I was sitting in my office yesterday when The Butcher of Lansing darkened my doorway. He knows I love cars a lot and says “You have to go out back and see the car.”
Being hard of hearing I thought he was telling me that I needed to go out back so he could tell me some bad news about a project we’re on.
I said “Is this going to make me cry or make me mad?”
“NO, GO SEE THE CAR!”
Remembering the Fisker from last fall, I suddenly understood and ran to the back of the building and only stopped long enough to grab the camera.
See if you can guess what this is:
I set the camera down after taking this picture and I ran up to the guys who were climbing over the car.
I said to the guy who looked the most professionally-dressed “I will let you have my credit card for fifteen minutes if you start that car up so I can hear it.”
He smiled and talked with one of the other guys who got in the car and turned it on and revved it up to 7-8000 RPM.
I could describe the awesomely loud sound like this:
Replace every tooth on the chain of an enormous stainless-steel chainsaw with a scalpel blade and rev it up as tight as it will go. It’s like a surgical chainsaw gnawing on diamonds.
It was harsher/brighter than I personally like – it sounded nothing like a classic American muscle car – but it sounded dangerous and I’d still take it in a heartbeat. It had the same quality of danger you could imagine of you walked up to a leopard and give its scrotum a good hard squeeze-and-twist.
It was hard to conceive of how the tires could possibly grip the road if you tromped on the gas.
Care to guess what this car is?
I called Cruel Wife to tell her what I’d seen, because she loves cars, too.
Me: You’ll never guess what I saw out back…
CW: What?
Me: A ______ _______ _______!!!
CW: Lucky dog. I’m picking up the floor to vacuum.
Me: Did you hear me? I saw a _______ ________ ________!!! The guy started it up! It was AWESOME!
CW: Ok.
Me: Ok. Well, I guess that’s all I had. Goodbye, I guess.
CW: Bye.
Later she e:mails me. Simply put, it said “When are you coming home? How do tostados sound”
My reply:
(sigh…)
What do you care??? You were totally unexcited about
ME SEEING AN ______ _______ _______!!!
But instead, you’re grumpy that you have to vacuum
AND I GOT TO SEE AN ______ _______ _______ AND LISTEN TO IT ROAR AT 7500 RPM!!!
Tostados sound awesome.
I plan on
AN ______ _______ _______ WITH QUAD OVERHEAD CAMS, 530BHP, 0-60 IN 4.2 SECONDS, AND 420LBF TORQUE!
leaving around 5:15pm.
We men die first because we want to, I tell you. I left at 6pm in any event because I couldn’t get out any quicker than that.
What car is it? If the pic didn’t give it away, and the specs didn’t give it away, this ought to help… the RPM dial goes counterclockwise.
Ok, yes, so sue me. My life is sad and small enough that I get excited by cars.
I even got to touch the car. I may never wash that hand again.
****
The CDC is, much like the press, the EPA, the IRS, and any organization with a high profile, far too impressed with itself.
One in five children has a mental illness. Oh, as high as that, hmm?
“This is a deliberate effort by CDC to show mental health is a health issue. As with any health concern, the more attention we give to it, the better. It’s parents becoming aware of the facts and talking to a health-care provider about how their child is learning, behaving and playing with other kids,” said Dr. Ruth Perou, the study’s lead author.
Oh, it’s a deliberate effort, all right.
I suspect that this is the same kind of “feelings trump reality” judgment call that leads to “everyone is special” and “we’re all winners”.
Kids are just plain not rational. They don’t do logical things. Until you see a clear and consistent pattern and dig deeper into the behavior, you can’t really go around making claims like this.
If your kid needs to have his stuffed animals arranged in a ring, imitates environmental noises nonstop, cannot meet your gaze, trips over his own shadow, and can only communicate with great difficulty, yeah, maybe he’s autistic. Get that checked out. (yes, we have one of those cases at LemurHouse)
If your kid cannot pay attention, disrupts class, and has antisocial tendencies – he/she might be a kid in serious need of discipline. Kid might just have a lot of energy. If you see a months/years long pattern of behavior that isn’t correctable by discipline and it causes a breakdown at every point in life, then yeah, you probably have a problem on your hands.
But one in five kids mentally ill? Nah, they’re kids.
****
You know, the whole IRS thing has that “bag of cats, smell of crazy all over it” kind of feeling.
On Saturday, Celia Roady — the lawyer who asked the question of IRS official Lois Lerner at the May 10 American Bar Association conference — issues the following statement to Fox:
“On May 9, I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks … and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks. I agreed to do so.…We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”
Wimmen, just can’t keep them interested in the fancy cars. Besides, that furrin’ stuff just doesn’t do it for them. Nuttin’ like a good ‘Murrican V-8 to keep them in the kitchen. Them durn fancy Austin Martians are a bunch of money and noise. Can’t take it to the grocery, jump curbs and bridges, carry kids or hay bales. Look silly painted orange with Dixie flag on top. What good are they.
Actually, when I was on a work trip to the UK a year ago, my coworker and I hoisted a few pints with a bunch of Aston Martin sales and maintenance personnel who were on a field trip to our location. Nice folks. Beautiful Vantage some lucky SOB owns.
V-12 Vantage courtesy of Aston Martin! Good eye, WN.
This Wommen would have been very interested in the fancy car if I’d been there to see it in person. Otherwise, I was just a typical woman in the middle of her monthlies.
Hardly typical.
You claim that you were distracted by other goings-on at the time. And you weren’t present at the appearance. Sorry you missed it.
Well, at least your hubby had the rare opportunity to witness Greatness carved into metal and brought back the evidence. Maybe next time.
LK’s lucky he has you and you both share . My wife isn’t nearly as interested in cars. Or guns. I’m lucky she’s still interested in me…
Hmm. I’m guessing it’s some sort of car.
BTW Girl Genius is doing another kickstarter thing. They’re raising funds to keep their older books in print.
Oh well don, Mitchell. “Some sort of car”… Really?
I know you are pushing my buttons but must you joke about so serious an issue?
Yeah, that’s all I got. I’m missing the gene that prompts me to drool over point a to point b machines. And, frankly from the back this particular one doesn’t really look “all that”. I’ve seen Mazda Miatas that look sportier than this thing. 😛
*Pokes the bear*.
A Miata is a girl’s car, man.
If you’d compared it to a Prius I might have gotten worked up and worried that you were a closet Liberal but by referring to a girl’s car I cannot take you seriously. That’s a good thing. Whew.
Yep, Miatas come with a uterus.
Did I tell you about the time I got to be inside a Bugatti?? DID I???