In-Flight Reading

2012-01-21T15:16:00.001-05:00

Props to a friend of mine from Deviant Art, who also happens to have a blog here. There's not a vast number of women who just dig cars outright, for their own pleasure and purposes, and meanings. I give it up to the ones who do. Check her page out, "LilBlueHorse," as she's known on DA, is one of a kind.

http://carsandsparkles.blogspot.com/

And I did the following as a tribute to the recently-passed father of an Odawa Native American friend of mine. And before anyone gets all bent out of shape, yes, I know that the totem pole is primarily an Inuit device, but it brings the piece together with a sense of family and culture, at least from my perspective. If you don't agree, feel free to say so.

2012-01-12T16:06:00.002-05:00

Issac Newton, Albert Einstein....if nothing else, I guess I'm in good company.

2012-01-07T12:32:00.004-05:00

It is entirely possible to buy a Ferrari for about as much money as you'd spend on your average new car. Sometimes substantially less. Don't believe me? Check the following link:

http://www.ferrariclassified.com/showVehicles.aspx?make=Ferrari

and while I admit there are many with prices ranging well into six and seven figures, the Ferrari for the price of a minivan is not implausible. Same goes for Rolls-Royces, should you be so inclined, as seen here:
http://autos.yahoo.com/used-cars/rolls_royce-overview

Not that there aren't some caveats, in either case. Generally speaking, cheap Rolls-Royces and Ferraris are cheap for a reason. Either they don't represent what one might consider a stylistic or engineering high-water-mark, even in the eyes of their manufacturers, (in the case of Ferraris, I was looking for, and unable to locate an example of the generally unloved 330GTC: if the GTC was human, it's looks would fall somewhere in the Albert Brooks/Woody Allen/Peter-Falk-as-Columbo ilk.) What I did find in Ferraris at fairly reasonable prices were a lot of 308 and 328 GTBs and GTSs, the model popularized in the T.V. show "Magnum P.I." Which brings me to my second point. As they say, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. In the case of the 308s and 328s, a relatively low price is an indicator that not enough attention has been paid to what the Brits refer to as "the fiddly bits;" think of them in American English as the really tiny Lego pieces that you find in the carpet in the middle of the night, with your foot. As I understand, the periodically-necessary timing belt replacement on a 308/328 will set you back approximately the price of a new Ford Fiesta.

So what's the big picture here? The reasons people might, or might not, find you desirable are about the same; either you haven't been true to yourself, (think about it; the really desirable Ferraris, the ones that DO go for six-and-seven figures, are ones truest to the heart of Signore Ferrari. The 308s and 328s were popularized and mass-marketed to the point of near prostitution, in the eyes of a company like Ferrari.) or you're high-maintenance, and haven't been maintained, and thus anyone who DOES subsequently get involved is in for a long, expensive chore, in return for what may seem like infrequent moments of satisfaction. It may still be enough satisfaction, in the eyes of whomever you're involved with, but it's always hard to say. So what's the solution? In-keeping with our car analogy, consider the Mustang. The desirability doesn't extend to resale value the way it does with something that's almost totally hand-built, but in terms of sheer numbers ("votes of popularity," you might say,) well, look at the numbers here for ten years of 308 production:
(Production figures are in bold print)
308 GTB (Fiberglass) 1975 — 1977   808 (s/n 18677 — 21289)
308 GTB (Steel) 1977 — 1980 2185   (s/n 20805 — 34329)
308 GTS   1977 — 1980 3219   (s/n 22619 — 34501)
208 GTB 1980 — 1982 160    (s/n 31219 — 41329)
208 GTS 1980 — 1982 140 (s/n 31249 — 41265)
308 GTBi 1980 — 1982 494 (s/n 31327 — 43059)
308 GTSi   1980 — 1983 1743 (s/n 31309 — 43079)
308 GTB QV    1982 — 1985 748 (s/n 42809 — 59071)
308 GTS QV 1982 — 1985 3042 (s/n 41701 — 59265)
208 GTB Turbo 1981 — 1985   437 (s/n 41357 — 59277)
208 GTS Turbo 1982 — 1985 250   (s/n 42863 — 59279)
308 GTB Michelotto   1978 — 1985    15 (s/n 08380 — 31559)

If you add it all up, the number is somewhere around 20,000, which was mass-production for Ferrari, and by comparison, a good month in a Ford Mustang plant. So why have Mustangs been hot for going on 50 years now? Stylish, but simple. It's a fine line to walk, but there is some truth to it.

And as I mentioned before, the really desirable Ferraris adhered to Polonius' advice in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true." If you decide you're going to walk a particular road, it may indeed be the right one for you. If being desirable, even if you're not instantly accessible is what you crave, go for it. But figure that some might see you as a snob. It's always a fine line. Choose wisely.

I myself have been accused of "running hot and cold," which is probably true. Popularity in terms of sheer numbers is frequently also a function of simply how things are going, who you're catering to, are they buying, and all the rest of that noise. I guess you could say the difference is that of desirability as shown by sheer numbers, as opposed to....how are you valued? How much are you valued? Snob appeal, yes. Like I said, choose wisely.

2011-12-31T14:28:00.001-05:00

I'm sick to death of a lot of things. Somewhere near the top of the list are people, women especially, who fail to understand that the life of a divorced man is overrun with mandates. Alimony (not me on this one, thank God,) child support (that one I am subject to,) and other collateral obligations connected to a relationship falling apart, frequently leave the incident male sucked dry financially. Which means that when the rest of life's little "hiccups" come along, well, you can see where it wouldn't be pretty. And you can see where the slope could get to be pretty slippery. But we all need love, we all DO love. And we all have to live. The upshot here is that if you're in a relationship with a guy who's already been around the marital block, you should reasonably expect that financially, there are probably times when he's going to come up short. Of course, if he's any kind of man at all, he's good for it. If he's like me, he needs understanding and patience, because frankly, any marriage falling apart creates a train wreck, no matter how bold a face he puts on. Normally, (and I can only speak for myself here,) he's not being predatory if he needs you to pick up some of the financial slack. Divorce and its incident costs and mandates are a game changer. You live by not only the rules, but the whims of everyone else involved. And it sucks. So ladies, do the divorced men of the world a favor and understand this. Like I said, there are instances where I'm wrong, unfortunately, and some guys, even in these situations truly are predators. It's also not a situation that ever happens by itself. If a guy is sneaky, and predatory, and generally ill-mannered, well....the situation didn't create itself. Sometimes stuff gets in there, particularly when the emotional "slate" is still soft, (particularly in the flower of youth,) and as a result, as adults, everything goes sideways. It doesn't make anything less wrong, or any man less culpable for the actions that follow, but if you're being honest, and trying not only to play by the rules, but roll with the punches, it's best to realize that the hard ones can hit men just as hard as they can women. Also, the whole idea of divorce, and its incident costs and ramifications, and mandates, is something that doesn't go away until it really does. That is, until you're out of it financially. Till the child support is completely paid, till all the expectations are met, once and for all. And I've seen plenty of women out there who don't seem to want to believe this whole state of affairs; well, believe it. It's the truth, whether the man that you're involved with, or connected to will actually say it or not. I've probably said all this before, but frankly, it bears repeating sometimes. A little understanding goes a long way.

2011-12-28T20:04:00.000-05:00

This is primarily for my family members, and I hope it gets around to all the right people, because I'm tired of fighting everything I think I've been fighting. Or at least that which just dawned on me recently. I haven't ever gotten a particularly cordial reception from some sectors of my own family, and having thought a bit about how our family occasions go, (at least amongst the Klobucars, Tomacs, Babiches, etc,) attendance is normally pretty good for family reunions, funerals, and the like. You just kind of hit that "social wall" on occasions; all the people who don't really seem to want to talk to you for whatever reason...... and, admittedly, yes, I have always marched to the beat of a different drummer, that borders on a given. Neither of my marriages has been what you'd call entirely commonplace. No fault, really, of either of the brides, probably more just like the fact that there are some hyper-conservative members of the clan. Which is also not to say that none of THEM have skeletons in the closet, but generally speaking, that's beside the point. At any rate, In thinking about why my reception (and that of my spouses,) has been somewhat lukewarm, I realized a couple of things. 1) I'm the youngest of the cousins, until we get into another generation entirely. Nobody to relate to totally in that way. Okay, I can go with that, assuming it's the real deal. 2) As I mentioned before, I have always marched to the beat of my own drum. I understand if people find this a bit off-putting, but I've been working on my social self for quite a while now. Gimme a break, willya?! I'm tryin' here. 3) Most importantly, at least from my perspective, the guest list at both of my weddings was fairly small. Why? Because I've never been particularly WEALTHY, that's why! The first time around, we cut every break imaginable, and still pretty much barely had enough to make what DID happen proceed. Any more bodies invited would have broken us, right from the word go. When Martha and I got married, I suppose financially, more people on the guest list wouldn't have been impossible to swallow, however, given that I was working in Ohio at the time, and on top of that had to deal with Martha having a pacemaker put in three weeks before the wedding, any more people would have pretty much been a logistical nightmare the likes of which has not been seen since The Odyssey by Homer. So if any of this really rings true, and members of my family have felt slighted because they never got a wedding invitation, either time, I'M SORRY! TRULY! I'm only capable of so much, and a little slow on the uptake, to boot. Nothing has ever been meant as an intentional slight, if that's how it's been perceived, I'm just a man with distinct limitations. If that still doesn't suit you, sorry, there's nothing else I can possibly say. But reciprocally, neither of my mates has felt particularly good about the way they've been treated. and this is the only way I can think of to stand up for them, and their feelings. and what, by trickle-down effect, has happened to me. In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?!"

2011-12-22T16:01:00.000-05:00

I have now been two days this week, (and am committed to a third,) doing geometry classes, attempting to help students learn ratios. In both cases, the classroom teacher has been gone multiple days. Day one, the students understanding of the subject was done in by a sub who apparently knew less about the subject than he thought he did; the regular classroom teacher, by word of the students, is absolutely stellar at her job, but currently done in by shoulder surgery, and the sub's attempt at instruction fu*ked them up royally. Today, (and tomorrow,) it's the regular classroom teacher who, by word of the students, is almost grossly incompetent. Very few students in the four hours I was charged with, understood much of anything, in what should have been review. The point? Mostly that incompetence (or competence,) knows no job title. Teacher accountability should be an issue all the way around. Also, you can't assume, particularly with advanced math, and particularly given that young minds are really not "built" the way adult brains are, no matter what teens would like to think, that just knowing math (or any other subject,) qualifies you to teach it. You have to be able to make it easy to understand, or you risk making things worse. I admit I don't know math all that well, but so far, I've put the time into getting to know it so I can actually explain it. And admittedly, I ain't perfect. If I had my way, I'd stick to English like I know I can actually be competent at. Never mind the typical classroom teacher's "leave the sub with a pile of worksheets, that'll keep 'em out of trouble," ethic. Uhhhh, no. Doesn't work like that. Normally there's a point in the day where I could either do with a top hat and cane, or a taser. But, of course, neither one would be following the lesson plans, or the law, so there I am. I want the full-time, classroom teachers to think about this. And yourselves. And your students. Please.

2011-12-01T10:32:00.001-05:00

With the passing of 2011, I have now been a substitute teacher pretty much as long as I have ever been anything else professionally in my life. And I love what I do. The sad part is, at least in Michigan, I am the state of the educational art. I hear from full-time teachers constantly about their friends or children who rack up thousands of dollars in student loans to become teachers, only to graduate, and not be able to find jobs. At least not in Michigan. What, then, do these friends and children do? They substitute teach. Oh, sure, frequently, they get the gigs in districts I can't because I'm not certified, but they're doing the same thing I am. Burdened by a bigger mountain of accrued debt than me. Much as I have ever bit*hed about how debt-laden I am, particularly in this economy, relatively speaking, it's small potatoes. And I'm working on it continuing to get smaller. I'm not upside-down on a house, wading in business losses, and as bad as the economy has been, I've managed to stay afloat, day-by-day, for the last four years. I bothers me when I hear from students constantly...."another sub?! I've had subs every hour today!" Perhaps its just a matter of creating a generation of students who can more easily cope with such transience where their educators are concerned, but it still takes me multiple visits to a particular school to develop any kind of rapport with the students. The kind your average full-time teacher probably develops in the first week or two with a given class. On the up-side, I have actually been able to develop a rapport with certain students, usually because they started the relationship by pi**ing me off until they realized that I meant business. That I cared if they learned, even if they didn't. I've been advising student teachers lamenting the fact that they can't find work to consider teaching English in Asia, like I did. It's God-awful sad that I should have to give anyone this kind of advice, but frankly, it amounts to going where the jobs are. The sad truth is we've given away the American industrial economy, and it's taken most of the rest of America down with it. Until we make that particular comeback, nothing is going to change.
And I know what at least a few are probably thinking. I don't intend to ever stop learning, I would simply die if that were the case. But between the economy and the fact that I still haven't finished paying for my Bachelor's, one that probably served me less well than it might have, had I made more enlightened choices while I was still young enough for it to make a difference, I admit I'm a little gun-shy about going further into hock for an education at this point. The education I have continues to serve me, day-after-day, I'm proud not only that I have my Bachelor's, but that I passed my Michigan Test for Teacher Certification in Basic Skills and English (but not in Journalism, my major, which I think only really serves to prove how night-and-day different journalism is from the way it was taught to me.) Bottom line? Further education is simply not cost-effective in my particular time and place. But I could never be a good teacher if I figured education could ever stop. Allow me the luxury of being at least a little intelligent about all this, though, will ya?

2011-11-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

Dunno about you, but I have known the times God has been trying to get something across to me. And He's not always subtle about it. I think it's all part of my Jewish heritage, and Him being the wrathful, yet loving "Old Testament" God. The one time I had the temerity to demand proof, out loud, that He really existed....well, let's just say it involved a freak thunderstorm, and, ultimately, building materials for the church across the street. Needless to say, He got my attention right about then, and it stuck. (Can ya tell?) Today, I suppose, it was more like an email from God. Started out as just a normal subbing job, but all the classes got a presentation (no doubt because they were mostly high school juniors and seniors,) that college is not only necessary in this day and age, but ultimately very doable. And the guy was a great speaker. (I've seen quite a few good motivational speakers in high schools, imagine that.) He got my attention. On top of him, in the afternoon, was a presentation to some of the students about one of the local community colleges. Okay, Lord, I get it. I need to get on the stick, and get this whole educational thing squared away once and for all. If I ever want anything, if I aim to right the wrongs of my past, this is a necessity. And f*ck the idea that I should be afraid of what might happen. This now involves far too many people, and far too much of my own future. Forgive me if I still am still a little afraid, in this day and age, of what's gonna happen, but ya know what? I can tell at this point that He's got my back. If I was really gonna go up in ball of flames, I would have done it before now, probably in Korea, or someplace else. By now I should know of myself that I'm tougher than all that. Call me human. But once again, I get the message. I need not fear. Just get it done. That, apparently, is all anyone wants. Some days, I just hear myself saying, "fear is for the unenlightened." Which, I suppose, should always be followed up by what Martha said before I left for Korea; "then you have every reason to be afraid!" But I did it then. I can now. I must now. Wish me luck.

2011-11-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

The below is shots not only of my dad, but taken by him during the Korean War when he was stationed at Busan. There's a lot more great images, and as I come across them I'll share them as quickly as possible. Happy Veteran's Day (a little late,) Dad, thanks for not only your service, but who you are, as well.

2011-11-08T12:09:00.002-05:00

Overall, I think the thing that's bugging me most lately is the state of the economy. Combined with the fact that I'm pushing the far end of that "18-to-49" demographic with every passing day, well, frankly, I don't know what to do. I'm glad, pretty much, for every day that I'm just hanging on, and able to pay at least, well, the lion's share of my obligations. This is all gonna take patience on everyone's part. Something that I don't exactly have in spades. But going back to school? Much as I'd like to, and want to, the idea of digging myself in deeper without any real concept of if I stand a chance of having some kind of return on investment just scares me. A lot of things in society should probably have what in journalism is referred to as "the chilling effect," that is, you say it, and the repercussions are such that noone else is likely to. Think about this with a prudent mind; how many things don't get posted on Facebook, or Twitter, or anywhere else, because of the mass awareness that the "Thought Police" are out there, and if they don't eliminate you any other way, they'll make sure that your job and domestic situations suck as much as they think you do. Okay, perhaps that does more than verge on a dystopian fantasy, but can ya blame me, really? How many records can a potential employer check before you even walk into a job interview?

I found this, and....amused as I was, I was also shuddering a little, because this is just the funny side of the truth. Amazing to think that you'd have to be completely "off the grid" to actually have any privacy. Never mind not smoking, not having a job, or doing anything else constructive. And are we better? I've heard that statistically, the gap between the rich and the poor, "us and them," to some, has never been greater. Isn't it nice to have equality, by virtue of the 99% bottom-feeding?! At any rate, here's to those (like me,) who all troop along, uncertain of the future. If God came back tomorrow, I wonder what he'd do? Sodom and Gomorrah weren't spared, who's to say we wouldn't be? Anyway, here I am, floating around in stasis, generally, trying to keep my head above water, thinking only....."I really have done a lot for humanity as a whole." I'm no Albert Schweitzer, or Mother Teresa, but I hardly think I'm as much of a miscreant as I feel some people have made me out to be at times.

On a lighter note, Halloween was fun this year, and I have the pictures to prove it.

Yours Truly as "Undead Jack," from "Titanic."

Gumby Who?!!!!

Carol, Karen and Mardell

Joanna Folland, a wonderful human being.

More nonsense as it comes!

2011-10-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

I have a lot I could whine about, but I really don't feel like it, so I hunted down some pictures on the internet, just to make myself feel good.

I just love this one. Lamborghini Miura Spyder.

A BMW 2800, body by Bertone. I confess I've never seen this one before.

How they did sexy back in 1968. The Alfa Carabo.

Raymond Loewy's vision of the 1959 Cadillac. Not quite like the production version, huh?

Like any right-thinking car guy, I have my perennial favorites. The 1938 Talbot-Lago "Teardrop" coupe happens to be at the top of the list.

My name is Bond....James Bond......married.....with children.....

Of course, if you're going to have a "shooting brake," (station wagon,) nothing less than a Ferrari will do, for some. Bertone's interpretation of the 1965 330 GTC.

And finally, in my opinion, the sexiest big car ever created, the Bentley Continental.

2011-10-05T13:34:00.000-04:00

Just returned from the dentist. No big thing, apparently my teeth tend to get filthy pretty quickly, for whatever reason. The thing is.....well, at this point, I still feel a little like I'm floating. In the course of the cleaning, the hygienist had the kick the gas level up at least once. I was practically, as the Brits would say, insensible. Stoned. Cloud Nine. At this point, I still feel myself coming down. All of which, of course, begs the question, how sensitized am I, are we all, normally? If this woman has gotta get me that close to completely ripped to get any kind of work done in close proximity to my oral nerves, what the he*l is normal? It puts a new perspective on the idea of your sensibilities. Are we all riding so close to the rails, that we're perpetually within inches of complete emotional shutdown, or is the norm more what I was like when I was stoned? She did, after all, have to turn the gas up at least once from what was supposedly normal. If the norm is more like I was what I felt like on a mega-dose of Nitrous Oxide, this, to me, explains a helluva lot. And essentially makes it all the more frightening that people try to do stuff like texting while they're driving. If your consciousness is pretty low-level generally, well, I dunno. And I was still searching every conceivable crevice of my mind to convince myself I wasn't in pain, even though I really was. So.....what is normal? And is the idea of my "Attention Deficit Disorder" really a function of just trying to stay sane? Sort of a mental "rev limiter," if you will? (for those not so informed, a "rev limiter" on a car is the programming in the engine computer that keeps the engine from over-revving, and essentially destroying itself.) It's valid to my mind, but at this point I don't even feel like I know what real is. Is it mine, or everyone else's? If this is hard to understand, I suppose I really do "get it," sort of. But then again, I don't know. I've only ever experienced my own reality. And what, mayhaps, might an "unaided" reality have been like for someone like Jim Morrison, or Edgar Allen Poe? Theoretically, even L. Frank Baum and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hyper-reality. Hyper-sensitivity. Where do you live?

2011-09-19T16:38:00.000-04:00

It is inhuman not to forgive another person's humanity. Period.Some around me still choose not to forgive, and as little as I like it, there ain't a whole lot I can do about it. But I know myself, and I know how far I've come, and believe me, it's a long freakin' way from where I've been. The rub is the people who wonder, "why weren't you there before?!" If it was (is) really Asperger's, this is a form of Autism; and if there's one thing I've learned about dealing with Autistics, it's that sometimes, if you don't get RIGHT IN THEIR FACE, and explain to them where they have blundered, they won't get it, period. Subtlety simply is not an option. There are other neurological anomalies that have not been handled the way the should have been, in a time frame that would have prevented a lot of heartache. There's still not a whole lot I can do to fix what happened in the past now. Yes, there have been times when I spit out social blunders like Watermelon seeds. At this point, I manage to keep my sixty-some Facebook friends: family, old friends, and those who, seemingly, life has caught up with in the same way it has with me. A few new friends. Not many, but some. I guess that's just not how I roll. I can actually follow along in conversation, and render an opinion about something besides the new BMWs, or whatever. ( I think the muscular look of the latest ones is out of place, really, BMW to me bespeaks a look like a finely tailored suit, and they're just not hitting it.) Overall, (and you know who you are, if I'm talking to you,) why are you choosing to blame me, to hold grudges, for the kind of stuff I haven't really been able to control? Why, exactly, are you doing this to anyone? As far as it goes with dad, this is a guy with full-blown dementia; he doesn't even know what year it is. And still that misplaced grudge. Still, no forgiveness. How dreadfully unappealing. So you're God, now, and feel no compunction in judging anyone this way?! You oughta be ashamed of yourself. I can't do anything but live day-to-day, and fix all the things I let pile up when I wasn't paying attention. And it was all my fault? The neurological anomalies, the agonizingly slow mental processing speed? I could have, and should have, fixed this all, or run the risk of all the heartache it would cause me on its own?! Well, lemme explain something to you; I have paid. I've paid in spades. I've paid in ways you, or no other person who lives outside of MY mind, will ever completely understand. So give it up. Nobody ever hurt you half as bad as you hurt yourself, so get over it. Get over YOU. As far as anything else, I'm done with the past, it's over, ain't a go**amned thing about it I can fix, except pay old bills, and forgive people myself. Which I've been trying to for quite a while now. I just keep on truckin'. Have I been misguided? Probably. Oh, well. I'm workin' on it. Nothing else I can say.

2011-09-11T16:34:00.001-04:00

"Haunting hopeful tributes....." What a bunch of crap. This is the kind of thing I'm coming across here on this 10th anniversary of 9/11. Has it been worth the hype? To my mind, not really. I told the story a while back of working in Dearborn, with a little Muslim girl who was being particularly hard-to-handle for me. When I confronted her about what could possibly be the issue, she said her dad was in the army. It didn't occur to me to ask *whose* army he was in the service of, and really it didn't even matter; all I saw was a little girl who missed her daddy. I can see where she was coming from there. The only thing I could tell her was that her mommy probably missed her daddy just as much, and it would probably help her mom if she "made good choices." (the teachers in the crowd know what this means.) The next time I saw that same little girl, she gleefully told me her daddy had come home. I'm pretty sure that was all she wanted, and frankly, I don't blame her. I don't recall even having a problem with her after that. I'm also pretty certain all she wanted was to be heard. No surprise, I can get my head around that one myself. Look around you, and legitimately ask yourself if there is any such thing as a "pure" American, outside of Native Americans. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. We're all from someplace else, if you're lookin' back far enough.

And culturally, 9/11 will eventually be the same variety of vacuous, memorial non-entity that things like Armistice Day are. Do Americans have any trouble driving Hondas because Pearl Harbor occurred? That was another attack on America. "Well, that's different," I hear some say, "almost all the people who were at Pearl harbor are dead now." Exactly. And one of these days, all the people who were involved with 9/11 will suffer the same fate. The same fate as us all. Every generation has its Zapruder film, Rodney King, Challenger explosion, whatever. And the succeeding generations will NOT be able to get their head around it, because it is only history to them. Except for the soldiers who fought in the wake of 9/11, who will now be maimed for the rest of their sorry lives. Them I feel sorry for. Maybe it's just me not having the "luxury" of being able to be "totally American," because I've worked around everyone else from every other part of the world. No harm, no foul, I say. Think about it.

2011-09-06T14:02:00.005-04:00

I'll tell ya, life at this point doesn't have so much of the "screaming into a void" feeling as it did for a long time. Lo, this year (year-and-a-half, actually,) it's been since I got the results of my neuropsych battery really made a difference in that. And overall, their assessments of Asperger's and ADD are probably pretty much spot-on. But something still bothers me. Parkinson's Disease. I've read that it's not a genetic certainty that you will be affected by it, even if someone you love is. But the same reading also revealed that your risk is still somewhat higher for developing it (it is a developmental, onset kind of thing,) and just....God, feeling like you're dying. the following definition is from the Parkinson's Disease Foundation website.

Parkinson’s involves the malfunction and death of vital nerve cells in the brain, called neurons. Parkinson's primarily affects neurons in the an area of the brain called the substantia nigra. Some of these dying neurons produce dopamine, a chemical that sends messages to the part of the brain that controls movement and coordination. As PD progresses, the amount of dopamine produced in the brain decreases, leaving a person unable to control movement normally

Scary stuff. Although the correlation of all these things, ADD, Parkinson's etc.....Dopamine. What's Dopamine? Psychology Today can help us answer that.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses, and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson's Disease, and people with low dopamine activity may be more prone toaddiction. The presence of a certain kind of dopamine receptor is also associated with sensation-seeking.

Dopamine transfer? (ADD) Dopamine deficiency? (Parkinson's,) Who the he*l knows. I'd love to just be able to tie all this up in a neat little bundle, take a pill a day that wasn't going to fu*k with one thing or another, and be done with it. Is it that easy? Surely you jest. I'm not. And don't call me Shirley. (Thank you, Robert Stack.) I could make a life out of this. I mean a real life, not just one where I'm muddling through from day-to-day. I probably should. I'd probably be dead before I got my Doctorate, but it would help mankind, I'll bet. It would help me.

And Asperger's? What do we not know about Asperger's that helps it retain it's position as being a giant pain in the a*s?! None of this can really be effectively remedied, a lot of it will have you either on anti-depos, or a good, strong anti-psychotic like Exelon. All of which seems to either miss the point, or be using an atom bomb to kill a fly. I think it's mostly that "degenerative" part of Parkinson's that just makes me squirm. Instead, I don't really know what to do. Fight it with every ounce of me, for God-only-knows what kind of payback, or just go with it.

Doing that with Asperger's means....well, frankly, I've made a living hiding myself behind a camera lens before. No real accolades, with the exception of a couple of "A's" in my photo-centered college classes, but that was doing pretty good for me, in college. And I've made a few bucks along the way as a photographer. I didn't please everyone. God knows I probably never will. But I managed not to get fired. What would it take? probably more of a support structure than I've really got at the moment. Definitely more money than I've got. But I've done it. And I can do it. I guess it's true what they say, though; never stop learning. Not 'till you *can't* learn anymore. That's the day that scares me.

And then, of course, I am continually asking myself, "does everybody have to fight this kind of crap?!" The trial-and-error, the self-discovery around every turn? Is it common? Doesn't feel like it. I'd swear some people's lives just fall into their lap, without a second thought on their part. The message of my own father? It can all be fleeting. And like I say, it's that never-knowing-when part that's just a raging bit*h.

2011-08-31T11:20:00.002-04:00

The following is excerpted from the New York Times. Times have been tough for Cuban owners of American cars since the Castro regime took power in 1959. An embargo from the U.S. has meant that Cubans have had to be very "creative" when it comes to servicing their vehicles; two-liter bottles serve as makeshift gas tanks, powertrains are scavenged from other vehicles to keep these cars going, long after their original engines and transmissions have gone to their reward. Rumors now say that Obama might lift the trade embargo, in light of facts like how Cuba is served for its automotive needs by companies like Volkswagen, Hyundai/KIA and China's Geely Motors. The flagging influence of the Castro regime on the world stage also means that as Cuba poses less of a threat to U.S. national security...well...the end of those creative Cubans might be at hand sooner than anyone imagined.

OOKING at it at nighttime from a third-floor balcony in downtown Havana, Ricardo's recently purchased four-door 1956 Chevy Bel Air, freshly painted, looked just the ticket. My stepsons, who live in the United States, wanted to show off their homeland to their girlfriends, who had accompanied them to Cuba, and Ricardo had offered to drive the four of them and two others to Cienfuegos, 210 miles distant, and Trinidad, 50 miles farther. Ricardo pulled up at noon sharp the next day, four hours late. The first thing the passengers noticed when they opened the trunk was five five-gallon cans of gas sloshing around where a spare tire should have rested. The car had no gas tank, and Ricardo had rigged a plastic siphon from a smaller tank under the dashboard. The four doors shared one outside handle, which was dutifully passed from door to door so each could be opened. Still, happy and optimistic, they poured a ceremonial splash of rum on the car's floorboard for good fortune, and lurched away.
After a couple of miles, Leonardo nonchalantly asked about oil. "I don't know," Ricardo replied. "I've never put in any in." The Chevy peaked at about 35 miles an hour. They stopped every five miles to suck gas into the siphon and feed the engine. Famished by late afternoon, they pulled over to a field and cut stalks of sugar cane to chew on. Then the most shredded of the four tires suddenly exploded, and the seven passengers roamed the nearest small town looking for a replacement. The best they could do was a tractor tire they whittled to size, then, with borrowed equipment, soldered in place.
Back on the road, a side window fell into the lap of a startled Juan Carlos. The car lacked windshield wipers, rear lights and bumpers, and none of the dashboard dials worked. Ricardo himself lacked a driver's license. The clutch pedal fell through what was left of the floor. Often they had to push-start the car after a stop. (The car did have a fully functioning theft-alarm system.) The '56 Chevy belched into Cienfuegos late that evening.
Ricardo's Chevy is one of an estimated 60,000 pre-1960 American cars roaming Cuba. About 150,000 existed at the time of the 1959 revolution, shortly after which the Detroit auto giants and all American manufacturers were forced to stop sending goods to Cuba to conform to the United States' embargo. Ricardo's car is far more typical than the ones that art directors love to put on the covers of books about Cuba to evoke a melancholy feeling. Movies about Cuba like "Buena Vista Social Club" turn the jalopies into objects of nostalgia by panning lovingly over a wheel-less Chrysler here or a Plymouth stalled in traffic there. Yet to get dewy-eyed about old American cars in Cuba is to get whimsical about our trade embargo against the island.
There is a feeling abroad in the land that Cubans love old American cars. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cubans love new American cars, not old ones, but the newest ones that they can get their hands on are 45 years old.
To own one of these vintages, known as cacharros, or less commonly, bartavias, in Cuba defines who you are, how you spend your time and how you wish to be known. When your plugs don't spark, when a faulty brake line can't be repaired, when your engine sputters into a coma, when you run into any of Ricardo's difficulties, you fabricate the equipment yourself, share with a friend, buy from a stranger. Or you put your car on blocks until the right part appears the next day, month or year. But when your motor purrs, when you accelerate effortlessly from second to third gear, when the doors click into place, you momentarily forget your difficulties and glide for blocks with a prideful smile, until you inevitably run into one of Ricardo's multiple problems. Could there be a more appealing metaphor for today's Cuba than cars from yesterday's America?
Cuba nicely exploits the fleeting nostalgia that envelopes foreigners when they first visit the island, so much that a government agency rents spiffy reconditioned old convertibles for visitors to tool around in. Capitalizing on the past is a time-honored enterprise throughout the world, and Cuba is simply taking advantage of its own limited resources. Most resourceful are the shade-tree mechanics who create parts. A 2002 film, "Yank Tanks," profiles these "doctors," who think nothing of transplanting a Czech engine under a Buick hood or a Russian carburetor within a De Soto chassis. One fellow fabricates chrome bumpers on his patio, while another makes brake shoes in his home workshop. Old American cars in Cuba, cobbled together from their comatose elders, are variations on the old Johnny Cash song, "One Piece at a Time."
It is the foreigners who rhapsodize about the cacharros. Two new books, "Cuba Classics," by Christopher P. Baker, and "Che's Chevrolet, Fidel's Oldsmobile," by Richard Schweid, speak of a love affair between Cubans and old American cars, but what choice have they had? In "Driving Through Cuba," the Irishman Carlo Gebler uses his search for a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham as his leitmotif. (He never finds one.)
The rattletraps, according to the Cuban-born Cristina García in her sweet paean to the clunkers in "Cars of Cuba," "positively explode with a riotous sensuality." Among Cubans on the island, the singer Carlos Varela uses the cars as a metaphor for the 1959 revolution in his song, "La Política no Cabe en la Azucarera" (roughly, "Politics Don't Fit in the Sugar Bowl"), including the line: "A friend bought a '59 Chevy/He didn't want to replace any parts/And now it won't budge." If the feared post-Castro foreign plunder of native art, antiques and coastline takes place, surely pre-1960 cars will become part of the pillage.
I once saw a functioning 1934 Plymouth on the streets of Sancti Spíritus, a town of about 100,000 in the country's interior, and I know how that sensation of visiting a living museum of old cars can unexpectedly creep up on you. Informally, when Cuba hands sit around and consider the opportunities that could arise when the United States and Cuba return to their senses, some fantasize about getting into construction or electronics, industries that may burst wide open. But after seeing Ricardo's '56 Chevy, I predict a great future in low-end auto parts. The Pep Boys, Checker Auto Parts, AutoZone — that's where it's at for Cuba of the future.

Tom Miller is the author of "Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba."

Forgive

2011-08-29T13:47:00.000-04:00

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Or, more to the point, I've lost something; my sense of guileless-ness. After having been kicked to the curb once, and not even really knowing why, precisely, I have essentially lost the ability to trust anyone innately, whether they warrant it or not. Call it an end of the innocence, I suppose. All around me, things are going on which seem final, and inevitably destined toward death, heartache and hardship. If it's not too much trouble, Lord, I'd like my innocence back. Please. I'd like, for once in this life, at least to this point, to think that someone else doesn't have an ulterior motive, or a hidden agenda they're just aching to spring on me. I've had about enough of people aching to spring anything on me. I'm not made for that. If Jesus was supposed to save me from sin, save us all from sin, then why does it seem more like the Adamic Covenant going on? In short, I guess, I want to believe, and very little around me gives me cause to. Granted, man's inhumanity to man doesn't extend to others in the absolute worst of circumstances, after things like Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and other disasters too numerous to mention, someone, thankfully, has been there to extend a hand to the down-trodden. In normal circumstances, however, there's still poverty, and crime, and greed, and malevolence of every flavor. Can't You make it STOP?! Is that asking too much? I'm tired of my own lack of ability to have faith in anything, tired of being gun-shy about other people's motives. If I've been evil, I'll tell You this right now, I have no idea how. It's not like I've ever set about to be malevolent, but if you have to run around with your guard up all the time, well, yeah, I guess you do start to develop pre-conceived notions about people and their motives. And you end up having to defend yourself. And defend your heart. It sucks to have to, but there ya go. So, please, God, give me some reason to have faith in humanity, instead of having to keep looking over my shoulder all the time, and looking ahead of me, wondering what's going to happen next. I'm worn out from all of it.

2011-08-24T10:12:00.002-04:00

Yes, indeed, this is the latest pic of my 16-year-old daughter, Shelby. She admits in her Deviant Art journal that she had some apprehension about doing it, and although I can't say as I really blame her, well, it's not like there's not precedent for it in her life. I mean, how big a difference is there between the #2 that I always use on the back and sides of my own head when I I get my hair cut and this? And in all honesty, if she's gonna do this, better she should do it when she's young, and can pull it off, than trying to do it at my age, and be viewed as almost comical. People have also said, "I was raised better than this, my parents would have NEVER let me do it!" How well-raised, what example, really, are any of us? The fact is there is no real "Parenting Instruction Manual," we're ALL essentially the product of trial and error on the part of our parents. If you live in a household where a divorce occurred somewhere along the way, you're saddled with the baggage that came from all that; the custody disputes, the accusations (sometimes sadly and painfully real,) of non-payment of child support, infidelity, the list goes on and on. Even in households that didn't go through a divorce, strife is part of being a family. You don't always like what your brother and sister have done, you think they got what you didn't, they were the favorites, and could do no wrong, whatever. Unless you were really well-off, and essentially got raised by a nanny or something, which means your parents are distant and cold to you. All of it is crap. If you've been a parent, unless you're the most heartless, intentionally cruel individual God ever put on this earth, when it comes to your children, you don't pick favorites, you recognize differences. My concern in the case of my daughter is that it may be a severe hindrance when it comes to her job opportunities, which she's going to have to be thinking about at some point, but she's committed to being an artist, this may just be the look the employers she's interested in are looking for. Hair as self-expression. And all in all, much as I wouldn't do it myself, she's still beautiful, and still my child. I was a little miffed at her mother for being in on this whole project, but if it wasn't going well, and mom stepped in to help, well, that's the best response you can hope for, I guess. Few things are more scarring, at least temporarily, than a bad 'do. And I recognize, as well, that my child does a great many things purely for shock value. It's part of the Shelby territory. Other than that, I myself am probably just as responsible for who she and her sister both are as anyone else. My objective in raising them both is that they would be able to "run with the boys," and not be run over by them. What my children do proves that they're living up to my standards, not those of my ex, who seemed more interested in self-sabotage, low standards and a relative lack of creativity. Do you want the best for your children? Remember Proverbs 22:6;

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I don't expect instantaneous results, I expected rebellion. I did it myself. I paid a heavy price for it, which, to a certain extent I will be paying for a long time to come. But I do see a payoff, I do see a light at the end of the tunnel, and for once, I think it is not that of an oncoming train. I've had far too many Wile. E. Coyote moments.

2011-06-08T14:08:00.003-04:00

I came across this one a while ago, and posted a link of my Facebook. I didn't realize there was a video at the bottom of the page, showing this creation in action. I honestly don't know if I should be impressed, frightened or amused. Maybe all of the above. It is pretty cool.
http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/1101_east_german_el_camino/index.html#ooid=AwZmJ2MTojD6CnX-Qr-z0Ki_bulznmLY

2011-04-30T15:35:00.000-04:00

I mentioned on my Facebook page that the Alfisti are probably already jumping up and down over the impending return of their favorite brand to these shores, due to ownership of Alfa by Chrysler's parent, Fiat. Notable, too, is that Fiat's woeful quality issues of the 60s and 70s, prompting the old joke about FIAT standing for "Fix It Again, Tony," are apprently a thing of the past. Or at least not intimately remembered by anyone under the age of 55. This is the Guiletta, and yes, it does have 4 doors; the handles for the rear doors, in artfully Italian style, are visible in the "C" pillars, up on the window line. It's maybe a little larger than my Focus, but not much. Some will probably consider the looks rather polarizing, especially the nose, but it's that Italian artful thing I mentioned; love it or hate it. I happen to love it. But this Alfa doesn't get my blood pumping in nearly the way the 8C Competizione exoticoupe does; that thing is like Sophia Loren on wheels; primal, eternal, demi-orgasmic sexiness. But for a daily driver, something I could afford to live with? I'd do this.

2011-04-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

To some, the following will probably seem as though i have unzipped my skin and revealed a glowing, totally alien, interplanetary self: I don't feel Catholic. Sorry, I never really have, with the exception of those times when I'm on "Catholic Autopilot;" I can recite the Niocene Creed when called upon, and perform other minor miracles under similar conditions, but I have never felt any particular compulsion to eat fish on Friday, or do any of the other things righteous Catholics are called upon to do. So Who is my God, then? Lemme put it this way; He's a more wrathful, Old Testament sort. He falls more in line with my own temperament, and, I suppose explains more within me. Saturdays are not about another day to work with me, they're a day to rest, and think. Bottom line? I feel more Jewish than anything else. I had relatives, as I have now found out, people I would have called aunts and uncles, who died at Auschwitz and Minsk because they held to their convictions, and were Jewish even when Adolf Hitler didn't think anyone should have been. That's where my soul is at. But of course, after a lifetime of Catholicism, this is not going to be some overnight change, it can't possibly be. I don't even know if I ever could convert, even if I wanted to. It reconciles things a little bit to think that Christ was referred to as "The King of the Jews," and was Jewish long before the mere idea of Christianity came along. It does little to explain a string of Baptist belles who have been the loves of my life, which is, perhaps, another puzzling part of this whole "Who's my God?" question, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. And I'm not certain what the Catholic stance is on at least one, ahem, particularly male rite, but there it is, staring back at me in the shower every morning. I've never had any particular fondness for ham.....bacon, that's another story, barbecued ribs, same thing. But I actually have successfully picked bacon off a sandwich before biting into it, as I have vowed to do for lent this year, so I guess I could adapt, as an homage to those relatives of mine who did hold to their convictions, when the world around them told them not to. That takes real guts to me. I don't know what anoyone's going to think of even the particular revelation I have made here, insofar as I have made it thus far. I sure as hell don't know what's going to happen if I take things any further in an effort to reconnect with my real self, insofar as I have spoken it here. Baby steps. That's all I can think at the moment, and.....well, I guess we'll just see how things go. No disrespect intended to anyone, in terms of the way in which I have lived my life thus far, but something in all this feels like it was very much meant to be.

2011-02-25T15:56:00.000-05:00

C'mon, let's walk, you and me. What's that? You didn't wear the right shoes? Take mine. Seriously. Outside of my ADD, there doesn't seem to be a single head, trained appropriately or otherwise, who can pinpoint precisely what the deal is with me. At this point, it doesn't even matter. Lemme school you on what it's really like to be me. Do you have any idea how draining it is to do all the things you're supposed to do?! Focus. Stay with the conversation. Color inside the lines. All this, while taking a psychostimulant every day of your life, to help you stay calm and focused enough to get things done. If that isn't f*cked-up for starters, I don't know what is. People who have the expectation that I'm not not going to be drained at the end of the day, let alone the end of the school year, clearly have never done what I do. Ever. All this, of course, while I'm just dying to come out with the first thought that comes into my head, pertinent or not. Mash the throttle and feel the rush of life in second-overdrive, while the trees whistle by on the interstate at 140 m.p.h. But alas, that would get me killed. Or at the very least, incredibly alienated. From everyone in about an 8,000-mile radius. People who don't understand that the hardest thing about my soul is trying to figure out where to point this thing. And where not to. Apparently there are certain trajectories at which my eyes alone pack a pretty hellacious wallop. To say nothing of my words, or my actions.

Another little something I had almost forgotten about. Imagine having a startle-reflex so vicious that the rest of the world seemed to regard it as entertaining to scare the sh*t out of you when you least expected it. Explain to me how that one thing alone, were you the one afflicted by it, would not have you perpetually on-guard. And then people have the nerve to wonder why I bi*ch perpetually about being tired?! Get real.

The bottom line? I can live inside the box, but it sure as hell isn't my natural habitat. Imagine a soul that's screaming at you, every single day, "God, but if I only could....." without deadly repercussions. Most people, minimally, are programmed, or learn quickly, what is and isn't appropriate. If I'm wrong about the average person's capacity to stifle those screaming, prodding voices within them, by all means say so. In the meantime, if it's a certain time, on a particular weekend, where I haven't taken my meds because I damned-well didn't feel like it, didn't feel like dealing with the "crash," or other equally unpleasant medication side-effects, I have one word for you; deal. There are, in fact, times when I'm just flat-out tired of being everything I need to be, and doing everything I need to do. So if I'm taking a minute to draw, or say what I think, or get caught up in hip-hop, played at make-your-ears-bleed volumes purposely to drown out everything and everyone imaginable, take my advice. Take two steps back, wait till I'm done, and then advance at your pleasure. Or peril. Same thing if the reverse happens to be true; if you hear the Kitaro going, it's a big sign in flashing neon, that says, "WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! DANGER!" It won't be pretty. The backlash could very easily cut you in half. And, like I said, at other times, I just need to have that rat-a-tat-tat-to-make-yo-neck-snap-back. Sorry, that's just me.

I suppose the fact that I even recognize that this is the case counts as progress, in some circles, but it is by no means a panacea. I don't seem to have really found the "sweet spot" yet, so it's a game of perpetual compensation; don't let yourself get too far in either direction. Like I said, if half the game is just being able to stay the hell off the guardrails, I guess that's good. But, of course, it leaves you marveling at those who have mastered the rapier skills at which you see yourself as woefully inadequate. If I had it my way, I would be a metaphorical razor in every concievable direction, but I suppose that, too, has its own perils. There are certain things, believe it or not, I wish did come more naturally to me; skills with numbers. Social adeptness. You get the picture. To me, a voice, or a mere sound, is like a picture of your background, a step into the innermost part of your mind. A voice in an instant absolutely rings with pure soul. If you don't understand that, it's okay, I guess I didn't really expect you to. In absolute stillness, my ears just ring sometimes, to a point that any normal person would either tune out or be absolutely maddened by. I still don't ever feel like I can really make myself totally clear, no matter how hard I try, no matter which of the thousands of words at my disposal I chose to use.

On the flip-side, I suppose there are people who would kill to be me, even for five minutes, just to have the skills that I do happen to have. Taken in total, I suppose it all comes down to taking from God what He decided to bless or curse you with, even if the things that are both a blessing and a curse are the exact same things. That, and knowing where the guardrails are.

Tort Law Reaches Fairy-Tale Levels

2011-02-12T15:16:00.004-05:00

THE FOLLOWING IS EXCERPTED FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The use of the term "a coven of lawyers" inspired me to write the following. John Edmond, Phoenix, Arizona.

"......and just as the wolf siezed Little Red Riding Hood, theWoodsman burst through the door and killed the Wolf with his ax."

Immediately, the attorneys for the relatives of the Wolf filed a suit against the Woodsman for wrongful death; the Woodsman had acted on presumption, not having seen the Grandmother actually being eaten. Besides, the Wolf had been abused as a pup and was merely reacting by cross-dressing. In addition, the attorneys for the Wolf's relatives sued LRRH for entrapment: She had told him where to go, and presented an allurement. Finally, the attorneys (acting with the Sierra Club,) sued the State for nonenforcement of the Endangered Species Act.

The attorneys for the Woodsman countered with a suit against the Wolf, saying that the Woodsman had acted for LRRH in good faith under the "good Samaritan" provision of the law. And, he too, had a deprived childhood. Action was taken against LRRH for provoking the Woodsman into unpremeditated and precipitous action with her undirected screams. His attorneys, (acting with the ACLU,) also filed against the State because the law was vague; it said nothing about disguised wolves.

Soon the attorneys for LRRH filed against the Wolf's estate for psychological damage and depriving her of a beloved Grandma. The Woodsman was also sued for breaking and entering. Her attorneys (acting with the Commitee for Juvenile Justice,) sued the State for failure to protect its citizens against wolves, no matter how disguised and for failure to monitor properly the Child Protective Laws.

In turn, the State made claims against the Grandmother's estate, saying that such assistance as provided by LRRH had made her ineligible for the welfare program. The State proceeded against the Wolf--use of a disguise in the commission of a crime. Finally, the State advised OSHA that the Woodsman's ax was substandard and unsafe.

The state Legislature quickly formed a committee to study the implications and report. after seven months of study and deliberation, the Committee recommended to the State that the law be amended to include the subject of cross-dressed wolves.

And they all lived happily ever after, because nobody had to pay; they were all bankrupt (yes, even the State,) after dozens of attorneys had collected.

2011-02-04T15:48:00.001-05:00

There was an old Reebok ad that asked, simply, "do you have the love?" When it comes to my job, well, it's more to me than that, and I told some people about how miffed I was, so here it is; I was subbing for a teacher who quit after two weeks in the district, citing no other reason than another district made her a better deal. That's what it comes down to. Of course, there's more than that, like, who are you really leaving in the lurch here, if you're the teacher doing so? Your students, first of all; most of them were rowdy, almost all day long yesterday, and I don't blame them for being so. This is apparently the second or third teacher they've had in this job since the beginning of the school year. So yeah, here's another group of students, who have once again been betrayed by another adult. One student referred to his former teacher by a colorful, if unrepeatable euphemism, and over the course of the day, I can see where he'd think that, even if I couldn't say so. I really did feel for the students in this situation. There were students wondering if the teacher had died, been fired, or God-only-knows what else. But they cared, and in this instance, and the teacher is essentially the one who stuck them in the ribs with it. Who else gets caught in the crossfire when something like this happens? ME. Because the students are taking the backlash that should rightfully be directed at you, by virtue of being such a thoughtless cretin, and directing it at ME, because I'm THERE. Easy target, I get it. Although I really don't appreciate being put in that situation by anyone. God help the person who does, as almost anyone who knows me will tell you.

Never mind that the co-teacher, who's maybe half my age, is looking at me, wondering if she did the right thing writing up a stack of students yesterday. I said the only thing I could, telling her apparently she's the one who is going to be a fixture to these students, so she's the one who has to put her foot down and take control of things. Which is probably not the thing some young teachers wanna hear, but ya know what? Somebody's gotta stand up, and somebody's gotta sit and listen, and you gotta know when it's your turn to do what. Admittedly, in a way it felt good to be the one who was turned to for advice, maybe it's just an acknowledgement of my age, maybe somebody was once again feeding my inner rock star. It doesn't matter really. It feels good to have students who remember my name; my whole name, and call me by it.

Mostly, though, what it alluded to in the beginning is what really has me so miffed. Teaching is a calling to me, no different to some than being a doctor, or a priest, or whatever. I take offense to the people who do it, as they say in hip-hop parlance, to "stack chips." It's not about the Benjamins, and it go**amned-well never should be. Being in the public trust, even to the extent that I am, (or am not, as some might view it,) is very nearly sacrosanct to me.If you are in charge of the minds of a group of students, and somebody makes you a better offer, at least have the decency to wait until the end of the school year, or Spring Break, or whatever. Don't think it doesn't matter to the students who's up there, and don't think it doesn't matter to me how you are. Don't defile what I do with your attitudes, and if you are in education, and "all about the Benjamins," (which is silly, frankly because if you are, you have to realize you could be doing a lot better,) do me and every other hard-working teacher a favor and go find your f**king future in mortgage banking, where you belong.

2011-01-26T15:56:00.000-05:00

Today was a day of extremes. In the morning, I was at a career center in one of my districts, and the high-school juniors and seniors in the class were working with programs like Illustrator, Photoshop and Rhino, which is apparently a CAD-type design program I have to admit I've never even heard of before. In the afternoon, I had sixth-graders, most of whom had the regard for education that the lion's share seem to these days; distaste, unwillingness, and seemingly the remnants of some enculturated idiocy. The expectation, it seems, that if their education happened to fail them...no problem. Spend enough money on lottery tickets, go on a game show, or, God forbid, work, if you really had to, but inevitably somebody would take care of you. I mean, this is America, land of the free, and home the indigent and pampered, right? THAT particular bubble cannot burst soon enough. The truth, of course, is probably somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, and it really is heartening to see young people learning high-tech skills while they're young enough to make a difference. That's what I really want; to teach kids who WANT it. Those who have the intelligence and foresight to realize that it's either keep up, or get mowed down. Those who aren't waiting to be driving behind an armored car and have a bag of money fall on their hood. I've seen that kind of want-it attitude in America before, but it isn't nearly as common as it is in other countries. Here, we suspend students from school, hoping that it's going to be a punishment, and they take it only as more time to sit at home and play video games. I had one of my sixth-graders today that I had to send to the office; his retort to me on his way out the door? "Thanks for the vacation." I was heartened here only when I saw that he got an In School Suspension, which is the way things should have always been, or we wouldn't be in the trouble we're in as a nation right now. I guess you can call that progress. Instead of filling up the jails, or inflicting the ultimate punishment of just pure stupidity, some people are thinking. Perhaps not soon enough, because public elementary and secondary education budgets are still being raided to fund higher education. Say WHAT? How the he*l are students supposed to even GET to higher education, if they don't have the skills to get into college in the first place? This is the most bass-ackwards philosophy I think I've ever heard of. Not unexpected, if you ask me, but screwball none the less. If we consider "education" to include those learn at 50 what they should have learned at 18, because the industrial economy in America prized muscle over intellect, and a group of people ended up getting caught out, yeah, I suppose that's progress. And maybe it's these people who will finally succeed in extinguishing the suckling, unwarranted expectation that has essentially robbed this country of its greatness. But somehow or other, it's got to be instilled in our young students that they have no right to expect anything great if they haven't put the time into thinking that they should. I'll cheer when every student from the age of 5 on up wants it, and nobody expects that their failure to learn should deny them anything.

2011-01-08T14:59:00.001-05:00

For whatever else I claim, and claim to have been in life, my cameras, my sketch pads, all that, have always mattered to me. In college, the best grades I got in journalism school were in photojournalism, and as being the photographer for Michigan State University's Capital News Service. The first job I was ever simply offered on the spot was as a photographer, and overall, I'd say I did pretty well at it. People around me don't seem to really "get" that. The expectation seems to be that I could work some kind of 9-to-5 shlump job, like the rest of the world, when the truth is, I've been fired from so many of those kind of jobs, that at this point in life, I'm a little gun-shy about trying to get a "real" job; especially in this economy. And as much as I wish people would just leave me the hell alone about it, most just don't seem to "get" it. And I feel like, at this point, if I really said anything honest about the way I felt, it wouldn't make things any better. My fondest hope is that some people would just let me save up the $1,000 or so it would take to get a decent DSLR, and try to get going. We'll see if that really happens, although it probably won't. And frankly, I've been through enough of life that I don't really give a sh*t if I ever get rich or not. I'd just like to be able to do my thing, without constant interference.
Anyway, what the hell is the deal with people marginalizing art and artists of all kinds, unless you happen to be Picasso, Miles Davis, or someone else who managed to have gotten that lucky? Are we that go****mned culturally deficient as a society?! I won't go so far as to claim that the world needs artists in the same way that we need teachers, doctors or microbiologists, but COME ON! Surely artists rank at least above car alarm installers and mortgage bankers. I could ramble on until I'm blue in the face about social inequity, or whatever, but the fact is, we, as people, are all different. And rating a person as an individual on the basis of what they do, well.....some would say that's just one step closer to a kind of Nazi-ist uniformity. Don't get me wrong, I also understand the need for social order, but as I've been raving about for a long time, ours seems to be a world that is incredibly out of balance. If American society were a tire on a car, that'd be the corner that you felt all the shaking from. If you understood that.

2010-12-27T14:19:00.001-05:00

I've picked up a lot of new friends on Facebook recently, from many different segments of my life. Which, I guess, can be the odd part about it; one of those "can't tell the players without a scorecard" things. So here goes. As always, members of my family are on there, although not every single one of them, and outside of Martha, there's not many other Klobucars on there. My mom retook her maiden name, Loewenhardt, years ago, and of course, having been through more than one marraige already, there are Klobucars who probably would do just as well in life *not* owning up to knowing me. And then there are the Partlows, Davis-Partlows, and other maritally-induced amalgams. So it goes. Speaking of Martha, well, that's a story in itself. I told some of the details, and she actually tells the whole story better, but suffice to say she was hosting a Detroit Tip Toppers bar night, April 9, 2003, and said the magic word; blues. I'm a huge fan of Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King and blues music in general, so hanging out in Westland though I was, with no real plans that night, I drove across town to the Blue Goose on Jefferson in St. Clair Shores, and faintly, almost unwittingly, the ground began to move beneath my feet. It was that kinda sensation. And it hasn't stopped since. But on to the players, as I said.

HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE FRIENDS Everyone from Linda Milhizer-Crabill and Kelly Dearth-Atkins, to Jeff Matheny, Tim Mchugh and Dennis Verbanic. We shall call all of these people, the "earliest" players here, because I knew all of them before I could map out a route to Las Vegas on the spider veins on my knees. Add to them the college friends, people like Teresa Kintner Gunderson and Jennifer Gahr from my days at the University of Missouri, attempting unsuccessfully to get a Journalism degree from said university. The degree I *do* have is from Michigan State. Now stop booing.

TIP TOPPERS FRIENDS People like "Tallchick Karen," Andrea Pierce, Nancy Brown, George and Opal Ferkovich and many others are from my affiliation with the Detroit Tip Toppers, a social club for tall adults. (men over 6'2", women over 5'10"; Martha is 6'3", about an inch taller than me.) If you think you meet the height requirement for membership, the Tip Toppers as a group are on fb as Detroit Talls. For other Tall Club International affiliates in other cities, you would do well to Google "Tall Clubs" in your particular city; we're all across the U.S., and pretty much world-wide, and we'd love to have you. It's all fun and games, and no one bites unless you invite them to.

MY KOREAN STUDENTS From my year spent teaching English as a Second Language in South Korea, I still do hear from a few of my students every once in a while, I think I constitute a continuing, low-cost English lesson. I've never gotten that close to any American students in almost 6 years of substitute teaching, but then again the risk of potential impropriety is higher, too. None the less, of course, some students walk in the room and see me, and it's either "Hi, Mr. K!," or as one student plainly put it, "Oh, this dude does NOT play!" Make what you will of that. If you peruse my friends list, you may see a group of (possibly, unless you're relatively fluent in Korean,) illegible characters. That's them; all wonderful, hard-working kids, who I've always been really proud of.

If you dig around in the older posts, you'll find a lot of stuff even I've probably forgotten about, but in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "what a long, strange trip it's been." And it ain't anywhere near over yet. I would go so far as to say the good parts of my life are pretty much just getting warmed up. Which is, perhaps, an odd thought at the age of 45, but so be it. Beyond that, of course, a few of my friends defy any attempt at categorization, which, frankly, suits me fine.

Anyway, if you're new to my Facebook page, it is, I suppose as it is with many; an experience where all the seemingly long-lost corners of your existence are reunited. As for me......yes, I do in fact speak Korean pretty well now, my teenage daughters are going through their phase of being teenage daughters, like it or not, and every so often I find myself hanging from Ecclesiastes 9:11. Go figure. Enjoy the experience of being my Facebook friend as much as you have ever enjoyed knowing me live and in person, and if you have a question.....someone here is BOUND to have the answer.

2010-12-26T16:13:00.001-05:00

I saw the coverage on TV when this car was auctioned off. Read the tale below, I suspect it will be of great interest to all my music aficionado friends, not to mention all my 80s kids compadres and others. It's signed by all the rock & roll Live Aid heavyweights of the day, everyone from Ozzy Ozbourne to Bo Diddley and all points in between. The best pic I could find of some of the autographs is at the bottom.

Auction: LAS VEGAS 2010

Sale Price: *$46,200.00

Year: 1985

Make: CHEVROLET

Model: CAMARO IROC Z

Style: 2 DOOR COUPE

VIN: 1G1FP87F6FN173699
Exterior Color: WHITE
Interior Color: GRAY
Cylinders: 8
Engine Size: 305
Transmission: AUTOMATIC

Summary: This 1985 Camaro IROC Z "Live Aid" signature car has only 746 original miles and has received lots of publicity. It's fully documented.

Details: The year was 1985 and music legends Bill Graham, Bob Geldof, Larry Magid and Allen Spivak produced one of the biggest concerts ever, named "Live Aid". Over 1.4 billion people worldwide watched this global jukebox on TV. The mission of Live Aid was to get the world to come together and make people aware of world hunger. General Motors partnered with MTV and Radio City Music Hall to plan there own special idea. There idea was to bring two of America's newest flagship sports cars, the 1985 Camaro IROC Z, to the concert which was held at JFK stadium and these vehicles would then be signed by all the entertainers who performed there. Some examples of the 100+ signatures are Chevy Chase, Don Johnston, Bette Midler, Jeff Bridges, Eric Clapton, Ozzy Osbourne, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, The Four Tops, Tom Petty, Mick Jagger, Run DMC, Neil Young, REO Speedwagon and Carlos Santana. After the concert, the other IROC Z went to the GM Heritage Collection Center and this IROC Z went on the GM international auto show schedule. This car was the one pictured and mentioned in all the press such as The Washington Post, The Hollywood Reporter, New York Post, People, USA Today, New York Daily News, Automotive News and New York Newsday. In 1986, it was raffled off at a concert held in New York City named "Drive Aid". All proceeds went to the Live Aid Foundation. Twenty-five years later, the car it's 100% original and only has 746 original miles. Documentation is included. This is a true piece of automotive and music history.

2010-11-18T20:46:00.002-05:00

Purloined from the journal of one of my Deviant Art buddies. I thought it was funny as hell.

Theory of US Military (Snake Method)Wed Oct 27, 2010, 9:05 PM

Airborne: Lands on and kills the snake.

Air Force, O-6 and above: "Get that damned snake off the fairway!"

Armor: Runs over snake. Never knows it, as well as where he is on the battlefield. Continues directly ahead wondering what all those new buttons in his turret do.

Army Aviation: Has GPS ten digit grid to snake. Stands off at a range greater than any other weapon system and destroys snake with precision fires at a cost equivalent of one Mercedes 350SEL. Returns to base for fighter management and a "cool one".

Army Shrink: Attempts to get snake to explain its sexual feelings about its mother.

Chaplain: Tries to get snake to attend services, mend its ways.

Combat Engineer: Studies snake. Prepares in depth analysis based on obscure 5 series FM about how to defeat snake using counter mobility assets. Complains that maneuver forces don't understand how to properly conduct doctrinal counter-snake operations. (Engineer School tries to hide the fact that M9 ACE proves ineffective against snakes).

Field Artillery: Kills snake with massive Time On Target barrage with three Forward Artillery Brigades in support. Kills several hundred civilians as unavoidable collateral damage. Mission is considered a success and all participants (i.e., cooks, mechanics and clerks) are awarded Silver Stars.

Military Intelligence, G-2: Snake? What snake? Only four of 35 indicators of snake activity are currently active. We assess the potential for snake activity as LOW.

Marines, Infantry: Kills snake by accident while looking for souvenirs. Local civilians demand removal of all US forces from Area of Operations.

Mech Infantry: Runs over snake, laughs, and looks for more snakes.

Military Intelligence, S-2: Reports to ground troops that snake is a non-combatant. Six Infantry wounded. MI states that if the ground forces would have read the nesting diagram provided in the 24 page enemy intel report, they would have known the snake was a possible threat.

Missileers, Air Force: Lays in target coordinates to snake in 20 seconds, but can't receive authorization from National Command Authority to use nuclear weapons.

Navy SeaBees: Build snake elaborate rec room, complete with secret still.

Navy, SEAL: Expends all ammunition and several grenades, then calls for naval gunfire in failed attempt to kill snake. Snake bites the SEAL, and dies of salt water poisoning. Hollywood makes film in which SEALS kill Muslim extremist snakes.

Navy, Surface Action Group: Fires off 50 cruise missiles fro several ships, kills snake and makes presentation to Senate Appropriations Committee on how Naval forces are the most cost-effective means of anti-snake force projection.

Ordnance: IDs snake as having improper scales. Deadline snake and order parts against snake. Parts come in 15 days later but the snake has been upgraded to FMC due to scrounging of parts through improper channels.

Para-Rescue: Lands on snake upon descending, thereby injuring it, then feverishly works to save the nake's life.

Pilot, A-10: Has Global Positioning Satellite coordinates to snake. Can't find snake. Returns to base for refuel, crew rest and manicure.

Pilot, Air Force, B-52: Pulls ARCLIGHT mission on snake, kills snake and every other living thing within two miles of target.

Pilot, Air Force, F-15: Misidentifies snake as enemy Mil-24 Hind helicopter and engages with missiles. Crew chief paints snake kill on aircraft.

Pilot, Air Force, F-16: Finds snake, drops two CBU-87 cluster bombs, and misses snake target, but gets direct hit on Embassy 100 KM East of snake due to weather (Too Hot also Too Cold, Was Clear but too overcast, Too dry with Rain, Unlimited ceiling with low cloud cover etc.) Claims that purchasing multimillion dollar, high-tech snake-killing device will enable it in the future to kill all snakes and achieve a revolution in military affairs.

Pilot, Air Force, Transport: Receives call for anti-snake equipment, and delivers two weeks after due date.

Pilot, Army, AH-64 Apache: Unable to locate snake, snakes don't show well on infrared. Infrared only operable in desert AO's without power lines or SAM's.

Pilot, Army, HH-53 Jolly Green Giant: Finds snake on fourth pass after snake builds bonfire, pops smoke, lays out flares to mark Landing Zone. Rotor wash blows snake into fire.

Quartermaster: Encounters snake, then loses contact. Can not identify who owns snake by hand receipts. Orders new snake through supply channels. Request is denied by higher authority; issuing the unit a snake will bring the manager to a zero balance; one snake must remain on hand at all times as per their boss' guidance.

Ranger: Plays with snake, then eats it.

Signal, Enlisted: Tries to communicate with snake . . . fails despite repeated attempts. Complains that the snake did not have the correct fill or did not know how to work equipment a child could operate.

Special Forces: Makes contact with snake, ignores all State Department directives and Theater Commander Rules of Engagement by building rapport with snake and winning its heart and mind. Trains it to kill other snakes. Files enormous travel settlement upon return.

War Correspondent: Decides snake is patriotic nationalist agrarian reformer being molested by imperialist U.S. forces, asks snake for directions to nearest bar. If bitten by snake, charges U.S. troops with neglect of duty to protect freedom of the press.

2010-11-03T16:15:00.002-04:00

AYP. In teacher lingo, it stands for "Adequate Yearly Progress." In other words, by the standards of the testing, your students actually learned something from you. In Detroit, it can be hard to come by, because the general attitude locally has pretty much gone to hell in a bucket. Although whether it's the students or the teachers who are making more of an effort, I'm not sure. But things DO seem to be improving, despite dismal local morale. Crime is getting weirder, as reported on the news, but overall, well, I guess you could say there are bright spots. I mention AYP because one of my districts was crowing that their high school teachers had succeeded in accomplishing this for the first time since the MEAP started being given. Dunno whether to cheer or cry. Among other things, it's dawned on me lately that I've probably been more impenitent and opinionated than normally serves a person well. Given my attitudes about unions, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of teachers, districts and others were rankled more than a little by the things I've said. I also know that there was probably a reason I waited until AFTER the mid-term elections to post again. Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, who was running as a Democrat, had the support of most of the unions in Michigan, including the AFT and the MEA; and he STILL lost the election to Republican and former Dell CEO Rick Snyder, who billed himself as "One Tough Nerd," and promised to treat the citizens of Michigan like customers. The fact that Bernero lost the race for Michigan governor even WITH the support of the unions, pretty much has to be a first. That's how important the unions have been in the past in these parts. The times, they are a'changin'. And it's not like I support corporate inequity that made the unions almost a necessity in the first half of the 20th century, I mean when lumber barons like David Whitney (whose Woodward Avenue mansion is now one of the best restaurants in Detroit,) could afford to finish the outside of his house in semi-precious Pink Jadeite, (I think that's what it is,) there's some serious inequity going on here. But conversely, when I know teachers these days who own Lincolns and Jaguars, well, greed got us all somewhere we didn't want to be. Especially when my weird little mind recalls my kindergarten teacher, who traded her Volkswagen Squareback for a plain-jane beige Mustang. Of course, I also know teachers who drive Ford Focuses (Foci?) and Dodge Calibers, but the point is, unionism still managed to cause some things to get out of whack, especially these days, when the unions are dealing with districts that essentially have no money. Point blank, don't whine about having to make cutbacks in your own life when the futures of ALL of us are at stake. I support union representation, when I figure the union's demands sound sane. Of course, in times like these, NOTHING sounds sane. Which is really the point. It doesn't help matters when I work directly for a company that ISN'T union, in schools that ARE. Makes for a lot of confusion, and sort of, "where does one really stand on this?"

On top of that, well, I've probably pi*sed off enough people with the attitudes I have espoused, and if that includes you, I'm sorry. I'm workin' on things, and I'm just gonna have to KEEP working, and pray to God I can make things better. Overall, I'd say things are on more of an even keel in my life, I'm getting things under control, slow but sure, and what I can't fix, I'm just gonna have to deal with somehow. It's an Asperger's thing, you may or may not understand. If you don't, be patient anyway, I'm still dealing with a lot.

2010-10-13T20:28:00.000-04:00

I don't really know why this is important to me, but I took these pictures at the recent Plymouth Chili Cook-Off and motorcycle show. The fact that the bike in question is a V-Star, and not a Harley-Davidson is for once irrelevant. The idea of inscriptions for cancer victims, and the signatures of cancer survivors? That got me.

So much so, that in the event you haven't yet visited my Deviant Art site, I've made these prints available for purchase, (or so says the system, I've never actually had a print sell yet,) and pledged the proceeds from cash sales to the Karmanos Cancer Institute here in Detroit. In a dying city, perhaps, as many as possible should be allowed to live via the miracles of modern medicine. And in this particular case, I suppose it's just kinda doing it my way. (Don't I always, yeah, I know.) Anyway, in the event you can't find the post with the original link, or never saw it, here goes:

jadongcha.deviantart.com

As for the prints, you can't miss 'em. At least one, which is at the top of the page in features. The other is in the "Motorcycles" folder, or may be among the featured prints for sale. A word of warning; like I say, I've never sold a print before on this site, so I don't really know how it works, exactly. But I'll figure it out if I have any takers. Here's hoping.

2010-09-30T18:58:00.001-04:00

Seemingly, I have had more problems dealing with outright spam, or the attempts to attach it here, tha I figure I ever should. I made the point at one point that this is my soapbox. This is where I speak from, and if you happen to think I'm right or wrong, please feel free to comment. If you wanna hang your ad here, this is not the place, and I will handle it in what I consider to be the appropriate fashion. I have also had to deal with some amount of "pseudo-Godliness," on the part of some people who would profess their religion via email, as opposed to actually going to church, getting confirmed (if you're Catholic,) or actually having a real, functional, regular relationship with God. This just bugs the living sh*t out of me. One of the things I have learned lately is that part of having a relationship with God is having the whole church, social experience. Having people who will pray for you, if necessary. That kind of thing. Not chain emails, designed to guilt you into having a better opinion of yourself. That's NOT what it's all about. If you happened to get one of these from me, I apologize, mostly it was done in the effort to just shut one particular person up, and scream my point about what's real and hypocritical when it comes to knowing God. And, to make my point, yeah, I DO feel I know God, I know my Bible, I know my favorite scripture passages. Anyone who REALLY knows me, (or has even been reading here,) knows exactly what my favorite passage of scipture is; it's the one that got me through all of the darkest days I have ever known, even if I sometimes can't remember the exact words, I know the hope that it gives me. And Ron Rolheiser, http://www.ronrolheiser.com/books/, confirmed when he came to our church recently that this particular passage was, in his words, "the distillation of hope; this is hope in a nutshell." And if ya DON'T know the passage, well, lemme spell it out for you; http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+9%3A11&version=KJV. I'm not about to go pushing my beliefs on people who really do believe something else, and if you feel as though I did, once again, I apologize. I'm not faddy about my beliefs, these are the ones in my heart, and they're there for a reason. They've proven themselves, time and time again. Big picture, if you REALLY love Jesus, knock off the hokey emails, (which are frequently infused with a large modicum of uncalled for nationalism, which I REALLY hate,) and get your a*s into church, if you haven't recently. You wanna know and love God? Do it the right way.

2010-09-17T15:46:00.000-04:00

Big sigh of relief. I won't get into the exact details of the procedure Martha just endured, and I still haven't seen her yet, word from the doc was that she wasn't coming out of the anaesthesia as fast as she's been known to in the past, but I've been assured that everything went fine. At any rate, the upshot is that this is a procedure that should help her have more energy, although, well, it's a two-sided coin. Mostly at this point, it just feels good to have it done. I can breathe again. Stay tuned.

2010-09-16T15:51:00.000-04:00

I came across the above down in the basement not too long ago, and I don't know very much about it. At this point, I probably won't because it's my dad's picture, and, well, we've been through that whole tale. But things being as they are, I wanted to share it as a little homage to him having been all that to me for a long time. Nothing like it, I'm quite sure, will ever pass my way again. Which, as Martha has pointed out, shouldn't make me feel too bad, because I've been there for him in his time of need. And indeed I have. He changed my diapers, I can return the favor..... If you're inclined not to share this perspective, I don't know what to tell you. There may be much I don't know about him, hell, I don't know. In any event, he's still one of my heroes, right up there with Lance Armstrong and Indiana Jones. Say whatever you like about fiction, doping, or however else you'd like to dissect my choices. Lance? It isn't like doping has been particularly unusual in the sport of bike racing, as in many sports; you go through chemo and still win the Tour de France, what is it, seven, eight times? Hell, in the sixties it wasn't muscle builders in bike racing, it was hallucinogens. The story is that the title of Cream's "Disraeli Gears" LP was actually inspired by a quote about one of the Tour de France winners who was so doped up he could probably hardly see straight, garbled by the drugs the speaker had taken. Indiana Jones? Fictional, yes, but heroic and intelligent, everything one could hope for in someone you can look up to. Same with dad. And if I do half the stuff in my life he did in his, I will have done well. In a certain way, I probably have. Which is cool. My only other thought, really, is that given the choice of living to 100 with not much of my sound mind left, and living to 70 and being sharp as a tack when I go, I know what my choice'd be. Still, here's to you, dad. You worked hard, earned respect, and probably made mistakes along the way. We're all human. What counts is the trying.

2010-09-14T14:29:00.007-04:00

I have a lot I could be saying, the recent past has been so friggin' chaotic it's unbelievable. I got some decent vacation pix over the summer, but God. Can't stand up for fallin' down. And it's gettin' to be a habit. And the endless waiting, for whatever's gonna happen. The one thing I've really been wanting to do, and debating whether or not I should, is introduce all my blog fans to the following:

http://jadongcha.deviantart.com/

Yeah, that's right, in the absence of any other online presence I may have, I have my DA page. The artists in the group will recognize it as an online artist's "commune," so to speak, and if you look hard enough, you can probably find anything you want on there, no matter how twisted or juvenile your tastes happen to be. On my page? Three guesses. Well, okay, it's not only cars, but yes, frankly that is a primary focus here. And there's an area which says "print available," although I really don't know for certain how that works, so if you check it out, and figure it out, we're probably both ahead. If it doesn't give you what you want, leave me a message here, or email me, and I'm sure we can make something happen. My original intent here was to have a place where I could sort of "commune" with Shelby, but since she's choosing to behave like a pi*sed-off 15-year-old right now, (which I suppose is not entirely unnatural, under the circumstances,) well, might as well generate a little new interest. What can you expect? Sketch art, digital manipulation, photos, and other manner of stuff I have found particularly worthy from myself and others. Enjoy. And if you like it, tell a friend. Oh, and if you're wondering what "Jadongcha" means, it's just the word for "car." In Korean. go figure, huh?

I wanted to show tis one off, because Martha was actually the creative genius behind it. she told me what she wanted, and I just shot it. Probably about the most attractive angle you can get from a '66 Rambler Marlin.

This was my shot, from the Woodward Dream Cruise. (One of many, as you might have guessed. You'll see more if you check out my other page.) I have a soft spot for Flathead Ford V-8s, and this one was just WAY cool.

This, as I am told, is a Volkswagen Beetle, made of rod iron; no windows, mostly just floorpan, seats and engine. The story is that they're very popular in Mexico for weddings. I'm not sure what the truth is, so I'll go with that. I can see it.

And this one just had my brain going all "Greased Lightnin'," back before John Travolta started getting jowly. Knocked my socks off.

Korean Harley Davidson Commercial

2010-09-14T14:11:00.000-04:00

Bruce Willis - Subaru Legacy Touring Wagon

2010-09-14T13:56:00.000-04:00

Jennifer Lopez for Subaru Legacy 3

2010-09-14T13:54:00.000-04:00

subaru r1 ad 3

2010-09-14T13:44:00.001-04:00

I read about this Subaru commercial from Japanese TV in a magazine somewhere. The older car is a mid-fifties Subaru 360, which is about as large as one of my shoes. The new, bright red, "Ten Tou," ("ladybug,") is the (2007 I think?) Subaru R1. The upshot of the dialog is that the new R1 is trying to push the 360 "old timer" out of the spot. It is pretty funny, even if you don't speak Japanese. Included above are Subaru ads from Japan with Jennifer Lopez and Bruce Willis. (I don't know, I'm hard pressed to make the connection myself.) Just enjoy. And, the above is going to tell you embedding wasn't allowed, so it'll take you to You Tube. Do it, if you can, it's worth it.

2010-08-14T11:07:00.006-04:00

Of perhaps the greatest import at the moment is my daughters, who, although they don't really wish to see me, wanted to contiue to see their grandmother. And by coalitioning with Cheryl, I pretty much axed that. I will not be circumvented, or otherwise ignored, especially on the basis of profit motive. That just ain' happenin'. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say so. I guess the upshot, really, is that I'm trying to get my relationships the way that I want them. Which may seem selfish, cold-hearted, and somewhat Damoclean, but ya know what? The light at the end of the tunnel has all too frequently been that of an oncoming train, leaving me feeling more like Wile E. Coyote than anyone else. I also realize that all of this may indeed backfire on me, alienating me from people altogether. I see this as a chance I take. My hope as far as my daughters is, that upon further maturation on their part, they will realize what the hell I was trying to do. As such, I could be in for a long wait. On the flip-side, I have been praised by many around me for standing up, actually getting things off my chest, and getting on with life. Which I have, I guess. I have way too much other sh*t to worry about to be carrying around excess emotional baggage. Sorry if you got dropped, but I can only handle so much.

In other news, President Obama said he approves of the mosque Muslims have wanted to build in Lower Manhattan, not far from the site of the former World Trade Center. I'm fairly certain the right-leaning conservatives are gonna have a field day with this one, as it affirms in their minds that Barack Obama is not a "real" American, that his birth certificate is a fake, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam. God forbid we as Americans should ever give credence to an idea that we ourselves don't believe in, no matter who else, or how "non-American" they might seem. Although given that Islam has been around for thousands of years, and the World Trade Center didn't even make 30, I'd be more than willing to say that the symbolism of religion trumps the symbolism of capitalism, hands-down. Especially given the current state of the American economy. Kinda makes you wonder, if the World Trade Center were standing today, how many of the offices would actually be occupied, as opposed to just having a "For Lease" sign on the door? Seems to me that the Founding Fathers had something to say on this particular element of social tolerance, a little thing called Freedom of Religion. If you've forgotten about it, it's....oh, God, lemme think......OH YEAH! IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES! Right there in the Bill of Rights. I've worked in Dearborn Schools, and it doesn't make me any more Muslim than I've ever been. Speaking of which, I've been mulling over in my mind whether I shouldn't, even being a practicing Catholic, know a bit more about my Jewish heritage, in honor of all those relatives of mine who sacrificed their lives at the hands of a man who really WAS a monster, Adolf Hitler. I suppose if that was the case, I'd swear off Porsches, Volkswagens and Mercedes Benzes, given the influences he had over the two former, and his personal preference for the latter. If that was that case, of course, I'd also end up having to rule out Enzo Ferrari, given that he was a World War II-era Italian, and thus theoretically a Fascist, and everything would snowball, and frankly I'd set my own thoughts back about 1,000 years. It's bad enough Henry Ford was such a raging anti-Semite. Maybe I'll just swear off pork.

I've spent probably most of the summer now reading Aristotle's "On Man in the Universe," which I think should be a must-read for anyone who considers themselves a true American. If you've ever wondered where the Founding Fathers got their ideas about what kind of nation America should be, look no further; this is like the owner's manual of being human. There are indeed parts of it, to borrow from Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, that have "a certain naive charm," but other parts will have lightbulbs going off over your head faster than those in Miley Cyrus' dressing room. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself, assuming you can find a copy. Oh, wait a minute, Amazon to the rescue.

http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Man-Universe/dp/0517146843

As always, you can tell me if I'm wrong, I'll believe it when you prove it. Finally, I'll share with you a little something I did for the wedding of some of our Tip Topper friends. Unfortunately, it's at the top of the page, and I can't seem to move it like I usually can. So if you were wondering what that was about, now you know.

2010-08-06T11:49:00.003-04:00

On a recent Bonnie Raitt CD, ( I wanted to say album, but I should try and be a bit more modern, shouldn't I?) there's a song called "Unnecessarily Mercenary," in which Ms. Raitt tells the tale of her lover's obvious profit motive. I recently got something of a shot of profit motive when my daughters expressed that, while they no longer wished to see me, they wanted to continue seeing their grandmother (my stepmother,) for reasons, frankly, one can see from space. Grandma buys them lunch, and other things. Grandma takes them places. All of this, while Grandma is also paying probably $5,000+ a month to keep her husband of 25 years in an assisted living facility, keep him clothed, (he tends to eat rather sloppily, and soil himself with disturbing regularity, necessitating new clothes pretty frequently,) keep his clothes washed as much as possible, get his medications, take him to the doctor when necessary, and otherwise look after him in the way that one should, out of pure, unselfish love. Mind you, my dad doesn't particularly like being in assisted living, as evidenced by his frequent attempts to escape. But the Fire Department will no longer respond if he gets up in the middle of the night and falls, meaning when he was living at home, I was the one doing the frequent heavy lifting in such instances. And when I say heavy, at 81, my dad is still almost 200 pounds of fulsome, robust human being. It wasn't a pleasant experience getting roused out of bed at 2:00 in the morning because dad had fallen somewhere in the house. It was, and is, equally unpleasant to see him as a shadow of the man I once knew. And we won't even get into the expenses of home ownership, the paying of lawyers and accountants necessary in the sorting out of estate issues, and the like. And working, because she has to, to keep everything going.

You can't imagine what it's like when your own father doesn't even really know in his own mind that you are no longer 10 years old, and that you have your own children, your own issues, and probably would have your own life, were it not for the efforts you were making to try and keep your past where it belongs; behind you. Of course, no matter what, your past is never entirely behind you, partly because your children, and your love, your unselfish, undying love for your children always keeps the past fresh, no matter what. So, to Shelby and Sydne, I say the following:
When you were crying in the middle of the night as babies, because your ear infections were so bad you screamed, or becaues the heat of July was so unbearable, who do you think sat up with you? Grandma? Your "stepfather?" (I will happily remove him from quotation marks when the marraige actually happens,) No. Your mother did, when called upon to do so, but having children is a physically draining experience, as you will probably someday discover yourselves. Frequently as not, it was me; dad. You sat in the "Daddylounger," or clung to my shoulder, and tired as I was myself, frankly, I still didn't mind.
Even in the times when the burden was shifted to me, I made sure child support was paid. Child Support. Meaning all those times your mother bought you stuff or did things for you, or whatever, frequently it was money she got because I was paying it to her. I apologize if it's been insufficient, or inconsistent at times, but I also wish you could see the paycheck I had from long ago, where, after the payment of Child Support, health insurance, taxes, and everything else, I was left with a whopping $14. Ask your mom if she could survive for a week on $14. I already know the answer.
And speaking of things I did, yeah, I know Martha has a lot to learn about being a step-parent, such as she is when I don't have physical custody myself, but like I have said, over, and over, and over, especially in the last year, she and I are both learning about what it takes to be better people. It's not easy, frankly it's gonna be a long, drawn-out process; I don't expect you to love her overnight, it sure wasn't the case when I was growing up with Grandma Cheryl. I wondered where she fit in my life, when I already had a mother and a father, and then it dawned on me, at about the age of 25; she really did care about me. Almost more than anyone else ever had. And as far as my relationship with Martha, yes, I know you think it happened too fast, it very well might have. But the bottom line is this; do I not have the right to be happy, on my own terms?! Do you intend to begrudge me that capacity, too?
Happiness. God, I shouldn't even go there, for everything that's involved in the reasons I haven't been happy. Shelby, I was about your age when I overheard my father say to Cheryl, "How do you like my dumb son?!" In the intervening time, I have heard him say, with a clear mind, that he was proud of me, but never to your face, never behind your back, would I call you or Sydne dumb. You also never had to kneel in fireplace cinders, the way your great-grandpa Klobucar made grandpa and his brothers do when they were bad. There have been other instances in which I have been mistreated, ignored or abused by other people, but I won't get into that. The people who did know who they are, and what they did, and it's not my place to judge them publicly.

If you still want to continue not to have contact with me, that's fine, I can accept that. God knows I've been angry with the people who I feel mistreated me. And if you still want to see Grandma, well, that's not my decision either. But deciding to have a relationship with her, and not me, is, as I said at the beginning, a profit motive a person can see from space. Just keep in mind who loves you, and who cares about you, for the simple reason that that's what a PARENT does. And beyond that.....Good Luck!

2010-07-28T13:48:00.003-04:00

Imagine, if you will, that I am who I am, Peter A. Klobucar, except for one thing; I had never spoken a word of English in my life. Instead, I spoke only Serbo-Croatian, because I had never ventured out of my little world. Let us further suppose, that at some point, for some reason I decided I was going to go to America. I arrive, speaking only my Serbo-Croatian, and find most people engaging in one of several possible responses.

Outright disdain. You tried to commuicate, and just couldn't, because you didn't speak my language, and rather than trying, you just gave up. Which is honest, but unprofitable to the person acting as such, assuming I can learn. If you're like this, do you really think your behavior is going to be beneficial to you? I am gonna learn, and more than that, I'm gonna remember exactly how people responded to me.
Quiet, careful whispers, telling one another, without telling me, (or so you think,) that you think I'm lazy, stupid or otherwise incapable of being what you might consider "normal." The response on my end is a bit like it was for our disdainful types; you know what they say about the foot that you step on today.....
You tried to help me learn English, but unfortunately didn't get very far, because you didn't speak Serbo-Croatian, so there were a lot of words and phrases I didn't understand, and they aeren't going to be clear to me because they just don't make sense in my mind. In terms of English Language Learners, idiomatic expressions and slang are the most troubling, because the words seldom mean in usage what they literally do. In a case like this, despite the fact that you didn't get very far, I could still recognize and appreciate the effort you made to help me.
You speak Serbo-Croatian, and were willing to help me learn English, because you, (often through trial-and-error,) were good at deciphering the slang terms, figuring out the grammar, and helping me in any way you could. God is in the details, and if you gloss over the details, you're not really getting it. On the positive side, don't think what you've done for me is gonna be forgotten. I guarantee, it won't.

This is the best explanation I can possibly make of how I feel, and how I have responded to people. Despite the fact that I do speak English pretty well, this is the kind of "disconnect" I have felt from society. I don't know why it's been that way, but after the life I've lived, I am finally starting to come around, be socially more adept and functional, and hopefully less likely to be whispered about. And don't think the responses are any different from what I've described above. If you don't recognize that I'm saying outright that I'm different, yeah, I saying that. I have been, and I'm learning. Furthermore, if you were dealing with a person who didn't speak your "language," no matter what particular sense we're talking about, if they ask you a question, and you say "guess!" or "you should know that!" is that helping them or just antagonizing them? Nobody in this world knows absolutely everything, do you think a mortgage banker would be good at electrical engineering right out of the box? I wouldn't want that particular guy working on a building or car project I was in charge of. It comes down to not only experience, and innate talent, but how much are you willing to bend to help someone who clearly doesn't know what they need to? If they're willing to bend to learn, shouldn't you be willing to bend to help them?

That's as clear as I can make my feelings. If you still don't understand, ask me.

2010-04-08T10:50:00.006-04:00

God, I can't believe I'm over 500 posts at this point. Speaking of "seems like only yesterday," my eldest daughter is apparently a creative one-up on her old man; she has managed to get a scholarship for a prestigious summer arts program. And although I know she doesn't read this, way to go, sweetheart; your dad is prouder of you than he's ever been. At this rate, this could very well be just the beginning. I can only hope.

In other news, I went last night to see the last night of the 15th annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners. I was truly moved, believe me. It was a shame to think that some of the hands and minds that created such fantastic art (and believe me, I'm not exaagerating at all,) will never know their freedom. It was one of those things as a teacher that made me pray to God the students I come into contact with will make the right choices in life. Anything else is simply a waste. For more info about the exhibit, (although it's over for this year,) check out the link below.

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/pcap/pages/news.asp

This link is one of the prisoner-artists talking about his life, and the way being in the show changed him as a person.

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/pcap/pages/gallery/gallery_visual_art.htm

The nice thing, really, was that all the art was for sale, at relatively reasonable prices. And if there was ever a place to pick up a piece that might be a gem someday, this'd be it. It also inspired me creatively, and made me realize that no matter how bad things are, they could always be worse; MUCH worse.

Inevitably, some will say this is work the likes of which they've never seen out of me before, and they'd be right. That's how much this show affected me.

In a somewhat different vein is this one, which is stylistically closer to home, and readily understandable by any parent of an anxious teenager, whether whatever skills they possess are prodigal or not. Finally, one more below, just for fun.
A little Technicolor fantasy never hurt anyone, no? Hollywood made a living out of the idea for ages. Support the arts. Support education. And keep in mind the consequences of not doing so.

2010-03-29T14:50:00.002-04:00

Social disaster? Yeah, I admit, that I have been. Fine. Let's delve a little bit into what I haven't been, shall we?

A criminal: Not once in my life have I ever spent a night in jail. Admittedly, you could negatively scrutinize my driving skills all you want. Everything from loud mufflers and a few speeding tickets, to being the only da*n person I have ever known to be cited for what the State of Michigan calls "Improper Crossing of Median." Turning around on the freeway where the cops sit sometimes; $145 worth, or so, as I recall.
A substance abuser: Aside from developing a brief penchant for cigars in college, I have never really been addicted to anything to the point where I've had to make excuses for my life to try and cover things up. I have managed to cope with the things that have been stressors in my life in relatively productive and benign ways. Which is not to say I'm perfect, but give me some credit!
Lazy: On this point, you'd probably get some contention from some people, but let's face it; do you have any idea how much energy it takes to stay contained and focused when your world seems to be continually going straight to hell? When very little around you ever seems positive? I've done the best I can, and I continue to, as I always will. But especially in light of what has now been proven, what I am, I am for good reason. And let's not forgt that I didn't even begin to get the kind of help I needed essentially until mid-life. It leaves an awful bloody lot of negatives that are unfortunately ingrained.
Disrespectful: On this point again, there are probably people who would contend that in manners I have been, but I try like hell not to be. It's not a manner of living that seems very productive to me, and I have tried to avoid being a bad guy. And in most cases, I feel at least, that the people who incurred my wrath did so by virtue of their own actions, not my innate malevolence.

Have I run hot and cold, had my share of problems just keeping up to speed, and done a really lousy job, for a long time, of doing things like attempting to make eye contact? Guilty as charged. I still cite a certain amount of mismanagement as concerns the people who should have been paying more attention during those developmental years. Getting it right then would have saved me a lot of pain now. None the less, I may get loud, I may get ugly, but in terms of living in society, I'm not a criminal, and I'm not a threat. I'm not gonna kill you, or myself, or anyone else. Look at my past all you want, I have nothing to hide. Less than others, that's for sure. I am what I say I am, nothing more nothing less. I've known people who were probably afraid of someone who's smart, quiet and physically and socially clumsy, but I'm here to tell ya; there's nothing to fear. I'm not gonna take your job, chances are I wouldn't want your job. I have enough headaches in my life without contemplating the responsible use of power, or whatever. Material wealth is not a biggie to me, although I'd prefer to not stress over all the things I can't do. Decent pay, a little credit for my intelligence, and a little peace of mind. That's all I'm asking, and from my perspective, it doesn't seem like all that much. I'm nothing to be afraid of, some people already know that. Can't we all just.....get along?

2010-03-28T13:25:00.004-04:00

Does it make any sense for one person to be able to blast hip-hop in the car at full volume, and still choose a new ringtone like Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying?" Thought not. Somewhere between impatience, rage and the simple desire to just feel "unchained," well....nevermind. I can see this whole train of thought is gonna get rather disjointed. I'm not the most transparent thinker, I realize that. At any rate, through certain modes I have come to realize ADD is probably not the only culprit for what makes me, well, me. There's seems to be components of Asperger's, issues with my neurological processing speed, and, so as not to scare anyone unduly, what we shall refer to as "Greta Garbo Disease." Y'know, "I want to be alone." (I can't do the accent.) And for reasons I've gotten into pretty frequently here, frankly, I do. It's never completely possible, I'm not even sure if the situation would be different if Martha and I were living on our own, but anyway, that's what's been said. There are probably aspects of my memory that aren't that great, for whatever reason, but--well, stay tuned, I intend to get this situation worked out, somehow or other. At this point, my thought is that I'm getting too damned old to try and be competing against the kids, never mind all the people who have been unemployed for six months or more. Gotta figure out how to succeed on my own terms, 'coz there seems to be no other answers at this point. In any event, we shall see. Stay tuned.

For those who might have never realized there was an original Mini-Cooper, behold, this is what it looked like for forty-plus years. And it was British, not a little, tiny BMW.

I shot this with what used to be referred to as "masking film;" it had cinematic uses, and generally speaking wasn't meant to be run through a regular camera. ISO speed was hyper-slow, (like, ISO 6 or 8,) and as you can see, way contrasty. Years ago, I had a big industrial tin of this stuff, and made some interesting pictures. Some stuff a digital camera just can't do.

I spotted this poor, nasty, weatherbeaten Porsche 928 while out and about recently, and decided to put the devil back in it; MY way.

And apparently Chrysler Corporation, in it's infinite wisdom has decided upon the return of some of the more popular 70s colors, Like Plum Crazy Purple shown here. Not like the Dodge Challenger wouldn't look good covered in leather and chiffon, but this definitely works!

2010-03-17T18:24:00.002-04:00

Will somebody please explain to me how in the he*l something like what described below happens?! And what the point is?! Part of me is saying the water supply would be a good target for this stuff, but that would seem almost conspiratorial, which, of course, I'm loathe to seem. None the less, there it is, in black and white. I couldn't possibly make up stuff this good.
Eli Lilly Hit By $75 Million 'Brink's Pill Heist'
by The Associated Press
In a Hollywood-style heist, thieves cut a hole in the roof of a warehouse, rappelled inside and scored one of the biggest hauls of its kind - not diamonds, gold bullion or Old World art, but about $75 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs.
The pills — stolen from the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. in quantities big enough to fill a tractor-trailer — are believed to be destined for the black market, perhaps overseas.
"This is like the Brink's pill heist," said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor who studies the health care industry. "This one will enter the folklore."
The thieves apparently scaled the brick exterior of the warehouse in an industrial park in Enfield, a town about midway between Hartford and Springfield, Mass., during a blustery rainstorm before daybreak Sunday. After lowering themselves to the floor, they disabled the alarms and spent at least an hour loading pallets of drugs into a vehicle at the loading dock, authorities said.
"Just by the way it occurred, it appears that there were several individuals involved and that it was a very well planned-out and orchestrated operation," Enfield Police Chief Carl Sferrazza said. "It's not your run-of-the-mill home burglary, that's for sure."
It's not your run-of-the-mill home burglary, that's for sure.
- Carl Sferrazza, police chief in Enfield, Mass.
Experts described it as one of the biggest pharmaceutical heists in history.
Edward Sagebiel, a spokesman for Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly, put the wholesale value of the drugs at $75 million and said they included the antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta and the anti-psychotic Zyprexa. No narcotics or other painkillers were in the warehouse, he said.
Other pharmaceutical warehouses have been hit with similar burglaries in recent years, but experts said the value of the Eli Lilly heist far eclipses any other prescription-drug thefts they have tracked. The thieves could easily net $20 million to $25 million, Gordon said.
Enfield police would not say whether the building had surveillance video or whether employees are being investigated. The building is unmarked and unprotected by fences.
The FBI was called in.
Experts said the heist shared many traits with warehouse thefts of pharmaceuticals last year near Richmond, Va., Memphis, Tenn., and Olive Branch, Miss. Those thieves also cut through ceilings and sometimes used trapeze-style rigging to get inside and disable the main and backup alarms. In some cases, they sprayed dark paint on the lenses of security cameras; in others, they stole disks in the security recording devices.
Enfield police and the FBI would not comment on whether some of those techniques were also used in the Eli Lilly theft.
"The level of sophistication in these thefts is very high," said Dan Burges, director of intelligence at FreightWatch International, a Texas-based security company. "These thieves actively target certain products. They find out where they are, they go there, they come looking for it. They probably were conducting surveillance on that warehouse for days, if not weeks, before that theft occurred."
Burges and Gordon said the thieves probably already had a buyer lined up, possibly an online pharmacy or someone in South America or Asia, where drug regulations are lax. Gordon said it is unlikely the drugs would end up at a local hospital or drugstore chain.
"The people with a reputation to protect, a CVS or a Target or a Kroger or most hospitals, they don't want to take any chances," he said. "It's too big a risk. You're talking about people's health."
However, stolen drugs have made it into the U.S. health care system, often through Internet suppliers or crooked wholesalers.
Last June, thieves stole 129,000 vials of insulin in North Carolina. The drugs were not properly refrigerated, and later surfaced at a medical center in Houston. The Food and Drug Administration said in August that some patients suffered unsafe blood sugar levels after using them and that it had recovered just 2 percent of the stolen insulin.
"We know that any number of unscrupulous people interested in profit find ways to convince some secondary wholesalers to put these products back into circulation and on into pharmacies," FDA spokesman Tom Gasparoli said in a statement.
Pharmaceuticals made up 5 percent of the thefts of commodities in 2009 in the U.S. The average such heist was worth about $2.5 million, according to FreightWatch. Pharmaceuticals are usually stolen from trucks or cargo containers — there were a few dozen such thefts last year — though Burges said warehouse break-ins are on the rise as thieves become more sophisticated.
"They're very creative, they're very good at what they do, and catching them is a very difficult thing," he said.
Zyprexa and Cymbalta were Eli Lilly's two best-selling drugs last year. Prozac was Lilly's first billion-dollar drug and the company's top seller before it lost patent protection several years ago. The thefts will not cause any national shortages of the products, Sagebiel said.

2010-03-14T16:49:00.003-04:00

Travelers, take note. A study published in the Journal of Mammalogy cited that bears break into minivans more often than any other type of vehicle. This is because animals have learned there's good food to be had. Bears are omnivores, for the most part, meaning they'll eat almost anything, and will certainly eat whatever's abundant. Bears are also intelligent enough to teach this foraging behavior to their cubs. Researchers examined reports of vehicle damage at Yosemite National Park from 2001 to 2007. The study suggested that minivan passengers (often kids,) are prone to spilling food and drink, leaving a detectable, delectable aroma. Steam cleaning a minivan interior is often recommended before venturing into national parks and other areas that bears are known to inhabit. But wait, there's more. Apparently bears also recognize the shape of minivans, and seek them out. Kinda puts a new spin on the whole idea of Yogi Bear, though, doesn't it?! He ain't so dumb after all. Think about that when pondering the caloric intake needs of an animal that weighs about the same as an older Mazda Miata. And don't say you weren't warned.

2010-03-11T16:01:00.003-05:00

My days just amaze me at times. Yesterday, one of the schools I work from time to time had a student talent show during the day. A relatively small number of parents showed up, and it was generally a reminder to me of Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences;" even if the students involved weren't always the best in the classroom, they still had talents. Some of them sang, and I have to say beautifully for a bunch of mostly fourth-and-fifth-graders, some of them danced, including a young lady who tap-danced, and three young men dancing to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," doing the kind of flying acrobatics that required gym pads. Freakin' amazing. One young man even had more guts than I think I'd have had at his age, and got up in front of his classmates singing a popular Gospel song. Don't ask me the name of the song, I probably wouldn't remember it right now even if I ever had. That's a leap to me, when the rest of the kids in the show, it seemed, were singing Miley Cyrus songs. Like I said, it was reminder to me that I have to keep that kind of talent in mind when dealing with some of the ones who can be unruly, disrespectful, or generally hard-to-handle. And one of my students yesterday, little Lana, bless her heart, asked if I could come over to her house for dinner. I had to politely decline, of course, I hope she wasn't too upset. But that's a first in itself; the student wanting you as the sub to come meet the parents. Yikes. Dunno if that's a good sign, or a bad one.

Cut to today, and I was working a gym class full of sixth-graders. You'd think at some point it would have reinforced yesterday, right? Yes and no. Some played hard and hearty, boys and girls, and some just flat-out didn't wanna do it. Some whined like a million stripped gears; "can we play basketball/dodgeball/anything-but-this?!" "I hurt my (insert body part here;) I need to sit down." There were times when the complacency reached Norse-epic proportions. On second thought, maybe it does reinforce what I felt yesterday. It's a da*n shame for the sake of some of the students that the world doesn't seem to be a diverse enough place to suit some of their needs, but there it is, and every adult knows it. It's about surviving, and you wonder how some of them will, or if they're just gonna get steamrolled. I wanna do more. I want some of them to want it more. I know that's not wrong, I know it's in their best interest, but it's not an easy gig. Ah, well, on to tomorrow, and hoping for more. I read a quote and can't remember the whole thing now, to the effect of "the students are unruly, and seem to want nothing; I fear for the future of mankind...." I think it was Socrates, maybe Plato. Nice to know I'm in good company, at least.
And this is actually one of my photos, one which has been immensely Photo-shopped, but turned out kinda cool, really.

2010-03-09T15:35:00.005-05:00

There seems to have been at least a few posts on this site that have, shall we say, attracted the wrong kind of attention. It's a damn shame when I have to swat away parasitic 'bots like so many flies. If you haven't gotten the message, if you're reading this, and English is not your first language, I don't know how to express it other than to say, STOP IT!!!! THIS IS NOT A COMMERCIAL SITE!!!!! THIS IS MY SOAPBOX! Or, in perhaps a more subtle fashion, (yeah, I know, there's a first for me......) in the immortal words of W.C. Fields, "Go away, kid, ya bother me..." The parasitic posts don't even seem to have anything to do with some of the latest ones, I had to go back a couple pages, and delete stuff. Just BUGS me.

In other news, Carroll Shelby has always been known to be a bit arcane, and seemingly always made an effort with Shelbys to sell them in places people would appreciate them. Like the following information found about 1971-72 Shelby Europas. The photo below is accredited to a website called http://www.ponysite.de/ ergo the photo and information are (to my mind, anyway,) duly accredited. The information below is of foreign (non-U.S.) origin, and thus was chock-full of the usual English Language Learner grammar mistakes. I oughta be credited with fixing their English, whoever wrote it. Long-story-short, the one pictured below was shipped through a Detroit-area Ford dealer around the summer of 1971; 14 were made all together, and 9 are still known to exist. Kinda funky lookin', if you ask me, but who am I to judge?

VIN: 1F03M202545
Body: 76D = Mustang Convertible
Ext Color: Z = Grabber Green Metallic, Ford #5002-A
Int Color (Trim): CA = Black Knitted Vinyl Bucket Seats
Axle: R = 1:3,25 Traction-Lok
Trans: U = C-6 Automatic Transmission
DSO: 48 = Detroit, Michigan
Scheduled Production Date: 10E = May 10, 1971
The Original US dealer where the car was ordered from by original owner Claude Dubois: Bob Ford Inc, Detroit, Michigan. This car never went to Bob Ford, but was delivered ex-factory directly to a shipping company called SOPAC Transport in Newark, NJ. It is assumed that the other Shelby Europas of this batch were delivered the same way. The earlier cars all went first to Bob Ford. It seems transport charges were the reason. The DSO of 48 still indicates that it was a Bob Ford order and initially assigned to his district. Options as ordered are as follows:
Black power Top with Glass Backlite
C-6 Select Shift Cruise-o-Matic
Traction-Lok differential
E78-14 Belted Tires (with 14x6" steel rims)
Convenience Group
Power Steering
Power Front Disc Brakes
Ram Air Hood Option
Full Console
Decor Group
Power Side Windows
Competition Suspension
Tachometer and Full Instrumentation Group (Oil, Ampere, Temp)
The Shelby Europa was offered as a fastback (sportsroof) and convertible, both powered by a 351. According to French and Dutch sales literature, they were offered in a G.T.500 version as well. At least one had a 351 race engine with a 780cfm Holley carb and 360HP, another one a 429 with a Drag Pack option and close to 400HP. The cars were not allowed to be re-imported to the U.S. due to the then stronger safety and exhaust emissions regulations. Due to the high fuel prices, the demand for a Shelby Europa was not really big, only Scandinavians seemed to like them, as is the case with most muscle cars in this period. Only 14 Shelby Europas were built and sold in 1971 and 1972. 9 are currently accounted for and on file with the Shelby American Auto Club.
There were 3 in the Netherlands, however the third dutch Shelby Europa of C.V. Bastiaanse was stolen in 1987 and never appeared again. Watch out for a red one. One of the other one not yet found is the white 429 equipped Shelby Europa.

THOUGHTS TO PONDER

If we refer to the race of Brits as "Celtics" (pronounced with a beginning "K,") why do we pronounce the Boston basketball team with a beginning "S?"
A student walked up to me yesterday, as I took a class out for recess, (and mind you, this is not one of the kids in the class I was in,) and said, "Eat fruits more than vegetables. They're better for your colon." I didn't really know what to make of a student who seemed so interested in my gastro-intestinal health, but....eh, some of them really care, I guess....maybe....
Who exactly did put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong?
Check this one out, believe me, you'll thank me. http://www.kopps.com/. Always fun to keep an eye on the frozen custard "Flavor of the Day."As I write this, it's German Apple Streusel and Tiramisu. Enjoy.

2010-03-05T09:05:00.002-05:00

A college campus isn't the first place that comes to mind in a discussion about violent crime.
But research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 1 out of 5 college women will be sexually assaulted. NPR's investigative unit teamed up with journalists at the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) to look at the failure of schools — and the government agency that oversees them — to prevent these assaults and then to resolve these cases.
A Hidden Attack
When a woman is sexually assaulted on a college campus, her most common reaction is to keep it quiet. Laura Dunn says she stayed quiet about what happened in April 2004 at the end of her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin.
"I always thought that rape was when someone got attacked by a stranger and you had to fight back," she says.
That night, Dunn was drinking so many raspberry vodkas that they cut her off at a frat house party. Still, she knew and trusted the two men who took her back to a house for what she thought was a quick stop before the next party. Instead, she says they raped her as she passed in and out of consciousness.
For a long time, she had a hard time even letting herself call it a rape. It just didn't make sense with the way she saw her life.--

Okay, hold the phone. Sorry, (and I'll probably catch an unmitigated amount of flak for saying this,) but what this young woman is describing (which I first heard on NPR,) isn't rape. At least I don't see it as such. You're right, Laura, rape is when someone gets attacked (whether or not it's a stranger is frequently irrelevant, there's still a bodily violation involved,) and has to fight back. Nobody ever said anything about a person having gotten so drunk that she got cut off at a frat house, of all places, the collegiate Pantheons of high drinking art. The way I see it, if you get that drunk, you have effectively relenquished any control you have over what happens to you until the hangover goes away. "As she passed in and out of consciousness?!" Am I supposed to be able to summon up sympathy for this woman at this point?! And NPR basically attempted to paint this woman's picture with the same brush as a woman who was sleeping in her bed at another university and was raped and strangled to death by a stranger. That's heinous. That's wrong. But it also said that the man who raped this woman entered through an open window, and also made no mention of her sleeping off a good drunk. What exactly is your expectation when you go to a frat house and have that much to drink? Never mind the idea that if Laura had made the choice to attempt to drive home that night, the consequences could have conceivably been no less life-altering, and not just for her. At least someone else had the presence of mind not to let that happen.

And to answer what is probably the unspoken question in the minds of many, yes, if my daughters ever found themselves in the situation where they were in college, and sexually assaulted after having drank so much that they were going in and out of consciousness, I would be angry that they had been violated, but they'd still get one hellacious tongue-lashing from dad about having been that drunk in the first place. Let's face it, frat boys almost as a rule are hell-and-gone from being saints in the first place, did anybody really figure this situation was gonna end well? And Laura's story above continues by talking about her boyfriend of four years, and how they were going to get married, blah, blah, blah.....WHERE THE HELL WAS HE?! If he had that much interest in this woman, he should have been there, seeing to it that something like this didn't happen! Sorry, overall, you can tag a woman like this as a "victim" as much as you want, I ain't buying it.

Should universities be more tightly controlled to make sure attacks, even like the ones described above, don't happen? Ideally, yes. But long-term, universities aren't going to have any more money than any other entities for things like tighter policing of student activities. And it's still going to come down to the same thing it always has; the students using common sense.

2010-03-02T14:54:00.004-05:00

There are those whiny, tree-hugger types I despise, who think that all forms of motor racing are inherently evil, hyper-consumptive, and should be banned from the universe. First of all, alcohol fuels have been a racing staple for at least the last fifty years; say what you will about some of these fuels, and their contribution to pollution, minimally, they've done little to impact the fossil fuel supply as we know it. Of course, caring about the fossil fuel supply presumes that you're actually going to use some of it, which runs counter to your own whole line of thinking anyway. So shut up. At any rate, behold the next big thing(s) from Porsche, probably considered by many to be one of the ultimate enemies of the "Green Revolution;" The 918 Spyder (pictured below,) Porsche's first full hybrid road sports car.......(which should also effectively end the argument against hybrids that they're all boring, and counter-intuitive to sportiness of any kind.)

....and the 911GT3R Hybrid, the first Porsche racing hybrid vehicle ever. If this doesn't stop your whining about the impact of racing on the environment, nothing will, and you should probably find some other blog to be interested in, like the Tree Hugger Times. Make your own blog, say what you will about me and Porsche. I'll stand my ground anyway.

Finally, for the science teachers out there. Ask yourselves about the physics involved in the picture below; how much velocity could it possibly take to get what is presumably 18-to-25,000 pounds of vehicle airborne, even if not by more than a foot or so. This has to qualify as one of the modern marvels of humanity in anyone's book.

2010-02-27T12:33:00.003-05:00

I've probably mentioned it before, but the Olympics usually manage to help me realize that seemingly-insurmountable obstacles to success are probably really not all that hard to manage. Mostly, you just have to make the right decisions, and, well, keep workin'. Lindsey Vonn strikes me as a whiny little ditz, but others involved in the Olympics are pretty cool to me. I like snowboarder Shaun White's overall style as a person, and I think the Canadian women's hockey team, with their much-ballyhooed incident over cigars and Molsons on the ice, was probably more being chastised for being "un-Canadian" than truly unsportsman-like. I doubt if anyone would view it badly if the men did the same thing in the wake of their (potential) victory. And after several of Team USA Hockey's "miracles on ice," (1960 and 1980 most notably,) I think this should be the year for the Canadians to take the gold on their home ice. As for me, well, "working the wrinkles" out of my life is still going to be a long process, but I made one decision that, at least for the time being, seems to have helped me be able to save a fairly sizable sum; I cut up my debit card. There are probably people out there who are looking at this with some amount of horror, but I'll tell ya what; when you have to think about having cash, and not having the option of just "whipping out the plastic," it's amazing the number of things you start to think twice about. And the difference it can make in your outlook, and the way, well, I view things anyway, is like night and day. I've never been very good at saving money, or a lot of the other financial basics, so perhaps this is just how I need to operate day-to-day. And since my bank is one of the ones that recently merged with another bank, come April, I'll be getting another debit card from the new bank anyway. Although once I get the new one, I still don't plan to carry it in my wallet, I'll just keep it around for emergencies. So it's not a total shut-down here, just kind of a breather, I guess. An opportunity to start to get it together. Again. I think I've actually gotten some lucky breaks in that whole arena, and although I've still got a lot of work to do, I consider this to be a step in the right direction.

Speaking of steps in the right direction, although I have at once whined greatly about how little American students seem to educationally "want it," but how much I love doing what I do, I think I still have some choices to make. Lately I've been considering if it wouldn't perhaps be in my best interest to make my long-term educational more focused on Speech Pathology than Education. Between English Language Learners, stroke patients and other medical-need individuals, and a certain amount of the special education population, it would seem as though the possibilities are indeed out there. On top of that, no one will ever "want it" more than a person who has either had language skills and lost them, or who never had the English language skills of a native speaker to begin with. Which is, to a certain extent, what it comes down to; in the immortal words of Don Henley, "How bad do ya want it?" There are instances where I'm just tired of beating my head 'til it's bloody trying to pre-empt the typical student's social exigencies. The idea of coming to school is not to do so because you got an iPod Touch, or a new Hollister t-shirt. I was pretty much a reject myself in school, I've been thinking that perhaps some element of just being a teacher and "getting on the other side," so to speak, would alleviate some of the pain I experienced growing up. Ehhhh, a little bit. Having done what I've done for the last few years, (and what I probably will for more, at least as long as the economy in Michigan holds together somewhat,) has helped me deal with the pain and anger I felt over all the things I haven't been able to teach my own children over the last several years. It's a biggie from my male perspective. Although God knows, as any children do, I'm sure mine have been watching me, even from their far-off outpost. They can see almost everything, I'm quite sure. And I guess I can be proud of the fact that, at least judging by who they are, I haven't been sending out the wrong signals, at the very least. So I am somewhat proud of being able to at least be a good example as a person. Not perfect, by any means, but I ain't done yet, either.

2010-02-15T09:21:00.003-05:00

Enough about me. Apparently, I can rant on all I want, and particularly with the country being the way it is, it's not gonna make a difference anyway. Suffice to say, though, that the money we don't spend on education is money we're going to end up spending on the criminal justice system; it's that simple. And from everything I've ever heard, education is a relative bargain compared to keeping somone locked up in prison their whole life. Do we see it that way? From everything I've seen, no, not really. For one thing, America has been busy perpetuating, seemingly for as long as it has been a free country, (make what you will of that whole concept,) its "-isms." Sexism. Racism. However else you care to see it. Yeah, okay, admittedly, we've come a long way with great numbers of these, having our first African-American president, I think, counts for something here. But c'mon, it wasn't until the 1920s that women had the right to vote, and for African-americans, although they were theoretically granted the right to do so with the abolition of slavery, the biases here continued into the 1960s. And in either case, it pretty much took social revolution to bring about change. Not that I'm advocating social revolution, generally speaking, it's messy, costly, and, well, as they say, results may vary. All I can say is, it's taken Americans an awfully long time, a ridiculously long time in some instances, to throw off the shackles of elitism. Although I will say one thing for people in the past who have precipitated such changes; they had the the presence of mind to know when it needed to be done, and the boldness and creativity to know how it should be done. Even, dare I say it, when it comes to the labor union movement. Henry Ford tried to beat the union sympathizers to the punch with the "$5 a day" wage; "look," I can almost hear Mr. Ford say, "you're making all this money, why would you wanna risk screwing it up with the mere idea of a labor union?!" The trouble is, of course, Henry Ford was, almost above all else, a raging anti-Semite and an epic control freak. Yeah, the possibility existed of you making $5 a day in a Ford plant, provided you were willing to play by Mr. Ford's rules. And in a lot of cases you couldn't, simply on the basis of who you were. And for all the progress we've made in obliterating "-isms," there's still one biggie out there that needs to be conquered, particularly now. Ageism. Whatever else I may be seen as being, or not being, my advancing age is still starting to make me iffy, I think, to potential employers. The usual line of thinking, as I understand it, is about older employees being too expensive, and not having enough energy to take care of business. On the up-side, the more miles you've got on the clock, the less likely you will be to be trapped by potential snares a younger person would very likely never see coming. And there's more. We've got a whole culture full of younger people who have either been fed all the wrong answers as a result of "political correctness," (God forbid we should crush their fragile self-esteem,) or just as many who have figured that music or professional sports would be their salvation. When you get through all the rest of the employees you could possibly have, there's going to be a very small group left who's not either incompetent or incarcerated. And relatively speaking, I can see where a group like this would rightly want what they consider to be their due reward for being hard-working, creative and intelligent. Gee, where have I heard that before? And I agree with those people who say that a lot of today's young people have "too much stuff," and lack the civility to know when it's appropriate to use it. I was in a classroom not too long ago, and when I politely asked a student to put a way their cell phone, their response to me was, "why?" Excuse me? Why? Why would I ask you to put away something you bloody well know I should never see in the first place? It's called civility, and you're not gonna get very far without it. Which is, perhaps, why elitism rose to the place it did back when knights were fighting The Crusades; being able to read and write is what seperated the "worthy people" from the riff-raff. Previous generations were also a lot better at being creative when it came to problem-solving. Being creative. That's something else I take issue with, the whole flock-of-sheep-conform-or-die mentality. But when your acceptance as an individual revolves around what kind of cell phone, what color iPod and what make and model your SUV is, guess what, people? That's called conformity. Real popular with groups like the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. And if you don't know about them, Google them, I'm sure you'll come up with something.

Our deacon in church yesterday was talking about the fact that prophets, whose main job in ancient times was not predicting the future, Nostradamus-style, but more simply acting as big, loud, moral compasses for the rest of humanity, were, generally speaking not very popular people. But humanity has always needed them, because without them, no one would ever know the right thing to do. We'd have seminars for kindergarteners about how to access all the things their high school counterparts have figured out how to. First-graders with tattoos. God knows I've already seen first-grade boys with mohawks and earrings. How bad is this gonna get before we snap out of it? Perhaps there's another explanation, one I've pondered lately. Things have now gotten so bad, and we as adults are so hopeless, that we're transmitting that to our young people. That's not helping us either. Cant find a job? Can't spend the day drunk because your money's gone? Fine, just be pi*sy, moody and less moral than ever. Yeah, that solves a lot. This is the time for creative solutions, and I know I'm not the only one who has them. Now stand up and do something.

2010-02-10T11:55:00.005-05:00

I was reviewing some of my old posts, going over the rants, and clearing out some of the comments I've gotten recently that amount to SPAM, frankly. Nothing from anyone who's been a regular follower of this column, just miscellanious stuff that had little, if anything to do with what I had actually written about. I'm holding steady in a lot of ways, which, frankly, is absolutely maddening. I'm not a guy with a real appetite for the status quo, and I can already hear people going, "NO SH*T?! GOD, THERE'S A SHOCKER!" It's not really in me, and not necessarily something I've ever even been conditioned to. My dad was at his best, and happiest, when it was his name on the shingle, and not someone else's. He worked for Philip-Morris in the 1970's, and to fit into that particular culture, he had to start smoking cigarettes, at least over the cigars everyone in creation knew him for. Yeah, I know, some would call it "taking one for the team," but when it comes to that, is it even worth it? It was essentially the straw that broke the back of his marraige to my mother, whatever that may have amounted to overall, but....ah, never mind, in retrospect, it's probably just as well. I'm trying to get over a malcontented, chaotic childhood and young adulthood, trying to get over being an undiagnosed, unmedicated ADD for most of my life, trying to get over being regarded as a freak, and just wanting to lay low for the rest of my days. But let's talk about some of the stuff I haven't talked about to this point.

I HATE my first name. Yeah, I know, every kid gets taunted about their name somehow or other. George becomes "George of the Jungle." Mike is, "I wanna be like Mike," or, "Hey Mikey!" which I can see people despising from their own perspective. But Peter? I can't begin to tell you how many times, even from adults, even into my 30s, I heard, "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-eater....," or some R-or-X-rated contortion of the same. It's not funny. It stopped being funny after the 8,000 times kids teased me about it in kindergarten. Never mind the idea of my name being a reference (at least in some circles,) to a part of the sexual anatomy, and--you can see where I'm going with this. Pile that on top of being viewed as a freak because I could read better than anyone else in school, usually a good two or so grade levels ahead of my actual grade, and it starts to all fit together bout why I'd just prefer to be left alone at times.
I hate the fact that people have preyed on my having a hellacious startle reflex. People have frequently snuck up behind me just to make me jump, and I surprise myself in not having delivered a walloping left-hook at least once. Not like I have a walloping left hook, but presuming I did, I suppose I would have been justified on more than one occasion in delivering, if only in self-defense. I've only been jumped twice in my life, once in grade school, and the poor sap who jumped me then made the mistake of doing so on a day when I happened to have been wearing my favorite cowboy boots. I'm quite sure his toes were probably never the same. The other time was in high school, and the kid who grabbed me, although he was on the wrestling team, was also a good six inches or so shorter than I was; I had no trouble lifting him up and pinning him between my body and a convenient wall, for at least a few crush-blows worth, until he relented, realizing that this was a really bad idea. He made no mention of cracked ribs in the days that followed, so I don't presume that I actually hurt him. His comment in the wake of this incident had more to do with, "man, I'll have to remember that move." Anyway, I hate having to have been that creative in the name of simply defending myself.

Being left alone. Yeah, okay, I know I'm not alone in having this desire, hell, I was shocked to find out that J.D. Salinger was alive until just recently. The larger point of all this is the amount of time I've had to spend just being on the defensive. And given that people spent that much time preying on my startle reflex, yeah, I've probably spent longer in life than I ever should have off in my own little world. I'm surprised I'm still alive at times. Taking my meds, at least that has changed, but now sometimes I'll be in a classroom, and it's "why are you shaking?" (a question I don't have a real answer for, so I usually just beg off with some response about a family history of Parkinson's, which is true.) Somehow or other, it just never stops. I wish I was a bit more "normal," so to speak, it certainly would have served me better. On the upside, none of this stuff is nearly as serious as some of the cognitive impairments I've witnessed, but it doesn't keep it from being a bit*h. I've had my share of successes, and I know I will continue to, but when you spend most of your life having been a social disaster, and at the same time having had people wonder, "why isn't he doing more? he can do better," the last thing you really wanna worry about is developing close relationships. More people who are unhappy with who I am; yeah, this I need. I'm trying to be better, but obviously, this process is not one that's going to change me overnight, if in some instances at all. I'm still fighting the battles over being trapped in a God-awful economy with essentially nowhere to run, being over 40 in said economy, and thus not being nearly as desirable as younger, fresher (and more socially adept,) minds. Add it up, and I suppose it all really does add up to who I am, in fact I know it does. CAN I change? Some things yeah, some things, maybe not. I know when I've felt successful. I know when I've felt comfortable in my own skin, which is not all the time. And the only reasonable response? Keep moving, keep learning, keep trying to grow, and see what the world throws at me next. I've had to be tough, and maybe I do just need to laugh more. I want to, believe me.

I also had an odd thought over some of the things I've heard lately about dementia. They say now that a Mediterranian-type diet, with a lot of fish, fruits and vegetables, and olive oil over vegetable oils, reduced the incidence of Alzhimers'-related dementia between 30 and 40 percent depending upon which study you're looking at. Also keep in mind that nothing is conclusive in all this, and they're trying to figure out which portion of such a diet plays the biggest role in combatting dementia, but it's interesting in and of itself, and in how it relates to American society. For the most part, this type of diet is hell-and-gone from whatever sounded desirable to Americans for most of the last 100 years. To the Depression-era kids, nothing ever sounded as good as a big honkin' steak, with potatoes and something fried on the side. Baby Boomers had a similar line of thinking. To Gen-Xers on up, it was a fast-food nation; we want it now, so bathe it in oil and grease if need be, and Super-Size it, while you're at it. Are we now paying the price for it, in our parents living longer, but with less of their cognition overall? Are we paying for it because health care costs associated with this kind of living have now sucked us dry as a society? Perhaps. Greed has been seen as good for a long time, loathe as we as Americans have been to admit it. I know me standing up here on my little soapbox railing about it does little, if anything, but if one more person thinks about it, maybe it eventually will catch fire as a thought. I can always hope for better.

2010-01-20T10:19:00.005-05:00

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. I was in a classroom yesterday, and the students, frankly, didn't seem to give a rat's a*s about what was going on. I can't say as I blame them, in a way, the VCR (yes, there are still VCRs out there,) I had to work with didn't work in concert with the TV very well, and the video was about UFOs, and the information was nowhere even approaching up-to-date. Obvious busywork for when the sub was there. I did my friggin' best. But if the student's attitude was anything near the real deal, (and I realize things always change when the sub is in the room,) it's no wonder we're being eaten alive by the Chinese. I have this to say to my teacher friends, and the students they teach; not only is the American Industrial Revolution over, but as we're seeing at this point, the rise of the American middle class is over as well. The manufacturing economy is no longer in places like Detroit, or Grand Rapids, or Elkhart, Indiana or anyplace else in America; it's in places like Ghuangzhou, China, and Seoul, and Lord-only-knows where else. I know these students have to recognize, at least to some degree, that the fact that dad took the UAW buyout from Ford is, in essence, saying, "we know we (meaning the automakers,) owe you money by virtue of the contract we agreed to your union with, but we're not making enough money to be able to live up to it. So either take your cash now, or run the risk of getting nothing if we fold, because basically, you and all your coworkers are now dead-weight to the company." Think it's not true? Then why is General Motors down to Buick, Chevy, GMC and Cadillac? (Which leaves a lot of plants that are going to be empty.) The General is now also onto its third or fourth possible suitor to take over SAAB, and it looks as though its grand import-fighter experiment, Saturn, is headed for the drain soon as well, because noone seems to very inerested in it, either. Companies like Toyota, BMW and Mercedes Benz are propping up economies in the southern states, only because the plants are non-union. In short, as a people Americans are getting eaten alive by healthier, smarter foreign economies. Granted, even a lot of them aren't perfect, but there's a certain amount of blame in perpetuating the idea (through the media, at least,) that careers in the music industry or professional sports will save them, in much the same way that unskilled union labor jobs saved their parents from starvation. Well, it's over. Period. Those jobs, at least as fostered by U.S. companies, are gone, never to return. And, yes, I know I've blathered on about this before, but if I didn't see these students up close and personal in the classroom, I'm sure it would probably have no relation to me, either. Unfortunately, it does. Should we have to patrol the halls of high schools to make sure students aren't skipping class? Shouldn't these students just want it, and realize that their only fighting chance in the new age of America is to have a good education? And before anyone says anything, yes, I do recognize Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences; I know we're not all the same. But what I've seen my share of lately is NO intelligence; at least not any that's going to help Americans save themselves from the clutches of being intellectually out-gunned by everyone else in the universe. I have seen solidly creative, intelligent American students, and I give them all due credit for the efforts they have made to be better people. The problem is, they're the exception, not the rule. Even journalism, the field I went to college for, is now a dinosaur, stripped first of its relevance, by things like "social networking," (which I now realize, almost without exception, is the internet's version of road rage; the lowest-common-denominator element of it is simply appalling.) and now stripped of its universality, because even newspapers like the Boston Globe are dying like flies, and will continue to do so, because advertising revenue, the mother's-milk of professional journalism, simply isn't there. It's not there, because the companies who could concievably advertise are no longer there. They no longer exist, having been gobbled up by foreign conglomerates, or left to simply wither in the wind. So what are we destined to do? Either bow to this new age of American colonialism, where we're fostered like children by every other country in the world, (think about the colonial age of Africa, or the British in India,) or fight back by fostering intellingence and creativity in our students. The rest of the world can own us, or we can be smart enough to own them. I can see which way it's headed right now, and it scares the hell out of me. It's not my call, it is that of the minds who represent the future. And I can only hope they do the right thing.

Understand me, here, too, I wouldn't be so crass as to, say, bash on the Haitians; when you're battered continually by political upheaval and acts of God, the odds are simply not in your favor, and may never be. But let's face it; the Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians and others, have made massive inroads into America's greatness. At our expense, and by virtue of an attitude as a country that has been too lackadaisical for too long. If we had as much respect for our teachers as we do for our professional athletes, I doubt we'd be in this mess. Not to mention the idea, as we've seen in Michigan, of almost-bankrupt school districts. WHAT?! Could there be any larger measure of our mislaid priorities than the idea that we barely have enough money to see to it that children are properly educated? That's epic kinda "something's wrong with this picture," and reason enough, I think, for thinking that something has to be fixed in our society, and fast. But, of course, the way things are going generally, that doesn't look like it's gonna happen; certainly not as fast as it needs to. Malnourishment and social oppression, anyone?

Yeah, I've been at it again. I originally conceived this as an entry for an upcoming contest sponsored by the Henry Ford Museum, but it doesn't even start until early February, so I think I'll just come up with something else and show off with this one.

2010-01-11T15:22:00.003-05:00

Okay, well, judging by the news, my southern friends and others are unfamiliar with some of the common-sense stuff we Yankees hafta deal with every winter. When kids die because they walked out on too-thin ice, this is a problem. To that end, the point with this column is to enlighten some of my friends from, like, Indiana southward, in the stuff we here in the rust belt take for granted.
1) If the top of the ice isn't TOTALLY frozen, don't take the chance of walking out onto it. It's too thin; like, WAY too thin. It will not support your weight. Meaning what? Meaning if you see anything that looks like water that's NOT frozen, DON'T GO OUT ON THE ICE! You'll die. Quick.
2) I've heard people who get confused about the old rule of "steering into" a skid. Real simple. If you're fish-tailing, (skidding,) and the rear end of your car is going right, steer right. If you're skidding left, steer left. and get your foot OFF the gas, unless you're driving a two-wheel-drive, rear-engined Porsche, which by all rights, you shouldn't be anyway. If you're driving a Carrera in the winter, you're bound to see God at some point anyway, so leave it in the garage and spare yourself (and your insurance company,) the aggravation. If you do the opposite, and steer left when skidding right, you're just destined to go in a big circle, and probably soil yourself at the very least.
3) If your car is equipped with anti-lock brakes, and you hear that (probably unfamiliar) sound of the ABS pump kicking in, (it's sort of like an intermittent buzzing sound, and the brake pedal will pulsate as well,) Just hold your foot down on the brake pedal, and the ABS will do it's job. You'll be able to steer, so you should be able to maintain control of your vehicle. If you're not so lucky, and DON'T have a car with ABS, (if you're unsure, just click the key to the "on" position and check the "idiot lights" in the gauge cluster; one of them should be (usually) amber-colored, and say "ABS" or something similar.) DON'T EVER slam on the brakes when it's slippery. Pump the brakes; the smoother you can do this, the better off you'll be.
4) If you're REALLY lucky, and have a vehicle equipped with Traction Control, or Stability Control these are systems that integrate the functions of ABS with acceleration or power control; most are designed so that on slippery surfaces, you can't accelerate too quickly; at least, you won't be able to accelerate quicker than you can stop. None the less, keep your speeds WAAAAAAAY down (I wouldn't recommend going more than maybe 25% of the speed you normally drive on a given stretch of road, especially on snow or ice.)
5) Give yourself at least three times as much room as you normally would to stop. On ice, rules number 4 nd 5 run in tandem. Slow down and give yourself as much room to stop as possible, unless you have a death wish.
6) If you're really, REALLY lucky, and have a vehicle equipped with all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive you're better off than people who don't have these things; but you're still not God. You will normally be able to go a little faster, and stop in a shorter distance, but this is still not the time to be probing the limits of your vehicle. As for what the difference is between all-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive, four-wheel-drive has at the very least an on/off switch, if not a selector for range. If you have four-wheel-drive, normally you won't need your "4LO" range unless you're stuck, like, up to your axles in snow, or have managed to skid into a ditch. "4Lo" range will usually also not let you go more than 15 or 20 m.p.h. on any surface, no matter what. With four-wheel-drive, "4Hi" will normally give you all the driving traction you require. All-wheel-drive usually either has just an on/off switch, or no switch at all, and operates via a viscious clutching mechanism, (never mind, you don't need to get into the details,) or in concert with the ABS and Traction Control systems, delivering power to the wheels that have the best grip. Just keep that whole "you're still not God." mantra in mind.
Keeping all this in mind, those of you in Miami, or Atlanta, or wherever, play by the Yankee rules, and you should minimally be able to keep the shiny side up, and (relatively) dent-free. Take your time, and don't let it get the best of ya.

2010-01-08T15:33:00.003-05:00

Yeah, okay, it seems very much like playing around, but I do take my art seriously. And I'm proud of it. In other news, maybe it is just me, but the high school students I see, no matter what district it happens to be, seem--GASP--SERIOUS! More of them are treating their studies as though they matter. As though, perhaps, they can't continue along the same path that their parents trod. As though that path simply doesn't exist anymore. As though the world that's waiting for them is going to require every last ounce of their creativity and intelligence. Well, I'm happy to see it in the situations where I do, which is, admittedly, not every single one. As far as the ones who haven't gotten the memo yet, in the words of Peter Lorre's Senor Ugarte, "Poor devils." And curiously, I was working in an art class yesterday, and when I mentioned Fred Flintstone, these third-graders KNEW about him, and could describe his appearance; when I mentioned The Powerpuff girls, these same students looked at me as though I had two heads. Score one for the cartoon classics. Beyond that...typical Michigan winter, a*s-deep in snow, meaning I gotta get up ASAP, get the snowblower out, and go at it.

And I saw this one on, of all places, my sub agency website, contributed by the sub manager in one of the districts; Little Johnny came back from Christmas break, and his teacher asked him what he had done. He said, "oh, we went to see my grandma in Punxsutawney." The teacher said, "Oh, that sounds like a wonderful vocabulary word. Johnny, spell Punxsutawney for the class." Johnny replied, "Come to think of it, she lives in Ohio."

And although I made mention of it on my now-defunct Facebook page, I will once again share the news about the latest thing in theme parks, Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This wonder claims to have the world's fastest roller coaster, with a top speed of 124mph, and a flume ride which transports its riders through the internals of a Ferrari 599 engine. It's all indoors, and located within a stone's throw of a Formula 1 racing circuit, for the comfort and enjoyment of its patrons. Yee-ha. Although, come to think of it, one of my Dearborn students, at some point, will probably have experienced this thrilling edifice in the course of seeing their relatives. I have a few students in Dearborn who remember me, maybe I'll get lucky, and one of them'll bring me back a souvenir. Yeah, I know; I can dream, can't I? Don't I always, yeah, I know.

2010-01-07T12:24:00.006-05:00

First of all, yes, I did pull the plug on my Facebook page. Call me crotchety, but as much as has been going on in my life lately, finding the time to do everything that all my friends want me to be part of online is just, well, expendable, as concerns go. It was fun, and unlike my first foray into "social networking," it didn't require me to tell off every skank in creation. But lately, I've also had a noticable drop in sub-call volume, and while it may be just a coincidence, I mean, yes, things really are that bad in Michigan, even in the field of education, but at this point, I can ill afford content I can't control; my life is out of control enough. Anyway, if I'm gonna have a student find me online, I'd rather it not be something I was ashamed of, or that I'd have to explain; same for employers, or potential employers. I know they all have people surreptitiously watching over such things, school districts have an image to uphold, the last thing I wanna do is be the one to push one of them into spin-control mode because I hadn't looked at my Facebook page in a while. God, I must be getting conservative. I mean, I'm convinced that one guy making the news for this long, pretty much for only setting his underwear on fire, while he happened to be wearing them, is simply inane. Perhaps it's just that conditioned idea of being in control of how I'm noticed, (and that's important to me,) but I still like this better, even if people do think I'm boring.

The woman pictured above is my Aunt Frances, who passed away recently at the age of 94. That's what I call getting the most out of life. Fran was as close as anyone in my family ever came to a grandma, and she was my dad's oldest sister. Her homes were a magnet for warm memories, places where she cooked and cared incessantly, unselfishly, and with everything in her being. She was also a nurse, a wife, and made of the kind of strong which has almost ceased to be in this day and age. Needless to say, she is, and will always be, missed. Even if she probably would hate me for putting up a picture of her. Much love to her, as the kids would say.

I spent yesterday working as a "Community Assistant" at one of my high schools. Basically, it means I was patrolling the halls all day, vigilant for students having passes, and going where they were said they were. Apart from a few who chose to be belligerent, mostly it was a good day, although my legs were burning-kinda-sore by 4:00. Gotta give it up to the people who do that job for a living; they delve into the seriously un-pretty shows of behavior, in the name of me being able to do the job I do regularly. Props to every single one of them, no matter what district they work in.

Finally, I did have some of my newer artwork on display on my Facebook page, stuff that I liked enough to migrate it here. Make what you will of it, I like it. There are others I like, but I've gotta locate a few of them first. It can be a challenge, believe me.

2009-12-09T16:32:00.004-05:00

Well, here we are, nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Wow. Doesn't seem all that long ago, but there it is; pushing ten years since we all worried about Y2K. Being the eternal car guy, I've been pondering the ten best cars, either in my own experience, or just by virtue of outright car-lust that came out in the last ten years. Here, then, in no particular order, are my choices for best and most notable since Y2K:

'05-'10 Ford Mustang This car single-handedly fired the first shot in the new age of ponycar wars, also spawning the first Shelby GT500 since the 60s, and a vehicle that does no injustice to the name. Unquestionably the best thing to wear the Mustang badge in a long time.
'05-up Ford GT The most unrepentantly bal*sy piece of work ever produced by Ford Motor Company without the distinct intent of racing in mind. Some have been, you can't have a car this trick and not expect someone to want to test its mettle. But this thing was also available with a Mackintosh audiophile sound system, although I find myself questioning whether you could really hear it above the exhaust. As to the cut-in doors, I whacked my head more than once on them while in the employ of Roush Industries, but strangely the pain didn't hang around very long when you remembered what you were driving.
'00-'10 Ford Focus Keeping in mind that this car replaced the Ford Escort, which, back in 1981, replaced the Ford Pinto, the Ford small car has come a long way, baby. Tight, fun, a little strange and not the easiest car to work on, but about as modern and enlightened as small cars get.
'02-'05 Nissan Sentra SE-R and SE-R SpecV About as bad-a*s as small cars have gotten in recent years, bar none, at any price. With a 2.5 litre, 175-horsepower four, the torque (and consequential torque-steer, unfortunately,) made it an almost unending slingshot. Granted the shifter on the six-speed in the SpecV was no better than so-so, (the 4-5 shift bordered on hypothetical, and 5-6 was pretty much a guess,) but it made up for it with 17" tires and on-rails handling.
'03-'10 Nissan 350/370Z and Infiniti G-Coupe Carved from the same unendingly incredible chassis, the new-age Z is unquestionably the best one ever. The '90-'96 iteration was a dynamic miracle, but countered by being a technician's nightmare; every operation on these takes 5 times as long as it should, due to the "front-mid-engine," (everything under the hood is smashed up against the firewall,) design. Thank God Nissan at least learned not to repeat that mistake.
'03-'04 Audi RS6 A 450-horespower V-8, all-wheel-drive, and an exhaust note that sends shivers down my spine. There's not much more else to want in a car; pricey when new, but worth every penny in my opinion. The hot rod for all seasons.
'05-'07 Cadillac CTS-V With 4 doors, and well-nigh 600 horsepower on tap, nothing this size is anywhere near this audacious unless your last name happens to be Earnhardt or Andretti.
'08-'09 Pontiac G8 Pontiac's replacement for the ages-old Bonneville is an Aussie with attitude, and one of the reasons it's such a da*n shame General Motors didn't have the good sense to preserve the Pontiac Motor division and send Buick packing, rather than the other way around. Not nearly as impenitently nasty as the CTS, but a serious contender for BMW's domination of the sports sedan universe.
'08-'10 Dodge Challenger Hemi power never hurt any car, we've known that for eons. The retro-sexy looks are stunning, even if the thing is kinda porky. (An SRT Challenger is 4100 pounds-plus, about as much as my old '84 Continental.) By all accounts, not the dynamic rapier the Mustang is, but, given the right set of circumstances, you wouldn't kick Jessica Simpson outta bed just for not being the brightest bulb in the pack, either.
'05-'06 Mercedes CLS-class About as sexy as the 4-door sedan has been in I-don't-know-how-long, I would unquestionably have one, based simply on that.

2009-11-27T15:30:00.002-05:00

I read the following in Road and Track magazine recently, and, well....try as I might to have some excitment over the priorities of throngs of tree-huggers everywhere, judging by this, there's still a bit too much government-induced prestidigitation over "gas mileage," (seeing how there really is no such thing as gas mileage, if you're not using gas,) when it comes to what we now label "plug-in" electrics. True, the vehicle itself is producing reduced emissions, but you're still plugging into a household outlet, so, PRESTO! Your household electric bill is going to skyrocket, and the municipal powerplants will be working overtime, compensating for all the smog you just "saved the world" from. The following is pretty much why I maintain that plug-in electrics have no place as conveyances, save for inside the bounds of golf courses.
Super Mpg=Super Hype?
Will your Chevy Volt get 230 mpg? It depends.By Dennis Simanaitis
November 2009
There's a lot of enthusiasm — much of it justified, some misapplied — about electric propulsion for the automobile. At the heart of this is a desire to reduce our petroleum appetite. And, thus far, our principal measuring stick for evaluating this is "mpg," miles traveled per gallon of fuel consumed.
But is mpg the appropriate metric? Is 230 mpg for Chevrolet's Volt plug-in hybrid really an indication of typical PHEV gasoline consumption?
And what's the meaning of an equivalent 367 mpg for the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle? As a pure EV, it doesn't use any of the stuff at all.
Are these mpg values just oddities of inherently complex — and possibly flawed — measurement techniques?
A flawed measuring stick?
Consider the following calculation: The Chevy Volt's battery and gasoline tank are both topped up. I drive 40 miles in its pure EV mode, after which the car's gasoline engine fires up. It runs a generator that in turn powers the Volt's electric propulsion. Chevy says this series-hybrid operation, together with its minimal battery assist and regenerative braking, gets me another 300 miles. Let's assume for arithmetic convenience this is a 10-gal. tank at 30 mpg (not bad for a 1.4-liter engine indirectly powering a 3500-lb. car). In total, then, I've gone 340 miles, used 10 gal. of gasoline, and hence achieved 34.0 mpg (plus, of course, the necessary electric replenishment).
Certainly not embarrassing, but where's my 230 mpg?
Yet here's an equally plausible calculation: I drive this same Volt 41 miles each day, just one mile beyond its EV range, and recharge each evening. Its series- hybrid range of 300 miles, the same as before, gets me 300 days before its tank is exhausted. This is a total of 12,300 miles (300 x 41) on its hypothetical 10 gal., which works out to 1230 mpg.
There's no legerdemain in either of these PHEV calculations. It's the mpg measuring stick that's at fault.
I've chatted with specialists at AC Propulsion and GM, studied writeups at SAE's Automotive Engineering Online and double-performed calculations of my own. Here's what I learned.
Mpg estimates — of one sort and another
Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers and window sticker mpgs (two different things, note, with different fudge factors) are both based on test procedures devised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For conventional vehicles, including non-plug-in hybrids, these evaluations are well defined and based on dynamometer emissions tests. (See "Assessing the Obamacar," June 2009, and "Monitoring the (Technical) Pulse of the Industry," August 2009; both available at roadandtrack.com.)
For pure EVs, the procedure is well defined, though as you'll see directly it's anything but straightforward.
Encouraging EVs (and arithmetic dexterity)
EPA's procedure for evaluating an EV is based on a gallon of gasoline containing 33,705 Watt-hours of energy, the equivalent of about 115,000 Btu. Then it applies several "well-to-tank" adjustments: a multiplier of 0.328 reflecting fossil-fuel electrical efficiency and another of 0.924 accounting for electrical transmission efficiency. That is, 33,705 x 0.328 x 0.924 = 10,215.
Then, acknowledging that petroleum refining and distribution have their losses as well, the value is divided by 0.830: 10,215/0.830 = 12,307.3.
That is, 12,307.3 Wh of EV energy is considered equivalent to one gallon of gasoline's energy in a conventional vehicle.
But wait, there's more.
The Department of Energy also applies what's essentially a "petroleum-free" incentive. If the car is an utterly pure EV (not a PHEV, not even an EV with a gasoline-fired heater), then it's rewarded with an added 6.6667 multiplier. (As Wagnerian authority Anna Russell used to say, "I am not making this up...")
This raises the equivalency value to 82,049 Wh/gal.
That is, 12,307.3 x 6.6667 = 82,049.
If the EV has petroleum combustion of any sort, this factor drops to 73,844 Wh/gal. (And, in truth, by this point I lost interest on where this new one comes from.)
The bottom line in a pure EV mpg evaluation: The car is dynamometer-tested on city and highway cycles, yielding electric consumption numbers in Wh/mile. Then these go through the usual 55/45 weighting for a resulting city/highway average. Last, this average is converted to mpg using the 82,049 Wh/gal. equivalency.
(I acknowledge the exemplary arithmetic of SAE author Paul Weissler in all this. Thanks, Paul.)
It's hardly straightforward. But it's an attempt to equate well-to-tank properties of both fuels, along with rather a healthy encouragement for EVs.
Another metric: cost/mile
Although Nissan hasn't disclosed the actual test average for its Leaf EV, we can work backward from the reported 367 mpg to derive it: 82,049/367 = 223.57.
That is, the Leaf must have consumed around 224 Wh of energy per mile in its city and highway evaluations.
This gives us opportunity to assess efficiency in another way, namely, cost/mile. Alas, don't expect this to be a sound bite either. The brief answer is, "It depends."
In particular, most electric utilities have a tiered rate structure. As an example with which I'm familiar, Tier 1 or "Baseline" cost is 12¢ per kWh; Tier 2 is 14¢/kWh, up to Tier 5 at 31¢/kWh. That is, the more electricity I use, the more costly per kWh at each successive tier.
(Full disclosure: I live in Southern California, where electric utility rates are said to be quite high. However, according to the Department of Energy, the national residential average is 11.86¢/kWh.)
Now let's suppose I drive my Leaf 800 miles each month, its 27 miles per day/9600 miles annually reflecting the car's urban EV intent. That 224 Wh/mile works out to a little less than 180 kWh/month (224 x 800 = 179,200).
Its cost, though, depends on my pre-Leaf home usage within the electric utility's tiered rate structure. I assume, as is the case, that I have yet to install a TOU ("Time of use") meter and no special EV deal. That is, the Leaf's usage just gets added to my monthly bill.
Suppose my current home usage is 400 kWh/month, frugally within my Tier 1 allowance of 462 kWh/month. Then the Leaf brings this to 642 kWh, 62 kWh of which is at the Baseline 12¢/kWh rate ($7.44), the remaining 118 kWh at 14¢/kWh ($16.52). I'd be spending $23.96 for my Leaf's 800 miles, or 3¢/mile. Frugal indeed, as even a 48-mpg Toyota Prius runs around 6¢/mile for its gasoline.
But there is a grabber, and not through an absurd assumption.
Suppose, unlike mine, your home has an electric dryer, plasma TV, home theater, air conditioning, the works. That is, suppose you're already into Tier 5 usage. Then all of the added 180 kWh comes at 31¢/kWh, with an additional monthly cost of $55.80. This Leaf's 800 miles works out to 7¢/mile, more than the Prius's.
And what of PHEVs?
Because of their various modes of charge depleting and charge sustaining operation, PHEVs are inherently even more complex. Researchers at Argonne National Labs have been studying the matter for some time now. EPA has not officially released its CAFE or window sticker procedures for PHEVs.
What about the Chevrolet Volt's 230 mpg? As you read earlier here, different assumptions of Volt usage could yield anything from 34 to 1230 mpg. Chevrolet says 230 is a conservative value based on surveys of actual usage patterns — with other types of vehicles, of course. Obviously we won't be able to confirm this until late 2010.
See Tech News at roadandtrack.com for my own estimated cost/mile analysis of a Volt PHEV. As with the EV Nissan Leaf, the answer is, "It depends." Depending on your electrical costs, it's a real bargain or just a tad more than operating a Prius.
It's clear that EVs and PHEVs can offer significant benefit for many of us. But it's also clear that consumer education is essential to understand the full story. And, to me, there's excellent argument that a new metric of efficiency is needed. Today's EV and PHEV mpg ratings are at best premature and at worst misleading. It's crucial at this point not to overhype and then underdeliver.
.......And then there was the following, which made me realize just exactly what I had proabably done to my body in half a lifetime of working on cars, working in car dealers, and inducing other such hazards into my reality. It did kinda make me glad I hadn't worked on cars for longer than I did, if it had been more like 30 years I had been working on cars, I'd probably be a cancer patient by now, if not approaching it slowly but surely. It also makes me wonder about the future and life span of all the career wrenches I have ever known. I'm surprised I haven't attended more funerals for my car guy buddies.

Side Glances: My Toxic Biosphere
Tales of misshapen cats, poor ventilation and new uses for the Shop-Vac.By Peter Egan, Editor-at-Large
December 2009
Peter Egan
Well, by the time I came in from the shop last night, I looked like a chimney sweep from the cast of Oliver. Which I've not seen, but I imagine there's a chimney sweep in there somewhere. These carboned-up waifs were the perfect symbol of Dickens' London.
Alas, the dirt on my face and clothes hadn't come from anything as useful as chimney maintenance, but from the inelegant task of emptying and cleaning my Shop-Vac to make it safe for chipmunks.
Yes.
You see, our cats have recently become skilled at catching chipmunks, bringing them in through the cat door and releasing them — apparently unharmed — in our house. In the past week, Barb and I have captured six of the critters and released them into the wild (i.e., our backyard). We've been using a yardstick to herd them into a large plastic wastebasket, then clapping our Rand McNally Road Atlas over it. Pure chaos.
Earlier today, I was complaining about this haphazard technique over the phone to my buddy John Jaeger, who lives in Southern California, and he said, "I have just two words for you: Shop-Vac."
John explained that you clean out your shop vacuum cleaner, removing all the hazardous garage materials — metal filings, paint dust, etc. — and then just vacuum up your wildlife. Shut the vacuum cleaner off as soon as they're in the tube. He said even if they get sucked all the way into the barrel, it doesn't seem to hurt them. Just open it and let them out.
"Works for chipmunks, mice, bats and scorpions," he said. "Might even work on rattlesnakes..." he added pensively.
I should explain that John used to live in a place called Silverado Canyon, right on the edge of a large wildlife preserve — where two people were killed by mountain lions a few years back — and he had more than his share of visits from wildlife, venomous and otherwise.
I didn't ask how one might go about releasing a rattlesnake from a Shop-Vac, but it sounds like one of those nightmares I'd have after mixing cheap Scotch with too much foie gras from the Bargain Barrel.
But back to soot and chipmunks.
On John's advice, I went out to the garage last night, opened the doors, dumped out my Shop-Vac, cleaned the large paper filter with a brush, blew out the barrel and filter with compressed air, cleaned everything with Windex and Pledge and put the whole works back together. Immaculately clean and safe, ready for the next chipmunk. All this was done, of course, in a huge cloud of dust, containing God-knows-what. Floor dirt, driedpaint dust, iron and aluminum filings, dead spiders and flies, rust chips, mouse turds, brake dust, clumps of dirt with congealed grease and brake fluid, etc. Awful stuff.
When I came into the house, I glanced in our bathroom mirror and saw that I had a coating of gray silt in my hair, and my moustache looked like the air cleaner on our lawnmower.
"What a wondrous thing is man," I mumbled to myself, "that he can breathe such things and continue to stand upright." Before showering, I checked to make sure both eyes hadn't gravitated to the same side of my face.
Okay, this is an old private joke, and needs some explaining.
About 20 years ago, I accompanied my friend Chris Beebe to a small body shop — long since closed — where he was having his MGB painted. When we stepped inside, I was rather alarmed by what I saw.
The two guys who owned the shop were using spray guns to prime the body of an old Ford pickup, and neither was wearing a dust mask. The shop was thick with gray mist, and the heady smell of evaporative agents hit my lungs like one of those doses of smelling salts you see doctors using in the old movies. There was a small ventilation fan twirling slowly in one window, but it didn't seem to be having much effect.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light and the gray paint cloud, I realized there were several friendly shop cats rubbing against my legs, so I crouched down to pet them. It was then I realized they were all a little misshapen and off kilter in some way — oddly tilted heads, short legs, elongated necks, stunted tails, etc.
When we came out of the shop, Chris said to me, "Did you see those cats? I swear one of them had both eyes on the same side of his head, like a Picasso drawing of a cat. It must be genetic damage from the paint fumes."
It may also have been a simple case of inbreeding — possibly cats marrying their own cousins and sisters for too many generations until they all looked like hillbillies or Habsburgs — but I suspected a few generations of genetic damage from all those fumes.
Anyway, this little moment left a big impression on me. There was a parable here somewhere, with personal application...
I enjoy automotive shop work — been doing it, in some form or other, since I was about 12 — but I've always been aware that car and motorcycle repair and restoration are, chemically speaking, not quite as healthy as, say, building a birch bark canoe or raising sunflowers.
In just the past week, for instance, I've been cleaning, bead-blasting, priming and painting some rusty internal pieces from the scissor-like window mechanism in my Lotus Elan. During this minor job, my skin and lungs have been subjected, sequentially, to mineral spirits (paint thinner), the fine dust of glass beads, gray primer and Gloss Black paint from a spray can.
I wear rubber gloves while cleaning the parts — but sometimes take them off to handle the wet parts without dropping them. I wear a high-quality dust mask while painting — and then take it off later to drink a beer while admiring my handiwork. You try to protect yourself while doing shop work, but as British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin once said, "The bomber will always get through." And so, it seems, will the mists and chemicals of car restoration.
Still, things have gotten much, much better than they once were.
When I started as an apprentice car mechanic in the early '70s, we had parts cleaner whose fumes made your eyes water, and it could raise a red rash on your hands. In our careless hurry, we often skipped using gloves while rinsing off small parts.
Now automotive parts cleaners are much less volatile, and most mechanics wouldn't think of running the stuff over their bare hands.
We also used to blow the dust out of old brake drums with compressed air, filling the whole shop with a gray cloud of asbestos particles. Asbestos, of course, has long since been proven to cause a deadly cancer of the lung lining called mesothelioma. No one uses it in brake pads or shoes any more, and no mechanic would now blow any kind of dust all over a workshop.
But we did.
I guess in the '70s we were still part of an earlier and less health-conscious strain of American culture, where a large segment of the population had been subjected to military adventures, so chemical solvents seemed like a small threat. We were also the generation that, as children, took naps on the rear window ledge of the Buick on the way to grandma's house. Why wear rubber gloves for protection from parts cleaner, when you don't even have seatbelts in your car? Or a rollcage in your Offy-powered midget?
"Yes — you're right — I suppose I should be wearing a mask while I paint. Got a cigarette?"
I kind of miss that era, but most of us probably wouldn't joke, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself," has grown more true than funny.
As a lifelong garage dweller, I've always secretly envied my friends who chose the hobby (or career) of fine woodworking over car mechanics. When I visit their shops, they seem to live in a wholesome world filled with the good smells of cedar or walnut, and glues made from wonderful honey-colored, naturally occurring substances that are not byproducts of nerve gas research.
But I am now informed by my friend Pat Donnelly — who is a sports car racer as well as an expert woodworker — that this is not quite the case. "Sawdust can cause emphysema," he told me, "and a lot of wood finishes are pretty nasty to breathe. I guess if you like something well enough, you just have to put up with the hazards."
Quite so.
I'd half hoped that by this age I would have had some kind of epiphany and turned to a healthier hobby, such as raising bees or thatching roofs, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm apparently addicted to parts cleaner and paint dust. The smell of an old grease-covered engine block still fires off a wave of pleasant associations in my brain, and so does musty car upholstery. At car shows, I actually stick my head in the windows of old cars, just so I can inhale deeply. Can't get away from it.
But at least there's now one shining bright spot in this dark little universe of dust, mold and hydrocarbons I've built around myself: The inside of my Shop-Vac is immaculate, and smells like Windex and fresh Lemon Pledge. Anything to keep the chipmunks healthy.

2009-11-15T15:15:00.003-05:00

It's been high anxiety lately, so much so that I really don't care to get into it very much. As usual I'd rather laugh than cry. And believe me, this was a great laugh.

I wish it was mine, but even so, this was such a hoot when I saw it that I HAD to share it. Make up your own caption.

2009-11-03T16:16:00.003-05:00

Okay, well I guess truth really is stranger than fiction, even any one I could ever come up with. I've been talking, (joking, actually,) for a while that General Motors would merge the Cadillac STS and DTS models into one range of vehicles. Only instead using the name that I had imagined, (the STD,) it will in all likelihood emerge as the XTS in 2012. I give The General kudos for paying attention to a little sh*t like me, (although they probably didn't, really,) and having the good sense not to moniker the car with something that would in all likelihood clinic badly.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/archives/index.html

http://www.motortrend.com/features/112_0806_movie_magic_machines/index.html

The above is actually more like...."so *I* know where to find it, but there's some fun articles in there.

2009-10-31T10:37:00.005-04:00

What appears below, you will find at the bottom of the page, at least today; it's NASA's Photo of the Day, and I happen to think it's a hoot.

On a more serious note, I did come across another item that REALLY worked my nerves; NPR had a story about an ex-Wall Street investment banker who lost his job and decided to "keep a little money coming in" by substitute teaching a couple days a week. Excuse me?! I thought Moral Bankruptcy and Bad Behavior 101 were curriculum normally taught in the parking lot of your average high school. All I can say to this man, in all honesty, is welcome to my world, motherf**er. Now try living on substitute teaching without the benefit of your little Wall Street "golden parachute." Oh, and a word of advice; don't park your Mercedes in the student parking lot. If it's still there at the end of the day, depending on the school, you might still be minus wheels, glass, seats and all your CDs. Unless you're gonna spend some of that Wall Street money to get your MEd. and teaching certificate, step aside and let the real teachers (the ones with passion, integrity and some amount of pride in what they do,) do the job. This is not where you belong. Beyond that, it's my belief that executives who have lost their jobs in this whole Wall Street debacle should collectively get off their dead a*ses and put some of that industry to work creating jobs and companies on their own terms. Yeah, it's a risk, isn't that what they taught you when you got your MBA? Complacency gets noone anywhere, and just clogs up the Starbucks coffee shops with a bunch of over-50 pre-senior delinquents fretting over whether the economy is going to improve before they have to sell their Harley or need a hip replacement, whichever comes first. Wall Street created this mess, and made a ton of money in the process, it seems to me a top-down philosophy (and, no, this is not to suggest that all the 20-something wives of those ex-execs and bankers do anything relating to doffing their brassieres,) where the people who have the money, (and don't bulls**t me, they're out there,) should be the ones responsible for either paying their fair share of taxes, or doing the hands-on reinvestment in the economy. It's that simple; somebody's gotta stand up, do the right thing and help us all get back on our feet, or we're all scre*ed. I'll get off my soap box now.

Beyond that, if you've been on my Facebook page you will notice I made much to-do about the rather sudden reappearance of one of my artsy buddies whom we had all taken for dead, or at least out of the country. Well, it turns out he was still in the country, alive and well, and married now, still playing music, just like he's always done. He'd probably end up having to do a lot of digging to find some of my artwork, which is buried in the deepest bowels of these very pages, and some which may or may not have appeared before. I swear I'll get some truly new stuff going. On the upside, I fulfilled a promise to an art teacher I had subbed for to burn a copy of my PowerPoint about the BMW Art Cars. She seemed to appreciate my contribution to her learning library, we'll see if her students dig it. As for my buddy Tim, he, (like most other people,) knows me because cars have been my life, even in the several lifetimes it's been since I saw him last. God forbid I should disappoint him. At least right now, many others know I'm not that much of a one-trick-pony.

2009-10-30T14:10:00.002-04:00

Okay, think about this the next time you want to go all nationalistic; the reason the Japanese automakers had such a great reputation for quality for such a long time was not the brainchild of a Japanese engineer. The reason the Japanese got so far ahead of Americans for so long in the car-quality race is because they listened to a guy named W. Edwards Deming. Not a very Japanese-sounding name is it? It shouldn't. It isn't. Mr. Deming was born in Sioux City Iowa, and in 1950 lectured the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers about the importance of statistical process control, and its impact on product quality. And the Japanese scientists and engineers listened. As an object lesson, consider that Ford produced a model at one point which was available with either an American-made transmission, or the same transmission manufactured in Japan; the parts inside both transmissions were within specifications, but in the Japanese-assembled transmission, parts tolerances were much closer; for example, if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus one-eighth of an inch, the Japanese-made part was within one-sixteenth of an inch of specification. So what was the net takeaway here? the cars with the Japanese-assembled transmissions ran smoother, and experienced fewer problems. and customers wanted the cars with the Japanese-assembled transmissions, and were willing to wait a few extra weeks or months to take delivery. Put that in your Marlboro Red and smoke it. Wanna read more about him? Here ya go.

http://www.lii.net/deming.html

Was Deming alone in the Americans not listening to what he had to say? Not by a long shot. consider the case of Charles Paulson Ginsburg, inventor of the Video Tape Recorder. He invented the VTR for Ampex, initially for commercial use; CBS was the first network to use a VTR to record broadcasts for television, and for network use, the Ampex VTR-1000 cost $50,000. So far, I haven't really made my point here. Flash forward to 1971, and the idea that the VTR could be popularized for home use. What company made that happen? Sony. Okay, the Betamax format eventually got eaten by VHS, but you get the idea. And I don't claim, then, that the Japanese are really any more almighty than Americans, big-picture, the real issue is who's got the vision? Who can really see what will or won't be good, or popular, or right? A bunch of speed-crazed, pharmeceutical-frenzied, swashbuckling yahoos like Americans, or the relatively conservative, analytical and honor-bound Japanese? I would say it's just necessary to think more when you live on an island, the way the Japanese do, otherwise everything is hard to get and outrageously expensive. As opposed to America, where you could probably drive at triple-digit speeds through more than one western state with impunity, because there's nothing more there than tumbleweeds and the occasional Armadillo. the real thing is, especially in times like these, vision and creativity should be necessities, especially in our youth, and from everything I can see, they're not. Too many still think they could make it as NBA stars or rappers or models. To my teacher friends.......see to it that your students aim a little higher than this willya? Thank you.

2009-10-13T14:14:00.002-04:00

Oh, just flippin' dandy. This is exactly what I need right now. But more confirmation that we're essentially all going to hell in a bucket, and not even enjoying the ride. What are we supposed to think for the future? and what exactly AM I supposed to tell my children about their futures? "Sorry, ladies, it's all up in the air; dunno what to tell you, dunno what to believe myself." Good dad; yeah. It's harder than hell to keep my own head up when everything is lookin this pointless. throw me a rope, throw me some hope, LORD JESUS, PLEASE!!!!! And, God, it just makes me so MAD that the people we trust in government to make things happen can't get their sh*t together enough to prevent debacles like this. I pray to God something miraculous happens soon, 'cause I'm getting REAL tired of trying to hold my head up for what seems like for nothing. And is it lookin like anything else is much better? Not from where I'm standing. Just a straight-up AUGH!
Budget Impasse Results In Immediate Cut-off in Federal Funds to Michigan School Districts
Contact: Martin Ackley, Director of Communications Agency: Education
October 5, 2009
LANSING – The state budget impasse that has left Michigan without a Fiscal Year 2010 School Aid budget is preventing the Michigan Department of Education from paying federal funds to Michigan school districts this week for programs ranging from Special Education to Title I, and the wide variety of school meals programs.
The state Legislature did not meet the October 1 budget deadline, leaving the Department of Education without legal authority to process millions of federal funds that recipients receive on a weekly basis.
School districts and private organizations that operate federal programs appropriated in the School Aid Act normally are reimbursed their federal funds on a weekly basis. Without a School Aid budget, those funds cannot be paid.
“This will deeply affect the cash flow for schools, day care centers, and adult care facilities, to name a few,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan said. “But I am confident that the Legislature will do the right thing and pass at least a continuation budget this week and allow us to start passing through these federal dollars.”
The Michigan Department of Education processes federal payments for the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture three times a week. Over a normal two-week period, the Department processes approximately $43 million in payments.
Some of the federally-funded programs that are affected include: Title I; Special Education; School Lunch Program; Adult and Child Care Food Program; Career and Technical Education; Educational Technology; Improving Teacher Quality; Charter School Funds; Even Start; Migrant Education; Comprehensive School Reform; and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (After-School Programs).

2009-10-07T15:45:00.002-04:00

If you've never had one of those moments that makes you realize that whatever is going on in your life is not anywhere near as bad as it could be, pull up a chair. Martha and I both had one of those moments, over the course of a whole-day conference about Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators, otherwise known as ICDs. You and I usually just know them as pacemakers, but there's a whole lot more going on with these devices than just keeping your heart dancing on the rhythm you want it to. And a LOT of reasons why people end up with them in the first place. One of the speakers at the breakfast meeting was 13 when she had her first pacemaker installed; she "passed out," which is to say she stopped breathing and almost died at track practice. When her mother finally got the call, the message was "if you want to see your daughter alive again, you'll come to the hospital NOW!" No threat, just fact; her track coach administered CPR, which kept her alive until the EMTs got there. This young woman, of course, is not the first to have ever had such an incident, you hear about them all the time. Sometimes with more tragic results. The good news is, if you're paying attention to your child's health it doesn't have to happen. There is a condition called Long QT Syndrome, which essentially manifests itself as a cardiac rhythmic anomaly, and similar conditions, which can be tested for if your child or student shows symptoms of it. I would minimally implore all of my teacher friends to check out the information from the following link, and be informed about how you can save a child's life. And if you're a teacher, and you don't know CPR, or need to take a refresher, DO IT. Ask yourself what more you need hanging over your head.

http://www.sads.org/

On the subject of ICDs and defibrillators if your child, or spouse, or whoever, needs one, everyone, not just the person fitted with it, is gonna have to learn how to live with it. One of the physicians in attendance was talking about how things like competitive cheerleading are not necessarily out the window, but if you wear a pacemaker or ICD, and participate in competitive cheer, you'll have to be content to be on the "base," and not be the "flier," who goes zooming through the air, propelled skyward by their teammates, in some cases. Electromagnetic Interference, from many sources is a problem as well. The following is good information about the devices themselves, and the truly crucial portion of a pacemaker or defibrillator, as with many things, is that you're not alone. Many people have had them installed, and although there are still issues with them, they generally qualify, I would say, as a solution that beats dying by a long shot. And they've come a long way from the earliest external pacemakers that came out back in the late 50s.

http://www.medtronic.com/our-therapies/defibrillators/index.htm

http://www.medtronic.com/our-therapies/pacemakers/index.htm

Back to the lecture at hand, the conference really drove home the point that no matter how much you think you're dealing with, there's usually someone else in the world who makes your condition look like exactly what it is; small stuff. And if you have an answer to what your problem is, whether there's a solution or therapy available for it or not, you're at least that far ahead; there was at least one patient at the conference whose arrythmia could not be attributed to any particular condition in her that physicians were aware of; never mind the patients whose defibrillators had gone off, which most of them described as "like being kicked in the chest as hard as possible." Most remember exactly the moments when their defibrillators went off, and the result of these life-saving jolts usually still elicits some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And awful as that all sounds, still......consider the option.

2009-09-29T09:37:00.002-04:00

My presumption is that it's mostly Scrabble freaks and crossword junkies (like myself,) who are remotely interested in this kind of thing, none the less, it's always interesting purely for the insight into the culture that it gives. English language learners probably hate it, because it just means that there's more stuff that they won't understand, although perhaps having some of these words in the Oxford English Dictionary helps matters considerably in terms of understanding, and making yourself understood in a more natural way. It's a bit odd to think that this book could conceivably grow larger, though, especially since I recall several teachers of my acquaintance having antique OEDs which were at least 8 inches thick, and probably weighed close to 50 pounds, if not more. Maybe it's the dead words that leave that make the difference.
Anyhoo… The latest additions to the Oxford English Dictionary are a mixed bag.
Many of us welcome autumn for bringing gorgeous weather, Octoberfest beers, and the merciful resumption of football.
But for a small number of your fellow citizens, fall brings another blessed event, one that is no less heaven-sent because it occurs every season: the Oxford English Dictionary online hauls out a host of new entries, as the largest word book in the world gets even larger.
As always, the additions are a mixed bag, a bag commodious enough to include words diverse as “dot-org,” “globalist,” “hand relief,” “red state,” “three-way,” and “unmixed blessing,” plus many others, along with a beefing up of major entries such as “clone,” “drug,” and “thought.”
The OED—started in 1857 and digitally updated since 2000—is a historical dictionary, which means it includes example sentences over a wide period of time. This makes it so much more useful than most other word books, since you can actually see the word in action. It’s like learning about frogs by watching them hop around a pond instead of dead on a desk in high school bio class.
So please enjoy this sample platter of linguistic nuggets and lexical enchiladas from the latest revisions, which are only a week old. As always, these facts should dazzle that English grad student you’ve been drooling over in the coffee shop, and maybe they’ll even invite you over for a cozy night of citing on the couch.
• Twitter is on everyone’s mind and handheld device these days, but the word “twitterpated” has zip to do with it, and its recent entry is a coincidence. Two meanings—“Love-struck, besotted. Also: thrilled, excited; obsessed” and “Foolish, silly; flighty, scatterbrained”—date from the 1940’s, launched by the 1942 Bambi movie.
• Who says having your nose in a digital library all day can’t lead to a greater appreciation for nature? Since the additions also covered extensive revisions from “red” to “refulgent,” subentries were added for the red-kneed tarantula, red-chested cuckoo, red-backed salamander, red-legged locust, red-lipped snake, and red-rumped parakeet. In related news, the red-handed howler monkey is now on my list of awesomely named animals that are a little impolite, along with the goliath bird-eating spider, naked mole rat, and giant spitting earthworm.
• My rare-word itch was well-scratched by “thinking mug”—a term labeled slang, obscure, and rare—for the head, with only one recorded use in 1849: “Bout four years ago, it came into my thinking mug that there must be plenty of gold in the bed of Coosa creek.”
• The recency illusion, as coined by University of Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky, is the tendency to think “Whoa, that’s new to me. It must be new to the world!” I had a little bout of the recency illusion with the word “thoughty,” which has meant “thoughtful” for centuries, as here in 1702: “A minister should be a very thoughty man.” This is similar to how 19th-century uses of “truthiness” meant truthful, as opposed to today’s Colbertian truthiness, which encompasses many types of BS such as “globaloney,” another new entry. That one goes back to 1943: “Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still ‘globaloney’.”
• Regular readers know I’m entranced by suffix mayhem, such as the promiscuous ways of “-gate” and “-istan.” So I was happy to see the suffix “-think”—as in groupthink and doublethink—get its own entry. A 1984 quote has my favorite example (“This is yet another example of ninny-think.”) though I hope to someday be known as the founder and seminal contributor to doofus-think.
• You’re probably familiar with the common sense of “batsh*t,” even if batsh*t insanity doesn’t flow through the branches of your family tree (not that I would know anything about that). But an almost opposite meaning exists in Australia, perhaps due to blander bat diets: “My personal life is the same as anyone else’s and it’s as boring as batsh*t to read about.”
• Of course, capturing the world in words isn’t all red-handed monkeys and thoughty twitterpations: ugly reality intrudes, this time in the form of the mega-successful word “waterboarding.” The first known use is as recent as 2004; minus the “ing,” the term is older: “Upon capture the ‘POWs’ are roughed up and given their first taste of the dread water board: they are strapped head down onto an inclined board, with a towel placed over their faces and cold water poured onto it. They choke, gag, retch and gurgle” (1976).
• Also dating from 1976 is the basketball and general-purpose insult “in your face!” Speaking of faces, the first face-plant was probably done by a clumsy cave-dude, but we’ve only been talking about “doing a face plant” since the eighties.
• “Anyhoo” is a word I enjoy using, and it turns out I’m using it “right,” which to dictionary-makers just means in the most common way: “used (humorously) to indicate a change of topic, or a return to a previous topic after a digression.” I was surprised to learn that it was originally a regional pronunciation of “anyhow” and disappointed to learn that variations “anyhoozle” and “anyhoodle” didn’t make the cut (yet).
Anyhoo, I could go on till 2012, or even the apocalypse after that: there’s no end to this stuff. People sometimes wonder if I feel bad not knowing another language, and I don’t. I feel like I barely know one language. The OED will give you that feeling, in the best way possible.

In other news, well, I've commented about a LOT of things lately, and one of the ones that really bugs me is the surge in anti-foreign sentiment, as noted by the rise, at least in Detroit of the "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign!" bumper stickers, usually adorning either a rusted-out Ford Ranger or Contour (many of which were assembled in Mexico,) or a new Dodge Ram (many of which are assembled in Mexico,) or Ford F-350. The more genuine sentiment, I think, should be, "Out of a job yet? Keep dumbing down yourself and your family!" Go ahead, lack that ambition, and spirit of self-enterprise; heck, the founding fathers relied on complacency and endless coddling by the British, didn't they? Oh, wait, that's right, they didn't! They felt that they were being 'jacked on the whole idea that despite all the money they were paying to the British, they still had nothing to say about what was happening. And they did something about it. Something real. And as it turned out, cultural and economic isolationism have never served America very well. Besides, given the foreign interchange that occurs currently, to codify any kind of nationalist mind-set would put us even deeper in the hole than we are right now. What we really need to shove the lid on, and weld it in place when we're done, is greed. British greed made America, and Wall Street's greed put us in the Great Depression, not to mention the recession we're in currently. I'm not gonna go all Socialist equity here, but come on; as a country, and as individuals, we should all know what we really need. If the rest of the world can live the way they do, and still find adequate means to express themselves without the need (generally,) for 150-room mansions and H1 Hummers for every member of the family, why can't America?! Mind you, the whole idea of the following runs counter to all this, and frankly, is an amusing, if rather touchy concept:
Colombia Confronts Drug Lord’s Legacy: Hippos
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 10, 2009
DORADAL, Colombia — Even in Colombia, a country known for its paramilitary death squads, this hunting party stood out: more than a dozen soldiers from a Colombian Army battalion, two Porsche salesmen armed with long-range rifles, their assistant, and a taxidermist.
Outrage ensued after the release of a photo of soldiers next to the carcass of Pepe, killed in Puerto Berrío.
They stalked Pepe through the backlands of Colombia for three days in June before executing him in a clearing about 60 miles from here with shots to his head and heart. But after a snapshot emerged of soldiers posing over his carcass, the group suddenly found itself on the defensive.
As it turned out, Pepe — a hippopotamus who escaped from his birthplace near the pleasure palace built here by the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar — had a following of his own.
The meticulously organized operation to hunt Pepe down, carried out with the help of environmentalists, has become the focus of an unusually fierce debate over animal rights and the containment of invasive species in a country still struggling to address a broad range of rights violations during four decades of protracted war with guerrillas.
“In Colombia, there is no documented case of an attack against people or that they damaged any crops,” said Aníbal Vallejo, president of the Society for the Protection of Animals in Medellín, referring to the hippos. “No sufficient motive to sacrifice one of these animals has emerged in the 28 years since Pablo Escobar brought them to his hacienda.”
Sixteen years after the infamous Mr. Escobar was gunned down on a Medellín rooftop in a manhunt, Colombia is still wrestling with the mess he made.
Wildlife experts from Africa brought here to study Colombia’s growing numbers of hippos, a legacy of Mr. Escobar’s excesses, have in recent days bolstered the government’s plan to prevent them — by force, if necessary — from spreading into areas along the nation’s principal river. But some animal-rights activists are so opposed to the idea of killing them that they have called for the firing of President Álvaro Uribe’s environment minister.
Peter Morkel, a consultant for the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Tanzania, compared the potential for the hippos to disrupt Colombian ecosystems to the agitation caused by alien species elsewhere, like goats on the Galápagos Islands, cats on Marion Island between Antarctica and South Africa, or pythons in Florida.
“Colombia is absolute paradise for hippos, with its climate, vegetation and no natural predators,” Mr. Morkel said.
“But as much as I love hippos, they are an alien species and extremely dangerous to people who disrupt them,” he continued. “Since castration of the males is very difficult, the only realistic option is to shoot those found off the hacienda.”
The uproar has its roots in 1981, when Mr. Escobar was busy assembling a luxurious retreat here called Hacienda Nápoles that included a Mediterranean-style mansion, swimming pools, a 1,000-seat bull ring and an airstrip.
“He needed a tranquil place to unwind with his family,” said Fernando Montoya, 57, a sculptor from Medellín who built giant statues here of Tyrannosaurus rex and other dinosaurs for Mr. Escobar.
Hired by private administrators of the seized estate, part of which is now a theme park (imagine mixing “Jurassic Park” and “Scarface” into a theme), Mr. Montoya rebuilt the same statues after looters tore them apart searching for hidden booty.
But Mr. Escobar was not content with just fake dinosaurs and bullfights. In what ecologists describe as possibly the continent’s most ambitious effort to assemble a collection of species foreign to South America, he imported animals like zebras, giraffes, kangaroos, rhinoceroses and, of course, hippopotamuses.
Some of the animals died or were transferred to zoos around the time Mr. Escobar was killed. But the hippos largely stayed put, flourishing in the artificial lakes dug at Mr. Escobar’s behest.
Carlos Palacio, 54, head of animal husbandry at Nápoles, said Mr. Escobar started in 1981 with four hippos. Now, he said, at least 28 live on the estate. “With our current level of six births a year set to climb, we could easily have more than 100 hippos on this hacienda in a decade,” Mr. Palacio said.
“Some experts see this herd as a treasure of the natural world in case Africa’s hippo population suffers a sharp decline,” Mr. Palacio continued. “Others view our growth as a kind of time bomb.”
The number of hippos on the hacienda could have reached 31 had Pepe, the slain hippo, not clashed about three years ago with the herd’s dominant hippo, then left with a mate for other pastures. Once established near Puerto Berrío, the mate gave birth to a calf.
Faced with the possibility of a nascent colony away from Nápoles, Colombian authorities decided to act. After all, hippos, despite their docile appearance, are thought to kill more people in Africa than any other large animal.
Unable to find a zoo that would accept the three hippos in Puerto Berrío, officials in the department, or province, of Antioquia considered their options.
Capturing them was expensive, costing as much as $40,000 for each hippo, in a country where malnourishment among the poor remains a major problem, said Luis Alfonso Escobar — not related to Pablo Escobar — head of Corantioquia, a state environmental organization. Taking them to Africa was dangerous, in addition to being expensive, because of the new diseases they might introduce there.
So the officials opted for a hunt and hired a nonprofit conservation group, the Neotropical Wildlife Foundation, to help manage the operation.
The foundation brought in two experienced hunters, Federico Pfeil-Schneider and Christian Pfeil-Schneider, both of whom also represent the car manufacturer Porsche in Colombia. To ensure the hunting party’s safety, the environmentalists also secured an escort of soldiers.
All went as planned until the hunt’s details and the photo of the soldiers appeared in the news media. Outrage ensued. Newspapers speculated on the fate of Pepe’s severed head. (Luis Alfonso Escobar, of Corantioquia, rejected rumors that it went to the hunters.) A judge in Medellín issued a ruling suspending the hunt for Pepe’s mate and their offspring.
Meanwhile, other hippos may be on the loose. Mr. Palacio, the hippo caretaker here, said at least one was lurking in the waters of a neighboring ranch. Mr. Morkel, the veterinarian, said one or two others could have wandered off, according to local reports.
On the grounds of Hacienda Nápoles, a sign warns visitors to the theme park. “Stay in your vehicle after 6 p.m.,” it reads. “Hippopotamuses on the road.”

Okay, yes, conceptually it proves the point that the rest of the world is not all grass huts and Birkenstocks, but it also makes the point about the danger of greed; A Colombian drug lord, a man who was pretty much the OED definition of greed, wanted Hippos for the palace, (although God only knows why,) and now, even after his death, they're still the same invasive species anything else of its ilk would be. And with that, I would appear to be begging people to do what I think they always should; think a little.

2009-09-21T15:14:00.006-04:00

Yes, that is indeed me,grinning for the camera from the confines of a giant hot dog bun at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. All for fun, and fun for all.

And leave it to those wacky Brits, (where the Catholics are in the minority, compared to other parts of Europe,) to give the world something like this. Not like it's bad, and actually, and if you look down a bit, (no, not down your nose, necessarily,) I've included the prayer here. Overall, I suppose it constitutes a real break with what one normally thinks of as Catholic doctrine, or maybe just an admission that it really does happen. and not necessarily in altogether scandalous ways. Gutsier than one might take as the normal Catholic stereotype.

Give us this day our daily... Catholic church issues prayer for faithful to say before sex
By Simon Caldwell
Roman Catholic couples are being encouraged to pray together before they have sex.
A book published by a prominent Church group invites those setting out on married life to recite the specially-composed Prayer Before Making Love.
It is aimed at 'purifying their intentions' so that the act is not about selfishness or hedonism.

The prayer, which appears in the Prayer Book for Spouses, implores God 'to place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes'.
It adds: 'Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will.
'Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, for ever and ever.'
The 64-page book has been published by the London-based Catholic Truth Society.

Marital advice: The prayer book
The group has close links to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
The Rt Rev Paul Hendricks, who is the Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark and sits on the charity's board, said he thought the prayer's inclusion was 'brave but good'.
'I suppose it is a bit idealistic but it is recognising that God is at the heart of the marriage relationship between husband and wife,' he said.
'It is important for the Church to affirm the value of marriage and family life and I suppose this is a particular way of doing that.'
'Perhaps it is something that has not been tried, certainly for a while - I can't remember seeing something like that before.'
The book contains prayers for every stage of marriage and family life, including engagement, planning for parenthood, pregnancy and caring for children and elderly parents.
The prayers, written by a variety of authors, are interspersed with Catholic teaching on the meaning of marriage and family.
The book pushes the message that marriage should be exclusive and life-long and condemns abortion.
It criticises 'those who, in our times, consider it too difficult, or indeed impossible, to be bound to one person for the whole of life, and those caught up in a culture that rejects the indissolubility of marriage and openly mocks the commitment of spouses to fidelity'.
It adds: 'It is a fundamental duty of the Church to reaffirm strongly the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage.'

Included here, straight from the Catholic Truth Society website, http://cts-online.org.uk/news/?p=121, is the prayer in its entirety.

Father, send your Holy Spirit into our hearts.Place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes.Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will.Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness.Clothe us in our true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, for ever and ever. Mary, our Mother, intercede for us. Amen

And apparently the CTS knows it went out on a limb with this, according to the website, but stands by it, and apparently the associated "Prayer Book for Spouses" is a huge hit because of all the attention. Give 'em Hell, in whatever quantities they seek it in.

Below, here are a few new pix from The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village's "Cars Stars and Guitars 2" For those who might recognize it, yes, that is indeed the 80s-idol ZZ Top Eliminator '33 Ford, and a sweet Pierce-Arrow, if for no other reason than Martha loves them.

Yet another TV idol that probably requires you to be of a certain age to identify it, The Monkeemobile, from the 60s TV show, snapped at a Detroit-area car show. Wild stuff.

Dementia Cases to Double Every 20 Years
(Sept. 21) -- The number of people with dementia globally is estimated to nearly double every 20 years, according to a report released Monday for World Alzheimer's Day.
Much of the growth will be fueled by longer life spans and population growth, especially in developing nations.Skip over this content
Danny Johnston, AP
A neurobiologist leads volunteers taking part in a study on memory loss in 2008. By 2010, an estimated 35.6 million people worldwide will have dementia; that number is expected to swell to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050. Skip over this content

"Over the next 20 years, the numbers of people with dementia are anticipated to increase by 40 percent in Europe, 63 percent in North America, 77 percent in the southern Latin America ... and 89 percent in the developed Asia Pacific countries," said the report, from Alzheimer's Disease International.
"In comparison, the percentage increase is expected to be 117 percent in East Asia, 107 percent in South Asia, 134-146 percent in the rest of Latin America, and 125 percent in North Africa and the Middle East."
By 2010, an estimated 35.6 million people around the world will be living with dementia. The number is expected to hit 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.
One in seven Americans age 71 and older, or about 3.4 million, have dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health. In this age group, 2.4 million people have Alzheimer's disease, NIH research has shown. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Some of the causes of the disease are believed to be genetic, while others are thought to be preventable.
Studies have shown that physical exercise, the kind that keeps the heart healthy, also keeps the brain healthy, according to the National Institutes of Health's Cognitive and Emotional Health Project.
Mental stimulation can help too.Skip over this content
From AOL Health: Reducing Alzheimer's Risk

Some memory loss is a normal part of aging, but accelerated and permanent memory loss are signs of trouble. According to the Alzheimer's Association, as many as 5 million Americans live with the disease. While there's no surefire way to prevent it, you can reduce your risks. Click through for some tips.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, as many as 5 million Americans live with this disease, 500,000 of whom are younger than 65. Unfortunately, there's no surefire way to prevent the disease. But you can reduce your risks with diet and exercise.
"Our brains can be made stronger through exercise," Andrew Carle, assistant professor in the department of health administration and policy at George Mason University, told CNN late last year. "In the same way physical exercise can delay many of the effects of aging on the body, there's some evidence cognitive exercise can at least delay the onset of Alzheimer's."
A combination of antioxidants, supplements and curry may also help.
Vitamins A, C, and E are antioxidants, which prevent cell damage and are believed to slow down diseases of aging, said Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"There are studies that suggest antioxidants might prevent dementia," she said.Skip over this content

Fish oil and phosphatidylserine supplements may also help. Aging brains show signs of inflammation, and fish oil has anti-inflammatory properties, said Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging.
Phosphatidylserine is a lipid found naturally in the body and is a major component of cell membranes. Small said he's not 100 percent convinced these supplements will help stave off dementia, but they're worth a try.
There's also curry. Small said that as he gets older, he might try eating more foods with curry in them.
"Some studies in Singapore show that those who ate curry once a week had better memory scores," he said.

The only real reason I find myself wondering about the verity of the above has nothing to do with people living longer; we know statisitically, at least at this point in history, they are. Medical techonology has brought us a long way. The bigger problem lies in the fact that the economy as we have all ever known it, has collapsed, taking with it the certainty of proper medical care, and proper care for the aged. And I'm guessing many who are now caring for elderly parents with dementia issues don't want to see it happen to them; if they can't live a life that's long and full to the very end, I'm guessing many would just as soon stand in front of an oncoming train and let God decide, not to go all Anna Karenina on everyone. Tsk.

2009-09-17T09:54:00.005-04:00

Sometimes words are funny; sometimes, not so much. It ain' about what you say, but how you say it, as they say. I learned this in a couple different ways lately. In an effort to be a right-thinking dad, and give my daughters a little advice about their futures, well, either it came out completely wrong, (entirely possible,) or they're just being the teens and tweens I know they are. (Also completely plausible as a explanation.) At any rate, in the wake of this, neither of them wants to see me, hear me, speak to me, whatever; which, as parents know, is a painful, gut-wrenching, unpleasant experience like no other. Also in the wake of this, right or wrong, I may indeed just end up eating a big slice of Crow Pie in an effort to put things right again. If I have to, I have to, and I chalk it up to learning, just like everything else in my life. And given that they're daughters of mine, as you might well imagine, when it comes to their mind-sets, the apple don't fall too far from the tree. Apparently, the best advice with kids still isn't about what you say, but what you do. On that count, I don't believe myself to have failed, except in falling victim to the same economic knee-capping that everyone else is suffering through in this economy. Quite frankly, I have to stop and wonder how well-placed any advice on a child's future is in this day and age; who the he*l knows?! Their future as artists and restauranteurs may be just as well-placed as the logic all of us Over-30s grew up with, that, unless they hit it big, and hit just the right nerve in popular culture, they're destined to be struggling forever. You never want that for your children. Overall, there can be far too many causes of unhappiness in the world; misplaced ambition, as we have all discovered through living life, can be as big a negative as poverty. If not bigger. The real objective in a properly lived life should be to be able to stand on your own two feet, make the right calls for yourself, and not live in the place we, as a society, seem to have gotten to. To say that the future is such a foggy, ambiguous mess right now that I don't think anyone knows which way is up is an understatement.

Our church's Father Theo, the Asian Indian, and resident comedian, started one of his sermons recently by talking about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson going camping.
"Watson!" said the great detective, "what does it mean to you to look up and be able to see the stars?"
"Well," said Dr. Watson, "Astrologically, there are billions of stars, and possibly millions of galaxies, meaning the possibility is great that we are not alone as life in the universe. Theologically, it means we are insignificant; a mere speck in the eyes of God. Meteorologically, it means we are going to have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it mean to you, Holmes?"
"It means our tent has been stolen!" replied the great detective.

Finally, in the "only from the mind of a Klobucar" department, one of my nephews heard Cheryl and his mother talking about a program that operates through Detroit's Capuchin Soup Kitchen for ex-convicts and recovering substance abusers that teaches them about bakery operation, (making bread, etc.) "They're teaching monkeys how to bake?!" was his response, seemingly a little shocked at the concept. Yeah. Score one for pervasive genetics. And as I think about it now, the future has always been mostly in the hands of either the most creative, or the most necessary among us. Score another point for a new age of neo-Darwinism, with a twist of God, Whoever He may be to you.

8-foot-1-inch Turk crowned world's tallest man
Previous record holder, tired of the publicity, refuses to be measured
LONDON - A towering Turk was officially crowned the world's tallest man Thursday after his Ukrainian rival dropped out of the running by refusing to be measured.
Guinness World Records said that 8 foot 1 inch (2.47 meter) Sultan Kosen, from the town of Mardin in eastern Turkey, is now officially the tallest man walking the planet. Although the previous record holder, Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, reportedly measured 8 feet 5.5 inches (2.57 meters), Guinness said he was stripped of his title when he declined to let himself be measured.
"If this title had given me more health or a few extra years, I would have taken it, but the opposite happened, I only wasted my nerve cells," he said.
"If I have to choose between prosperity and calm, I choose calm."
Kosen, 27, told reporters in London that he was looking forward to parlaying his newfound status into a chance at love. "Up until now it's been really difficult to find a girlfriend," Kosen said through an interpreter. "I've never had one, they were usually scared of me. ... Hopefully now that I'm famous I'll be able to meet lots of girls. I'd like to get married."
Kosen is one of only 10 confirmed or reliably reported cases in which humans have grown past the eight foot (2.44 meter) mark, according to Guinness.
The record-keeping group said he grew into his outsize stature because tumor-related damage to his pituitary triggered the overproduction of growth hormones. The condition, known as "pituitary gigantism," also explains Kosen's enormous hands and feet, which measure 10.8 inches (27.5 centimeters) and 14.4 inches (36.5 centimeters) respectively.
The tumor was removed last year, so Kosen isn't expected to grow any further.
The part-time farmer, who uses crutches to stand, said there were disadvantages to being so tall."I can't fit into a normal car," he said. "I can't go shopping like normal people, I have to have things made specially and sometimes they aren't always as fashionable. The other thing is that ceilings are low and I have to bend down through doorways."
But he noted some advantages too, including the ability to see people coming from far away.
"The other thing is at home they use my height to change the light bulbs and hang the curtains, things like that."

Find a girlfriend? Get married? It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility, but the late Sandy Allen used her height to show schoolchildren that being that tall didn't necessarily mean you were a freak, just a very tall human. One with the same feelings as everyone else. A question, once again, of mind-set, I suppose.

2009-09-09T16:30:00.003-04:00

Garrison Keillor hospitalized after minor stroke
Sept. 9, 2009, 4:16 PM EST
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Humorist Garrison Keillor still plans to start his new season of "A Prairie Home Companion" as scheduled in just over two weeks, despite suffering a minor stroke.
Keillor had the stroke and was admitted to Saint Marys Hospital at Mayo Clinic, said Karl Oestreich, a spokesman for the Rochester, Minn. facility. He will remain there until Friday for tests "and upon his release will resume his schedule as previously planned," Keillor spokesman David O'Neill said.
"He is up and moving around, speaking sensibly, working at a laptop," Oestreich said in a statement to The Associated Press.
O'Neill said in an e-mail that Keillor "is doing well and the family appreciates the warm wishes."
In a statement, Keillor said he was "feeling ill" on Monday morning and drove himself to United Hospital in St. Paul, where he lives, then was transferred to Mayo "simply because they know so much more about me down there."
Keillor, 67, underwent surgery to repair a heart valve at the Mayo Clinic in 2001.
"I am in the hands of smart and compassionate people and plan to get out on Friday and get right back to work," including the opening of a new season of "A Prairie Home Companion," Keillor said. "And that's the news from here."
Mayo Clinic initially said Keillor was hospitalized Sunday, but Keillor's publicist said it was Monday. Oestreich later confirmed it was Monday.
Keillor is scheduled to open the new season of "A Prairie Home Companion" on Sept. 26 from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.
He celebrated "Prairie Home's" 35th anniversary with a Fourth of July performance before some 10,000 people in Avon, a central Minnesota town that helped inspire his fictional hometown of Lake Wobegon. He performed last Friday night at the Minnesota State Fair.
Some 4 million people listen each week to "A Prairie Home Companion" on nearly 600 public radio stations in the U.S.

In news of my own......first day back, and I find out, (after two years of doing it now,) that the kindergarten teachers in one of my districts are contractually entitled to another set of eyes and ears in the classroom for the first week; I wonder how long they're going to be able to maintain that arrangement. None the less, of course, I'll take what I can get, especially in this economy. All in all, it was a good first day back, especially considering that working with kindergarteners, some of whom might have never been to school before, can be, as someone I know put it, "like herding cats." Truer words were never spoken. But the classroom teacher complemented me on my capacity to keep things moving while she took care of other business, which was heartening. Now if I could just manage to get all my subbing stuff into a container that doesn't end up weighing as much as a Buick......

2009-09-08T14:09:00.003-04:00

Given the relative scarcity of recent pictures of my oldest child, this one, despite the "No Pickchas!" demeanor is a definite classic. There's been a bloody LOT on the boil in the past month; Martha had her pacemaker battery replaced, and still isn't entirely healed up. Her father just had a pacemaker installed, and insists on being his usual feisty self. Frankly, after a couple of days of staying with the man, just to make certain he didn't manage to kill himself doing something he wasn't supposed to in the intervening time, it dawned on me what one of my Korean students meant when she called me ugly. (You can probably find that post, if you're willing to dig back far enough.) It wasn't so much a matter of appearance, as is probably testified by the fact that somewhere, probably on some Korean website, are pictures of my derriere, snapped by another student with her cell phone. No, I think "ugly," in this case was more like, "Ugly American;" the net result of someone who has been so propagandized by anti-foreign sentiment that they couldn't see straight if they wanted to. It goes by a lot of other names; closed-mindedness, bigotry, call it what you like. It centers around the idea that you could make the call on something without even knowing all the facts. Man, is that a dangerous state of mind. And the thing is, when you put a mind like that in a position of power, particularly as a parent, the results can have a hellacious ripple effect, and one that can be hard to contain. Thankfully, the people who have propogated a lot of this sentiment, primarily the World War and Depression youth, are either dying, or so jacked up on Seroquel that no one really pays them any heed anyway. Even the Baby Boomers are mostly 60+ these days, and although whatever anti-American sentiments they're given to are probably directed at different groups of people, it's at least a bit better. What we've propogated in the last 30 years is a lot of biracial children, which will probably go a long way towards easing hostility in the future, despite the fact that some still face the "Who-am-I-really-and-what-group-do-I-identify-with" hand-wringing. So be it. Suffice to say, blanket sentiments coing from anywhere are dangerous as hell. And I go back to work tomorrow, thank you, Jesus, doing a 4-day stint. Always nice to open a year like that. Further the hope, and La Chaim. And I almost forgot, actually......I don't know where this picture of Syd came from, but man, it is *so* nice! How couldja not not love a face like that?!

2009-08-16T15:08:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I admit, after a while, the shots can all get to seem a bit familiar; it gets that way with me, too, believe it or not. Most of the above is from a "lost file," that I remember going to with the girls, (you can see the reflection of one of them taking the picture in the photo above,) but couldn't find for the longest. The one with the moths, I just came across looking through some other pictures, and thought it was just the coolest. I have more from the car show, anyway, and I'll probably trot out more in the future, but I thought maybe a few people would at least enjoy these.

2009-08-11T09:20:00.003-04:00

I'm a fan of Aston Martin. I Have been for a long time now. This disturbs me. Aston Martin badge-engineering a Toyota mini-car?! What would David Brown, founder of Aston Martin, and the man honored by all of those famously sexy "DB" Astons of the 50s and 60s think? You know James Bond wouldn't drive one, primarily because "Q" couldn't find enough room to hide all the necessary spy accoutrements. I'm starting to think nothing is sacred. My guess is that, all by itself as a company, Aston Martin could produce a car for less than the price they're intending to sell this one for, and make it a substantially more "Aston Martin" piece of work. What it calls to mind just as much is that a certain "small-car chic" has taken hold, much in the way SUVs did, back before everyone figured out that they were destroying the planet, probably more than we knew at the time. At any rate, in the beginning of any movement away from the current status-quo, some mistakes are bound to occur; this is unquestionably one of them, if you ask me.
2010 / 2011 Aston Martin Cygnet - Car News
Aston Martin badge-engineers a Toyota. Seriously.
BY JENS MEINERS June 2009
Photos (21)
Badge-engineering has a bad name in the industry for a reason. It’s essentially a cheap way to expand a brand’s portfolio, but it does not respect heritage and brand values. Think of the ridiculous Chevy TrailBlazer–based Saab 9-7X or, further back, Cadillac grafting its logo onto a Chevrolet Cavalier and selling it as the Cimarron.
Yes, It’s Real
Imagine then what the Cygnet, an awkwardly restyled version of the 117.5-inch-long Toyota iQ minicar, is going to do to the image of Aston Martin, one of the most prestigious ultra-luxury brands and self-proclaimed “world leader in exclusive niche engineering.” Believe it or not, the blobby Aston Martin Cygnet, which is only a concept for now, is set to go on sale in Europe in the first half of next year.
The Toyota iQ was launched in January 2009 as Toyota’s answer to the rear-engine Smart. (It is likely to come to America soon badged as a Scion.) Unlike the Smart, but in typical Toyota fashion, the iQ is conservatively engineered. The tiny four-seater houses its powerplant up front and rides on a platform that draws heavily from the bigger Yaris. Weight varies depending on equipment and engine, but the iQ generally tips the scales at just over a ton.
According to an Aston Martin spokesperson, the company does not plan any changes to the iQ’s powertrain, and the Cygnet will likely become available with the iQ’s full set of powerplants. This includes a 67-hp, 1.0-liter three-cylinder gasoline engine; an 89-hp, 1.4-liter turbo-diesel; and a 97-hp, 1.3-liter gasoline four-banger. Toyota offers five- and six-speed manuals as well as a continuously variable transmission. With the most powerful unit, the Cygnet will be able to run from 0 to 60 mph in a leisurely 12 seconds or so. Top speed is quoted at 106 mph for the Toyota, and traveling that speed in the Cygnet should prove as thrilling as doing 200 mph in its supercar, er, siblings.
The iQ’s roof and door panels, and even the headlights and side mirrors, are carried over for the Cygnet. Of course, the Aston is also stuck with the iQ’s cartoonish proportions. The main changes pertain to the front end, which makes a comical attempt at being a grown-up Aston Martin by wearing the company’s trademark grille, as well as busy-looking air scoops which the Aston design team managed to squeeze onto the flanks and tiny hood. The interior is likely to be more sumptuous and more attractive than the iQ’s, offering multiple personalization choices at a similar level to that currently offered with other (actual) Aston Martins, according to the spokesperson.
Priciest. Tiny. Toyota. Ever.
The Aston tinsel comes at a price. “It is too early for us to specify an exact price,” Aston offers, “but we believe the Cygnet will be offered for around €25,000 to €30,000”—the equivalent of $35,000 to $42,000. By contrast, in Germany, the genuine article from Toyota starts at around €13,000 for a five-speed 1.0-liter and rises to just under €17,000 for a 1.3-liter with the CVT.
While the Cygnet’s styling, package, and powertrain may not endear it to current Aston Martin owners, its sheer exclusivity might convince some of them to buy one anyway. Because an Aston—or Lagonda—owner is what you need to be to be allowed to purchase the Cygnet, at least at the beginning. This arrangement will spare dealers the inconvenience of having common folk pulling up in their 9-7X or Cimarron, hoping to trade it in for a fuel-sipping runabout with a flashier badge, and Aston CEO Ulrich Bez sees the car as serving current Aston owners in a role “akin to an exclusive tender to a luxury yacht.“ (Besides, Cygnets will make great service loaners for Aston dealers, and who wants to parallel park a DBS for a quick run to Tesco to grab a packet of crisps?)
The chances the U.S. market will be spared are slim. “Our immediate priority is with existing Aston Martin customers and we will start to make the Cygnet available in Europe first. We would expect our existing largest markets, such as Italy, Germany, France, and the U.K., to have the highest demand. However, the U.S. will be a priority too,” Aston Martin offers. We can’t wait.

2009-08-06T15:26:00.003-04:00

I had something of an epiphany today, the likes of which I haven't experienced since the first time I ever read John 15:1-8 in The Bible. It's something like this, if you've never read it:

The Vine and the Branches 1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

The first time I read that passage, it was like a light clicked on in my head; I understood the relationship clearly between man, Jesus, and God. Don't misunderstand me, Ecclesiastes 9:11 is still my favorite passage in The Bible, but that passage in John was a major kick in the teeth to me. Ecclesiastes 9:11, by the way, goes:

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor does food come to the wise
Or wealth to the brilliant
Or favor to the learned;
But time and chance happen to them all.

I've started going to group therapy sessions, to deal with a lot of the issues that have been plaguing me for a while, so my life will be better. Today they presented a handout about the "Reasonable Mind," versus the "Emotional Mind," and it was kinda like the whack between the eyes a steer probably takes, just before he's turned into hamburger; only the implications are less dire than that. This is supposed to make things better. In the middle, (this is all done as a Venn diagram,) is what's labeled the "Wise Mind," which is reasonable, but, surprise, surprise, still allows the Emotional Mind to have some say. For those in the group who were having a hard time grasping the concept, I offered the idea of the Reasonable Mind being the one that would read Consumer Reports before buying a car, to find out what the best one would be for them. The Emotional Mind would buy a red Mazda Miata, even if they had a family of six. Damn the torpedoes. The Wise Mind, in the middle, would buy a red Honda Odyssey or something. A little something for both sides. Don't ask me how, in teaching, and learning to be a teacher, I didn't equate all this, but, CLICK! There goes the light bulb. Maybe it's just the graphic point. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm TRYING to solve my problems that's different. But this is a game-changer to me. It occurs to me that I have a hard time knowing where on the chart I'm at sometimes; do I operate more on emotion than I think I do, or have I just been so freakin' blind to everything for so many years, that knowing anything, really, would come as a shock? A reasonable mind wouldn't have stood there speechless as a 12-year-old, ogling the most beautiful car he'd ever seen in his short life the way some kids would gawk at a naked picture of Marilyn Monroe. (And, yes, I realize I'm dating myself now. Get over it.) A reasonable mind wouldn't spend money on things they couldn't even remember buying, or scream obscenities at the driver in front of them, who can't hear you, for better or worse, after feeling as though the other driver had done something totally inane. The notion was suggested that the big difference between the emotional and rational minds is, who are you thinking of? Are you thinking of the larger world? I've done that, and frequently what irritates me is the people who don't. Maybe that's more of it. The anger over other people's blase attitudes, particularly when I feel as though I've busted my a*s trying to do the right thing, and thus making myself tired as hell. At any rate, I think the net takeaway is to not let emotions pull every bit of line off your mental reel like a hooked Marlin.

Which is not to say that being emotional doesn't have it's up-sides; we're definitely better creators, but on the whole I'd still rather have had a guy like Chesley Sullenberger at the controls if my plane was going down, as opposed to a guy like me; more people woulda been dead, that's for certain. I'd still rather have never had problems paying my bills, although even that seems to be a game of chance these days. In all likelihood, I would have had fewer problems, had I spent less time glossing over things, for whatever reason. I'm still happy to be me; I didn't die at Auschwitz or Minsk, or fall off a building to my death, the way some of my relatives have. All in all, by comparison, my foibles have been relatively minor. Maybe what kills me is just not having made better choices in the past. But for better or worse, my life wouldn't be what it is today. And I'm still happy about a few things.

2009-08-04T13:02:00.004-04:00

Below is some of my favorite shots from the Highland Games Scottish Festival we went to. Like I said in my last post, it really was a lot of fun. Lots of color, lots of action, lots of food.....you get the idea.
Vendors were everywhere selling their wares, like these hats.

This fearsome-looking fellow is there every year, leading the mock troop training. He's a very intelligent man, and would have been my choice for a leader in battle.

The Hammer Throw, and other "heavy events," get men in kilts into some outrageous contortions, as this fellow demonstrates. and believe me, that "Caution" tape is there for a reason!

It's not unusual for the Highland Dancers to catch as much air as these two, and then some.

I don't know what they call this, except for it being a "circle dance." I have other shots where they're more in motion, but this one was reasonably symmetrical and well-balanced, so I like it better that some of the others.

Martha (right,) her sister Marie, and Martha's niece Avery, wearing "Ta's" Scotland hat. Cute, huh?

The Scottish regiment display was quite a sight, especially when they did the mock field drill, firing the guns and cannons.

If you know anything about Scottish tartans, the patterns and colors are all about your clan heritage. This riot was just irresistable to me.

I mentioned the Caber Toss, one of the other "heavy events." Basically, you're hefting a telephone pole (kind of,) and trying to get it to move as accurately as possible. The origin of this was when Scottish military units had to cross a fast river in battle, they'd pick a tree, and try to heft it across the river as accurately as possible so it would function as a bridge.

2009-08-03T15:39:00.003-04:00

I just had one of those experiences with another driver that prompted me to want to scream directly into the ear of this inept idiot, "YOU ARE A MORON! YOU DO NOT DESERVE A DRIVER'S LICENSE, SAVE THE WORLD FROM YOUR MENACE AND BUY A BICYCLE!!!" The really big idea is that I now feel the need to go over Pete's Rules of Driving.

Put the damn cell phone DOWN! No call is that crucial, barring that from a wife who is in active labor, that it can't wait for you to answer it.
When you call a person, have a reason to do so. Using a cell phone as an anti-boredom tool, especially when driving, unconsciously prompts most people to drive at about 40 miles per hour, holding up traffic for God-knows-how-long in some cases. Attempting to text while driving is also a big no-no. GPS navigation creates similar insanity if you're trying to figure out where to go and listening to the little voice on your GPS unit and not focusing on your driving. In this case, it's best just to know where the he*l you're going before you're trying to get there.
Tailgaters are the reason cruise control was invented, and I am NOT hearing from any of these "Drive Happy" or whatever the da*n slogan is, yahoos who believe it's polite to just pull off to the side of the road, and let the obnoxious tailgating as*hole go on their merry way. And don't you DARE have the gall to tailgate me and then flash your lights, or honk your horn, like I oughta let you continue being obnoxious. Being in a relatively polite part of Detroit, me, and invariably others, will merely vent with an obscene gesture; there are places in the world where that behavior will get you shot.
Speaking of behavior that could potentially get you shot, Dearborn, Michigan is not the only place in creation with a largely Arabic population; don't get creative with a beach towel and sunglasses, as this could be a potentially ugly scene.
At least when I'M driving, assume as a passenger that I know how to get to my destination, unless I have officially designated you the navigator, in which case I'd probably let you drive anyway. And my philosophy is that audio entertainment is Driver's Choice, so if I happen to feel like listening to my Turtles CD, or the 1812 Overture, go with it; you'll get your chance when you're driving.
When you drive, BE DECISIVE! The open road is no place for wimps, especially not Detroit. When you pull out of a parking lot, GO! Because if I have to stop because you're driving like a wuss, and, worse than that, not even looking in the direction of ONCOMING traffic, I'm gonna be PIS*ED! And I will have every right to be.
If you see construction signs that tells you that your lane is going to end at some point, MERGE INTO THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC A.S.A.P.!!!! Because I'm sure as he*l not going to be the guy to let you in if you wait until the two lanes become one. You'll sit, you'll wait, if you're having a really bad day, you'll overheat; and I will LAUGH myself silly, because you had MORE than enough warning that this was going to happen.
We've all seen car accidents before, if one happens near you when you're driving, take a cue from the cops and KEEP MOVING! There really is nothing to see, don't snarl traffic anymore than it already is because of your macabre proclivities.
Take this one from me, DON'T use the "authorized vehicle" turnarounds on the freeway if you happen to screw up and miss your exit; the ticket was called "Improper Crossing of Median" in Michigan, was about $145 ten years ago when I made this mistake. Best you should save yourself the cash and the headache.
Common sense should tell you not to drive behind tanker trucks, trucks hauling roof trusses, or anything with a vehicle behind it sporting a "Wide Load" sign. If common sense doesn't tell you that, let me be the first to do so.
If you're driving a U-Haul truck, limo, or something else you're not used to driving everyday, take a minute before you start moving, and make sure your mirrors are properly adjusted, and then WATCH THEM! You never know what else may sneak up around you. A little preparation and courtesy beats 5-to-20 for Involuntary Manslaughter, hands down. I really wish more people were in the habit of actually turning their head, and checking their blind spots before merging or changing lanes, but this is America. In Ann Arbor, you can't even get pedestrians to assume that you're going to stop because they're crossing the street.

Follow these simple rules, and I can at least tell you that you won't pi*s me off.

2009-08-02T13:56:00.004-04:00

There's been plenty going on lately, ergo my inability, it seems, to keep up with it all. My father-in-law was in the hospital recently, and at this point is requiring more maintenance than he has in the recent past, He doesn't seem to enjoy the experience of actually acting all of his 85 years of age, although after having gotten him a cell phone to use in emergencies and showing him how to use the one-button-dial feature, he really seems to dig that. He really didn't like it when I gave the inside of his car a thorough scrub-down, and checked all of his signal bulbs, replacing a few in the process. I explained to him that he had a girlfriend, and if there's one thing women hate, it's driving around in their boyfriend's skanky car, unless you're 17, then it seems to be pretty standard. Speaking of teenagers, my daughters were with me for a week in July, and I frankly feel a little more connected to them, (not much, but a little.) I went to a public pool for the first time this summer with Syd, and am thus now burnt and peeling; ah, well, the experience of being a dad. Yesterday Martha and I made our annual trek to the St. Andrew's Society of Detroit's Highland Games Scottish festival which was, as always, loads of fun. Even somewhat kid-friendly, if you can believe it; there's parts of the festival, of course, they specifically don't recommend for family attendance, but they're up-front about all that, so it's all good. I found a t-shirt that said, "I'm married to a Scot; Pray for me!" Everyone seems to have gotten a good laugh outta that, and I actually managed to get the stains out that proabably landed it on the clearance table in the first place, so, once again, we're good. It's always interesting to watch the heavy events, like the Caber Toss, and the Hammer Throw, and I got some awesome pictures, which will hopefully get up here in some sort of timely fashion. Definitely no lack of character on a day like that, although I mused about what a Croatian festival would be like; Martha said given our family reunions, you probably wouldn't really wanna know, but also said she promised to take my 94-year-old aunt to one of the upcoming Croatian church festivals. More food vendors and fewer kilts are what I'm thinking are the primary distinctions. But overall, I gotta tell you, I really am feeling a lot better, at least about myself; my brain is just kinda going, "things could definitely be a lot worse." I also couldn't recall if I had posted the following new images here, but I've been having fun playing around with this kind stuff, too. which makes me feel good.
Neat, huh? It takes a lot of work to get them looking like that, because the whole operation is essentially scaling a photo or other artwork to fit the paper, but the results are worth it, at least to me. All that, and here comes school again, right around the corner. It all seems way too short at times; or maybe that's just life itself.

2009-07-23T13:24:00.003-04:00

My children have been here for the last week, after spending a lot of time with their mother. Apparently, all in their house are facing their own challenges, too. Whether Lisa had to turn in her lease, and was unable to do so again, I don't know, but she's "hooptified" again, sporting a 2000-ish Ford Explorer with a sunroof, but apparently sans working air conditioning. Well, you know what the big attraction of being with dad is. But none the less, it's been a good week so far. Syd has been taking a pottery class at a studio nearby, and I've had a chance to just sit down and talk to Shelby, dad-to-teenager. I think I've even managed to crack the egg on that hardest-issue-for-parents-to-discuss with a child of theirs who's growing up; that's right, sex talk. It's a particularly hard subject for dads to get into with their daughters, but some of the more important successful points of the discussion were

Acknowledge what she already knows, which may be substantially more than you want to imagine. But thanks to school health classes, the female menstrual cycle, and other impossible-to-avoids, a girl's knowledge of sex and her body, these days, at the age of 14, is more sophisticated than you figure.
Make no mistake, it's always a question of virtue, but the bigger reason to push for her to wait when it comes to having sex is that there's more God-awful diseases out there than there have ever been before in history, so the larger point is that it's in her best health interest.
Be aware that when you ask some questions, "The Girl Code" will be in effect, and seemingly, particularly to this dad, Korean was easier to decipher. And frankly, as women, I'm well aware that this code never goes away; it morphs into new forms, with new friends, but God forbid we as men should EVER know everything we need to in the name of communicating effectively with women.
I'm also readin a book called Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, which is a very useful book, but which makes the point clear about the dichotomy in thinking between men and women. If a man knows he has a problem, his inclination, (surprise, surprise,) is to want to DO something about said issue. A woman's response to the same condition, frequently, would be to want to talk about the problem, which, frankly, accomplishes absolutely zip. The phrase "talk is cheap" came from somewhere, remember that. As did its corollary, "actions speak louder than words."

So the bottom line, really, is that effective communication starts early, and, of course, you hafta keep the lines open. Cheryl suggested writing the girls letters frequently, which I started doing, and which I will continue to do. It makes a difference; I probably wouldn't have had the week I've had thus far had I not at least started that way, although I was chided for my lousy handwriting by Shelby. Gotta work on that. What else? well, that'd probably be the freakin'-hilarious-comment-of-the-week, uttered by the Birthday Girl, Sydne; while describing an episode from one of their favorite You Tube Japanese anime series, she was talking about one of the characters, and somehow or other the issue of brassieres came up, and Sydne questioned this particular character's need to sport one on a regular basis, because she was, in Sydne's words, "as flat as a cutting board." Tells me everything I need to know, and then some. My baby's growin' up. At this point I'm just hopin' to be able to keep it real.

2009-07-08T09:24:00.003-04:00

It dawned on me the other day, despite the fact that everyone seems to agree that automobiles are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases imaginable, WHY this state of affairs would be is still open to question. Now, if you brought back someone who was frozen in 1976, not to be too Austin Powers, it's pretty much a fact that they wouldn't recognize very much; 8-track tape players? You gotta be kidding. They've been long-since supplanted by, consecutively, cassette players, Sony Walkmans, Sony CD Walkmans, and seemingly the ultimate incarnation, the Apple iPod; carry thousands of songs, practically in your friggin' wallet. 35mm SLR cameras? Once again, technology had a better idea, and we've all now traded even our trusty point-and-shoot 35s for digital cameras, sometimes even dispensing with those, and just trusting the ones that came in our cell phones. Cell phones? Boy, that'd fry some diodes in our societal time traveler, to say nothing of Google, Twitter, Facebook, and, God forbid, even email. Which begs the question, what WOULD our friend recognize from his own time? Flourescent light bulbs, Bob Dylan, and the ultimate no-touch-um item on automobiles; the catalytic converter. Foisted upon Americans by public outcry admonishing us to clear the smog from our air, so we could all breathe better, these devices were supposedly in our best interest. How did they work? In the event that you've forgotten, or never knew to begin with, the concept was simple; platinum pellets, or, later, platinum embedded in a ceramic substrate, would oxidize the Carbon Monoxide produced in internal combustion engine exhaust into-TA DA!-Carbon Dioxide and water. For a while this seemed to work. The skies were clearer than they had been in decades, never mind the fact that soon after this, the post-industrial era would begin in America, and almost everything we were even remotely able to buy came from China, Malaysia, or somplace else other than Heartland, USA (unless you happened to be in the market for a conversion van or mobile home, which would almost inevitably come from Elkhart, Indiana.) Obviously, then, too, the technological change brought about by catalytic converters brought all sorts of new things with it, like stealing catalytic converters and selling them for their platinum content. This is not a procedure I'd recommend, primarily because I'm not of that criminal a bent, first of all, and second, having removed catalysts in the course of being a mechanic, (and then dutifully replacing or reinstalling them, of course,) it's a bit*h. This is NOT a procedure you really wanna be involved with, trust me. The water content in the exhaust also necessiatated the almost universal use of galvanized or stainless-steel exhaust systems. In the event you haven't checked, a stainless-steel exhaust, while it does have a 5-to-10-year life span, also costs at least 5 times as much as a comparable setup where there is no worry about what the water content of the exhaust is going to do to the pipes over time. Which, of course, is almost impossible to compare, since catalysts have been with us for almost the last 35 years. But let's examine what else has occurred in the past 35 years, shall we? In 1974, a Lincoln Mark IV, arguably the car Jesus would have chosen to make his return in, had He returned from the right hand of God in that year, was a by-today's-standards paltry $10,194. Slightly more reasonable was the $3,088 charged for a 1973 Mustang Mach I. (We shall not even contemplate that automotive travesty known as the 1974 Mustang II; a Pinto in drag doesn't qualify as a real car in my book.) By 1978, the Ford LTD Landau like my dad had, when I first got behind the wheel of a car, would set you back $5,898. By 1998, a top-of-the-line Mustang Cobra convertible would set you back $30,200, although it also had a significant power advantage over its 1973 brethren. These days, a Lincoln MKZ will run you $37,000 and change. This, friends, is the real world, dollars-and-cents cost of progress; that a new Mustang will significantly outrun its 1970s counterpart, but cost you ten times as much. Which, of course, has driven the necessary increases in wages, due to the increased cost of living. And by all that, of course, well, the supply of money employers can generate is just as finite as anything else in this world; there's a finite number of consumers for everything. What happens then? Unemployment goes up, stress increases, the cost of health care skyrockets so much, having a job with health benefits has almost gone back to being a gamble. Which brings us back to my initial point about the catalytic convertor; 30 years ago, the waning size of the polar ice caps wasn't causing alarm that, as Robin Williams once said, "all the people in California (would surf) to Denver." Are we seeing the spiral here?! In my opinion, (humble though it is,) catalysts, stainless-steel exhaust systems, and all the other detritus that has come to go along with them, need to be consigned to the history books where they belong; we don't need to be able to access our emails, answer our cell phones, or do anything that's going to distract us from the chore of simply driving. And I'm fairly certain Polar Bears don't enjoy falling through the ice because it's so thin it can't support their bulk. (And no wisecracks about telling the bears to go on diets; if you had to live on Salmon, Seals, and whatever else you could lay your paws on, you wouldn't even begin to contemplate the notion of feasting of Honey Barbeque boneless chicken wings.) This is yet another case where we need to be smarter, which is nothing new, really; Sir Alec Issigonis, if you examine pictures of him, appears to be towering over the Austin Mini he brought the world in 1959. He was; and still, at six-feet-four-inches tall, he drove a Mini, a car no longer than ten feet in overall length, for years. Also amazing was the fact that 80% of the original Mini design was devoted to passenger space. The world can suit us all, we have the technology to do amazing things in the name of saving us all, and all we need are a few more creative genuises, not willing to think about how to remake what belongs in the trash heap of history, but contemplate something totally new. Step right up and save the world, if you've got the goods.

2009-07-07T09:26:00.002-04:00

http://autos.aol.com/gallery/unmarked-police-car

Realizing that a lot of motorists pay more attention to their cell phones, (believe me, that's definitely the case in Detroit,) well, ya can't tell the players without a program. I also had the crazy thought that, what if, instead of the pop star Michael Jackson, the person who actually died recently was Auto Nation USA founder Michael Jackson? I mean, presuming (not really logically, I admit,) that nobody had looked at the body, it's entirely possible. A passing, goofy thought, yeah, I know. And if you think about it, too, I don't know why people are getting so upset about having to move back in with their parents when the sh*t financially hits the fan; I mean, think about it, the Queen-of-freaking-ENGLAND basically lived in her mother's house until her mom passed away at the age of 101! Can you imagine the conversations in that house? Comedian Louis Anderson was speculating about the Queen Mother shouting something about "TURN THAT GLENN MILLER SH*T DOWN, WOULDJA?!" I can see it. I'm also in the middle of reading a book about how to be a better father, which I admit is something I do need to work on. By the words of this author, it comes down to spending more time with my daughters, which I'm ready to do, even if I'm not always sure how to, particularly give that they're reaching that age where they're both getting a little old for board games and sand toys. I'll do my best, ain' a whole lot else I can say.

2009-07-06T10:01:00.002-04:00

Have You Tried These Interview Tips?
Real job seekers share what works
By Rachel Zupek, CareerBuilder.com writer
"Dress professionally."

"Make eye contact."

"Research the company."

"Have a firm handshake."

Any of these pointers sound familiar? They should, because you've heard them thousands of times. While the above suggestions are great (and valid), the truth is that this kind of advice can get a bit generic.

We decided to turn the tables and make you -- the job seeker -- the expert. After all, you're the ones out there interviewing, so really, it's not too much of a stretch. We asked you to share what you've found to be successful during your interviews.

Check out these interview tips from real job seekers around the country. Have you tried any of them yet?

Ask the important questions
"One thing I always ask at the end of the interview is, 'Have I said anything that would lead you to believe I'm not the best person for this position?' This gives me an opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings and it also gives me a chance to redeem myself or explain where I am coming from on something. It also shows that if there's a problem, I am capable of fixing it." - Brooke Kelley, magazine editor

"During an interview, you are always told to have a set of questions to ask. A question that is helpful, that they do not expect -- 'I know you are interviewing a lot of candidates for this position and I'd like to leave this interview feeling like I've done my absolute best. Where do I stand in comparison to the other candidates so far?' shows boldness and that you are aggressive in your job search." - Jeannie Lee, PR manager

It's not all about you
"The interview is not about the candidate, it's about the job. No matter how great you are as a person or employee, the interviewer is trying to fill a position. Hence, talk about the job as much as possible. Ask what a perfect candidate would be like. Only occasionally talk about yourself and only to show how you suit their requirements." - Dave Field

Research the company -- and the interviewer
"Find out some information about your interviewer(s). See if you share anything in common and understand that they're a person, too, with interests, background and hobbies. Whether or not you know who will interview you, you'd better make sure you know as much as possible about the company and don't be afraid to let them know what you know." - Josh Bob, regional manager

Can you take the heat?
"I've found that saying that I can take constructive criticism has a big impact on employers. They need to know that you are not going to fold under scrutiny. Especially with the younger generation, where we have been coddled quite a bit with excessive praise and self-esteem boasters, you need to show you are resilient." - Liz Cauley, teacher

Make a list
List five things you've accomplished during your previous job and concentrate on those items during your interview. "Each time I prepared for an interview, I was reminded of five things that I had accomplished under my last employer. That gave me a boost of confidence when going to the interview. It helped me to decide how I wanted to frame the answers that I gave to the interviewer." - Sue Chehrenegar

Make it personal
"One thing that I do that has gotten positive feedback is I send a handwritten thank-you note. I have had numerous people comment and thank me for doing this." - Danny Kofke, teacher

Show your research
"Print out a couple pages of the Web site from the company you're interviewing with and bring it with you to the interview. Keep it on top of your résumé ... when you open up your notebook or binder to take notes or pull out your résumé, the interviewer will see the printed company materials and assume you've done your research. Of course, ideally you have actually researched the company ... in which case you're showcasing that fact." - Katherine Opie, senior executive recruiter

Know the job description
"Reviewing the job description will help you customize your answers by addressing the specific needs of the organization and requirements of the position to your skill set. Many people have no idea what the job entails or how their skill set makes them better qualified." - Cristina Castro, director of marketing and communications

Keep your answers to questions short and to the point
"Don't volunteer extra information. In my case, I talked about my children. We discussed that I had been a stay-at-home mom. Even though I had impressive writing credentials, he told me that I wasn't a 'corporate person.' (His exact words.) Of course, I never learned if this was why a job offer wasn't forthcoming but I'm 99.9 percent sure I said too much." - Marilyn Pincus, author and ghostwriter

Be gracious
"Be polite to absolutely everybody. If someone gets you a cup of coffee, thank them; hold the door for someone else -- that kind of thing. Give the receptionist or the last person you see a cheery goodbye. You want to leave a good impression." - Phyllis Harber-Murphy, virtual assistant

Speak as if you have the job
"Steal a page from the presidential candidates and talk if as if you already have the job. Say 'I will," not 'I would.' 'I can,' not 'I could.' This will remove doubt instead of inject it. Bosses like someone confident and proactive." - Joel Schwartzberg, director of new media

Use social networks
"I get a lot of my job interviews through social networks. I get recommended through others and it is significantly better than applying and actually interviewing. They basically feel like they interviewed you already!" - Albert Ko, business owner

2009-06-24T13:13:00.005-04:00

Gads. As I'm quite certain my regulars already know, dealing with a parent who's experiencing mild to moderate dementia is a little like dealing with a four-year-old on steroids; conversations, or attempts at conversations, are almost inevitably total non-sequiturs. Trust ceases to be about years of proof, and begins to just live in any given moment. To say nothing of the anxiety you can experience over the prospect of them injuring themselves, or someone else. I won't get into the specifics of a recent incident involving a relatively antique dagger, but, a) the story doesn't go the way you might think, and, b) thus far noone's been injured or killed, thank God. Suffice to say, though, it's nothing if not unsettling, and I'm sure as he*l not taking any chances. This having-to-monitor-behavior-24/7 stuff is wearing on my nerves. Parents, special-ed students, during the year, my general-ed students......raise your hand if you don't require constant attention. What it makes me realize in a lot of instances is that relatively speaking, my own behaviors aren't all that bad, at least not in my relative perception. Color me wrong if you like, but be prepared to back it up. There's a lot going on right now, and I'm not really concentrating on the things I'd like to be concentrating on, but I figure I'll get there, none the less. I would kill to just sit down with a bunch of Korean films and a bowl of popcorn, and have everyone just leave me the he*l alone for three or four hours. Relatively speaking, that'd be a cakewalk in terms of having to focus. Yeah, I probably am about as weird as I've ever been, and now more tired a lot of times. On the upside, if this summer goes the way I suspect it will, I'll at least be working a couple days a week, subbing in one of my special-ed programs. Enough to take the nerve-rattling out of the finances of being a normal sub, and surely one monster boon in this economy. It's all relative, I guess, but it's all good at the same time.

And as much as I know I've made mention of him before, I've been meaning to assemble a little homage to one of the greatest automotive artists God ever put on this earth, Syd Mead. Mead was a designer at Ford in the 50s and 60s, and did the set design for the movie Blade Runner. (That probably takes a lotta people back a long ways.) He has always been categorized as a futurist, and did print ads for United States Steel, of all companies, back in the 60s. Hot Wheels designers openly acknowledge him as a demi-god, at least, and I admire his sense of style, and his sense of humor. And he's still among the living, at least as of today. I saw him speak at Lawrence Technical University down the road in Southfield in '05, and immediately agreed with everyone else who came that night that the man was worthy of automotive-hero status. He's an innovator, if you could never say anything else about him. But his artistic skills are awesome, if not necessarily to everyone's liking; so be it.

2009-06-16T14:50:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I played a little with the page, on top of all the rest of the miscellanious crap I've been trying to get handled lately. If you look at my full profile, I have an audio track on there for your entertainment. I first heard about K'naan on an NPR segment, and was impressed initially with this man's skills as a poet; I doubt if Shakespeare could have come up with a word or phrase to rhyme with "Kandahar" (Yes, we're talking about the city in Afghanistan here,) but K'naan does. Actually, K'naan is from Somalia, and the tracks I've heard just straight-up ROCK. I also like the line in "Dreamer" about the perfect woman being an "intellectual, sexual, who still can cook." Amen ta dat. Speaking of fine women, Martha had a birthday this week, and despite whatever else may not be going the way it should this week, I seem to at least have managed to get her a birthday gift she likes. Phew. Believe me, ladies, it really is that kinda moment for a guy to do something like that. As for what it was, exactly....Martha like ceramics, among other things, and on my trip to Greenfield Village, I came across a tile with a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. It really is cool. Is it the sensitive, artsy, creative-guy gift that some women would probably kill to get? Perhaps. And that view of it, as opposed to portraying me as a wussy, effeminate, Pina-Colada-sucking piece of God-knows-what is worthy of reverence if you're married and 44, as opposed to being single and 22. Make no mistake, it is no sign, in and of itself, that I necessarily do everything right, but I managed to score on this one.

And as the other assorted foibles go, it's time for Martha's "routine maintenance" that I've come to get used to by this point in our relationship; pacemaker replacement. Interesting that every time it needs to happen, it will coincide with 5 years (or five more years,) we have been together. La chaim. And I admit there are days when it's like, "somebody throw me a rope, dammit, the ground is sinking!" Detroit is no place to want to be in this economy, at least not to me, and.....I don't know, just the specter of everything I have to be, for the benefit of all the people in my life that matter, is daunting, to say the least. I can't, I won't, I shouldn't give up, but that's not to say it isn't an uphill battle, either. The strangest piece of news from here in the Motor City, is that in the wake of Chrysler's ownership shake-up, (they're now owned by Italian carmaker Fiat, the United Auto workers, and the United States government,) most of the company's plants are still idle at this point, save for one; the Dodge Viper plant. That's right, you may be going to Hell in a bucket, as the Grateful Dead would say, but at least you can enjoy the (very fast,) ride. It actually says less about the demand for 10-cylinder, 600-horsepower sports cars than it does for the fact that "Team Viper," as they're known, has the smallest production staff in the whole company, amounting to 48 assembly workers, plus assorted engineers and ancillary staff. From that standpoint, it's a no-brainer, and probably more about igniting hope that more is possible. Pass some o' that over here, while you're at it.........

2009-06-08T15:53:00.000-04:00

I did something last Friday that every dad should; well, maybe just every dad in a circumstance similar to mine, who can get lucky enough to be able to take some time off and do it. I went to Greenfield Village with Sydne and all her 5th Grade classmates. I had a ball, and I know she was thrilled that I was there. It makes all the difference, believe me. And believe it or not, (well, maybe you can now,) at least the first two images below are hers, from start to finish. I happen to LOVE the very first one, which is a maufacturer's plaque from a steam locomotive. Awesome. the next one was conspicuously the only boy in her class she photographed individually; things that make ya go, HMMMMMMM......... I guess I shouldn't fret, anyway, she claims to still not be all that interested in boys, and I believe her. Glass-blowing demonstration, railroad roundhouse, and Syd as she compares to two very LARGE pottery jars. Savourez.

2009-06-02T16:10:00.000-04:00

"Car as art" is philosophy BMW has been propogating for years, with the semi-regular commissioning of it's "Art Cars," rolling canvases that have been adorned by such artistic heavyweights as Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. 2010 marks the first use of the car as the paintbrush, instead of the canvas. Artist Robin Rhode is responsible for this one, thanks to his reputation as an "artistic storyteller." The canvas used to produce the work in the video above is as large as a football field. Rock on.

2009-05-29T14:48:00.001-04:00

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPTED OPINION FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, WITH MY OWN ADDENDA BELOW IN ITALICS
How long before the midnight drag races return on dark and dusty roads?
When Barack Obama announced that the government will use its fist to wave onto the highways of America cars that get 39 miles to a gallon of liquefied switch grass or something, he said, "Everybody wins."
Everybody? What country has he been living in? This marks the end of the internal combustion engine as we knew it, and it is the way Americans have defined, designed and literally driven much of the nation's culture for as long as anyone can remember. Car culture is America's culture.
Mr. Obama is fond of giving people iPods as gifts. I've got a playlist for Mr. Obama's iPod.
Track 1: "Shut Down" by the Beach Boys. Clip: "Superstock Dodge is windin' out in low/But my fuel-injected Stingray's really startin' to go. To get the traction I'm ridin' the clutch/My pressure plate's burnin', this machine's too much."
Track 2: "Little Deuce Coupe" by the Beach Boys. Clip: "She's got a competition clutch with a four on the floor, and she purrs like a kitten til the lake pipes roar."
It's 2016. Imagine a Brian Wilson ever thinking to write: "And she'll have fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes her Prius away."
At Mr. Obama's "Everybody wins" announcement ceremony in the Rose Garden, no one knew better how much has been lost than the cowed auto chiefs arrayed behind him. CAFE, the fuel-mileage standards Congress mandated 34 years ago, gradually squeezed the size and life out of America's cars. But something's getting phased out here other than gas-fueled cars.
Some of the most famous celebrity converts to the politics behind this new, shrinking world of plug-ins once wrote and sang paeans to muscle cars and a more muscular culture.
Track 3: "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. Clip: "Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard."
Time was Bruce Springsteen knew that "Jersey boys" mainly meant steel, chrome, rubber and auto tech. Check out the lyrics to "Pink Cadillac" ("but my love is bigger than a Honda") or the car-crazy "Racing in the Street," invoking Chevys with 396 Fuelie heads, Hurst speed-shifters and Camaros running "from the fire roads to the interstate."
Podcast
Listen to Daniel Henninger's Wonder Land column, now available in audio format.
Track 4: "GTO" by Ronny and the Daytonas. Clip: "Turn it on, wind it up, blow it out -- GTOoooo."
We are being offered a different world now. One designed, defined and driven by a new set of un-fun obsessions -- carbon footprints, greenhouse gas and alternative energy. This large transition passes before us, barely seen, as the gray water of public policy. Hardly anyone notices how much is being changed.
To put a stop to the new sin of spending too much time out on Highway 9, we are getting the mark-up hearings this week in Washington for the Waxman-Markey climate bill. It's 900 pages long, dripping with thousands of Mickey-Mouse rules to reorder how we live. A Senate Finance Committee document last week on the Obama health-care plan proposes "lifestyle related revenue raisers." Lifestyles like drinking beer. This is the "taxing bad behavior" movement. They get to define what's bad.
Track 5: "Hot Rod Lincoln" by Ann Arbor, Michigan's own Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. Clip: "We had flames comin' from out of the side/Feel the tension, man, what a ride!"
This tension over how we live arrived before the world began standing on its head over global warming. The guys in the hemi-powered drones used to mock the granola and Birkenstock crowd. Look who's on top now.
"Everybody wins?" Not quite. What's winning is a worldview that goes deeper than the data beneath global warming. The gasoline cars they want to turn into scrap were about a lot more than the thrill of roaring on.
The cars and their culture were a manifestation of what made the U.S. really different. The cars, like the country, were big, fast and unfettered. Their drivers were delirious with the possibility of finding something new in life. "It's a town full of losers, and I'm pullin' out of here to win!"
When Americans grew up, that's just what a lot of them did -- win. Now, it looks like we're being asked to throttle down to government-approved survival. They're even running the car companies, telling them what to build, and then they'll pay people to buy the product. Save the planet and lose the nation's heart.
The likelihood of resistance to this timid ethos from anyone in politics is remote. It was tough to watch former A-4 Skyhawk pilot John McCain try to outbid Barack Obama for the green lifestyle vote in the debates. We'll see what happens when people walk into auto showrooms (if they exist) and every car has a wheelbase of about 100 inches.
Maybe they'll bolt. Maybe the car culture will revert to where it began, when the whiskey runners in the South ran from the revenuers. This time the cars themselves will be bootlegged -- fat, fast and gas-powered -- racing through the night on off-map roads while the National Green Corps -- enacted by Congress in the second Obama term -- looks for them from ethanolic choppers overhead. Reborn to run.

Agreed. There is very little in the way that the American automotive market is being reformed that one would ever categorize as "sexy." "Little Prius Coupe?" Nah, it just doesn't have the same ring to it. Same for "Hot Rod Nissan," although having driven more than a few hot rod Nissans, conceptually, that still has some teeth in it. The nature of the industry has just gone way too "world." Theoretically, the only real "engineering" ever done when any new car comes out has to do with the engine, drivetrain, and other major component systems. (And, of course, styling, but even that has gone all copycat.) Wiring systems? Between Yazaki and Hitachi, the entire car market in that area is covered. Which is probably just as well, given that in days of yore, when Lucas and other smaller manufacturers were infesting particularly British brands, they did indeed have what my engineering friends refer to as "thermal events" (what the rest of us call an electrical fire,) at relatively regular intervals, especially after they started getting old. Seating systems? Give Lear-Siegler a call, everyone else does, along with Sparco, Recaro, and some others. Wheels? BBS, Keystone....same routine. I could go on, but you get the picture. Overall, it does much to explain the whole "tuner" aftermarket segment, but....dammit, something is still missing. A '69 Camaro with headers and a Flowmaster exhaust sounds masculine; same for a similar vintage GTO (or any GTO, for that matter.) A tunerized Focus, or even something like a 300ZX that's been done in a similar fashion, sounds flatulent at best. If you're going to personalize, the car should reflect your personality, not your gastro-intestinal issues. Consider Harley-Davidson events, and how they normally look like a Vietnam veterans reunion in this day and age; for the most part they really are, and that's probably nothing like beside the point, it is the point. Stock or customized, there is a demographic dichotomy among vehicle buyers, amounting in great part to what we grew up with. Growing up in the "limbo" 80s, there was as many guys at my high school who were running classic musclecars as were running all manner of newer, hotter, (although not nearly as hot as the old ones, or so we thought,) rides. To me it's lamentable as hell that it's all headed the way it is in the new vehicle market, but it's not unforeseen, it's not without it's inherent virtues, no matter what I may think, and being over 40, well, especially amongst the hot rods, I'm not really the point anyway. The carmakers fully expect that guys like me will be wanting a Buick or a Lincoln in a few years. Sigh. Well, to borrow from Van Halen, where have all the good times gone? Right by my nose, yeah, I know.

Having thought about it, none the less, the idea that the possibility of fun with cars still exists, however changed the face of it might be, is still heartening. Alternative fuels? The way I see it, Indy Car, Formula One and the highest ranks of drag racing (funny cars, dragsters and Pro Stocks,) have all been using alcohol and ethanol-based fuels for eons now. All we really need to do is lure some of the guys who engineer racing engines away from racing teams and into the Big Three, (although I shudder to refer to the Detroit automakers as such at this point,) and let them ply their talents on cars for all of us to drive. If anybody can get American cars to run great on alcohol-based fuels, particularly, it oughta be these guys. It doesn't have to be the death of the internal combustion engine, masculinity, or anything else. It just requires "thinking outside the box," much as I hate that phrase. And, yes, I understand that alcohol fuels are no more of a panacea to the current crisis than any other possible alternative, but there has to be options for those who'd prefer not to drive a hybrid (an automotive Sienfeld; it sounds like...NOTHING! Much to the dismay of dogs and blind people, who are routinely run over by the earth-friendly-but-inattentive.) Diesels? Decidedly improved over what they were when I was growing up, but something about a car with a 4500 rpm redline still just fails to "get it" for me. Fuel cell vehicles? They're in the future, somewhere. Plug-in electrics? If you're driving anywhere beyond the bounds of a golf course, I can't really see why you'd limit your driving range (pardon the pun,) so significantly. This is America, home of the road trip, and discovering the undiscovered no matter where, or how small it may be. There are still old folks, I suppose; the ones who for years have driven whatever car they do less that 30,000 miles in ten years. Plug-ins might suit them fine. The end result is my usual admonition, I suppose; THINK.

2009-05-28T16:50:00.000-04:00

I may have shown some of what's above before, I can't remember last night half the time, let alone weeks or months ago. But for the benefit of some of the people who may be checking out my blog for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, I decided to pick a few of my favorites to show off. And the one directly above this one was taken by Shelby with her camera phone, at the Toledo Zoo. Cool, huh? Amazing all the things we can do these days. Anyway, long-time follower, or new friend, savourez.

2009-05-27T16:27:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've been busy for a few days. The good news is, yes, I did indeed pass my MTTCs; I passed the Basic Skills Test, and I also passed the English test. The Journalism test was the one I didn't pass. Drat. None the less, the results mean I can at least contemplate moving on with my life at some sort of reasonable pace. (Seems to me, though, that today, of all days, it's the one I'm having a hard time spelling. Go figure.) What it means precisely remains to be seen, but it's a good indicator, none the less. In other news, well......in the past I may have noted that my mother's father was one of a family of eleven, and many of them, being Jews in World War II, were executed at either Minsk or Auschwitz. A connection pretty much previously unbeknownst to me, and having just been confirmed as a Catholic, I'm in a little bit of a quandry as to how to respond to it. How exactly does a Catholic boy acknowledge his latent Jewish heritage? At some point, I'm planning on posting a version of the family tree, as I have it, so stay tuned. Beyond that, meeting relatives you've never met can always make you feel a little better too. And, believe it or not, I did that over the weekend. I saw one of my uncles, (the one who lives in Hawaii, in the event that I've bragged about him and can't recall,) and also met one of my relatives, whom I had never met before in my life, who lives in Holland. (I know at least one person who is probably laughing at this, and they know who they are, thus I shall go no further.) This is unquestionably the cool part of the family, (at least from the perspective of a relatively short holiday spent with them,) and I found myself relating to everyone pretty well. I have it in mind to check out the web addresses I was given, and I will report back here once I do regarding my findings. Once again, stay tuned, this should be interesting.

I have a lot of other little here-and-theres going on, including a little PowerPoint project relating the artists who created the BMW "Art Cars" to their "other" work; what I've got so far is actually pretty fascinating. The school year is once again winding down, ergo it's harder than hell to keep any child's attention, especially if it happens to be a nice day. If it's a lousy day weather-wise, like today has been, a birthday celebration, complete with cupcakes, (as happened today,) is a welcome diversion. Takes the edge off, if you can tolerate 25 or so second-graders who are hopped up on sugar.

Speaking of relating, I actually feel as though lately I'm doing a better job of at least making conversation, even if I haven't completely ironed out all the bubbles in my various social dichotomies. There are times when trying to get everyone moving in the same direction is like trying to get amputees to break-dance. 'Nuff said. In spite of what ever else goes on, I feel an upswing comin', and my first reflex is to just wanna ride it. Tell me I can't, I dare ya.