Everything I Know About Writing, I Haven’t Learned

By Buster McNutt

Just another day in paradise — writing a Buster column while waiting on the plumber. Apparently the number of banana peels you can put down the garbage disposal is somewhere south of sixteen. You know it’s a problem if, as soon as you pour the Liquid Plumber down the drain, up comes little white flags and postage-stamp-size copies of the Geneva Convention, along with a wad of ramen noodles that looks remarkably like a Cabbage Patch Rastafarian John McCain Doll.

And perhaps this is appropriate, because I’m going through a period of writer blockage matched only by the time in third grade when I was assigned a 500-word writing project with the title, “Why Girls Are Way More Valuable Than Just Being Able to Darn Socks When They Get Older.” As I recall, the girls’ writing topic had something to do with boys being more valuable than their ability to make disgusting armpit sounds and flick buggers from one end of the cafeteria table to the other, a record that I am proud to say still stands at Morningside Elementary School – you can look it up on their web site.

The hardest part of writing this column is figuring out what to write about. It’s not like the Editorial Committee tells me, “Gee, Buster, wouldn’t it be swell if you wrote a 900-word, insanely-humorous article on, you know, the different hilarious sounds made when you fill up the coolant tank, or the power-steering reservoir, or, I got it, the windshield washer tank! Who hasn’t gotten a hoods-up chuckle listening to all those gurgling sounds? Honestly, this is so easy I don’t know why we pay you!”

So when I find myself navigating in the brain-dead, what-to-write-about doldrums, I’ll usually just start writing about something potentially humorous that recently happened to me or someone I know, and then I find a way to relate it to something automotive, and go from there. You may remember my article “Latrell’s Truck Has Shingles” as an example of how this works.

Then you do the humor writing go-to, time-tested techniques that have worked to get a laugh ever since Eve did her “Pick an apple, any apple” trick on Adam. For example, the Rule of Threes. Consider these separately and then as a group: “It was more disgusting than: (1) the limited-time McLiver and Grits sandwich at Mickey Dees; (2) the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition with Hillary on the cover; and (3) walking into the bathroom at closing time at Taco Bell during Cinco de Mayo.” Now that’s funny. Any one of those examples might tickle a fancy here and there, and two might even evoke a chuckle, or possibly even a guffaw. But put the three together, and this borders on a serious side-splitting/pant-wetting event! Tell me you didn’t read those three separate disgust points together, and not have a mental picture of Hillary in a Brazilian monokini and sombrero with a Corona tucked in her mono-bottom and a river of McLiver sauce running down her cheek, as she stood in the potty line, and then the door to the Cinco de Mayo ladies room opens, and oh my goodness — Monica Lewinski walks out! You look in any of the better dictionaries under “disgusting,” and this is the picture you will find. Now, maybe this would have been funnier if Bill Clinton walked out of the ladies room, but you have to draw the humor-at-anybody’s-expense line somewhere. Or at least that’s what they keep telling me.

And one of my desperate, automotive humor go-tos has always involved toilets in the back of pickup trucks. You just can’t go wrong there, whether they are on the way to the dump or not. Too bad Peugeot doesn’t make a pickup truck. (Spoiler alert: Remember this for later).

Know your audience. Exhaustive (see, “Exhaust” is an automotive word I snuck in) research has shown that the primary audience for Buster McNutt: (a) checked both the x and y boxes on the chromosome order form at birth; (b) believe rap music, Jenny Craig diets, non-alcoholic beer and man purses are mentioned in the Book of Revelations as signs of the end times; and (c) are convinced that a fingernail with no dark stuff under it is like a 4WD pickup truck not only without a trailer hitch but with an umbrella on the gun rack, and  probably a man purse on the passenger seat and a can of Diet Doo in the cup holder. And maybe a Pepe Le Peu air freshener on the rearview mirror, along side a pair of miniature handcuffs … oh wait, that’s a different story.

It’s hard to say what the most humorous sounding car or truck part is. Some of that is geographical. “Universal joint” is big in California automotive publications, whereas “Dipstick” easily tops the charts in the South for funny sounding car parts. Me, I’ve always been partial to “Catalytic Converter,” if only because it is funny to think that anybody would believe a car part could convert anyone to Catalyticism. Only a true dipstick would take that leap.

And finally you have to come up with an ending that leaves the reader smiling. I try to have it relate to something used earlier in the article. Unfortunately I’ve already used “Dipstick” twice. I got it: a riddle to see who has been paying attention. What kind of car would Pepe Le Peu drive?

Sing it with me — “Allons enfants de la Patrie…”