It's a fair distance from Gwendolyn's exhaust manifold to her two-stage muffler, and along the way are no fewer than three catalytic converters. Somewhere on the far side of 90,000 miles, I had to replace the front tube, where the pre-cat lives, followed shortly thereafter by the center cat, and after handing over my Visa for that second replacement, I ruefully asked the service manager when I could expect the rear unit to fail. He said he'd never seen one of those go bad.

I suppose, though, it's probably a lot like this:

However, one amortizes this in the expected fashion:

I'm shooting for 200,000. Maybe I'm insufficiently ambitious. Then again, I drive only about 11,000 miles a year, which means I have a bit less than nine years to go. (And really, I just want to beat the mileage on my old Celica, retired at 194,500 miles.)

The demands of those who would manage our energy are occasionally absurd. For instance: for years, manual-transmission Corvettes have incorporated something called Computer Aided Gear Selection, which is a gizmo that, once you've started off in first gear, twiddles the shift gate so that your first upshift is to fourth. This was done for one reason only: to buy an extra point or two on the EPA fuel-economy test, city portion, and thereby escape the dreaded Gas Guzzler tax. (The Vette scores well in highway fuel consumption, owing to tall and taller overdrives.) Actual Corvette buyers hate it, of course, but ultimately it's a tradeoff: save the thousand bucks or so in tax, and use $20 of the savings to buy a kit to bypass the gizmo altogether.

But what if there's no tradeoff? What if one factor cannot be offset in any way, shape, size or form? And yes, there is such a factor, as Mark Alger explains:

I have a LaserJet in my office. Its behind-the-scenes machinations don't bother me, particularly, but then there's only the one, and it's called upon to do relatively little work: most days, it's asked for a hundred pages or fewer. Were it expected to produce thousands, I might start yelling at the grey box to get on with it already, fercrissake.

But that's the point: there is no substitute for time, and any device or regimen that wastes it has its priorities seriously screwed up. In a just universe, all those years in which we had to endure a 55-mph speed limit would be subtracted from our terms in purgatory.

Sing it, Marty:

This song dates from 1959, when they were still saying "country and western," and while Marty Robbins never mentioned a timeframe in "El Paso," the very sound of it, Spanish guitar and all, recalls the Wlld West of legend, where five mounted cowboys might indeed be standing guard. This has been one of my favorite songs since ever, and I have to admit that not once in the intervening years has it ever occurred to me that Rosa's cantina might actually have existed.

In 1959, it had existed for two whole years, a few steps north of the Rio Grande: cross the railroad tracks and the river, and you'll find yourself in — well, New Mexico, actually, since this is west of Juárez, where the Mexican border straightens up and turns into a line across the land. That much, at least, I comprehended:

So at least Marty Robbins knew what he was doing when he set his song in El Paso and not in any of the other fabled cities of the old West; you can't imagine Felina whirling in Dodge City. Whether he ever went to Rosa's himself, or just saw the sign and liked the name, we'll never know for sure, since Robbins died in 1982. Son Robby, though, says that the family often stopped in at Mexican restaurants on the road: "We didn't have anything like that in Nashville."

I've never been to the West Texas town of El Paso; it was the last place my sister Brenda had lived, but it never occurred to any of us that it would be the last place. Perhaps it's time I dropped by. I haven't sketched out World Tour '08 yet, though an all-Texas version has been kicking around in the back of my mind, and this would fit in nicely. The Mexican girls, of course, will pay me no heed.

As Johnny Carson used to say, I did not know this:

I did find this reference, which doesn't address the health issues but which does give alternate nomenclature:

Of course, calling it "black tree fungus" cuts down on its perceived desirability, at least to me. Still, I will keep this in mind, since I'm at an age where I can't dodge surgeons indefinitely.

Last month I brought up the 2006 Bollywood feature I See You, noting that it was an adaptation of Marc Levy's novel If Only It Were True, albeit without actually crediting Levy. This was in fact the third time I'd mentioned this film, once on this site and twice elsewhere, so at the very least, I reasoned, I ought to see the darn thing.

The story starts with Raj Jaiswal (Arjun Rampal), your basic Charming Rogue who has a TV talk show in London with the cheeky title British Raj. He's done well for himself, with a lovely high-rise and a Porsche Cayenne, and he thinks himself prepared for anything, with the exception of the arrival of a young woman on his balcony who explains that it's really her balcony.

Dr Shivani Dutt (Vipasha Agarwal), the lady in question, is having an extended out-of-body experience, while her flesh-and-blood body is being kept on a ventilator in a West London hospital after an auto accident — except that it wasn't actually an accident: she discovered staffers engaged in a grisly organ-harvesting scheme, and as far as they're concerned, a comatose witness is the best kind. And while normally Raj would greatly enjoy the prospect of a beautiful female visitor, Shivani upsets all his plans. It doesn't help that apparently he's the only person who can see or hear her.

If you saw 2005's Just Like Heaven, with Reese Witherspoon, you've pretty much seen this story already, except that this being a Bollywood film, there are semi-spectacular production numbers at regular intervals. Despite their inclusion, I See You runs a mere two hours, fairly short by Bollywood standards. This being a romantic comedy, you expect a certain number of punchlines, and I See You does not disappoint. Agarwal is almost scarily beautiful in her screen debut — Rampal said in an interview on the DVD that they were looking specifically for a newcomer — and the supporting cast seems to be having a good time, especially Michael Maloney as Inspector John Smith, who's properly suspicious throughout and never once says "What's all this then?"

Is I See You as good as Just Like Heaven? I think so. But I have to dock it points for concealing its origins.

(Review copy acquired by me at retail.)

The City Manager has prepared a report to Council on resource-saving measures [link goes to PDF file] undertaken by city government, including biofuels conversion of city vehicles and wastewater reuse for golf-course maintenance, and I spotted this little surprise near the end:

My guess: they would, if the city would pony up the startup costs for the first few. The number of actual electric cars around town can likely be counted on the fingers of one hand, but as Ron Gremban, believed to be the first person to convert a privately-owned Toyota Prius to plug-in operation, once said:

How much it would cost to recharge a vehicle remains to be seen; however, I suspect it's going to be rather a lot less than a tank of unleaded, even allowing for the difference in ranges. I spent $36 just the other day for enough gas to go about 270 miles; an electric with a 30-mile range will come in ahead of the game if it can be recharged for less than $4. It also remains to be seen whether that electric can be juiced up in anywhere near the five or six minutes it takes me to fill up Gwendolyn's tank.

In previous World Tours, I had noticed some distressing gaps in cell-phone coverage, and eventually I was able to trace some of them to the fact that while most GSM networks in the States run on 1900 MHz, some of them run on 850 MHz, and my very old phone (acquired before World Tour '01) didn't support the 850-MHz band. I made a note to do something about this after World Tour '07, and in the interim, acquired a TracFone from a Wal-Mart store for eighteen dollars and change, plus one airtime card.

I had to put the TracFone to work in the Carolinas, where I couldn't reach even what was represented to me as a 1900-MHz area. Taking advantage of current promotions, I was able to leverage a 90-minute, three-month airtime card into two hours and five months.

When I got home, the old phone was acting up, and I scrapped it in favor of one of those new four-band jobs with a camera of sorts, which theoretically would have made the TracFone obsolete. But after thinking it over, and noting that I can get actual reception in my office with the TracFone but not on the new phone, I decided to keep it and give it a reload, a ridiculously easy process except for one gap in the tracfone.com user interface: when you log in, it gives you the serial number of the phone on your account page, but if you subsequently jump to Buy/Add Airtime, it doesn't carry the number forward. Of course, this is why God invented cut and paste. Taking advantage of current promotions, I was able to leverage a 60-minute, three-month airtime card into an hour and a half and five months.

And besides, it's consistent with one other inconsistency in my life. The TracFone, since it was activated in North Carolina, has a 919 area code, rather far from my digs here in 405, but then my fax number — I subscribe to one of those fax services that emails you the stuff — is in 509, in far-off Spokane.

This simple but appealing heel is Diva by "Emilio Luca X," which seems to be a store brand of Brantano, a Belgian firm operating stores in the suburbs throughout the United Kingdom. They call this "purple," which might be pushing it a bit, but they also have a pink which is closer to fuchsia. I like the purple better, though: it seems to have greater potential for drama. "You can do anything, but don't step on my non-blue shoes." (Disclosure: I have turned up the brightness slightly on this picture so you can more clearly see the ribbon-y thing across the front.)

This is, incidentally, the very first time I've seen a shoe pitch with the heel height specified in metric: 85 mm, about 3.3 inches. The price from Brantano is £38, about $78 these days.

(Via Shoewawa.)

Ford, acutely aware that "Fix Or Repair Daily" was becoming more than just a catchphrase, has been beavering away at quality issues for several years now, and Consumer Reports has already noticed the improvement.

Now, so has Dearborn's bottom line:

To see how this was working out among actual buyers, Ford ordered up a survey, and the numbers looked promising:

Another RDA tabulation puts Honda at the top, with 1,313 problems per 1,000 vehicles.

If you're looking for a grain of salt to take this with, here you go:

Which means, generally, that it's going to take more than a year or two to erase a reputation for slapdash construction. But I submit that nothing is quite so convincing to automotive management as actual cash in the till, and that's what Ford has here.

(Via Autoblog.)

Yes, buoys and gulls, it's time for yet another installment of the blog feature that gives you Actual Search Strings leading to this very site. Buckle up, and be sure to keep both hands inside the browser.

libertarian right to die:  Absolutely. Just don't expect the county to bury you.

where's the oil pressure gauge in kia sedona:  At the parts place, waiting for you to buy it and have it installed.

tuck the wei lu:  Oh, damn, it's showing again.

would you turn down a seven inch dick:  At the very least, it ought to be tucked.

emotions related to the new beetle:  "Remember when these used to be economy cars?"

florida toyota dealer willing to export:  Curiously, this came from Canada.

do I have 4 or 3 speed transmission:  At least it's not a 2.

indecent exposure and location of genitalia male versus female:  Technically, it's not the location that creates the indecency.

ask jeeves auto erotic death:  This doesn't strike me as the sort of thing Jeeves would do.

dip scrotum in yogurt:  This doesn't strike me as the sort of thing Jeeves would do.

apologize when someone sees you naked:  I think they should, if only because they shouldn't be peering over my fence.

why is milk put in cereal:  Because putting it in chili makes people want to hurl.

Pics of Women with massive glutes:  You don't do much shopping on weekends, do you?

Michele will even draw you a map:

This is the time of year when I use the cutesy term "brick-and-mortar," normally used to describe actual (as distinguished from virtual) storefronts, to acknowledge a vague, inchoate desire to point artillery at the structure. Should I have to go to one on the 24th, it will be decidedly less vague.

I knew when I bought the 6133 that T-Mobile, avaricious to the last, had directed Nokia to rig the phone to play MP3s, but not to allow their use for ringtones unless they came from T-Mo itself. Being an old hand at screwing around with filetypes, and having noticed that WMAs actually will work, I am trying to locate a suitable conversion tool. Alternatively, I could do a CD full of potential tones, and then rip them with Windows Media Player.

I mention this now, in early December, inasmuch as I'm currently wrestling with the idea that the B. C. Clark jingle might make one heck of a ringtone.

AT&T is giving up on pay phones:

Clark Kent was not available for comment.

The fabled Deutsche Grammophon label has opened the DG Web Shop, which sells downloadable tracks from DG's vast catalog of classical music. This is very much in line with Universal Music Group's desire to get out from under Apple's thumb, and there are some distinct advantages to dealing directly with DG:

• Bit rate of 320. Constant, yet.
  
• No DRM.
  

I priced a DG reissue: piano works by Debussy, including both books of Images, the Children's Corner, and seven of the Préludes, played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. (I bought this stuff years ago on vinyl.) Individual tracks are a buck twenty-nine; however, the entire set — nineteen tracks — is only $10.99. And though this isn't one of them, a number of albums are offered with liner notes of a sort, in PDF format.

Best of all, this isn't limited to items in print: according to DG, some 600 out-of-print albums are available for download.

(From Create Digital Music via Consumerist.)

The Federal Reserve, says Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), should get into the business of rating credit-card offers on a 1-to-5-star scale. For some reason, this hasn't made it to his Web site yet, but the Minnesota Daily published this overview of the proposal:

John Hall of the American Bankers Association is doubtful:

And I wonder how long it will take before Crappy Bank and Trust Company (Member FDIC) starts looking for a way to sue the Fed after getting a star and a half — ten, twenty minutes?

Back in May, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) came up with an industrial-strength rewrite of the credit-card regulations, which I mentioned briefly here; last I looked, Levin's bill had never made it out of committee. Quelle surprise.

(Suggested by Fark.)

Yes, it's true: the Cleavers can't make it on Ward's salary anymore. What can be done about this dreadful situation?

Answer: not a farging thing.

This makes a great case for Omaha Steaks as the ultimate Christmas gift: it will piss off the maximum number of the Perpetually Outraged. (Especially if you order the Spiral Sliced Ham.)

Tim does some coupon scanning:

Well, it is December, after all.

I have to admit, this looks a lot less hazardous than the classic PIT maneuver:

ZAP!

Um, hertz, mega or otherwise, has next to nothing to do with power.

Will we start seeing old Sixties relics pressed into service as getaway cars? They don't have microprocessors.

(Via The Truth About Cars.)

Copied from my mid-February post:

I did turn in a claim form at the time: the Administrator has now sent out a letter explaining three options for receiving payments from the settlement fund, and I took the one requiring the least paperwork.

With one day to go in the filing period, five Democrats and eight Republicans have entered the Oklahoma Presidential primary, which is scheduled for the 5th of February and which will not move no matter what Iowa and New Hampshire do. Signed up for the Democrats so far: Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich, Obama and Richardson. GOP entrants include: Curry (who?), Giuliani, Hunter, Keyes, McCain, Paul, Romney and Tancredo.

I suppose we'll hear from Huckabee and Biden later today. The official list at the Oklahoma State Election Board will be here [link goes to PDF file] and will be updated as necessary, with the complete list available at the close of business this afternoon.

This is not, incidentally, a bid for linkage from Wonkosphere, which has been picking up my feed all along.

Addendum: If you're looking for Fred Thompson, BatesLine reports that the paperwork has been filed but corrections of some sort are being made.

Update, 5 December, 5:25 pm: No Biden. Thompson is in place, as is Huckabee. We have seven Democrats and eleven Republicans. And Jim Rogers, about whom more later, is back.

Nina has requested the following:

Actually, having time to take 5 to 10 courses would in and of itself improve my life, but there are obvious areas where I need to brush up my skills — or, in some cases, find enough skills for the brush to reach. The next couple of semesters should look something like this:

• Business 812: Knowing What To Shred, And When
  A check from the insurance company should not be on this list.

• Nutrition 1tsp: How To Persuade Someone Else's Girlfriend That You Can Actually Cook
  Requires lab: Not Every Meal Should Incorporate Cream Of Mushroom Soup.

• Nutrition 82/2: Passing Up The Second Plate Of Spaghetti
  To hear the doctor tell it, I should pass up the first plate instead.

• Plumbing 5/8: Repairing Things More Complicated Than Toilet Flapper Valves
  This is not to say that I would like to be able to, oh, replace a water heater, but I'd just as soon not feel as though I'm at the mercy of the guy (or girl) with the big wrench.

• Psychology 4Q2: Anger Management for Management
  No, wait, I should be teaching this one.

• Psychology I2I: How To Disengage Yourself From Unproductive Bullshit
  Also on Nina's list. I suspect this will take more than a single semester.

• Botany 500: Predicting Which Plants Will Die Before Spring
  Requires 421: Not Killing Them In The First Place.

• Media 559: How To Vent Less In Your Blog
  Also on Nina's list. I do it here instead.

• Auto Mechanics 427: Knowing At Least As Much As The Service Manager
  Which is important if you'd prefer not to write large checks on a regular basis.

• Women's Studies 101: Introduction
  Because obviously I don't know a damn thing about that half of the human race.
  

I suspect I'll get five people to do this even if I don't call them out by name.

The One Laptop per Child initiative is doing okay, I suppose, but it's not exactly setting the world on fire, and just getting production started has proven to be somewhat problematic.

Josh Jones suggests a different approach altogether: one Nintendo DS per child. And he actually makes a reasonable case, noting that the DS is inexpensive but built well, that loads of educational software can be had already, and that the machines are easily networked for classroom use.

Now if only I could be sure that he was serious.

Disclosure: I pay Josh Jones' employer, which does not necessarily endorse the proposal, for this Web space.

For the second time, Alabama State Rep. John Rogers (D-Birmingham) has introduced a bill to repeal the Heart of Dixie's nine-year-old ban on sex toys:

I guess the 21st might be a bit much to hope for, and here's one reason why:

Sometimes you have to protect the public against Citizens' Action Programs, too.

In the meantime, I will continue to make sure that when I drive through Alabama, which I do rather a lot since I'm rather fond of the place, I will take my cell phone off Vibrate. Just in case.

(Via Bitter Bitch.)

We know one thing: he ponied up the filing fee to run in the 2008 Presidential primary as a Democrat.

Two years ago, he ran for Lieutenant Governor, and sent this biography to KFOR-TV. Background stuff:

I did, of course, check with the election board records, and he did place third in both those primaries. His better showing was in 2002, when he got almost ten percent of the vote. In the '06 race for Lite Guv, he ran fourth with about 13 percent.

No campaign Web site yet.

The USB Plasma Ball doesn't care if you give it a crummy old USB 1.1 connection; it works just the same.

(Source of crummy old USB 1.1 connection: Toshi, my faithful Road Warrior notebook, age six, which apparently is not upgradable to 2.0.)

Presenting the B. C. Clark jingle, arranged for guitar. (And why not?)

Mark Woods blogs for NBA.com from the United Kingdom. The following is excerpted from his 3 December post (no permalinks that I could find, alas):

I like it here in the "back of beyond," myself, and I don't believe that it will always remain such, but let me repeat that line:

Do Seattle fans still trust the Sonics ownership? As far as they could throw them, maybe. Then again, the Sonics are still selling a lot more tickets than the New Orleans Hornets are.

Pass the beans.

(Via TrueHoop.)

Right about now, they're bringing down Tulsa's Camelot Hotel.

The Camelot's Arthurian pretensions included a drawbridge over the moat and a pool shaped like a spearhead. Heady stuff for the 1960s; dead weight in the 1980s, and deteriorated "beyond repair" in subsequent years. It will be replaced with, among other things, a QuikTrip, should Guinevere need a pack of smokes late at night.

The title of the paper: Diversity and Educational Benefits: Moving Beyond Self-Reported Questionnaire Data. Here's the abstract:

John Rosenberg translates:

Now there's nothing wrong with "understanding of racial and cultural issues," so long as it's an actual understanding rather than the rote regurgitation of the talking points demanded by the Perpetually Aggrieved, but let's not pretend that its effect is extensible beyond its own little sphere: no amount of cultural sensitivity will make someone a better engineer.

Should you enter "wamprat fruitcake" into Google's search box, you wind up back here, and that's as it should be, since I'm one of the few people fortunate enough to receive baked goods from her this time of year. (She's also diversified into fudge in recent years.) While it plays hell with my waistline, it's good stuff; I really think she could make a living at this stuff were she so inclined. (Which, I am quite certain, she is not.)

In addition to various other goodies, she also presented me with an upgrade to the infamous Big Ball O' Lights that's been hanging by the garage door the last week or so; the new version offers a multitude of colors instead of just Classic White.

I note in passing that at the moment the aforementioned Google search coughs up eight Sponsored Links on the subject of fruitcake. I think the one I get is better than any of the ones being offered.

Arthur St. Antoine remembers an old friend:

What I liked about this is not so much the Eurostory, but the fact that this appeared, not in Car and Driver at all, but in rival Motor Trend, St. Antoine's home base — he is Editor At Large — for the last few years. (One of the reasons I started reading MT again was to catch up with the guy.) I always try to appreciate gentle, unexpected gestures.

The committee charged with drumming up support for the Oklahoma City bond issue, which will be voted on next Tuesday (mark your calendars), has already sent me two flyers; what's more, I got a phone call suggesting that since the weather is expected to be ghastly next week I might consider filling out a ballot early under the absentee procedures. Each of these reminders, you may be sure, mentioned that there is no tax increase involved, which is more or less true: the existing millage will be continued for eight years or so, but it won't go up.

On the other hand, when there is a tax increase involved, you might not hear about the election at all:

From the Leader's story:

And why did they keep this quiet?

I am normally a serious supporter of vocational education, but I have to hope that this measure — the election is Tuesday — goes down in flames, and that it takes some of the NTC higher-ups with it.

(Via BatesLine.)

This is one of Trini's current catchphrases, and inasmuch as I seem to have developed a knack, or knacklet, for producing the things, I figured it probably wouldn't be a bad time to hone my technique.

Or techniques, more precisely, since what works on my phone won't necessarily work on hers. My little Nokia (which, a T-Mobile rep informed me night before last, is a very "manly" phone, whatever the hell that means) likes WMAs and doesn't much care how long they are; hers (which is bigger, if that means anything) prefers MP3s and demands they be kept short.

I'm not at the point where I can knock them out in a couple of minutes. Yet. But it's still better than forking over coin of the realm, particularly for recordings she or I already paid for in one form or another.

News Item: Microsoft has asked the designers of a low-cost Linux laptop intended for children in developing nations to redesign the system so it can accommodate its Windows XP operating system.

Also on Microsoft's agenda for the coming year:

• Release of a suspiciously Apple-esque application called "mZune"

• Require buyers of new PCs who request XP instead of Vista to pay for licenses for both

• Redesign of Windows Update to erase Firefox when detected

• MSN butterfly replaced by velociraptor

• New video service called "WeTube"

• Diversification into the lucrative field of baby gear
  

Meanwhile, Chrysler chairman Bob Nardelli has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to require Toyota to retrofit the popular Prius with the rear axle and leaf springs of a Dodge Ram truck, on the basis that the battery pack is heavy and could fall through the lightweight sedan's body structure, causing a toxic spill. When it was pointed out that the extra 300 lb of weight would seriously impair fuel-economy figures on the Prius, Nardelli simply smiled.

My current ride has a quartet of air bags (two front, two side), antilock brakes, a dashboard with no pointy protrusions, and bumpers that theoretically will shrug off a 2.5-mph impact.

Like many of you of a Certain Age, I spent most of my driving life in cars that lacked most or all of those attributes. (I learned to drive, in fact, in a VW Microbus, which lacked some other things: a radiator, air conditioning, and anything resembling acceleration.) Which leads to a question: does having all these safety gewgaws — newer cars than mine have a lot more of them — give me a false sense of security, making my driving less careful than it could be?

Don Norman, author of The Future Design of Things, thinks it can:

Wait a minute. A hundred is dangerous?

I don't see these technical advances as being anywhere near as much of a problem as ill-trained, incompetent drivers are. Consider, for a moment, a cruise control, such as the Mercedes-Benz Distronic, that slows you down if it thinks you're getting too close to the car in front of you. If the road is that crowded, using cruise control at all brands you as a complete and utter idiot, and the only "natural signal" you should be getting is digital: the upraised middle finger.

As for the passengers, I seldom have any, but in general, passengers' interests must be kept subordinate to the driver's. (Finally, an advantage to the three-row SUV: back-seat drivers can be pushed back even farther.)

That said, I've mostly gotten over my distrust of airbags, mostly because I've never had one explode into the middle of my torso like Alien in reverse. Come to think of it, I've never had one deploy even when I expected it to. Hmmm....

(Via The Truth About Cars.)

Fifty percent of the population is below-average in appearance, which suggests that there might be support for tax breaks for the unattractive.

The movement, such as it is, begins in Argentina, with author Gonzalo Otalora:

Otalora's book ¡Feo! (Ugly!) explains the premise further. Me, I'm wondering if the folks who show up here could qualify for some sort of rebate.

(Via Jezebel.)

Basil gets email from his Chevrolet:

So what did Vlad the Impala have to say?

Geez. And I passed up a tire-pressure monitoring system on Woot yesterday.

February 2007: CompUSA closes approximately half its stores.

February (approximately) 2008: CompUSA closes the rest of its stores.

An orderly liquidation is sought by the new owners, Boston-based Gordon Brothers Group, who acquired the company from Grupo Carso, the holding company of Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim Hélu. Slim has gotten rather a lot of my money over the years; apart from CompUSA, at one time he owned Prodigy, the one-time online service turned ISP that was eventually folded into SBC, and he still controls América Móvil, which operates the TracFone wireless service in the US. And I have to figure Slim didn't become one of the richest men on the planet by holding onto properties that lose money.

The fate of other CompUSA properties — the Web storefront and the tech-support division — remains to be seen.

Carver County, Minnesota, is facing a budget crisis, and they're blaming it on a typo:

Not a problem in and of itself, except that:

And you just know they were gleeful at the prospect of spending that money. Now they're going to have to rely on that expatriate Nigerian minister-without-portfolio whose financial adviser has promised them a cut of his Swiss bank account.

(Via buzz.mn.)

If you've come looking for the "Not even the buffet" post, it's here. It's scheduled to scroll off the front page today, and this is easier than just bumping it back up.

(Ms Wallent mentions the item in a Rant.)

Looks like I'm not going anywhere for the next 42 hours or so.

Gwendolyn started today with what sounded like the crack of a whip, slowed down by a factor of three, and when shortly thereafter both Battery and Brake lights clicked on, the sound was identified: broken drive belt. Unfortunately, I was at 39th and Meridian when the lights appeared; I was able to get back home without incident, but obviously I'm not going to be doing any driving.

I was going to restock the pantry today. Not gonna happen. I'm not out of food, technically, but meal planning will be essentially random for the duration.

Current plan: have her towed in Monday morning. If it's just the belt, and I suspect that it is, the fix is simple. This particular belt has only about 14,000 miles on it; however, the A/C compressor has been changed in the interim, and I have to wonder if maybe retensioning the belt at that time was hazardous to its health.

Update: I just clambered into the Forbidden Zone under the hood, and the belt looks to be more or less intact — which means that the alternator itself has probably seized up. Still a simple fix, though not so cheap.

GreenCanary offers assistance to an unnamed county in Maryland:

I've driven through Maryland a few times in recent years, and the traffic is certainly as dreadful as she says, but I'm wondering just what county this is, that she can travel 55 miles and not leave it; counties in Maryland aren't especially huge. Other than that minor quibble, I think this is a swell idea.

At Hershey, Pennsylvania in October, RM Auctions offered for sale a 1911 Selden Model 40R Varsity roadster. Expected to bring somewhere above $75,000, the Selden ultimately was sold for $220,000. I can't help but think that at least part of this startling price premium was due to George Selden's status as Inventor of the Automobile.

Yes, really. Or at least, so says US Patent No. 549,160 [link to PDF file], which was issued to Selden in 1895. He had in fact built a prototype as early as 1877, but hadn't gone into actual production. In 1899 his plans became clearer: he teamed up with William C. Whitney, who was going to be building electric cars, with the intention of licensing automakers under that patent and collecting a five-percent royalty. In 1902 a group called the Manufacturers Mutual Association was formed to fight Selden, who had already filed several lawsuits against rivals; they negotiated with Selden, and eventually, as the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, the group became his enforcement arm. As part of the deal, Selden cut the royalty to 1.25 percent, effectively making it cheaper to pay up rather than to fight it in court.

The one major holdout was Henry Ford, and he wasn't intending to be a holdout: he duly applied to ALAM for a license, and was turned down, ostensibly because of his previous business failures. (Wikipedia says that the opposition came mostly from ALAM board member Frederic Smith of Olds Motor Works, who didn't want Ford's products competing with Lansing-built Oldsmobiles in the Detroit market.) Ford went into production anyway, and was promptly sued by ALAM; the suit dragged on for six years before a court upheld the Selden patent. Ford promptly appealed. The New York Times reported on 13 February 1910:

The case never got to the Supremes; Ford was able to persuade an appellate court in 1911 that the patent as granted covered only vehicles with engines using the Brayton cycle, while Ford and other manufacturers were using the Otto cycle. ALAM chose to let the matter drop, perhaps because the Selden patent was due to expire in 1912 anyway.

Selden himself never produced any cars until he acquired a manufacturer in Buffalo in 1906. The first Selden cars, advertised as "Made by the Father of Them All," appeared in 1907; about eight thousand were built before the company shifted its focus to trucks in 1914. The Varsity roadster had a 40-hp engine — some lesser Seldens had 30 hp — and sold for around $2000. (Ford's Model T ran $850, dropping to $440 by 1915.) Only six of Selden's cars still exist today; questionable patents, however, are all over the place.

Incidentally, in that same auction in Hershey, a 1911 Oldsmobile Limited 7-Passenger Touring Car, utterly unrestored — the original tires were literally crumbling — brought $1.65 million. The price included a set of new(er) tires.

No snow, no sleet: just ice. We've had fog for two and a half days, and eventually it started to freeze; at about the same time, the thunderboomers rolled in. So we're in the uncomfortable position of getting a fair amount of rain, most of which will freeze before it reaches the ground, and it's going to continue for much of today and most of tomorrow. Roads are reportedly not too horrid — yet.

Folks less bitter than I think of this sort of thing as God's version of the 59th Street Bridge Song: "Slow down, you move too fast." Whatever I feel, you may be certain it's not groovy.

Update: So as to mock my presumption, the Weather Gods have gone ahead and dropped some sleet on us. Better for driving, anyway.

As a public service, Rammer shows the way from Virginville to Intercourse.

Watch out for the Blue Ball signs as you approach US 322.

Coming soon: Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator. And yes, it's got electrolytes.

No word on whether it will be available at Costco or Carl's Jr.

(Via SpoutBlog.)

Motor Trend's Arthur St. Antoine on the new Aston Martin DBS:

I can't even imagine the test drive.

(St. Antoine is also responsible for this Quote of the Week.)

Megan McArdle unpacks her copy of Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and finds this forgotten inscription by her college boyfriend:

Followed by this instruction:

For some reason, this reminded me of an interchange in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:

Which, I think, makes a pretty snappy epigram all by itself.

This feature appears once a week, largely because in seven days I can usually accumulate about a dozen search strings worth mentioning here without too much difficulty. Let's dip into the log and see what we can find....

Avoidance Avoidance complex:  I used to live in a complex like that. The rent was too high for the value received.

walt whitman song of myself subjectivity:  The subjectivity would intoxicate you so, but I shall not let it.

What sort of attitudes will attract boys:  I have no idea; I've never attracted any boys.

did woman in the 1600's wear underwear:  She did if she wanted to attract boys.

kosher men's penises:  I suppose this depends on how the men are killed.

what percent of lottery winners are usually back at their sucky life?  Probably close to 100 percent, since the vast majority of winners get tiny prizes like $5 or $10.

Burton Genuine Tongue Funeral:  Because who wants a counterfeit? And anyway, it's "Tong."

clinton lewinsky something-gate:  "Genuine Tongue" for some reason comes to mind.

how much can I download with 17,000 megabytes:  A lot more than you could without it.

what was the first year the bulldogs won the champing ships:  I honestly had no idea you could get ships to champ.

erotic big breasted ugly crone gallery:  The very definition of "different strokes for different folks."

that weird woman who has a list of strange things people have typed into search engines:  You wouldn't happen to have her phone number, would you?

do vegans give blowjobs:  Far as I know, they don't allow meat in their mouths.

boyfriend's penis tastes like latex:  Um, you're doing it wrong.

So I went out into the back yard to survey the damage, and there was a big chunk of elm tree sitting on the shed. No big deal, until I looked up and discovered the broken end of the branch actually leaning on the power line, which meant basically I had to move this section of frozen tree up and away to keep it from eventually snapping the line off.

There are maybe ten, twelve other places where the line still could give way, but I'm just glad I caught this one before anything could happen.

Going to work? Not even. Power's completely off at 42nd and Treadmill.

Not by any means. Here's a look at what's happening:

Normally, those two trees are about eighteen feet apart. Below, a tree across the street is seriously fragged.

I am not getting out to take more pictures if I can possibly help it.

Addendum: Vphotorob has a set of storm photos up on Flickr.

Why I'm glad my children are grown:

Oh, wait. Did he say "teens"?

Scratch that:

Come to think of it, no child of mine has ever managed to get stuck in a woodstove.

(Via Bitter Bitch.)

OG&E says so:

The company has about 755,000 customers at retail, which means that 31 percent of their customers are freezing in the dark.

Their current estimate for full restoration is "between 7 and 10 days," which, considering the sheer massiveness of the storm, is possibly a shade optimistic, even with a thousand people working in the field. I've pretty much decided that if mine goes out, I'm going to think seriously about leaving town for a week. I'm not expecting it to, though: next door has about half a foot of tree-induced deflection in their line, and they've still got the lights on.

Update, 6:55 pm: Public Service Company of Oklahoma, says the Oklahoman, has about 200,000 customers with no power, mostly around Tulsa. PSO has 514,000 customers in the state.

Tomorrow night marks the premiere of Playwrights Horizons' production of Doris to Darlene, a Cautionary Valentine, a new play by Jordan Harrison, directed by Les Waters. The premise:

Pictures and background here, though if you're anything like me, what you want to know is what sort of pop tune can be coaxed out of Tristan und Isolde. Herewith the answer, though I will not be responsible for any reactions by Mad King Ludwig.

Anybody who's read Fark for any length of time more than a handful of nanoseconds has seen the occasional link marked NSFW, which of course means "Not Safe for Work." In fact, rather a lot of sites use some variation of this tag, which makes me wonder why it is that Head Farker Drew Curtis is attempting to trademark those four words in that sequence.

I assume by default that this is a gag, and Curtis will neither confirm nor deny:

On a whim, I checked the government's trademark database, and apparently no one has yet registered "Duke sucks."

Where things stand right about now:

• Power is still on at Surlywood, though rather a lot of areas I passed through this morning are still dark. The rain is coming down fairly heavily, which is preferable to light freezing drizzle any day. Temperatures across most of the state are above freezing; there are still a few really warm areas down in the southeast, beyond the point where the cold front stalled.

• Gwendolyn is up and running again; the alternator tested somewhere between Bad and Are You Kidding Me?

• Still no electricity at 42nd and Treadmill, as of last I'd heard (about three hours ago).

• I spent much of the early morning (before 7:30) trying to move tree limbs out of the street. I got my own breakage pulled back, and most of next door's; however, the really massive branches are going to require industrial-strength assistance.

• The entrance to the polling place was a solid sheet of ice. I spent about two and a half minutes trying to negotiate my way up the walk while grabbing the ice-covered bike rack; eventually a pollwatcher noticed my lack of progress and came outside with a rubber mat. I deposited ballot #35 at 10:50. As I was leaving, someone from building maintenance emerged with a bag of the Usual Sidewalk Substances.
  

Still to come: grocery shopping, damage assessment. I'm pretty sure one of the two chaste trees is done for; the baby sweetgum doesn't look well but isn't broken; the big elm out front is about 20 percent thinner. (The slightly-less-big elm next door broke off in the middle and should be scored as a kill.)

Update, 1:30 pm: Power problems at the supermarket: cash only, no plastic — not a problem — and no perishables, the display cases being nonfunctional, which could have been a problem. From 23rd to 122nd on May, about half the traffic lights are working. And OG&E briefly hit 300,000 on the Out-O-Meter before dropping back.

The Chicago Tribune's Sam Smith is manifestly unimpressed:

And that's not all:

That's going to leave a couple of marks. Furthermore, says Smith, the Sonics' crappy record is exactly what the front office wants:

The bottom line:

Color me disgruntled.

This is Nicole Nason, thirty-seven, the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for the past year and a half. A photo of her — not this one — appears in the Car and Driver 10Best issue (January) with the questionable caption RILF ALERT. The R is for "regulator," I presume. And despite releases like this, which argues that fragile old people are more likely to be injured in accidents than the young and hearty, somehow she's a lot less controversial than, oh, let's say, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.

I realize that this is something less than Breaking News, but the alternative item in the can was a bit about those ghastly Manolo Blahniks for Men, and I wasn't about to look at them every day for the next week while they slowly move down the front page. Contrary to popular belief, even I have standards.

With about a sixth of the precincts in, all eleven of Oklahoma City's bond propositions look like easy winners: the least popular, #11, which calls for the establishment of a fund for economic and community development, is drawing 76.4 percent approval, and some others are up in the 80s.

You might conclude from this that city government is actually considered credible these days, and believe me, if you were around here during the days when it wasn't, you'd see this as a major improvement.

I thumbed through the 2007-08 budget book, which you probably don't want to read because it's a huge PDF (if you do, it's here), and debt service comes to $54 million, about 7 percent of city expenditures. Briefly noted therein:

Current millage is in fact 15.95; the last time it was over 16 was 1993.

Turnout, owing to the weather, was even lighter than usual: maybe 5 percent, instead of the usual 8-12.

Does this sound like anyone you know?

I should point out here that this writer also writes screenplays, which means that (1) he's likely hanging around Hollywood and (2) he thinks Hollywood is somehow representative of the rest of the world.

On the downside:

Then again, maybe he should have stayed in Hollywood. And my American Express card, by the way, is translucent.

(Via Dollymix, where editor Cate Sevilla "doesn't spend $700 on her face a month. I guess that makes her frumpy.")

While Oklahoma City voters were approving a massive bond issue, that questionable tax vote for Northeast Tech Center, says Tyson Wynn, was put into the deep freeze:

And that would seem to be the end of that, for now. Meanwhile, the Edmond and Norman school districts saw their bond issues approved, and there will be a runoff in Oklahoma City's Ward 7, where Skip Kelly got 49.9 percent of the vote. (It takes 50 to win outright.)

OG&E is making some headway on the eastside, and now there is power at 42nd and Treadmill. There is also approximately one third of a tree occupying my parking space, but the chainsaw kittens have already been dispatched to address this matter.

There's a bit of snow this morning, not enough to stick, but enough to elicit curses.

Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud says they will study the possibility of requiring underground electrical lines in the state:

I'm not sure what I think about this yet. Burying the lines will almost certainly reduce the incidence of outages, albeit at a steep price — and when there are outages, they might be harder to fix.

Nobody's going to accuse Mike Huckabee of a lack of vision, by Gawd:

Beat that, you quivering lumps of Kyotoplasm. "Free of energy consumption." Zero. I defy anyone to come up with a bolder plan than this.

Ryan Welton caught this at a press conference:

Right now I suspect the utilities are trying to figure out a way to recover the costs of restoration.

In the meantime, the Big Question remains unanswered. I was picking up a Gazette when a woman eastbound on 36th hailed me and asked "Do you have power?" And I drew a Google search today for "when the hell is oge going to get the power on".

The guy next door had brought out the chainsaw and was hacking up the residue of his elm tree, which, on sober second thought, looks like it might survive after all. I helped him haul some stuff up over the curb; he came over and sliced up the two major limbs that had fallen off my elm, and we reasoned, with a bow to Arlo Guthrie, that one big pile was better than two little piles. We had to knock off for lack of light, but we got quite a bit done — he more than I, you may be sure — and now the only major debris in the street is down on the corner at the apartment complex.

Inasmuch as everything else you're going to read about the late Ike Turner focuses on his seriously-dysfunctional relationship with Tina, I'm going to spend some time on the musical stuff, which starts in his late teens in the Mississippi delta with the founding of the Kings of Rhythm, who cut one of the contenders for First Rock and Roll Record in late 1950: "Rocket 88," credited to Kings vocalist/sax player Jackie Brenston and his, um, "Delta Cats," written by Turner, who played that amazingly-distorted guitar. Chess picked it up for national distribution and watched it become a jukebox staple. For the next several years the Kings toured and Ike played, in addition to guitar, the role of roving A&R man, looking for good tracks he could place with major R&B labels. Around 1958 the Kings took on a teenaged background vocalist from Tennessee named Annie Mae Bullock; in 1960, the scheduled singer having failed to show for the recording session, Annie did the lead on a new Ike tune called "A Fool in Love," which was credited to "Ike and Tina Turner," though the two didn't actually wed until 1962, and the traveling troupe became the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

Ike and Tina were major R&B stars into the 1970s. (Their backup singers, the Ikettes, made some good records of their own in the mid-Sixties.) After they split, her career eclipsed his, at least partly because he had some serious brushes with the law; the pair were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, but Ike, in jail on drug charges, did not attend the ceremony. (Tina, graciously, accepted for him.)

By 1993, Ike had cleaned up his act and gone back to what he'd always done best: playing those bluesy licks. And he kept on doing that right up until the end.

I actually felt a twinge before I read this:

When I got home yesterday, it was about 5:25, and I pondered, briefly, if maybe it might be a trifle unseemly to crank up the lights for the night. The rationalization for doing so boiled down to "Well, everyone on this block has power, so it's not like I'm showing off or anything." Still, there but for the grace of God, yadda yadda yadda. Maybe I'll start pulling the plug early or something.

Those of you who owned Commodore 64s will remember its BASIC implementation, which was provided by, um, Microsoft.

At the C64's 25th Anniversary celebration, Commodore commander Jack Tramiel recalled his dealings with Bill Gates:

Ultimately, the C64 moved about 30 million units, saving Jack Tramiel $89,975,000, most of which was apparently used to make the 1541 disk drive noisier.

The Nordic Battlegroup's coat of arms shows a lion wielding a sword and an olive branch. Originally, it was obviously a male lion, but that would never do:

This action, says the emblem's designer, demonstrates a lack of historical perspective:

I blame this cat. [Warning: Possibly-disturbing graphic.]

(Via Stanley Kurtz.)

I'm starting to think they should relocate FEMA permanently in Oklahoma, and this reinforces my belief: