Quote of the Day

She's madder'n a hornet because she has to appear on a blog post that has nothing to do with her other than she's wearing six kinds of makeup including Revlon Luxurious Color Smoky Crayon in Black Smoke.

If working retail has taught me anything, it’s dread. Dread of that one customer that ruins your day. Dread of being yanked around from one project to another. Dread of having your day off hijacked. Dread of suddenly realizing that you’ve just wasted another chunk of your life on people and things you not only don’t care about, but that you loathe. Dread that colors all holidays, all pleasures, all you see and hear, blacker than the blackest crayon in a depressed box of sad crayons. - LeeAnn on Look! A Baby Wolf!

A box of sad crayons. How depressing. The quote is good, the whole story is better.

Just What Do You Think You Are Doing?

A forgotten profession: In the days before alarm clocks were widely affordable, people like Mary Smith of Brenton Street were employed to rouse sleeping people in the early hours of the morning. They were commonly known as ‘knocker-ups’ or ‘knocker-uppers’. Mrs. Smith was paid sixpence a week to shoot dried peas at market workers’ windows in Limehouse Fields, London. Photograph from Philip Davies’ Lost London: 1870-1945.

Yeah, right. She's actually the neighborhood nuisance going around and harassing good, law-abiding folks. She shoots beans at their windows. By the time they come to the window to see what is going on she has turned and is shuffling down the street all innocent-like. What? Me shoot peas at windows? That's a laugh, ducky! Now be off with you! 

    Via Posthip Scott. At first I thought she was shooting little balls of paint at a train passing by on an overpass because the picture is from an actual trainspotter.

Battle In The Room - The Trailer

Pretty amazing what you can accomplish when you are stuck inside for three days because it's raining.

Major Crimes

My wife and I watched The Closer with Kyra Sedgwick who was a doll, well at least she was when the series started. Now we are watching Major Crimes with Mary McDonnell who is not. Matter of fact she was a major pain in the ass (is haradin the right word?) in her supporting role as some kind of internal affairs bureaucrat in The Closer. Her character (Captain Sharon Raydor) has not changed one wit, but she is perfect in her role as the head of the Major Crimes squad in the Los Angeles Police Department. We watched two episodes this evening from Frontier on-demand and they were both excellent. All the standard elements of a good television cop show were there, but the confrontations between intimately involved characters were exceptional. Captain Raydor is having to deal with her irresponsible semi-ex-husband. The parents of the confused gender teenager get to drag all their baggage across the stage for everyone to admire. I thank the lord that I don't have those kind of problems, or I would if I believed in the lord. Can you be thankful without having to thank someone in particular? And why is spell-check having trouble with Los Angeles?
    In the photo that's Dectective Andy Flynn (Tony Denison) on the left and Leutenant. Louie Provenza (G.W. Bailey) on the right.
    The episodes we watched this evening made me really glad I'm not a cop. I would not want to have to deal with the kind of situations they run into, and I suspect they were probably sanitized versions of the real thing. Of course, these were exceptional stories. The run of the mill stuff shows up on COPS.

Sebring Progress

  Older son and I got the engine back in the Sebring this evening. It took some ... I dunno .... force? Slight of hand? Careful engineering? Engine supported by an engine hoist, lowered to mate with the front suspension. Tripod joint came semi-loose. Luckily we were able to re-engage it without having to open anything up. Nothing like trying to line up a couple of axles dangling from a 500 pound block with a couple of hubs floppily attached to a 300 pound subframe. Somehow we managed. With a floor jack under the front end and a broom stick under the back end we rolled the whole assembly under the car and then jacked it up as far as we could go. It wasn't quite enough, so we had to reattach the engine hoist to haul the engine up the last few inches. We got the motor mounts bolted together and realized we hadn't engaged the steering column, so we had to undo the bolts in the left hand suspension tower to allow that side to drop down far enough to allow us to fit the telescoping sections of the steering column together.
    It was kind of weird working with that much weight. When everything is stable and still it all seems fine, but when you start raising and lowering things you start to realize just how much weight you are working with, and it's a bunch. Gravity is just the weirdest thing.

2 ROUND TRIP AIRLINE TICKETS WORTH UP TO $1,299.00 TODAY!

Got a form letter in the mail this week with this too-good-to-be-true offer. My wife quizzed them when they called, and didn't uncover anything bogus. It's just a new travel agency trying to drum up business. We have gotten a few nice perks when traveling, so while it sounds bogus, there is a slim possibility that it's legit. Besides, what else am I doing on Sunday afternoon?
   But now they have called back twice, so my suspicions are aroused. A quick search on the internet turns up this post on DECEPTOLOGY. They will give the free tickets AFTER you buy a membership in their travel club, and while it may seem like a good deal while the salesman is pouring snake oil in your ears, it is not. So what am I doing on Sunday afternoon? Maybe sit down with a trashy Science Fiction novel. Shoot, I might just while away the time drinking beer and watching pro-football with my buds, if I had any buds who watched pro-football. I will not be listening to snake oil Sam or snake oil Sally.

The End Of The World

Skeeter Davis - The End Of The World
    As I remember it. Dustbury puts up a post and mentions this tune. I don't recognize the title, but when I listen to that version I do. I mean I can hear the original in my head. I look up the original artist.and I find this version, which is a pale and weak imitation of the one I remember.
    I wonder how much of the difference is due to munging by the studio, and how much was just due to having an orchestra behind her, if that's what it was. Her twang is also less pronounced on this one. Coaching? Soundboard magic? Or did she just use a different accent on the TV version?
    There are a bunch of copies of this tune on YouTube, but the first few I tried were unembeddable because of the spoilsports at SME. That might be why there is ten seconds of silence at the beginning of this one.