ZOOM-ZOOM

ZOOM-ZOOM....went to my first Ride and Drive this weekend with Mazda at Alameda Point. It was held at the site of the old alameda Naval air station/airport. HUGE area with a Gorgeous view of the city....great weather that day too. I absolutely wanted to win the Bose Stereo so I took all three driving events very seriously. There were alot of people participating (several thousand) representing every demongraphic. I felt I had a huge advantage given my extreme competitiveness, my competition (alot of yahoos and folks with NO experience in high performance driving), and my modest high performance driving skill.

Let me breakdown the events. The first event was timed. You had 2 chances to drive an autocross course in EXACTLY 27 seconds...not over, not under. I was immediately at a disadvantage. As I waited in line, I saw couples driving together where one would give a countdown as the other negotiated the course. They would run it as fast as they could and slow down as they reached the finish line....Cheaters! I practiced counting in my head, "One hippopatumus, Two hippopatumas...." before I ran the course. When I got in the car for my first try, I got confused with the rediculous gearshift in the Mazda 5 and accidently left it in manual mode...and it was stuck in first all the way through! After hitting the rev-limiter 5 times and forgetting to count at all, I made it across the finish in 33 seconds...ABYSSMAL!! I got in line again and was determined to absolutely destroy the course. On my next try, I got into a Mazda 3 and made sure I got it in the right gear (automatics suck BTW). I started counting as soon as I crossed the green line and took off like a madman. Though I practiced counting out loud anticipating and attempting to be mindful of the effect of my body's excitement, I succumbed to the adrenalin and unknowingly counted much faster than was accurate. I raced across the finish thinking I got through quite close to 27 but instead crossed the checkered flag in 23 seconds....I blew it...but at least the attendent gave me kudos for my exceptional time.

So I moved onto a course that challenges you to "hit the apex". You had 2 trys to drive the course attempting to get your left tire exactly 12 inches from 6 sets of yellow apex cones...when exactly 12 inches from the cone, you get 2 points, anywhere from 6-18, 1 point....EASY!! I was optimistic about my chances given my experience in hitting apexes on a road course. The first time through I got a dismal 2 points...WHAT!! I was perplexed and attempted to debate the validity and the accuracy of the laser sensor with the event chief. He seemed irritated with my argument appearing as if he had heard the same line of inquiry a thousand times. The next time through, I was determined to blast each apex as accurately and quickly as possible. I thought I did great!...I even managed to nip the one inch corner of 3 apex cones. I drove back to discover I only got 4 points....BULLSHIT!! I started to complain to the attendent in a very curious an innocuous way, hiding well my displeasure, and he said that I did do well but that "this isn't an autocross course and you simply got too close to the cones". DAMN!

So off to my last challenge, the true and best test...the autocross course. Drivers were given the challenge to drive the new Mazdaspeed 6 (260hp AWD turbo Mazda flagship) through an autocross course attempting to beat a time of 43 seconds. I've never autocrossed but I felt very good about my chances. The line was 2 hours long and toward the end of the line, I really had to pee. I had a good look at the course and even studied the track map...but in the end I knew you simply had to drive by the seat of your pants. I watched several dozen absolutely crappy drivers ticking off 48 plus second laps after hearing them loudly bluster on about how they would destroy the course. I again felt optimistic and even contrived a dream of hearing the sound of the crowd's ovation as I set the fast lap record...and they would hand me my Bose stereo as I stepped out of the car triumphant. So by the time I got into the Mazdaspeed 6, I was extremely anxious, excited, and ready to burst with urine. I was relieved to see the Audi gear configuration and performed a perfect launch through the gate. I blasted through the first turn, upshifted aggressively at redline, chirped the tires, and slammed on the brakes for the slalom and realized then...that I was completely lost. I managed to muddle through and tached the car to the limiter on the back straight again slamming the brakes for the hard righ-hander. But out the of corner of my eye, I see another Speed 6 not too far down the course. It was the only black Automatic speed 6 and the driver was pussyfooting it! In a moment of complete madness, I told myself "If you have to drive into his car to get the lap record, then SO BE IT!!" I blasted through the back stretch remembering to brake hard on the second to the last last turn then realized my car was fast approaching the other black Speed 6. I regained my senses and decided to slow down and eventually tripped the lights with 4 car-lengths to spare. I was seriously pissed having drove the course like an utter mad-man...and my time reflected my concern for self-preservation....44.107. Oh well, at least I'm alive. I complained to the official but he thought I had a good run at it nonetheless and recommended I try again...he'd remember me and give me a good amount of space the next time around. But as it goes, I had to pee, didn't want to wait another 2 hours, and just wanted to got home after 6 hours of waiting in lines.

So in the end, I won a hat....actually everyone got a hat...oh goody. What can you do.

Jericho blows....

Okay, when I first heard about Jericho, I soo much wanted to like it. Not many post-apocalyptic genre t.v. dramas and I thought it might be fun to follow...but the show is really frustrating me now. Why? Besides the idiotic short-sightedness displayed by nearly everyone in this fricken town, the acting is terribly forced. Also, I don't mind the archetypes (however cliche)....nor do I mind the mysterious characters, but the whole teenage subplot comes across like some moronic studio exec's behind the scenes decision to garner more viewers from the 14-25 demographic. The directing for nearly every one of these scenes appear cursory at best,...and while I'm at it, the teen characters are completely UN-likable and cliche...and the whole drama about the outcast kid is soo played-out and completely uninteresting....I mean the real question is why the boy would find anything likeable about the girl??

And WHY is the WHOLE TOWN IN DENIAL!! ANY competent leader posed with this scenario would enact a plan founded in the principle "Hope for the best, Plan for the worst". The entire moral/psychological opposition to enacting plan "Fortress Jericho" is wearing thin. The idea that people would continue to use money, or continue to drink beer in a bar, or NOT ration, or use batteries, etc.etc. because they "HOPE" that things aren't as bad as it seems and that "everything is going to be okay" is getting really old. And the way that line of thinking (Fortress Jericho) is couched in terms of some morality play about "not loosing our sense of humanity" is totally absurd.

Anywayz, enough of that. As for my week, well my body is nearly destroyed. Yard work is literally back-breaking. I've pulled up a small tree and transplanted it into a 6 cubic foot pot (3/4 barrel)....and my hamstrings are still quivering from the effort. My wife and I finished moving 50 wheelbarrows full of rock and next weekend I'll be hand tilling (with one fricken pick!) some 90 cubic feet of amendment...my lumbar is really looking forward to that day. And we seem to have a wildlife highway for a backyard. Every night we usually observe a family of racoon, a skunk couple, and/or 3-4 local cats crapping or rummaging around our lawn. I've started to bury chicken wire under our fence and started to replace parts of our fence in an effort to disuade these creatures from using our yard as a toilet.

Well thats if for now....I'll blog latter.

Psychological ramifications of Catholic Indoctrination

I'm discovering that everytime I want to blog it's because I want to rant. But before I do, I should mention something that had me crying with laughter. At the bottom of a dusty tucked away cardboard box, I found an audio tape my buddy (the discourser) and I made nearly 20 years ago. It was a recording of 2 hours of teenage ramblings...the topics covered were, for the most part, girls and music. What's strange is that I can't fathom how the two idiots on this tape could possibly be us. Simply put, the recording demonstrates the psychological ramifications/damage of 12 years of catholic schooling/indoctrination. We were, at our core, angry as hell...and we essentially hated everyone equally...and had developed that special skill which entails the ability to logically argue a reason to hate nearly everything.

Though part of this presentation was genuine, most of it was clearly a fascade (our dress/attitude/language) founded in the need to provoke....typical teenage bull-shit. At one point, as a reaction formation to our Catholic indoctrination (the usual stuff: mortification of the body, beings embodying Original Sin, Hell as a very real place, internalization of an overbearing/judgemental god into ones psyche) and as a satirical response to the wave of rediculous death metal bands at the time, we decided to create our own band. Our band concept was simple; we took every satan worshipping death metal band/music cliche and took it to it's extreme....and in its final iteration came up with something utterly ludicrous. Unfortunately, or fortunately for that matter, our project never got off the ground. This tape I found, however, did have some vocal tracks and sample lyrics for one of our "songs"...to use the term loosely. So as not to break my own self-contrived blogging rules, delineated on my first blog, I will not print the lyrics. But rest assured, it cannot get any worse than this....and the vocal delivery?...well imagine the disembodied voice in the Amityville Horror (the original, of course) with strep throat.

So I've GOT to get back to work. I'll blog again soon.

wow...we're celebrating Columbus discovering diddly squat

Happy Post Columbus Day!! I had the day off to celebrate Christopher Columbus "discovering" America

(Now for my daily rant)...Any moron with the slightest knowledge of World History knows Columbus didn't discover shit. Ahem,....weren't several million people already living in both North and South America?...for like several thousand years since our last ice age? That, of course, is a tiny detail which, for continuity's sake, our country can't possibly acknowledge. If we had to, just imagine all the people who would be overwhelmed with confusion! The Holiday is, more than anything else, a lesson in racism. BTW, I was just kidding earlier. I think most people DO know and schools DO teach that Columbus didn't discover shit. It's the celebration of the Holiday, when seen from a historical perspective, that bears out the underlying racism. Racism as it relates to how one World View trumps other World Views.

So, what has happened in the world since my last blog.....the Congressman Foley scandal, the release of Woodward's book "State of Denial", Several school shootings, including a horrific and heartbreaking shooting in Amish country, 60 more dead and mutilated bodies found in the Iraqi killing fields, continued ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and North Korea tests a nuclear device. Jesus, I can go on and on with my political rantings,... but I just can't...not only because it wouldn't provide me an iota of emotional catharsis, but more so because I'm just too depressed over it all.

So instead, I'll talk about my week so far...it's much less sensational and less bloody to boot. Car problem solved: took it to my mechanic, he spent 10 minutes under the hood with ONE tiny screwdriver and said it was fixed (and it is BTW) WOO HOO!. "How much?" I asked him...."Nuthin, have a safe drive home"....Double WOO HOO! Back yard work all weekend...the wife and I are putting in sod and the prep work is back breaking. And lastly; work is, as usual, full of psychosis and super interesting clients with unbelievable (but true) stories that, for reasons of confidentiality, I can't blog about.

So that's it for now,...I have to finish my egg drop soup and get back to work.

The cheese shaver shaved my thumb.

So my thumb is recovering well. Unfortunately it will lack both nerves and a finger print....oh well. And I actually get the willies just holding the damn cheese shaver....a little PTSD I think.

Also, I've been calling a buddy of mine in Europe to offer support around the dissolution of his marraige. Now as for this institution, at it's core is a vow....to God and eachother. The bottom line being if you have a problem in your relationship....drum roll....you work it out. Crazy concept, huh. It's the abject defiance to merely entertaining the notion that things can be worked through and fixed thats truly heartbreaking. He's fallen in love with a different woman...the one now is a complete stranger. I truly wish him well.

"Global warming?..C'mon, it's all a bullshit conspiracy"

So Heroes truly rocks. I'm hooked. Love it.

Now for my daily rant. Re. global warming, human impact on nature in general (ie. extinction of species and contraction of biodiversity), and our responsibility as a species to mitigate these problems; can we possibly beat this horse to death anymore than it already is? And the Earth is in fact round folks. The way I see it, these people generally fall into several of the following 8 categories:

#1. They are contrary by nature and simply can't help themselves...kinda like a good friend of mine.

#2. Emotional difficulty in accepting the idea that our species has in many ways failed at our role as "nature's" caretaker and consequently damaged it to such a degree that we are in for some heavy consequences.

#3. Denial of the role as Caretaker....instead, that our species exist in opposition to nature. Or in it's most innocuous and deluded version, the belief and/or pursuit of mastery over nature.

#4. Adhereance to some twisted Darwinian view that we must, sadly, ALLOW the extinction of a species due to that particular species failure to ADAPT to human encroachment and or interaction...."I mean, my goodness, it's not OUR fault they're dying. People are just trying to eek out a living...and we need paper dammit, and aren't houses built out of wood you idiot?!?!....so clear cut away!" Its the height of moral relativity indeed when you begin to compare lost income to extinction. And don't let me get started on the flawed logic behind the notion of "renewable resources".

#5. Can't comprehend and/or deny that humans have the capacity to impact the environment on a large scale, not to mention in detrimental ways. Hmm, let's come up with a few massive and completely irrefutable examples from a list of thousands shall we? The Nile no longer floods yearly directly impacting half a dozen nations and several thousand miles of river coastland...Why? the Aswan Dam. The once mightly Colorado now never reaches the Pacific....Why? the Hoover Dam. Several hundred lakes in the U.S. and Canada can no longer support fish due to elevated PH levels..."but don't worry, that's just a myth". A laundry list of mega fauna, poached to near extinction, now needing (in some cases) armed guards in order to maintain the survival of the species. The long list of fish species that no longer spawn in the rivers and waterways of just the California coast. The some hundred miles of coastland affected by one Exxon Valdez oil spill that to this day has not nearly recovered it's once considerable bird population or fish numbers which had at one time supported a thriving industry (okay, I like to eat fish). Should I include the elevated rates of asthma, cancer, infant mortality, and genetic defect in communities in close proximity to refining plants? Crazy talk?....well talk to the Public Health dept in Richmond CA. I suppose I can go on but I'll stop here for now.

#6. Those who automatically refute and discredit ANY study/theory/data/information or idea/notion/comment/observation due to political reasons.

#7. They have an economic incentive/interest in it's opposition.

#8. They believe that perhaps it's all a coincidence....this is a natural and expected warming cycle.

So, ultimately, what is comes down to is...they think it's all bullshit. Yes, when 130 nations as well as all the first world nations on this planet (save the U.S.) acknowledge global warming and it's connection with human industry...Well, they're all brainwashed. When every major credible University in the U.S. supports this position....well, the oil industry has several studies that refute those studies. The thing is, if I wanted info. about chemotherapy, I'd talk with an oncologist. And in the same way, if I wanted info. about the climate (watch out, I'm going out on a limb here), I'd probably listen to a climatologist.

There really are people who believe that ALL climatologists are either lying or affected with bias. Lets analyze this critically, shall we? Re. the collective lying of the global climatology community; somehow, all these climatologist have secretly decided to not only fabricate all their data, but also to posit the same theory/observation re. the earth's climate. Reasonable? Re. the bias issue, somehow ALL these climatologists have unconsciously misinterpreted their data because they've been overwhelmed with bias and personal politics. Reasonable?

Are folks so brainwashed into believing that the American economy and industry would implode if we were to take steps to be cleaner? And for christs sake!....is it soo bad to be good to our planet?