October 17, 2004
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WhenWordsCollide: RandomPost
Here’s just a quick composite I just put together. The castle was from Larry Hague’s Webshots Gallery, and the foliage and clouds are my photographs. There was going to be more to this, but I stopped. I noticed I didn’t join the two foliage photos together too well. Ah, it’s late. It’s Saturday night, and it’s raining. Well, sort of California rain, probably won’t last too long, but we always need rain out here. It’s starting to come down harder as I write. It’s about 10:30pm here on the West Coast. My hip replacement has been hurting the past couple of days. (I predict rain as expected) and I’ve been telling people at work that it seems like it’s going to rain, and now it is. I’ve got the fan going in my media room too. And I’m trying not to notice my leg.
I thought of declaring all this week’s “failed art experiements” but then figured that this is a typical ploy to let readers know I’m not really doing anything of merit. So I’ll let the post become a ramble, and see whenwordscollide. Each time I open up the image program, I tend to open a lot of images, but I don’t want to ”assemble” anything for this post, and I just put up a photopost. I should just give in and post a poem. Those always get positive responses, but I just posted three poems from 2004 and 2003, and I don’t like to post two like “articles” in a row. Unless I’m writing new poetry, which I also should be doing, and actually planned on doing, but haven’t attempted. Again, more lost promises. How bleak. How negative.
This is as good a chance as any to insert some “political” observations, now that the “Debate Show” is over, and the election is coming up quick. I watched all except the “Town Hall” Debate, which I did catch in “sections” on NBC’s Newsfeeds on the internet. I fell asleep during the last one. If I were scoring, I’d say both “teams” came to a dead heat or draw. I want to give Kerry the edge, of course, but seriously, each candidate recited their talking points so often, I thought I was watching political ads. It’s “debatable” that these “shows” could even be called debates. Questions were asked of both Bush and Kerry, and neither one of them actually answered the question. Kerry has been getting Republican flak for mentioning that Cheney’s daughter is gay, although in this case he was actually answering the question.
If Bush is elected I predict dire straights for this country. (I predict he will lose, and it will be a larger margin than most pundits believe, because I think there will be more people voting in this election than in any other in recent memory. Partisans will crawl out of the woodwork for this one, and the liberal majority will elect John Kerry.) As I stated, though,. if Bush is re-elected, expect a draft, and also expect near martial law to be enforced in America. I believe Bush is planning to move into Syria next, even before we stop losing lives in Iraq.
Gasoline was $ 2.47 a gallon for regular unleaded on Thursday. How long can this go on? The next day at the same station, it was $2.57, ten cents higher. I love to say “Remember when gas was 39¢ a gallon.” In the 70s, with the advent of the “oil crisis” which never went away, and is getting worse form the looks of it, prices started rising, and have never looked back. I’m not going out on the weekends, in an effort to save money, and gas is $2.47 a gallon. I saw a neat photo joke on the internet the other day. It showed a gas price sign reading Regular: An arm. High Grade: A leg. Premium: Your firstborn son. It’s almost not funny.
The photo above is of a yellow 1965 Dodge Dart GT. When gas was 39¢ a gallon, I owned a 1965 Dodge Dart GT that looked exactly like this one, although I got this photo from the web, and it isn’t a photo of the actual car. I have to say that, although this is my “first car”, purchased on loan in 1970, when I was 16 and got my license, I always say that my first car was the 1960 Brookwood Station Wagon that was our family car from 1963 to 1970, when my dad bought the Nova. I had saved $100.00 in allowance money, and gave my dad the money to buy the station wagon when my dad bought the Dart. He drove the “new car” while I, the novice driver, was able to drive the station wagon to school for football games on Friday night. In my senior year, my dad let me take over the payments for the Dart, and I drove it to school each day and parked in the school parking lot. It was light yellow, and had the 180hp V8 engine. I loved that car, and sold it to my sister when I bought my 1971 Volkswagen in 1973. The Dart was christened “The Fantastic”. I still have the “flag” I used to fly on the antenna, which says “Fantastic”. The volkswagen was called “The Flukeswagen”. It had 14″ rims on the front, 15″ on the back, and air shocks, so the body of the car could rise above the oversize wheels. The Flukeswagen had an 8 track stereo with four speakers, what we called a “quadriphonic system” back then. The car also had deep shag carpeting and pinstriping. Although the motor was stock, it was a “custom” VW
. All my cars tend to stand out. Here’s a photo I got from the internet of a 1960 Chevorlet Brookwood station wagon. Ours was white in color, and the thing was the size of a tank. I had the VW for many years after I bought it and put two engines in the thing. Then I bought a 1980 Honda.Civic. But before the Honda, I got a 1961 bullet nosed T-Bird, which I ended up selling because the power steering was really messed up. After the Honda, I stopped driving for a long time, because I lost my license because of drunk driving arrests. I bought a 650cc “Thumper” Suzuki motorcycle called a “Savage” in 1986 brand new before I got my license back. I also owned a really neat 1966 Cadillac Sedan De Ville in the early 90s. Then the 1992 Geo Metro convertible, and finally the 1999 Eclipse Spyder convertible. With gas over two dollars and fifty cents a gallon, the next car I want would be a hybrid. I’ve seriously thought of getting another motorcycle, but with my joints failing me, and the hip replacement hurting during cold weather, riding a bike in the rain doesn’t really look like a promising prospect right now.
Comments (3)
Morning dear Mike…I am at work; so I am not really online wink
lovin the pics of the vintage automobiles….
I do hope u are right with Bush not winning…I can hardly wait to vote
Now I call this a one coffee mug post! I agree with your spin on the debates. Did I say spin, heck, I think you called it right on. Isn’t it interesting that the word spin has become a new word for distortion? I predict, that if Bush wins, his policies during that time will assure a Hilary Clinton victory four years later.
Love the pics! Yes, I’m a car-guy. Before going into the music biz I worked as a heavy duty truck mechanic and automobile mechanic. I’m ‘old school’ all the way. I learned many neat tricks of the trade from my late maternal grandpa, who spent 50 years as a car mechanic. He taught me some really cool trucks about doing the ultimate tune-up.
It’s a shame ‘real’ car mechanics are becoming extinct. All we have these days in the regular shops and dealerships are a bunch of parts replacers, who replace what the diagnostic tools and machines tell them to replace. I’ve restored many classic and antique automobiles. The ones that I owned were my treasures. All the blood and sweat that went into bringing them back from the grave, thus preserving them for future generations was all my pay. I enjoyed doing it, but always lost in the end on the financial aspect regarding the costs involved. Saving the cars from the crushers and parts hunters was my goal, and I suceeded. There’s now fifteen cars out in the collectors market that I saved throughout the 1980′s and 90′s, and that is all the payment I need.
On another note… I don’t want Bush re-elected either. I also don’t simply walk the walk and talk the talk, I always vote, and I do my own research so as not to depend on the media to inform me as to what’s right. I’m also a Precinct Election Official here in Ohio. Democracy so rocks!
Peace.