Chevrolet saves the day!

Amidst fears and speculation of the venerable motor company's impending bankruptcy, GM engineers have come through in the clutch (no pun intended) with a futuristic design they plan to introduce in 2010. Dubbed the "Corvair," it's a radical rear-engine design (so the trunk's in front, folks!) with an air-cooled flat-six engine. In the promotional photo above, the Corvair is shown undergoing rigorous testing on the barren surface of the moon.
Perennial presidential candidate and irritating gadfly Ralph Nader quickly dubbed the new Chevy "unsafe at any speed." A GM spokesman quickly fired back "We drove it on the frigging moon and nobody got hurt, for godsakes!"
Stay tuned for updates!

Reservations about reservations.

I'm beginning to wonder why I bother. A couple of weeks ago we were going into town on a Saturday for dinner and then to catch some music. To avoid a long wait I called the restaurant and made reservations; we had a limited amount of time for dinner to make the show. We ended up getting slightly delayed so we called and said that we had a 6:30 reservation and would be a few minutes late. They told us not to worry, there was a wait anyway. Hmmm. We showed up and got handed a pager like the other shlubs who were wandering up, who were being told 45 minutes to get a table. I stewed for a while, then one of the waitstaff came up to ask if'd we'd like drinks brought to us. I unloaded on him about what was the point of taking reservations if no table is held... etc. For once it worked and that pager was vibrating like a sex toy with new Duracells within a couple of minutes.

So last night, another Saturday and Valentine's Day to boot... we're just going to the restaurant in our small town, but it's kind of popular in the area so I had reservations, even let them pick a time when it might be a bit less busy. We got there and the owner tries to seat us at a table where another couple is sitting. Ye gods. What a romantic evening that would have been. He actually convinced a couple of people to do so but we held out and got a crappy little table of our own eventually, hurray. Remind me to stay home next Saturday night.

A thousand possibilities!

A few weeks ago I picked up a Gibson electric guitar at a good price, a fairly nice model with the fancy hardshell case which includes a combination lock on one of the latches. I took pictures of it to sell on Ebay and when I went to take it out of the case to type a description this weekend... uh oh. It hadn't occurred to me but the lock was set to the combo when I got it apparently and got spun after I took photos. So I put something good on TV and sat down on the couch, pulled the case into my lap and turned the dials to 000. and 001. and 002 (I'll skip a bit).

I started thinking it would have made more sense to start higher where it might have been set to a phone prefix or something. And I kept turning digits. Did I mention I had to slide a button after each combo?

I became convinced that I'd accidentally skip the ONE NUMBER that was correct and hit 999 with the latch still closed. I wondered how much prying the latch off would affect the value.

And I hit at 175 - pretty frickin' lucky actually.

Sometimes I feel so uninspired...

as Traffic once sang. I haven't posted in a while. I had one that was too political, then another one about my hometown that was coming out too pissy and not funny, so neither of them made it. And now I'm sick as the proverbial dog. But when something bloggable happens, I'll post! There's always my music blog, which is of the same questionable quality as this one:
http://iggy-mylifeinmusic.blogspot.com/