Friable Friday

For not the first time: Friable; adjective, easily crumbled or brittle

No, I did not watch the Ravens-Buccaneers game last night. For reasons better left unwritten, I was not in a place where I could watch the game.

I also did not play a playoff game in my computer football league. The game from Wednesday is not really worth writing about. (The AFC West Champions, the 9-9 Las Vegas Lightning, crushed the AFC Central Champions, the 9-9 Louisville Panthers, 39-10.)

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I have not really followed this issue much, but I think major league baseball is simply waiting for the World Series to end to announce that the Oakland A’s franchise is moving to Las Vegas. The team and the city of Oakland failed to reach a deal on a project that would include a new ballpark by what was admittedly a soft deadline. I have not seen any updates.

I don’t think MLB (which has now made 87 pension payments to me) wants to upstage the World Series with news of the A’s relocation. Of course, I could be adding two and two and getting six.

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To answer something Philip Maynard asked in his last comment, I have not really thought much more about buying a Solstice. I do want to buy a “complementary” vehicle, but that project has been pushed further down in the hierarchy.

If/when we live in a house with space to easily accommodate more cars, however many that may be, I haven’t given up on buying a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk or maybe something like this:

This is a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado, which was a member of my Ultimate Garage 2.0 published in 2019. At 221 inches in length it would necessitate a garage of “real” dimensions, not Arizona dimensions.

What do I mean? We allegedly have a three-car garage. All of my life I have understood that a garage should be at least 20 feet long/deep, and 10 feet wide for each car. Therefore, a three-car garage should be at least 20′ x 30′. The three-car garage in our second Texas house was 21′ x 30′. Of course, we only had two cars at the time.

Our current garage, however, is roughly 18′ x 28′ and that’s before the stupid lip that sticks out from the wall shared with the house. My Mustang is 188 inches long (15 feet, 8 inches) and barely fits. A 221-inch long car would not fit and our current lot is way too small for me to park a car anywhere on it. Most garages in Arizona are undersized.

We have recently seen a brand new house with a 4-car garage almost 20 feet deep and with no lip, but with an annoying 5-foot high berm in the front that, supposedly, cannot be removed because it’s classified NAOS: Natural Area Open Space. Understand that this berm borders on the street, but is still designated NAOS. We’ll keep looking or we won’t, but we’re not buying that house.

While I left the ’67 Eldo out of Ultimate Garage 3.0, I still love the car and having one would bring back the good memories of riding with my then brother-in-law, usually to various sporting events, in his ’67 Eldorado. As I have written, if I buy another car I want to buy one with some personal connection. An aside: if necessary, I would consider a ’68, but nothing later as I really like hidden headlights.

As always, I welcome thoughtful comments. Thanks.

#FriableFriday

#ArizonaGarages

#1967CadillacEldorado

#somanyCARSjustonelife

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Friable Friday

Once again, Friable: Adjective, easily crumbled

Originally, I was going to write another Hall of Very Good Cars post today. I have to admit that despite the two dozen or so cars I have scribbled in my notebook that are supposed to be the subject of such posts, I have no desire to actually write about them at this time. Like I wrote here, I don’t want to live in the past, but what I can see of the future, admittedly a flawed view, is not appealing to me, either.

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You may notice that the sub-menu under the header photo no longer includes an option for “Contact.” I had to disable that link because for weeks it has been used to send me dozens, maybe hundreds, of spam communications about buying prescription drugs online. I grew tired of having to delete them every day. As is too often the case, a few bad actors ruin something for everyone. The only way to communicate with me now in the context of this blog is to submit a comment. Of course, the comments have also been used to send me the same type of items, but at least I can permanently ban the senders’ email addresses.

Some blogs do not allow comments, but I think Disaffected Musings is better for having them. However, if the comments are hijacked then I will have no choice but to disable them as well. Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback column on the Sports Illustrated website had to have its comments disabled as people began using the forum to send personal messages and sent so many of them that the moderators could not delete the irrelevant comments.

I could rant about rampant narcissism, the utter disregard for the rights of others, but what good would that do? The anonymity of the Internet enables and emboldens bad behavior. The genie is out of the bottle.

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I think the blog is much better with pictures, even if automobiles are not the subject matter.

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Yesterday’s post about America’s song “A Horse With No Name,” and that had virtually no automotive content, generated a good number of views. Just like I ended the Threes And Sevens series with the year 1997 because the 21st century has not been about cars, the ill-advised headlong dive towards EVs is not a topic about which I wish to write at length.

You know, electric vehicles are not being widely adopted everywhere in the world. I read yesterday (on the Bloomberg TV news crawl) that policy makers in Australia are considering legislation to coerce people to buy them because only 2% of new vehicles sold there are electric. Again, those Australian officials are unable to understand that one size almost never fits all. Good luck installing charging stations along roads in the outback.

By the way, did you know that the vast majority of publicly accessible charging stations around the world are the slow type? For example, of the approximately 114,000 such devices in the US, about 92,000 of them are the slow chargers. Even in Norway, which has the highest adoption rate for electric vehicles, about two-thirds of public stations are the slow type. EVs are NOT the answer. From this website: “eFuels can be used straight away [right away in American English] with the existing tank and distribution infrastructure.” As Einstein said, every problem should be made as simple as possible. The move to EVs means enormous expenditures on new infrastructure that are actually not necessary.

See the source image

#FriableFriday

#EVsAreNotTheAnswer

#somanyCARSjustonelife

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Friable Friday

I remember watching Brian’s Song on television, but must confess that none of the details of that movie have stuck with me. Of course, I am mentioning this because James Caan, who played Brian Piccolo in the film, died on Wednesday at the age of 82. He and I shared the same birthday, which is probably why I am writing about him.

Caan is best known for portraying Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. If I’ve seen that movie I don’t remember it. As I have written from time to time, I have not been in a movie theater in at least 15 years and was never one to frequent theaters on a regular basis.

Caan, the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany, was a staunch supporter of Israel. Obviously, I share that view.

“And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

– John Donne

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Thanks to all of those who read yesterday’s edition of Hall of Very Good Cars and the blog, in general. The number of views for the post far exceeded that of the first version on its day of publication. Actually, that number far exceeded the combined number of views for the first installment on its day of publication AND the day after.

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I had two more weird dreams although what’s especially weird is that I could swear I was at least partly awake while they were happening. The first dream was that I discovered that the proprietor of the restaurant in which we were eating was putting pencil shavings in the coffee. Don’t ask me how I found out because I don’t really remember. Oh, don’t ask me why it was pencil shavings because I have no idea.

I screamed at her at the top of my lungs and created quite a scene. As customers began to leave she started to apologize, but I kept berating her until we decided to leave as well.

The second dream involved my trying to get work done on my car, but I am 99% certain the car in this dream was my first car, a 1967 Pontiac GTO. I don’t remember if the work was mechanical or aesthetic (or both), but the place where I took the car seemed rundown, like a shack among a collection of similar buildings all seemingly placed haphazardly in a large, unkept parking lot.

The owner of the shop kept encouraging me to really get on my car in that lot. I finally succumbed to temptation and did quite a burnout, which filled me with glee. Below are pictures of my first car, often shown in this blog.

By the way, my Z06 is still in the shop. They are waiting for delivery of the right exhaust manifold. This “saga” has now lasted for almost three months. It was on Friday, April 15th that the car didn’t start. At least I now have alternative transportation. I don’t want to jinx the car or to ruin my karma, but I am very happy with the Cascada so far.

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This article is titled, “The Leading Causes Of Death In [US] Men Should Be A Wakeup Call To Everyone.” From the piece:

“Men in the United States die an average of five years before women do. That’s coupled with the fact that the country is already an outlier when it comes to life expectancy. In other rich countries, such as Iceland, Norway, Japan, and Australia, men live on average eight years longer than they do in the U.S.”

“Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., killing nearly one in three men, often prematurely. A number of factors are at play, but the high death toll of heart disease is due in large part to poor diet, smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol, stress, lack of exercise, and underlying conditions such as diabetes and kidney problems.”

Note that many, if not most, of the factors that cause or exacerbate heart disease are behavioral in nature. For example, and I wish I could remember the source, but I have read that US adults walk only half as much as adults in other “rich” countries. These deleterious behaviors have nothing to do with delivery of health care.

Put down your phone or your tablet and go for a walk. I want you around to keep reading. 😉

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Here is a link to a non-political post on Why Evolution Is True. The post is about the Royal Observatory at Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest. Here are a couple of photos:

(Photo by Alessandro Ravagnin)

(Photo by Shane Turgeon)

I have seen the Northern Lights once. I was on an airplane with my wonderful wife and (i)ncomparable niece on our way to Iceland. Fifteen minutes after takeoff on this redeye flight, I think the only people awake were the pilot and me. (I can’t sleep on a plane.) I don’t remember exactly when I first saw them, but the Northern Lights were visible through the window for at least a half hour. They looked as though they were right outside the plane, but of course they usually occur at between 60 and 90 miles in altitude.

I woke up my wife and she watched for a few minutes before going back to sleep. I tried to wake up my niece, but she insisted we would see the Northern Lights in Iceland so she quickly returned to her slumber. We did not see them in Iceland. Nearly 20 years later, that is still a sore spot for her.

Thanks again to all of those who read the blog yesterday. Please keep reading and please tell your friends about Disaffected Musings.

#FriableFriday

#JamesCaan

#MoreWeirdDreams

#WakeupCall

#Aurora

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Friable Friday

Friable: Adjective, easily crumbled

You don’t think it was a simple matter of downloading the pro football computer game and getting started, do you?! Of course not…first, the downloader wouldn’t open. Then, the game wouldn’t open. I sent numerous emails to the company, but didn’t hear back from them until many hours had passed.

Before I heard from the company, but hours later and in desperation, I joined a computer forum of users of this company’s football game and posted my issue. Someone who apparently has been using the pro football game for a long time suggested that my anti-virus software (in my case, PC Matic) was interfering. Sure enough, when I disabled the “Super Shield” feature, the game downloaded and ran just fine, or seemed to at least.

Oh, still no resolution to the Z06 issue(s). Maybe I’ll have the car back by the 4th of July…

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A link to a piece from Why Evolution Is True: A new New York Times opinion columnist.

One of the comments resonated with me and shows, once again, that ~~woke~~ is a cult and that ALL people who blindly follow any ideology are practitioners of hypocrisy:

The woke readily toss the concept of “lived experience” when it requires them to acknowledge that biological women have a different lived experience than trans women. All of a sudden talking about lived experience is bigotry and transphobia. The hypocrisy is staggering.

I weep for the future, even though I won’t see it.

Sorry, just too distracted to write anymore today.

#FriableFriday

#~~Woke~~IsACult

#BlindAdherenceToAnyIdeologyIsFoolish

#disaffectedmusings

Friable Friday

No good deed goes unpunished…the windshield in my wonderful wife’s Corvette needed to be replaced, a quite common occurrence in Arizona. The appointment for the Safelite tech was yesterday.

I decided to observe most of the work (my wife had a physical therapy appointment) and even ended up helping a little bit. When the tech, who couldn’t have been older than 25 or 27, put on a sun hat I should have taken a clue. Of course, I am now sunburned on my scalp (thanks a lot, thinning hair), forehead and nose. The feeling of having your entire scalp throb is not exactly pleasant.

I don’t remember the exact number, but our next-door neighbor told my wonderful wife that they have had their windshield(s) replaced multiple times. Even though we have been living in Arizona just 17 months today, this is already our second experience with a broken windshield, the first having been with a rental car during our trip to the Mecum auction in March, 2020.

I had to have my windshield replaced once during my decades in the mid-Atlantic. Here is what happened: I was in my mid-20s and was driving my car with my then girlfriend accompanying me. She hated wearing seatbelts and only wore one because I insisted. The entire time she was in the car she would hold the seatbelt away from her and would often put her feet up on the dashboard.

Well, during this drive I decided to pinch her butt. That must have surprised/frightened her because she shrieked and her foot hit the windshield with such force that it cracked. Obviously, once the insurance company realized the crack was on the inside they would not cover the cost of the replacement. No good deed goes unpunished?

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I had a weird dream this morning. (What else is new?!) I was at a large gathering although I didn’t seem to know anyone there. I vaguely recall that some of the attendees were supposed to be famous, but those details are lost to dreamland. The venue was a very large house with many floors; I remember climbing four flights of stairs at one point. If you’re from Baltimore like I am, imagine a large home in Roland Park/Guilford on steroids.

All of a sudden everyone is in a hurry to leave. As I try to depart I notice several very cute puppies. I then notice that all of them have peed on the floor and realize I better watch my step.

I am reminded of something Norm Van Brocklin said on the sidelines as recorded by NFL Films when he was a coach. Commenting about a player Van Brocklin remarked, “The gears haven’t meshed in that guy’s head for a long time.” That describes me to a tee.

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Perhaps you sense my reluctance to actually begin the “Threes And Sevens” series chronicling years in the US auto industry that ended with “3” or “7.” I still think it’s a good idea, but once I start I will be committed (maybe I should be) to finishing. That commitment is a bit daunting to me, at present, although I’m not sure why.

Speaking of cars, this one crossed the block yesterday at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Palm Beach, Florida.

1993 CADILLAC ALLANTE CONVERTIBLE - Rear 3/4 - 256666

In case you don’t know, or even if you do, this is a 1993 Cadillac Allante. You may recall a beautiful example of the same car offered at the Mecum auction here in Arizona last month. That car was bid to $26,000, but didn’t sell.

All or virtually all of the vehicles at Barrett-Jackson auctions are sold at no reserve. This red Allante sold for…$11,000 all in.

I don’t HAVE to buy another car now, but I sure have an itch to do so. How much itching can I take before I have to scratch?

#FriableFriday

#NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished

#MoreWeirdDreams

#ThreesAndSevens

#CarItch

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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