin the bulb (gasp!) or shorten it's lifespan (double gasp!). Really it's the latter that has me worried, because if I have to do this again anytime soon, well, let's just say I won't be happy.