Thus, the Patrol.

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There's always danger involved in any automotive restoration project- it falling off the jackstand and crushing your chest, an unfamiliar suspension component becoming violently de-tensioned and sending a trailing arm through your skull in a macabre realization of the image on the shirt you are likely wearing at the moment.

But, these have that septic pool of bacterial badness about them. I mean, who knows where they have been, or what sort of cancerous spores may still lurk in the dusty confines of each nook and cranny which will be exposed during disassembly.

Breathing that stuff in can't be good for you, but hell, a pack of masks is $7.95 at The Wallmarts and you'll just hold your breath while ratcheting that fender off, never mind the frequent puffs of green dust flying out with each application of the pneumatic wrench. After a while, you might start to feel a little dizzy and have to step outside for a breather.

Pulling out a camel, you flick your Bic to flame and notice something odd about the back of your left hand: it has an eerie green tinge to it. Looking at the palm, you see tiny webs under the skin, which is turning semi-translucent. Stubbing the cigarette out on the heel of your shoe, you note that your ankle appears to have the same topography spreading over it. Through the screen door and into the downstairs bathroom, you flick on the light and stare at yourself in the mirror. Twisting the left-hand tap you start scrubbing your hands with soap and blistering hot water. That doesn't seem to be enough so you get out a fresh bar of LAVA, fumbling with the paper wrapper in your wet, diseased hands. The pumice-infused soap does no better and you contemplate Comet and a Brillo pad when you are overcome with fatigue. It takes all of your strength just to climb the stairs, and you nearly pass out falling into your bed. Rolling over onto your back, you do fall uncontrollably unconscious.

Birds chirping. Or a squeaky shutter blowing in the soft wind. There is a noise that brings you to consciousness. Instinctively, you rub your eyes, and then, remembering your green and spidery hands, pull them away. Blinking furiously, you attempt to squeeze any of the foreign matter from your eyes.

Realizing the futility you open them and survey the room, at least they still work. There's something different about the room, a strange, unfamiliar pattern of light on the wall from the 4 pane window opposite. It's a big shadow, which hadn't ever been there before, round and fuzzy. Looking down you see to your horror what the source of the shadow is; your scrotum has ballooned to elephantine proportions, and now splays your legs apart like a cheap bar mechanical bull. Not only has in grown to gargantuan size, but it has taken on the strange green webbing you first noticed yesterday on your palm.

You try to move, but the enormous bulk between your legs seems immobile, like some grotesque termite queen. Seeking out what used to keep your testicles company, you find it poking out of the green mat, a shrunken echo of its former majesty. Sitting up you find that the scrotal growth has torn through your jeans and Fruit of the Looms, which appeared to have put up a valiant effort-stretching beyond tolerances anticipated in the lab-before splitting and snapping back like the rubber band on and ad-filled Sunday Times.

The phone! If you could only reach the phone, you could call for help. But the closest phone is in the hall, by the top of the stairs, and that's a good 15 feet from where you now lay like a beached leviathan with nuts the size of mastiffs.

With all the strength you can muster, you drag yourself off the bed, your sack rolling off ahead of you like the Blob in that awful movie. It lands with a sickening, wet thwack on the floor, and you wince with the anticipated pain, but there is little, and you are thankful for small favors.

Thankful that you fell asleep with your shoes on, you make use of the traction that the rubber soles afford. Taking one step forward, and then another, you begin to make headway towards the bedroom door, and your boys drag behind you, leaving a green, diaphanous film in their wake. The door jam gives you something to grip onto and added leverage as you make your way out into the hall and toward the phone stand on the landing, the throw rug below it is askew from your travails up the stairs the day before, and it hangs slightly over the top tread.

Breathing hard, and exhausting all of your energy you make it to the phone. You have to wait a moment to catch your breath before picking up the receiver, and as you do, you feel a sensation like you are taking the worlds largest crap. A grayhound bus of a crap, and looking down you see, to your horror, that your sack is sliding on the throw rug down the top step of the stairs. Before you can do anything it hits the first tread -"Blop" and then the next- "blop, blop". Grabbing the phone to try and brace yourself, you feel your feet sliding across the now-bare floor and then out into thin air. Your ass is the first to hit, and it hits hard, likely breaking a bone or something as your balls continue their magical journey down the stairs with you bringing up the rear. You pause for a millisecond as the phone cord goes tight and then snaps.

Your balls bounce off the walls and each other like enormous click-clacks as they round the landing and make their way to the bottom, with you crashing behind and slamming your teeth together on every step.

Finally you see the bottom of the stairs loom into view. The boys are really rocking now, having gained considerable speed due to the cruelly named "weak force" of gravity, and their new-found mass. It's all you can do to keep from passing out as you round the landing and start down the final flight to the foyer. You think you can brace yourself against the newel post to prevent them from hitting as hard as they appear to be, but it's no good. Your foot misses its perch and you sail right by.

Your balls hit the floor with the sound of a dump truck slamming into a wall of fetid cabbage, and they split open. Green ocherous puss billows out of your cracked eggs and something else. Something squirming and slimy. Something with black deadlights for eyes. Something that flips and bends and flops across the floor, wrapping themselves around the side-table legs and knocking it over in their fervor. You balls now look like deflated hot-air balloons as the last of the larva wiggle out of them. You're sickened by the sight of this and feel something rising in the back of your throat. Leaning over to wretch, your stomach heaves and you feel your esophagus in involuntary flex as your mouth fills with . . . another of the worms. It wiggles there inside your mouth, scraping against the palette and leaving a coppery shit taste on your tongue. You barf again, and it comes fully out with a splat on the stair, and then slides off down the wall.

The horror of this scene is almost too much to take, and you grab the sides of your head with your hands and dig at your hair. Against the palm of each hand you feel something . . . tickling. You look into the mirror across the foyer and see a small gray, slimy tail emerging from each ear. There's a feeling inside your head like you are a grapefruit and are about to be shared by two chimpanzees.

When they find you, the CDC quarantines your entire property. There have only been two other cases like yours documented in the past, so at least in death you will gain some kind of notoriety. One of the CDC doctors, in his light blue Hazmat suit, notices the project car in the garage and makes a note. He's always wanted one of those, and after all, that couldn't have had anything to do with what went on here, now could it?

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But the Rover....I always love a cheap PCH that comes with a tow bar already attached. I wouldn't need to rent a trailer or dolly. Thankfully, it's really far away.

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Ever meet a vintage Nissan enthusiast (besides the White Zombie guy) who even acknowledges that they made cars besides the Z's? No. You have not, outside the context of Jalopnik.

There was a nice Patrol on Bring A Trailer the other day, however. [bringatrailer.com]

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I learned to swear at a Landrover when I was 4.

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The Nissan Patrol I didn't even know was a car before the eighties. Old FJs are cool, but this is so much more obscure and probably even more hellish.

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