Pretty Blondes and Subaru Fuel

Posted on May 12, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I was in a fast food joint. My enjoyment of non-food, meal-type, calorie portions (I refuse to call it food) was hampered by the many televisions. Who is the pathetic hypertensive adolescent that decided I couldn’t survive a Whopper without telescreens television’s flashing neon palpitations? Are they afraid I’ll realize I’m eating something that no sane person should consume? Don’t they know that I’m aware that fast food is shit and (occasionally) eat it anyway? I wish they would turn off the TV because I’m not a six year old. I can sit still long enough to eat my fries without an electronic pacifier.  It was on mute. I tried to ignore it but failed to block it out.

The manufactured revelation du jour was Congress harrumphing about gas prices. This is an annual dog and pony show hosted by people who deliberately fail to understand economics in order to influence voters who want free cake.

My only interest in this useless enterprise is the scheduling. It’s a few months ahead of it’s usual time slot. (This non-event historically happens simultaneously with the discovery that southern Californian vegetation is flammable and wildfire prone. This year it’s coinciding with the annual discovery that the Mississippi floods in springtime with a little overlap about tornadoes unexpectedly manifesting in tornado alley. Why so soon?)

I’ve been assured that the drivel on the screen was news but I know news and this was not it. This was a video game display overlapping rehearsed reality show theatrics. Soon the screen had two dour looking fellows in boxes, one on the left and one on the right. They didn’t have excellent hair like congressmen so I presumed they were hired economists dragged out of their gimp boxes? Or maybe they were technocrats with titles like “President’s Czar Of Unelected Guys With Job Titles Derived From 19th Century Pre-Communist Russian Government”?

Meanwhile, floating above, between, and larger than these two terribly important individuals was a bolder brighter view of a pretty blond with pretty hair making pretty expressions intended to convey that she was concerned about this important thing they were discussing. Presumably she is an intelligent and incisive journalist with all sorts of gravitas. For all I know she is a genius. Except she looked to me like a porn star pretending to care about commodities pricing. There has never before in the history of mankind been a society so sophisticated that it has commodities markets and so crude that it would broadcast the image of a porn star emoting about it. All this because it now costs extra to fuel a Subaru?

Meanwhile a stream of text swept across the bottom of the screen with frantic announcements about some sort of flag burning protest. Or maybe it was an anti-flag burning protest? Or were they anit-anti-flag burners? I presumed it was in a foreign land; some place where screaming masses of unemployable youths riot because the alternative is a good hard look at their miserable impoverished future and their self imposed conditioning which will perpetuate it. Then I wondered if it was domestic; meaning the youths are probably just rioting because they’re in one of the richest societies on earth and protesting is a temporary amusing alternative to getting a job.

I never caught the details. Apparently the flag thing was important enough to be vomited forth in twitter sized nuggets but not important enough for the pretty blond to read it to us. (Presumably she reads “news” stories for the benefit of those who are functionally illiterate and acts out her emotional response for those of us who are full fledged zombies?)

Then I finished my burger and walked out the door while muttering something about arranging deck chairs. I soon forgot the pretty blond and her “concerned act” because I’ve got bigger issues. The chicken pen has a weak spot and I heard raccoons in the yard last night. Now that’s news of actual relevance.

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Engine Porn: Part II

Posted on May 9, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Dr. Mingo’s delightful photos bring to mind a Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight:

If you are a man you should rebuild an engine at least once before you die.

There are two exceptions to this rule:

  1. Men are exempted to the degree to which they live in a pre-industrial society. A Neolithic tribesman who spears gazelles for dinner gets a pass on piston engines. This exemption only extends until the man matches the technology of his world. A spear wielding tribesman had better know how to make a flint spear point or his peers will correctly deduce that he’s a loser.
  2. There are no other exemptions.

We live in a technologically advanced society. A world of plenty. Wealth beyond the greatest kings of earlier eras. If you’re a man and reap the benefits of technology without understanding how it came to pass you’re a free rider, a loser, an unaware leech upon the world which supports you. Harsh? Yes! I’ve been called everything from rude to evil. I’m cool with that. Rude or not; I’m right.

Our society is hindered and drained by profligate overfed chimps who can do nothing but operate devices made and maintained by their intellectual superiors. A man who has rebuilt an engine is the opposite. He has demonstrably mastered some of the skills which make civilization possible. Those who cannot fix and who cannot build are expensive costs our society must bear only because we’re too nice to drop them naked on an ice floe in Greenland like we should. Too many “men” deal only in theory and reside too comfortably in it’s infantilizing grasp; they can tear down but cannot build. You can’t swing a dead cat on a university campus without hitting a score of such permanent adolescents.

Engines deal in physical reality; stress and heat, torque and pressure. They are the cure to wishful thinking. The antidote to wanton Utopian idealism. A herd of cappuccino sippers might muse about a windmill powered Pruis revolution. Man who has rebuilt an internal combustion engine knows that ideas alone cannot force the unreal into existence.

A man who has rebuilt an engine also knows that he can build again what he has built before. He is the self reliant opposite of the flaccid suburban cube dweller who calls a tow truck on his smart phone when his tire goes flat. Lawyers and politicians and other useless hangers on make money out of bullshit. But they don’t make reality out of bullshit. Engines prove it. Not even the most skilled orator orchestrating world class Congressional level bullshit can talk an engine into running.

I’m not saying a man has to hurry. Fiscal and other circumstances might delay or accelerate the process. Many a farm boy has taken up the wrench at a young age simply because they’re surrounded by…parts. An impoverished fellow or one mired deep in an urban environment might not get his chance until his golden years. I myself have been dithering with a World War II era engine for years. Every time I try to work on it some distraction comes up that is invariably higher priority; the pipes froze, the kid is sick, the Canadians are amassing on the border, etc… This is a delay and nothing more. The engine will be done…eventually. It must be done…because I’m a man and it is my job to make an engine that didn’t run into one that does.

A.C.

Note #1: Some readers (if I had any) might ask why I mention only men. What about women? I have three answers for this:

  1. I’m not going to touch it with a ten foot pole.
  2. That’s apparently how the universe works.
  3. I’ve never actually met a woman who has rebuilt an engine. Ever.

Note #2: So you’re a man and you’ve built a computer. So what? That doesn’t count. I’ve done it too and it just isn’t comparable to pistons and gears. Unless you made the integrated circuit board in your garage you’re just assembling Legos that use electricity. It’s time to shave the goatee and get over yourself.

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight, Libertarian Outpost | Leave a comment

Engine Porn: Part I

Posted on May 8, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Rebuilding an engine is a big project. It’s an art and it’s a science. Some parts are fun. Others are a pain in the ass. There are about a thousand details to remember. There is risk: It’s all too easy to wind up with an unidentified mystery piece lying on the workbench. And there is glory: It could run so well that every time you fire it up you’ll feel like a God.

Why do it? Because…it’s what men do!

In celebration of this manly endeavor, I present the work of my good friend Dr. Mingo. Beautiful isn’t it? It’s a recently finished 345 cubic inch V-8 that he bored out to a 350. It’s basically stock save the 600 CFM 4 barrel carb and a Comp 260 RV camshaft. It’s installed in his 1975 International Scout II.

Al Gore weeps at night knowing that light rail will never ever be better than a V8.

All the scented candles in the world wont make Ralph Nader forget that he has not yet eliminated testosterone.

In a world where people habitually put their balls in a vice called car payments and drive Tupperware with wheels, Dr. Mingo has taken a better path! He shall be tooling down the highway in his freshly tuned Gaia killing anti-Gore mobile. Well done sir!

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Well Done Everyone

Posted on May 4, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I recently went “off grid” for a few days.  I do this often.  “Off grid” means something other than using a generator to power your TV.  It means turning the damn thing off.  It’s a retrenchment in reality.  Listen to the media too much and you’ll start to believe their shit smells like flowers.  Detachment: I heartily recommend it.

Unfortunately, going back “on grid” is always a shock.  No matter how short my absence the world somehow gets exponentially weirder.  Why?  I have no idea.

Big (usually stupid) things go down in short times.  The distance of a few days “off line” put it in contrast and show the hyperventilating yahoos for what they are.  Once I went on a canoe trip.  The fishing was fair and the weather was pleasant.  It was an average week with the sun rising in the east, water continuing to be wet, and all such things as they should be.  I could be forgiven for thinking it was a week like any other.  Yet the nation chose that moment to go apeshit.  I paddled away from a nation that had been seeped in sub-prime loans and unsustainable stock levels that everyone pretended was not a bubble.  It had been so for years and seemed likely to continue (despite my misgiving).  I came back to find a smoking crater where the stock market had been, the Fed was burning non-existent dollars in amounts that require a review of number theory, and inexplicably the government owned two of the three Detroit automakers.

Also, someone robbed my truck while I was gone.  A pox on them all!  I hope they starve to death while honest self supporting folks like me go elsewhere.  I was also pissed off about the truck.

I’d like to say the weirdness is an unusual event but it isn’t.  The last time I went “off line” I drove away from a world where so folks in Egypt were protesting with twitter.  When I came back the many “revolution nations” were a thousand mile geography lesson and we were involved in a “kinetic euphemism” in Libya.

This time when I came back the first thing someone said was “have you heard the news?” Oh shit!  What stupid thing had gone down this time!?!  Had the government nationalized the Twinkie industry?  Did they sell Ohio to France?  Set fire to Wall Street (again)?  Invade Botswana?  Bomb Timbuktu?  Start a war with Luxembourg?  Nothing in my imagination is ever as weird as whatever really happens.  Good grief…what had I not imagined?

Osama?  Dead?  Double tap delivered by one of our fine boys in uniform?

Whew!

On behalf of myself and any other Curmudgeons who aren’t plugged into the 24/7 news cycle I’d like to thank the entire universe (and especially the military) for staying on task and making good news happen.  For a brief time sanity has prevailed.  Tomorrow the foolishness will probably return but good news is always welcome.

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Phenology Update II: Climate Modeling Is Difficult

Posted on April 29, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I know the godlike geniuses at the University of East Anglia‘s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) can perfectly model the entire planet’s climate such that the science is settled.  But I’m just a curmudgeon so I’m having trouble with mixed phenological signals.

Arguments that spring isn’t fully engaged:

  • No redneck has sunk a truck.  This is a serious breach of etiquette!
  • I was running heavy equipment Sunday and discovered that if you dig deep enough the soil is still partially frozen.  Did I mention it’s cold up here?
  • A couple robins showed up at my house a few weeks ago.  Then it snowed and I haven’t seen the poor bastards since.
  • Burning restrictions haven’t been put in place.  The annoying public service announcements about “don’t play with fire” haven’t aired yet.  I’m stuck with an extra week of “don’t text message while driving” and I find them especially annoying.  We could get by with one “don’t do stupid shit” announcement and then permanently end the “bitching at citizens with their tax money” industry.

    God will smite you if you play with it…by “it” we mean cell phones.

Arguments that it’s spring:

  • The news recently reported that the poor overworked farmers can’t get into the fields and plow.  Thus causing untold misery and the downfall of humanity.
  • The price of gas, which always rises at the beginning of summer, is rising.  (Note to all Americans, either buy gas or don’t buy gas but shut the hell up.)
  • I got a brush pile burned.  Job well done.  I won’t be burning any fields this year.  (Note: I didn’t destroy civilization and I had a damn burn permit so don’t get all urban and Smokey Bear on my ass!)

Arguments that it’s summer:

  • Obama recently began the summertime “gas prices are too high pointing of fingers”.  He went so far as to launch the traditional “panel to investigate this thing which we don’t understand”.  It’s too soon!  This annual dog and pony show is usually scheduled for the dog days of summer.  How uncouth to change the congressionally established pattern.  The president is not supposed to start acting weird about the price of gas until the corn crop is well established!

    I reduced domestic oil production but I don’t understand supply and demand. I printed a metric shitload of dollars but inflation definitely has nothing to do with rising prices. I’m not even going to wait until August to be surprised about gas prices. Eat your goddamn rainbows and shut the hell up.

So what am I to do?  Mixed signals abound…especially Obama.  Didn’t someone explain that you can’t bitch about unexpected gas prices until the annual bitching about unexpected spring flooding is wrapped up?  Sheesh…do I have to make a chart?

Well there you have it.  Things are just in flux.  Those of you in the south will be forgiven for looking upon our confusion up north with pity and smug condescension.  If any patriotic soul would please sink their truck in a lake I would appreciate it.  Also would someone tell the president that he’s way off schedule?!?

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Aldo Loepold; On Farms

Posted on April 28, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other is that heat comes from the furnace.”  Aldo Loepold, Sand County Almanac

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Dodgem? No. Hitem!

Posted on April 26, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Barking Moonbat alerted me to the new and appalling concept of “dogems”.  A useless anti-word meant to imply that amusement park bumper cars are meant for dodging rather than collisions:

Bumping in bumper cars is banned at Butlins in the name of ‘health and safety’

You could be forgiven for thinking bumper cars were, well, for bumping.But seaside resorts are introducing their own strict Highway Code on the fairground ride because of health and safety concerns.

Highway code in a bumper car ride?  I think not!  Before I go off on a ramble I’ll add a few caveats:

  1. This happened in Britain.  Sorry to say it but Britain, like California, is lost territory in the war to hold on to reality.  I really miss the lost aura of Brit moxie.  What happened?
  2. I’m in America.  The cities and the coasts might be dissolving into helplessness but no amount of patchuli oil, veganism, self-loathing, and navel gazing will overcome our heartland’s innate love of harmless mayhem.  Our citizenry understands the entertainment value of destruction and it will not be denied.  How else do you explain professional wrestling, monster trucks, and Jerry Bruckheimer movies?  If you outlaw bumper cars in Coney Island, youths in Brooklyn might just start rampaging with real cars in the parking lot.  For we are both crazy…and equipped!  (Try that shit with light rail!)  Our delightful lack of sophistication might keep “dodgems” safely contained in the Euro-zone where they belong.

However, one must be ever vigilant.  I’m constructing my own bumper car entertainment venue called “hitem”.  It will follow tried and true American ideals.  From back when men were men and lawyers/politicians/community organizers were kept on short leashes and mocked hourly.  Here are the details of true American style “hitems”:

  • All vehicles are powered by 350 cubic inch V-8 engines.  They can burn unleaded, diesel, ethanol, bourbon, or uranium.  No hybrids allowed.
  • For some reason fuel injection is banned.  I don’t know why.  It’s a NASCAR thing and I live too far north to understand such matters.
  • Any vehicle that does not collide with another for a period of longer than thirty seconds is disqualified, seized, and sold on e-bay.  Proceeds will be used to buy beer for the winner.  In keeping with the all-American style of the event the beer will be canned tasteless swill.
  • Vehicles will have straight pipe headers that point to the sky.  Contestants will gain points for every bird overhead that dies from the shock waves.
  • It is said that Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way while Americans think a hundred years is a long time.  In keeping with our view of geography, the contest arena will be roughly the size of Luxemburg.
  • Contestants may choose to equip their vehicle with a safety cage.  Those who forgo a safety cage must pre-pay funeral expenses.
  • The start of each round will be announced by Dr. Deelgood:

    Two men enter! One man leaves!

  • This is the final and most important rule: any lawyers who wish to file liability suits will have to hand deliver the appropriate paperwork to the complaint department which is in the center of the arena.  I’m a sporting guy so I’ll give him a three step head start before I turn the other contestants loose.
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Orwell’s Telescreens Were Bush League

Posted on April 25, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I’m disgusted by, and opposed to, government intrusion into private lives.

“The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.” Wired

But Steve Jobs beat them to the punch:

“Apple’s iPhone software is storing a record of the travels of iPhone owners on their phones and on the computers used for iPhone synchronization, a practice that has renewed privacy concerns about mobile location tracking.

The data, consisting of latitude and longitude coordinates and corresponding timestamps, is stored unencrypted and, apparently, without conspicuous notification.” InformationWeek

There are two parts to this story.  The first is as follows:

Duh…

Several years ago cell phones started getting good at knowing where they were.  Anyone with a pulse knows that “secrets” stored on a computer are always at risk of  winding up on the front page of a newspaper.  I assumed that sooner or later there would be a big media circus event where a cell phone tracked a criminal or a celebrity (or both) doing something bizarre, disturbing, criminal, or all three.  I gleefully pictured something funny; a corrupt Senator’s cell phone tracks him to a Nicaraguan Bordello, the data gets cracked by a teenager in New Jersey who blabs it everywhere, and in some hilarious turn of events it turns out to be a disturbingly kinky orgy involving  Ralph Nader, Rush Limbaugh’s Neighbor’s Attorney, seven kangaroos, and Charles Manson.  Come on folks you know the 2012 election season is coming and stories like that always liven things up.

I’ll admit I’m smug about cell phones and their legitimate threats to privacy.  I keep cell phones contained and deliberately dis-empowered.  Electronically tracking me is possible but it’s a pain in the ass.  If you want to spy on me I expect at least the effort of a gumshoe peering at me over a newspaper in a dingy cafe…possibly with a Sam Spade voice over and a soundtrack.  A database on a banker’s iDevice is so…lame.

Your's truly (pictured at left) explaining the significance of privacy to a cell phone salesman.

Defeating Steve Job’s evil plans are easy (at the basic…non-spy levels).  I rarely carry my cell phone, it’s usually off, and I don’t give out the number.  I only grudgingly answer the damn thing .  (In fact I only grudgingly answer any phone anywhere…I’m friendly that way.)  Oh yeah…and I don’t buy shit that does stuff I can’t control…which pretty much rules out every Apple product ever conceived.

I have a second, unexpected, reaction to this story:

Wow…

Did you notice that the US Government is still busily chipping away at the constitution.  Legal wrangling with those boring squares in the Supreme Court and whining that warrants (and other limits on Government spying) are such a hindrance to the noble Government that does so much good work.

Is Apple doing that?  Nope.  They just built the evil machine, sold it to people, and weren’t really all that secretive about it at all.  Talk about balls of steel!  They even mention the “super secret tracking feature” in their EULA.  Basically Apple said “we’re making this thing which could track you and give your worst enemy access to whatever skeletons are in your closet.  You’re so goddamn dumb you’ll pay for it, charge it up, stuff it in your pocket and carry it around.  We’re awesome and Orwell was a pussy!”

Steve Jobs demands formal attire at his secret lair.

I’m rather impressed with Apple.  Orwell’s 1984 postulates hell on earth but he never imagined people would wait in line to pay for a telescreen that they would have to carry around everywhere they went.  Apple is truly staffed by visionaries that are totally willing to look at any ethical line and say “we’d better cross that”.  Why shouldn’t they?  It’s their product, they can make it do anything they want…up to and including an app which tazers anyone who tries to install Linux.  Unlike a government, when a company screws with their customers all I can think is that customers are volunteers that brought it upon themselves.

Maybe the Apple should just release a free app for iPhones called “Orwell” and wait for criminals and innocents alike to voluntarily upload it.

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When Mind Boggling Isn’t An Exaggeration

Posted on April 21, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

mind-bog·gling (mndbglng)

adj. Informal Intellectually or emotionally overwhelming

A common theory is that humans just aren’t good at comprehending numbers which are very big or very small.  My experience with people (nearly all of which are human) bears this out.

Humans count in their head like this; one, two, three… a whole shitload.  Some arbitrary number constitutes the point where an individual’s brain defaults to “a whole shitload“.  Once a person reaches that level of confusion, it’s hard for them to go beyond it.  Attempts to differentiate between “a whole shitload” and “a whole mountain of shitloads” is an uphill battle.  If you’ve ever spent an hour trying to explain the real world difference between a thousand and a million you can sympathize.  It doesn’t digest easily and I’m not among those few who are eloquent enough to get past the boredom factor.

Which brings me to the National debt.  It used to be a shitload.  I was worried.  Everyone who understood it was worried too.  (Some folks have kept their concerns to themselves for personal or political reasons.  Others have employed self delusion or willful ignorance.  Regardless of public posture, those who understood the magnitude of the debt, without exception, knew it was serious.)

I knew it was going to get worse.  You probably did too.  It did get worse.  It happened (and is happening) as the Baby Boomers retire; more or less on schedule.

Something else has happened.  The debt crossed a Rubicon of scale.  It went to a whole different dimension of huge.  It is pegged at new and utterly unimaginable levels that have never before existed in any place, in any time, for any society, since the dawn of time.  Read that sentence back to yourself; “levels of debt that have never before existed in any place, in any time, for any society, since the dawn of time”.  You may disagree with my politics but that sentence is absolutely true.  The number really has dwarfed all that came before it.  Folks can try to pretend it doesn’t matter but they can’t pretend this has happened before.  Phrases like “largest ever in humanity’s span of existence” are not exaggeration.

There is no way make this into good news and true statements start to sound like exaggeration.  All because the numbers are so inconceivably huge.  The debt is so large that it is literally “mind boggling“.  The mind has difficulty comprehending numbers in the trillions.  Set aside politics and you’ll realize that’s what “mind boggling” means.  Your brain (like mine) can’t easily handle trillions of anything; debt, grains of sand, stars in the sky, etc…

Which brings me to an apt description of the debt gleaned from Monster Hunter Nation.  (I encourage you to go there and read the whole thing.)

“Saying that this is the same old same old, is like saying that gophers digging up your lawn is the same level of disaster as Krakatoa. Over the last couple of years we’ve reached a whole new level of crazy. Our spending has gone insane. We’re spending more money, faster, than all of mankind, throughout all of recorded human history. Economists aren’t sure what’s going to happen, because this has never happened before. Ever. On Earth. We’ve strayed into strange new territory here and there are many possible outcomes if we don’t stray the hell back out. And don’t for a second think that any of those possible outcomes are remotely good. No. They range somewhere between the Great Depression and Mad Max.”

He also added a bit of wisdom about Social Security.  Everyone younger than 50 should know this.  I do.  You probably do.  I’m posting it for those few souls who still cling desperately to the false belief that Social Security will be there when it wont.  If Kieth Richards can live to be old it’s possible for anyone.  If you’re young and count entirely on Social Security a retirement of eating cat food in a cold impoverished hovel between shifts at the coal mine is not out of the question:

“I had a discussion the other day with some relatively intelligent folks about social security. The idea of cutting benefits or moving the retirement age shocks them. “How unfair! But I’ve paid into this my whole life!”

Yep. You sure did. You got lied to and screwed over by evil political opportunists. Deal with it…”

“…No matter how hard you wish, no matter how hard you hope, no matter how much compassion you can fit in your stupid compassionate heart, no matter how much you happen to like some program that helps somebody do something wonderful… math never lies and interest never sleeps. Caring don’t pay the bills…”

“…if you’re not already old, and you’re counting on seeing money from Social Security, you’re a sucker.”

Enough doom and gloom; I always like to add a ray of hope.  Here goes; “just because something is mind boggling to everybody else doesn’t mean you have to play their game”.  Even in the Great Depression, many wise souls got by.  Most of us have sufficient freedom to maneuver out of harm’s way.  We are not required to make other people’s delusions true.  Train that monkey brain you were born with to overcome mind boggling foolishness and ride it out as best you can.  Leave the “deer in headlights” weakness to those who chose that path.  I’ll be rooting for your success and I hope you’ll be rooting for mine.

(Hat tip to Cold Fury who linked to the original article.)

Posted in Where vocabulary goes to die | 4 Comments

That’s Why They Fought And Died…

Posted on April 21, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Hat tip to The Agitator for this video.

Warning…watch every minute.  The last few seconds have the best firearms snark ever captured on film.

Posted in Amusing Videos | Leave a comment