Growing up in New Jersey clearly warped me as a driver. I think jughandles are perfectly normal and I still get jumpy when I have to pump my own gas.

I've pumped my own gas exactly once. And I somehow screwed it up, so that it filled the tank but didn't record how much gas it pumped out, and thus how much money I owed. (Well, how much money Zipcar owed.)

It's standard here. Because I need help, I have to buy a transmitter that requests service remotely. And then it never works. Hmph.

Just one more reason I need to move to the States...

Well, only one state. New Jersey law says that customers can't pump their own gas. I think maybe Oregon, too?

Just one more reason I need to move to the States...

While we'd love (LOVE!!) to have you, don't decide on the basis of full-service gas. Self service is standard everywhere except New Jersey, where for strange historical and political reasons, pumping your own is not only not the norm but actually illegal. Ah, federalism.

Hil, doesn't sound like you screwed it up, sounds like a broken computer on the pump.

I stole the motivation, sorry - Just cranked out 3 invoices and dealt with 3 more emails.

Deliberately bad prose is here! Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009 Results

The winner:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

Winner: Detective

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Self service is standard everywhere except New Jersey, where for strange historical and political reasons, pumping your own is not only not the norm but actually illegal. Ah, federalism.

I lived in New York (Ossining) and always got full-service gas. It was delightful. But that's close enough to New Jersey that people might have moved there and demanded it.

Illegal? Wow. Weird, yet cool.

I almost never fill up in NJ because of the full-service only thing. It weirds me out.

Every few years, someone proposes revising the NJ law requiring full-service gas stations, but it always gets voted down.

New Jersey, where for strange historical and political reasons, pumping your own is not only not the norm but actually illegal.

Jobs program!

Yeah, Oregon doesn't let you pump your own gas, either. it confuses me when I'm there, but I could get used to it.

Many happy returns, Frankenbuddha!