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Tale Of Two America’s – Corporate Greed VS Government Need.

Remember when gas prices doubled and went up from $2 a gallon to over $4 a gallon, and the newsies threw a hissyfit?  Here is the San Francisco Chronicle monitoring the situation as gas prices go above the then record of $3.36 a gallon.

Fast forward a few years to 2010. The bay area subway system known as BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has, according to the San Jose Mercury News almost TRIPLED their rates. Add in the $1 parking fee, and well, lets just say this public mode of transport isn’t very economical. It’s a rip-off! So, how does the San Francisco Chronicle’s respond to this inflationary???? Googling “sf chronicle bart price increase“, the newest article concerning BART price increases appears to have been written back in June of 2009. June??? I can’t believe the Chron hasn’t written anything about the BART situation since June. Actually, they have. Why, just yesterday this  piece appeared in the Chronicle, titled   “Hundreds ride BART sans pants” documenting a stunt perpetrated by the PLF to protest the high prices. No, not the Pacific Legal Foundation, or the Palestinian Liberation Front, but the Pants Liberation Front!  Here is how the protesters summed up their feelings of this obviously important occasion:

“It feels strangely normal,” said Luke Jakobsson, a student from Castro Valley who rode BART from the East Bay in nothing but shoes, a Swedish soccer jersey and matching skivvies. “Although I’m not sure how I feel about the wind in my ass.”

Some wore frayed cotton boxers, others opted for pink satin thongs, and a few forewent underwear entirely.

“It’s refreshing. This is California,” said Katyana Gradler, who’s visiting from Pittsburgh and wore pink tights and not much else for the occasion. “At home, we couldn’t do this because there are 4 feet of snow on the ground.”

Her friend Enrico Rossi, an Oakland craftsman, took the pantless theme a step further, shedding shirt and underwear as well. Instead, he wore work boots and a taupe-colored, transparent leotard.

OK, I lied. It wasn’t a protest of insane price increases.  And there is no such thing as the “Pants Liberation Front”… though there should be. Anyway, i wonder why the throngs aren’t up in arm over the almost tripling of the cost of riding the BART? Could it be because that is not a privately run company?

On the other hand, maybe all hope is not lost. The Chron did come out  against the unions when they threatened to strike last fall. Good for them. Wonder if they’ve ever gone against the teachers union?

Happy Blogiversary To Me…. # 5

Yep. It’s hard to believe. It’s been five years. We’re cooking dinner right now, so I don’t have time to reflect on the past five years. . I promise I’ll  write something really good tomorrow. Right now, I’m celebrating with a bottle of of 2005  MonteVina Syrah. OK. I’ll admit I didn’t by the wine for the blogiversary. We usually have wine on Sunday night, but the occasion is still worth celebrating.

Global Warming Fixed! – Thank You Prince Charles UPDATE!

Ah, the prescience of Prince Charles. Headline, from the Telegraph UK, eighteen months ago:

Prince Charles: Eighteen months to stop climate change disaster

The Prince of Wales has warned that the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless urgent action is taken to save the rainforests.

In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences.

“We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall,” he said.

Here is England, 18 months later, covered completely by ice and snow. Read more »

Question Of The Day

OK. Have no idea. Then again, I’m still waiting for a definitive answer to this age old question:

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?

Although the later has been examined and a mathematical formula has been proposed as a solution, the answer is probably the same for both – The world may never know.

PS. I have no idea which category to file this in.

From The “Never Write A Craigslist Ad While On Crack” Department

My friends at  Talk Bass are having a field day with this one. Someone in LA is either selling his bass, or writing his life story:

I have a Samick Custom Bass for auction. The bass includes a hard case. This bass is like a child to me. You see how parents become nothing other than a wreck of tears when they have their kids taken away from child protective services? That’s the image of me when I have to take this bass to the UPS store to send it to the person who buys this bass from my auction. I have been holding onto this bass for over 7 years. IT’S irreplaceable! I have had hard times and made it through without selling this bass, but I cannot afford to put the idea off any longer. So, I am forced to sell this bass due to being impossibly broke and hopeless when it comes to needing money.
When I first bought this bass it wasn’t all that great. The pickups were crap, and it was nothing more than a pretty standard 5-string. But there was one reason i HAD to have it: The neck and it’s playability. The neck is unbelievably thin and flat compared to most basses, let alone 5-strings. (As you know a 5 string ALWAYS has a thicker, bigger, neck than a 4 string.) So, it’s incredibly easy to play. After buying it I did two things that changed the bass MASSIVELY: I changed the nut to a brass nut, and carved the slots so that I could string it tenor style, being that the bass has a high C string on the bottom rather than a lower B string on the top. I did this so I could play chords, and have a higher range in general, giving me more versatile ways to play it than if it had a low B. Basically, you can play with a high C string without having to buy a 6 string bass. This makes it a “tenor” bass, and you can really get creative.
Then I changed the pickups to EMG-HZ pickups. The pickups were pretty expensive, but to be honest I don’t remember how much they cost. But I know myself, and when it comes to things for me I always have to have the BEST, with no exceptions. I specifically remember going through all kinds of research to find that these pickups were the best option. They don’t fit into the already carved slots in the body perfectly, so there’s about a 1/3 of an inch space between the body and the pickups. You really cant tell by looking, but if you ask me this gives it a sound that’s really unique, because it’s not hollow body, but there’s some space to make it somewhat hollow. This all came from a mistake–the guy at the workshop put in the wrong size pickup, and I freaked when I saw the mistake he had made. But, things have a way of working themselves out, so out of curiosity I plugged it in to see how it sounded before I told the guy to undo his work. In just a few notes later, I knew this guy’s mistake was blessing in disguise, because the bass sounded AMAZING!
The fact is this bass is one of a kind. I’ve played customized basses before, but none I’ve ever found was as easy to play as this one, sounded as amazing as this one, and the brass nut giving way to a high C string makes this bass a one of a kind find for anyone who plays bass.
The bass is in great condition, with only one major flaw. There is a chipped spot on the body where you normally rest your forearm while playing. It cant be seen unless someone is inspecting it. I put a photo of the chipped area so you can see it. The chip got there from me using the bass as weapon while me and my past band got into a fight with the band that was opening for us earlier that night. They spoke badly about us during their set, and me and my bass proved that me and my band meant business. This bass will mean business for anyone who is lucky enough to play it.

Any questions or requests for more pics, just email me. Thanks for looking, and thanks to anyone lucky enough to be the next to own this beauty that I’ll never see again.

• Location: LA
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Best Blogpost Of The Day! Ann Althouse

You would think I would chose myself over some Wisconsin law professor, but then, I always have had a thing for law professors, and hate myself. Ann is criticizing the clumsy writing style of  a Vanity Fair writer, who write this  about Tiger Woods’ choice of girlfriends / mistresses:

Tiger’s story has been driven by sex, tons of it, in allegedly all different varieties: threesomes in which he greatly enjoyed girl-on-girl, and mild S&M (featuring hair-pulling and spanking); $60,000 pay-for-sex escort dates; a quickie against the side of a car in a church parking lot; a preference for porn stars and nightclub waitresses, virtually all of them with lips almost as thick as their very full breasts; drug-bolstered encounters designed to make him even more of a conquistador (Ambien, of all things); immature sex-text messages (“Send me something naughty … Go to the bathroom and take [a picture],” “I will wear you out … When was the last time you got [laid]?”); soulful confessions that he got married only for image and was bored with his wife; regular payments of between $5,000 and $10,000 each month to keep his harem quiet

Buzz (yes, that’s the writerrs name) later writes:

It was only when his paramours started pouring out of every cupboard like tenement cockroaches that Tiger expressed some sort of awareness that he was in deep shit….

Now Ann’s had enough. That last bit really sticks her Ann’s craw. She responds:

The most sensible thing for him to do was to keep quiet and request privacy. That wasn’t arrogant. And about that trite cockroaches simile — were their mandibles almost as big as their mesothoraxes?

Classic!

PS. On a related note, I wonder if the advert guys working for Axe Body Spray are pitching for Tiger to become their new spokesman…. or is it too soon?

What’s The Old Saying About Making The Same Mistakes Over And Over And Over Again?

From a write-up by John Fund:

Democrats are reportedly busy devising a strategy as a firewall against a citizen revolt at the polls. Rather than emphasize their party’s accomplishments, they will attack Republicans for wanting to restore the discredited Bush era. “The Republican party in Washington today is no different than the Republican party that ran the Congress before,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, head of the Democratic House campaign committee, told the liberal Talking Points Memo.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the sentiment, but, well, I don’t think the “remind the voters who they are” strategy works all that well when your own party is sucking eggs. Anyone remember the winning strategy the Republicans used in 2006:

The message that Bush and others are sending to alienated supporters is that, no matter how upset they have been about various policies or political missteps over the past couple of years, life would be far worse under the Democrats. They name liberal lawmakers who would take charge of key committees and warn conservatives that taxes would go up and protection against terrorists would go down.

And even more damning, many on the right will now be able to say they were right.

Of course, the Dems could decide to single out the personal flaws of the opposition candidates…. Oh, the Republicans also tried that strategy in 2006?  Whoops.

And that strategy of personal attacks didn’t seem to work in 2009 either. Politically, 2010 is shaping up to be a fun year. I preemptively declare that “flailing” will be the word of the year.

PS. Hey, it’s my first political blog since the New Year. It took me a whole six days before I dipped my toes into that pool. Maybe I’m getting better from this disease called politics.

Hat Tip:  Insta-P

Cool Car Tip Of The Day

If you’re working on your car, and you have a vacuum or water hose that just won’t stay on, no matter how hard you tighten the clamp…

Spray a thin layer of hairspray on the joiner in your troublesome area. Assemble the parts and wait 30 minutes for the hairspray to dry. This will make the surface sticky to hold pieces together and prevent leaks, but not strongly adhere or damage anything. Many people use hairspray on every connection – not only does it make for better connections, but it also makes pieces easier to slide together when you first apply it. (from siliconintakes.com)

Now, you may ask, “Mike, why do you suddenly have issues with hoses”? Well, it’s because I went to the junk yard last week-end, and came home with one of these.

It’s an air intercooler, from a 96 VW Corrado, to be installed into Murphy, the $500 87 Subaru Turbo Wagon! The turbo compresses the air, which also heats it. that makes the air expand. The intercooler allows some of the heat to be removed, which means more air and fuel can go into the cylinder, creating a bigger bang when the spark plug fires, which in turn means… you guessed it, More Power! More hoses connected to the compressed air flow means more hoses that can pop off due to the pressure. I’m either going to go faster with this mod… or blow up the engine in the process!!!

When done, it should look something like this.

May The Force Be With… Eew!

Stolen From: Sully.

Reflections Of A New Year.

Happy New Year Everybody!

I want to start the new Year by reflecting on the old one. For me, like many, it wasn’t a great one. I didn’t get a full-time teaching job, and remained underemployed. As a result, my finances and credit rating took a dump. I have a few collection agencies calling me. One of the resolutions for the year is to start the process of repairing my financial status. That means getting a full-time job. If a long term sub’ing position doesn’t crop up this month, I will either expand my business, Frog’s Pool and Spa, or get a job at one of the local pool and spa parts warehouses.

On the music front – I need to devote more time to developing my guitar and song writing skills. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty pleased with the progress I’ve made on guitar so far, but I can do better. I’m not sure if I should pressure myself to write songs. When I’ve forced myself to write something, it has turned out disastrous. Lets just say that there is a lyric in my collection based on the Kurt Vonnegut book Galapagos. If you’ve read the book, you can imagine just how bad the lyric is.

As for recording my stuff, that must get done this year. I can a least play a few basic chords on the guitar, so there is no excuse not to do so. Sure, I’ll have to do my fare share of punching in bits where I screw up, but if you’ve ever been in a studio, that is not uncommon for the guitarist. The difference here is that my mistakes won’t be due to the imbibement of various drinks or chemicals; my excuse will be pure incompetence.

Now, for a criticism from last night. I was watching the New York New Years Eve celebration, and after the New Year came roaring in, NBC featured a couple of “live” music acts first up was Rihanna. The song she play droned on and on, and she didn’t even pretend to be enjoying herself. Her lip-syncing wasn’t; Millie, or Vanillie, whichever one is no longer with us, is certainly spinning in his grave. And then, after hyping the appearance of the band for the last thirty minutes, just as Green Day was finally being featured on the broadcast, NBC cut to a commercial. I didn’t mind that, as Green Day has long ago become irrelevant musically, but the poorly timed cut was sloppy TV production.

That wasn’t the “highlight” of the show. That has to be saved for the debut of the new Jay Z song and accompanying video for “On To The Next One”. WOW, when did what they call music become so monotone, monotonous, and repetitious. I’m struggling to describe just how bad it was, but I excuse myself as I think the song was bad beyond description. Oh well, I’ll provide the link to the song and let you watch for yourself.