For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge

My boy has started to use a fork when he eats. In fact, he pretty much requires it before he'll start anymore. If you've ever been around someone who is 18 mos old, you may have noticed that they don't necessarily ennunciate all the time.

Basically, this means that the MPAA would probably rate the first minute of dinner at our house NC-17. Seriously. It sounds like someone is in a room beating on Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams's thumbs with a BFH. I'm not talking about "Daddy Day Care" or "Mrs. Doubtfire" here. I'm talking about Delirious, Raw, and Robin Williams standup from the first half of the 80's. Lenny Bruce and Andrew "Dice" Clay's career are both wincing in their graves.

We really, really need to work on the "R" sound.

Ryan

Building valuable street cred

So, my boy likes Pumpkins. Like, he likes them ALOT. So whenever he sees them, he yells: "Punk-INS." That's all well and good, and to be truthful, it's damn cute.

However.

Sometimes it sounds like he's saying: "Punk-ASS" I'm really thankful that we live in a small town where this sort of thing isn't going to start some sort of turf war. Someday I'm sure we'll be somewhere where he will see a "Punk-INS" and a "Punk-ASS" at the same time. Then, when the PA looks at me and says "What did he say?" I can say "Pumpkin." But Oli and I will know the truth.

Here's to all you punkasses,

Ryan

Snake Oil

The internet has made it ever-so-easy for people to get conned.(Thanks, Al Gore!) The thing iS, it has also made it really easy for people to completely debunk the con-men in a rather public forum. So, those of us who know a thing or two take great pride in doing just that. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm some heartless a-hole (I am, but I don't want you to think that I am) who goes around picking on people. But when some hoser shows up and tries to sell people a can of marbles for $150 each, I get a little miffed.

And just to set the record straight: There are no miracles in the automotive industry. The closest thing they've ever had (aside from the assembly line) was the invention of the catalytic converter. There were no "secret carburetors" in the 60's that would allow a Lincoln Town Car weighing every bit of 3 tons with a 400 cubic inch big block to get 80 mpg. To be honest, the idea itself is ludicrous, and I'm sorry if you or someone you love has believed it. If someone is trying to sell you some "magic device" that "detroit doesn't want you to know about," guess what? THEY'RE LYING.

The bottom line: Don't buy snake oil. If you are an idiot, you need to find someone you trust so that you can bounce ideas off of them before you go spending your hard-earned cash on some Tornado Fuel Saver. If you're not sure if you're an idiot, ask a friend, unless they're an idiot. Probably a good rule of thumb is: If you're not sure if you're an idiot, but you're SURE your friend is an idiot, you're probably an idiot too. You guys tend to travel in packs. (I think you have to carpool because you wasted all your money on The Turbonator.) I'd ask my friends to prove it to you, but they're all idiots.

Anyway, I'm late for my carpool.

Ryan

Lucrative Business

Having responded to several other blogs this week, I have discovered that my son must have a secret contract with blogger.com. He babbles incessantly, and they record his ramblings and turn them into "word verification" phrases.

I have no idea what he's doing with the money.

slkejee,

Ryan

New Kid on the Block

Rocco's Repartee

Who does this guy think he is? Only posting for a month, and he's already got a plethora of high-quality, thought-provoking posts?

Seriously, read it, you'll like it.

Welcome, Rocco.

Hangin' Tough,
Ryan

Finally

I finally broke 50 mpg in my Jetta. It took almost a year of doing things to try to improve my fuel economy. I used to average about 42 mpg, now I average about 48. My all-time high for one tank is now 52.33 mpg. Here are the things I have done to improve my economy:

1. Slow Down! (I try to drive 55 mph everywhere I go.)
2. Use premium fuel. This is NOT important on a gas engine unless your engine is designed for it. It is VERY important in a diesel.
3. Switched to a lightweight, low-friction engine oil. (Elf Evolution CRV 0w30)
4. Advanced my injection timing.
5. Monitor tire pressure, and run max psi (51 psi)
6. Use low rolling resistance tires. (I run Michellin Energy MXV4)
7. Don't use air conditioning in the summer.

So there you have it. If EVERYONE could do things to improve their fuel economy this much, we could stop importing oil from the Middle East. (of course, we really CAN'T do that, but we COULD import less)

Just something to think about.

Frugally,
Ryan

Blogerati

I heard(saw) the term "Blogerati" this morning. How come I'm not hip to this new elitist categorization. Hmmm. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my sorry carcas hasn't posted to my blog in a long, long time. Man, I suck.

R

Slight Difference

SWEET! The composer works in Firefox for me now. I don't have to write in HTML

Now, what I was really here to say:

Flowers that grow perennially are MUCH different than flowers that grow perianally. So, always make sure before you stop and smell the roses.

Also, since some asshat posted spam to my comments section, I have turned on "word verification" which should, in most cases, distinguish legitmate comments from machine implemented ones.

Later,
Ryan

Snooze Playlists

Every morning, I snooze my alarm about 6 times. During those 6 brief interludes of local FM madness, I hear snippets of songs drifting through my semi-conciousness. The rest of the day, I hear songs in my head that I'm pretty sure I heard on the radio that morning. This is complicated by the fact that our local radio station plays lots of '80's tunes that I also listened to when I was a kid. It is FURTHER complicated by the fact that I'm pretty sure that the radio station plays the songs on a multi-day rotation... meaning that every 9 days or so I'm hearing the same songs at the same time. "Tainted Love" and "Don't you Forget About Me" are floating around in there with the likes of "Karma Chameleon." It really messes up my mental Jukebox.

Wake me up before you go-go,

Ryan

The Quintessence of Why I Read Neal Stephenson.

Here is an excerpt from a book called "The System of the World" by Neal Stephenson. It captures just about everything that I like about him. "The System of the World" is the third volume in a series called "The Baroque Cycle" Highly Recommended.

From page 457: "In an apt demonstration of the principle of Relativity, as propounded by Galileo, the bawdy platter , and the steaming morsels thereon, remained in the same position vis-a-vis Daniel, and hence were, in principle, just as edible, as if he had been seated before, and the pies had been resting upon, a table that was stationary with respect to the fixed stars. This was true despite the fact that the carriage containing Daniel, Isaac Newton, and the pies was banging around London. Daniel guessed that they were swinging round the northern limb of St. Paul's Churchyard, but he had no real way of telling; he had closed the window-shutters, for the reason that their journey to Bedlam would take them directly across the maw of Grub Street, and he did not want to read about today's adventure in all tomorrow's papers.

Isaac, though better equipped than Daniel or any other man alive to understand Relativity, shewed no interest in his pie -- as if being in a state of movement with respect to the planet Earth rendered it Not a Pie. But as far as Daniel was concerened, a pie in a moving frame of reference was no less a pie than one that was sitting still: position and velocity, to him, might be perfectly interesting physical properties, but they had no bearing on, no relationship to those properties that were essential to pie-ness. All that mattered to Daniel were relationships between his, Daniel's, physical state and that of the pie. If Daniel and Pie were close together both in position and velocity, then pie-eating became a practical, and tempting, possibility. If Pie were far asunder from Daniel or moving at a large relative velocity -- e.g., being hurled at his face -- then its pieness was somehow impaired, at least from the Daniel frame of reference. For the time being, however, these were purely Scholastic hypotheticals. Pie was on his lap and very much a pie, no matter what Isaac might think of it."

excerpted from "The System of the World" - Neal Stephenson

Bonus points were scored here for:

1. Using the words vis-a-vis and asunder.
2. Being two complete paragraphs of digression.
3. Relativity was NEVER so funny. Ever.

Pick up one of his books and start reading. You won't be disappointed.

Ryan