WhimsyLand

I was chuckling at The Car Guys while I drove to Walmart.  Yes, the demon retailers.  Every month or two I wander over to the new SuperCenter for kicks.  Sometimes, I drive over there to get a disk drive on a Sunday night, for example (they're open 24/7).  Considering how much they're contributing to lower wages and benefits, I should probably not go at all, but ...  It is amazing how much cheaper some things are there.  I just bought a 12' A ladder for the express purpose of putting a light bulb in my garage, something that has been out for four or five years (I know, typical whimsical male behavior).  I paid $120 for it at Lowe's and found similar ladders at WM for under $80.  Many items aren't any cheaper than getting them on sale at Safeway or Home Depot, which is what I usually do, but sometimes the pricing is surreally low.  I went in for coffee filters and kitty litter.  I walked out with an orbital sander, a new broom, 20 pounds of Purina Kitten Chow, two big buckets of kitty litter, a 12-pack of Coke for the occasional visiting son, and two 3-packs of those fluorescent light-bulbs that last forever (heck, I may never have to replace the garage light again).  I forgot the coffee filters because I'm one of those people who hate lists, and also one of those people whose mind goes blank when it is assaulted by an entire of store of Stuff You Don't Really Need.  Anyway, going back, I listened to the last part of Click and Clack, including a discussion of When A Car Is Technically Dead.  The Boys decided it was when the cost for safety-related repairs cost more than the next clunker you intend buying.  My '90 Lexus now has 205,000 miles and almost everyone thinks I should get a new car.  I figure it still looks pretty good when I wax it up, the leather is OK, and it works like a Lexus:  17-way power seats, individual reading lamps in the back seat, excellent retracting moon roof, good handling, zero-to-sixty in 8 seconds, and top end of about 130 (I can personally guarantee that it can do 115).  Besides, any decent car is going to cost $300 a month, and I could subscribe to more than 20 literary journals for that.  Of course, the Lexus is bloody expensive to fix when something breaks.  Not like my first car, which was a black 1960-something Ford, black and boxy.  Nor my second car, a Sunbeam Tiger 289, whose balding tires spun out all over Baltimore.  More like my third car, the 1959 Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite.  It was a convertible with an 800 CC engine, drove like a bumper car, almost killed me doing a 360 across 3 lanes of the San Diego Freeway, and actually ended its life as the world's largest flower pot parked outside my condo in Palos Verdes (I filled it with 8 bags of compost and planted geraniums).  Basically, everything I drove until 1975 was Unsafe At Any Speed.  When I lived in Manhattan Beach, I had a 1965 Jag Roadster (0-to-60 in 5.9 seconds, top speed 140) which was a waste if I wasn't driving up Pacific Coast Highway.  Next up was my dad's 1972 Cadillac, converted to run on natural gas, and roughly the size of a small asteroid.  Then the Mazda RX7, which was a fast little number even though the rotary engine was the size of a sewing machine.  I had to drive all the way out to Hemet to find one, as they were on allocation and being sold for $2000 over list.  Then, the VW Rabbit with a monster stereo that played a lot of Boston.  Then, the Audi 500, the Mazda 6, the Audi 200 I drove all over Europe at never less than 200 KHP and usually more, the Buick that my boss at the foundry gave me, the Jeep Cherokee, the green Subaru Outback (just like the 10,000 other ones in Boulder), and then the Lexus.  That's a dozen cars and I bet I'm forgetting two or three.  Anyway, I don't really need a car.  The one I have is just fine.  Until it needs a $2,000 catalytic converter subsystem.  Don't even ask about a new engine, I've priced them.  $18,000 and that doesn't include installation.  Which brings me back to The Car Guys.  They had some new show staff today, including the Car Talk Air Traffic Controller, Ulanda U. Lucky.  

I quickly re-read the Hard series by Dan Simmons this weekend:  Hard Case, Hard Freeze, and Hard as Nails.  The protagonist is a bad boy ex-PI who served 12 years in Attica for the homicide of the thugs who killed his partner.  Pretty good middle-brow action-mystery from the author of world-class horror, science fiction, and alternative history.  I've mentioned before the Ilium/Olympos books he penned recently, which have recently been the object of a movie deal.  It's about time.  God knows why the Hyperion series, whose first effort won the Hugo and Nebula, hasn't been converted to widescreen and DVD.  Dan actually lives in my home town, and rumor has it there's an 8' metal sculpture of the Shrike in his back yard.  I've driven by his modest home in the Old Town part of Longmont, but I suspect, with the kind of income his royalties must bring in now, he's always somewhere else researching books.  The "Hard" series, for example, demonstrates a knowledge of Buffalo that you would expect of a native.  Not bad for an ex-high school literature teacher, who has clearly shown that writing is writing.

I love the Shell commercial with the pole vaulter, but only because you don't see a lot of pole vaulters on TV.  This guy does a righteous job hitting the box, nice upswing and good inversion, but he's probably only clearing 12 or 13 feet, judging from the height of the guys standing by the pit to catch the pole.  I did 12'4" to set the record at AHS in 1967, and a couple of feet more at Pomona College.  That's when I transferred to Johns Hopkins, where my interest turned to computer science and tournament bridge.  They're clearing 20 feet now, thanks to faster and stronger vaulters, and better fiberglass. 

We had a litmag get-together today.  For journals that don't have university funding, it's probably the same all over the country.  Stuffing envelopes.  Getting back issue orders out.  Doling out the postage.  Estimating the next year's budget and comparing it against the publication schedule.  Finalizing the judging on various competitions.  God bless the volunteers.  If anything defines Labor Of Love, it's the small presses all over the nation, doing what they do one year at a time.

Well, you've wasted another perfectly good 10 minutes listening to Whimsy.  Our producer is Wem Wonder.  Our menu advisor is Ballpark Frank.   Our spiritual director is Morticia Tricia de Professori.  Our personal trainer is Ally Oop.  Our astrologer is Junie Moon.  Our accounts receivable specialist is Hannah Ovah Dedoe.