A W.O.M.

That's how a previous coworker referred to Lamborghini many years ago.  I asked what she meant.  She said, "A waste of money."

Opinions vary.  I'm a car guy.  Mine's different.  On the other hand some schmuck of a buyer just wasted a small boat load of money on this.

68,000 pounds to buy essentially some tires, a radiator, a couple of fenders, a headlamp, and some seats.

In other car sale news.  The government of British Columbia seized and sold a Ferrari Scudiera and a BMW M6 when the owners were caught street racing.  The drivers were caught driving in excess of 200kph (124 mph).  It's a pretty excessive law in my opinion but do the crime, do the time.

Bah Humbug

Apparently my brother's work place keeps the Christmas and Halloween decorations in the same box.  I'd guess that next year they will think twice before asking him to decorate the tree.

25th Anniversary

The first Calvin and Hobbes.

Dude, Where's My Health Insurance?

Meet Andy Harris.  Andy is an incoming freshman Republican House member from Maryland.  He campaigned strongly against "Obamacare."  He wanted to keep government out of the health care business.  During orientation he raised quite a stink because he wasn't going to get government health insurance until next year.

The thing is, Andy's right.  He shouldn't have to go months with out health insurance.  Neither should I. Neither should you. Neither should anyone in the richest society the planet has ever known.

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Purity

One's just right.  Two's too many.  Three's not enough
The Calc Teacher and I  were having a good dinner out Saturday night.  When we arrived we had to wait about 20 minutes before our table was ready.  Not a problem for us.  We just popped into the bar for a couple drinks.

Now I don't drink them often but before a good dinner I enjoy a martini.  I ordered a "Tangueray martini.  Dirty, dry, no olives."  The bartender asked if I wanted it straight up or on the rocks.

Personally I feel the only martini is a gin martini.  I accept a martini made with vodka.  Honestly, it's hard to argue with James Bond.  I have issues with all these flavored drinks people call martinis but that's the way drinking culture has become.  Cosmopolitans, appletinis and the like are just mixed drinks served in a martini glass.

But on the rocks!??!?  No, no, no!  Unacceptable.  100%, completely unacceptable.  Anyone ordering a martini on the rocks should be served a glass of coke and sent to the kiddie table.

Excitement in the 'Hood

Last Tuesday there was a stabbing and a shooting. It was also the last night of Fall volleyball so we were at the sponsor bar late and didn't get home until after it was all done. I didn't know until I saw the article in the paper above.

My brother, who crashed at my place that night, called me Wednesday to ask about it. He said there were flashing lights and a man on a walkie talkie on our street until after 3AM. That was long after the shooting and my place is 3 to 4 blocks away. Plus, it didn't make sense for fire engines, which my brother saw, to be at a shooting.

Yesterday while driving down a nearby alley looking for parking I found out what he saw was all about.





I'm not really sure what kind of cars those were. Click on the pics for larger versions.

Do It In Person

The Calc Teacher and I decided we are going to do the classic date tomorrow: dinner and a movie. After throwing around a couple options we decided on a restaurant. The restaurant has an online reservation system so I hit that up. We wanted to be around 7PM, one of the most popular times. On line I was offered 5:00, 5:30, 8:30, or 9:00.

I get in touch with her and we decide 5:30 is the most acceptable time. It takes only a couple minutes to do but the 5:30 time is gone. So I grab the 5:00. Once the reservation was in I called the restaurant directly and asked what they had available.

Receptionist: "We can get you in at 7:00 in the side dining room or 7:30 in the main dining room."
LPCardsFan: "We'll take the 7:30."

Stupid computer.

The Final Line Up For 2010

Second place. The first loser. That was us.

This past Saturday was the playoffs for the fall softball league. We went in as the 3rd seed. We beat the 2nd place seed by slaughter rule (10+ run lead in the 5th inning). We then played the first place team and lost by slaughter rule. The picture above is the final handshake after the championship game.

Next I get to plan the team winter party. We'll probably do it in January at our sponsor bar, Lincoln Station.

Next spring I will have to plan for a couple core players being unavailable but for now its time to enjoy the off season and weekends with no set plans.

In Need of Good News?

Has the time change given you the blues?
Have the election results got you down?
Does the impending holiday season depress you?

Well, then, let me put a little hop back in your step.  ESPN has finally - FINALLY - fired Joe Morgan!

Proving My Ignorance. Again.

I play trivia at a bar on Monday nights with a couple of friends.  Last night, the half time question was, "Name the seven movie for which Dustin Hoffman received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor."

I said, "I'm only about 80% sure I know who Hoffman is but he was in Tootsie and Arthur, Arthur.  Right?" 

Um, no.  He was only in one of those.  It turns out I've never seen any of the seven movies from beginning to end.  Only one of the movies have I seen any parts of on cable.

What We've Forgotten

Last night on cable there were a set of show titled "Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome." Two points from the show stood out to me.

The first was the aqueducts that supplied water to Rome. They are a fairly famous part of Ancient Rome. They were designed to supply clean, potable water to the great city. According to the show, the water was split into three aquifers: one for the public fountains, one for the public baths, and one for private residences of people of means. The people receiving private water paid a tax to support the aqueducts and aquifers.

The second was the roads built to support the empire. The Romans recognized that a maintained and expanding infrastructure was critical to functioning and expansion of their empire. It was both a emblem of their power and a means to continuing it. As related in the show, when Rome received intelligence of barbarians at the gate in Gaul they Legions marched to meet the threat at a clip of 20 miles in a 7 hour march. That would not be possible with out the roads.

I couldn't decouple those stories from the election this past week. And really, our entire political discourse over the past couple of decades. We've forgotten - or at least taken for granted - that our society's power and prosperity is reliant on the public works and infrastructure. It isn't just roads and sewers that matter but they are the basic starting point. Police and fire protection, the education of the populace, the middle class safety net, the regulations that enforce private contracts, and many other government programs are vital to the functioning of a modern society.

There is one political party in this country that is trying to support the basic infrastructure of this country and one that is not. The party that is leading us to disaster won this past week.

UPDATE:  Closer to home, the suburb of Prospect Heights has laid off 1/3 of it's police force.  

Captain Hook

George Lee Anderson, b. Feb. 22, 1934. d. Nov. 4, 2010.

My vague memories of Sparky start with him as a manager of the Detroit Tigers in the 1980s. He is 6th on the all times win list for Major League Baseball managers and won 3 World Series and 5 pennants. Although he spent more time in Detroit, Sparky is most famously the skipper of the Big Red Machine. With Cincinnati he won two of his rings and introduced and popularized the 5 man starting rotation. In a matter of a year or two is was adopted across baseball.

A truly deserving member of the Hall Of Fame and a loss to baseball. So long, Sparky.

Kick Out The Jams, MF

Scrolling through the list of events for Nov. 4 on wikipedia I saw that Fred Smith died on this day in 1994. Smith was married to and collaborated with Patti Smith and was the inspiration for the Sonic Youth, named after him.

It stuck out to me because he was a guitarist for the MC5, hard rock band credited with being an early entrant into the punk scene. One of the exes, The Drummer, introduced me to the MC5 when her band opened for Wayne Kramer. Brother Wayne was a founding member of the band and was on a solo tour at the time.

Now THAT is how you protest!

I don't ever want to piss this guy off.

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Election 2010 Anecdotes

Overall, a thoroughly predicted yet thoroughly depressing out come.  I'm hoping Quinn holds on to retain the governorship.  With congressional redistricting coming next year having the Democrats in charge will be at least somewhat of a consolation prize.

• I was voter number 14 at my precinct when I showed up at 6:40AM yesterday.  I never in my life thought I would be voting a straight party line ballot but yesterday I came damn close.  I deviated for Cook County Assessor - I voted for Claypool - and for the Water Reclamation District - I voted a straight Green Party line there.  I mean, Green Party.  Water Reclamation.  It just makes sense.
• On that note, there is such a thing as too much democracy.  Why the hell do we vote for the Water Reclamation District?  What could possibly be political about sewage treatment?  Don't even get me started on voting for judges.
• A friend who lives a few precincts over from me voted after work.  He got there a little at 6PM, in the last hour of voting.  His precinct has roughly 3,000 registered voters.  He was only the 237th voter that deigned to show up.   If this is typical of the city then Mark Kirk will have a lot of thank you notes to write to Chicago Democratic voters that stayed home.
• Another friend of mine who lives near DePaul sent this email yesterday about his voting experience:

  Older couple (50's-ish) take the booths to either side of me, and the guy keeps walking behind me over to the woman and reminding her of things. After the third trip I asked him (not quietly either, polling place is a school gymnasium) if he would like to switch booths so that he could make sure she voted the way that he wanted. He stayed put after that."

• On Chicago Public Radio's 848 this morning the first caller said (and I'm paraphrasing), "I'm a life long, liberal Democrat. I fully support President Obama. I thoroughly support a single payer option for national health care. And I voted for Mark Kirk."
  
  Dear, caller, Fuck You!
  

With that, I'm closing political talk for a while longer. Tonight, The Calc Teacher is coming into the city. We're going to make a nice pot of beef and vegetable soup, get some crunchy bread, and drink a bottle of red.

Boots: A Good Investment

Nothing makes a girl as happy as when you tell her, "I think I need to go buy some new shoes."

OK, there might be a few other phrases that will get her heart all a flutter faster but this one has to rate right up there. That's what I told the Calc Teacher on Sunday. There were still two hours until the little costumed candy extortionists started to appear on her front stoop. Within minutes were on our way to Oak Brook Shopping Center.

I was thinking a pair of brown shoes for work. Also, maybe, I should take a look at black shoes because my current pair were definitely in their last miles. The Calc Teacher, who has the stereotypical plethora of shoes for each season, had different designs on my feet.



Before I could get those we had to deal with the embarrassment of my socks. Now, I'm not that guy, but I was behind on my laundry so I did have on a older, religious pair that day. New socks were purchased and changed into before we did shoe shopping.

As best I can tell it is not with in the laws of nature for her to be in the vicinity of that many shoes and not look for herself. And that's fine by me. There was one pair she has "had her eye on for while." We detoured to the women's shoes for her to try them on. Oh, and there were these pair of boots she noticed last time. Why not have the saleslady bring those out too.

She tells me these are the exact ones but it is close.
Apparently there were little studs along the bottom.
I don't remember. Trust The Girl when it comes to shoes.

When the saleslady saw the boots she picked out we were suddenly the sole focus of her attention. When she couldn't find them immediately she came out to make sure we were still there and explained that her manager was hunting them down right now.

It was then that The Calc Teacher figured out why. When she turned the display pair over she saw the price tag: $450.00. It was the second time shoe shopping had her heart a fluttering that day. This time out of nervousness and not excitement.

The boots were retrieved and she walked around in them for a few minutes. Later she told me kept hoping they would start to feel bad on her feet. Never happened. She described it as walking on feathers. While helping her put on the shoes the saleslady gave multiple ideas of how fashionable they were, how attractive they were, and suggested different ways of wearing them. While the Calc Teacher was on her little walkabout the sales pitch continued.

I was given the pitch that buying a boot of that quality was actually a good investment. If I were to buy a cheaper pair of boots, say $60 or $70, I would be replacing them every year. These would last for a very long time. The whole time I'm nodding my head sagely and biting my lip to not laugh at her pitch.

Apparently, it was "obvious" we were "married" or at least I was the sugar daddy. Who knew shoe shopping could be so damn funny.

Mount Merapi

(Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)
For a short period of time I used to look around the web for pictures of erupting volcanoes. They remain a fascination of mine. The unbelievable power of the Earth revealed.  This picture of Mount Merapi is one of the coolest I've seen.

Mount Merapi in Indonesia began erupting this week.

Do You Know Where Your Polling Place Is

Google has an app for finding your polling location. Here's the Illinois Link.

It's Election Day. It is your civic duty. It is your Constitutional right. Go vote. Just ask yourself, Who are you voting for? And be happy you don't live in The Koran Bible Belt, where you can't buy booze today.

No more political links today. I have a scheduled post coming up. It'll give the curious another insight in to The Calc Teacher and me.

What's Good For General Motors

It turns out that the bailout of GM two years ago is paying dividends.  It may not exactly be a money maker but GM is profitable and is investing money in a new plant in Michigan.  The bailout- or a structured, gov't insured bankruptcy - allowed GM and Chrysler to continue to directly employ tens of thousands of employees.  Indirectly, through parts suppliers, delivery people, and businesses supported by those workers, 100s of thousands have remained employed.

Jonathan Cohn lists some of the "government interferences" that Obama and Congress took as part of the bailout. Most of those were to force the automakers to keep jobs in the U.S.A. One of the key reasons the automakers are profitable though is almost a throw away line in Cohn's article, "and, if you believe the automotive magazines, they are making good cars, too."

This is not a trivial point and Cohn links to the JD Power satisfaction survey. Yes, Toyota was hurt by the bad press and pour corporate response to the recalls but also because they had a lot of recalls. As an anecdote, I have a friend who grew up driving Nissans and Hondas. He makes enough money that he's not severely limited to buying cheap cars. He's and his wife own 2 Chevys and he had 2 before they were married. Making a good product breeds loyalty and repeat business. Repeat business is a key factor in profitability.

As Cohn goes into in more detail, the government assistance to General Motors and Chrysler remains imminently unpopular. Personally, it is not the kind of action I would want to see the government take in normal times but we weren't in normal times. Still the evidence - and it is not all in yet - is that the government assistance saved 100s of thousands of jobs and maintained a domestic car industry. Those people and those companies continued to buy goods and services that helped keep more people employed. It most assuredly lessened the economic damage that otherwise would have been done in this country.

The GOP opposed it at the time it at the time and rail against to this day.

Election day is tomorrow.

Making Their Way The Only Way They Know How

The fact that the 01 is duct tape makes this extra awesome.
Originally uploaded by Fazoom
I found a link to this in Balloon Juice comments. Quite awesome.