Hornady ZombieMax ammo commercial:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWb-5nblx4?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Ok then.
Tag: miscellaneous
In the Spirit of Halloween
Somebody went all out:
Click for full size (really big & detailed).
All it’s missing is (car) body damage from the impact.
I Had No Idea!
I posted about my first car last week, a 1969 Simca 1118, an underpowered French import that was just about the last of its kind brought into the country. A pretty underwhelming automotive experience.
Not so for the rest of the world, apparently:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yprEHh8d6sQ]
The Simca 1000 series was very popular around the world, and as everybody knows, it there are a lot of something, someone will race it. And if it gets raced, it will get hopped up.
Like I said, I always wondered how that car would have run with a motor transplant from a Honda CBX.
Sanctum Maiori Excrementum!
Remember Michael Winslow, the guy from the Police Academy movies that did all the sound effects with his mouth? Apparently he’s gotten nothing but better – much better – since then. From Grouchy Old Cripple, here’s Michael doing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. It will leave your mouth hanging open:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxcCC2g1Ke0?rel=0]
The American Dream
I’m watching TLC’s replay of the CBS show Undercover Boss. This week’s episode follows the CEO of the Baja Fresh restaurant chain as he goes to several stores as a prospective management candidate. The stores he goes to are ones performing exceptionally well, and he wants to find out what makes these stores different from the average franchise.
At the first, the manager is a young Mexican immigrant, only in the country for two years, who is busting his ass. At the second, a young man from the Phillipines – ditto. The third, a young man recently immigrated from Jordan with his parents. At the fourth, a young woman who is not a recent immigrant, but she has a two year-old daughter. Her husband works nights, and she works days. All of them are busting their asses and running their stores with dedication and enthusiasm.
At two of the stores the managers said outright that they were living the American Dream, working hard to create a better future for themselves and their families. All of them understand the American work ethic, and are doing what it takes to make their stores the successes that have drawn the attention of corporate management.
It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
Nobody Asked Me
The current rage on the intarweb blogs is the “What was your first car?” meme.
Well, nobody asked me, but I’ll answer anyway. I’ve done this post before, but here it is again:
My first car at age 16 was my dad’s hand-me-down. He’d bought it for something like $700 in 1974, put another couple-hundred in parts into it so it would run, and drove it until 1978 when he went down to the Ford dealership and placed an order for his very first brand-new automobile, an F-150 pickup truck.
That was the year I turned 16. Our insurance agent told him, “Don, you have a new driver in the house. The insurance company sees ‘new driver’ and ‘new vehicle’ and they put two-and-two together and come up with a 60% increase in your insurance premium. Put the old car in your son’s name and insure it for the minimum you can.” So he did. Which is how I, out of three children, was the only one who got a car from my parents.
Pissed my brother off.
But the car in question was no particular prize. It was a 1969 Simca 1118:
Only mine didn’t look that good. It was originally silver, but the sun had faded that right through to the gray primer underneath. The interior was sun-rotted so the front seatbacks got reupholstered with T-shirts stretched over them. I got some scrap carpet from a friend – brown shag, no less – and carpeted the floor with that. Door panels, too. No radio, so my dad had mounted a 12V-powered AM-FM under the dash and wired it into the harness.
Rear-engine, rear-wheel drive, 1118cc, water-cooled, 56Hp. Zero-to-sixty? Take a lunch and eat it when you get there.
But it was a car, and it took me anywhere I wanted to go.
I always wondered what that car would be like with an engine transplant out of a Honda CBX.
New Job Stuff
Tomorrow will be a long one. I’ve been over the majority of this state in my career, but tomorrow I’ll be going somewhere new – the Springerville Generating Station in eastern Arizona. Google Maps says it’s a 460 mile round trip, and about ten hours total, so tomorrow should be a solid twelve-hour day.
The stereo in my truck has very poor reception. I think I’d better take my iPod.
Movie Review: The Killer Elite
Typical action film. Lots of stunts, some explosions, lots of gunplay.
Major film stars: Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro.
Overall, not bad. I’d give it three out of five stars, but I have one teensy little gripe:
Why oh why does Hollywood worship the three-day beard? Especially when it comes to Jason Statham? It’s his signature characteristic. “Now performing, Jason Statham’s beard!” This film takes place over literally weeks, yet his beard never gets longer, nor is he ever clean-shaven, even when the situation he’s in suggests he ought to be (impersonating a doctor, for instance). It’s one of those “suspension of disbelief” things. Beat the hell out of a guy while you’re zip-tied to a chair with your hands behind your back? OK! Wear a three-day beard for weeks on end? Don’t think so. He shaves his head but not his face? WTFF?
That is all. My “profound” gland seems to be all tapped out at the moment.
OK, So the First Week at the New Job is Over
Man, it’s nice to be back on the retail side of the electrical equipment business. Know anybody who needs a 35′ diameter 26,000Hp Semi-autogenous grinding mill or two? I’ve got a lead on a pair of new ones, never installed, with full warranty! A mere $24 million each! No 58-week lead time, they’re ready to go (well, except for the drive systems – those would need to be built, and they’re extra.)
I’ve got to spend another week up in Phoenix, but the new office should be ready a week from Wednesday. One nice fringe benefit is I will have an office again instead of a cubicle beige fabric-covered box. I missed that. Another will be that I can walk to work – it’s 1.0 miles from my front door to the new office. The exercise will do me good. I may need to put together a 40lb. rucksack to carry.
Let’s hope that economic Armageddon remains at bay for the foreseeable future.
Lots to Say, No Time to Say It
I’ve got the urge to write another Überpost, but no time to do it. There are a lot of things I want to comment on, and again, very little time. The new job is going OK, but I’ll be happier when I don’t have to work in Phoenix. It’s a bit far from home.
Just a quick post, then.
I caught the new movie Moneyball last weekend. I’m not a baseball fan, but for some reason I like baseball movies: The Natural, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Major League, Mr. Baseball, I liked ’em all. Moneyball is based on fact, and per the blurb, it is:
The story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
The theme of the film is that, while it’s possible to buy a championship team if you have bottomless pockets, it’s also possible to build a winning team on a budget if you can select players who can get on base and otherwise don’t cost that much.
For a movie based on statistics, it was pretty good. I especially enjoyed the fact that this team of mutts and rejects managed to win a record-setting 20 games in a row – fact.
But throughout the entire movie, I kept having the same thought: The movie would have been just as good and cost a lot less if they’d passed over Brad Pitt and instead drafted Greg Kinnear for the lead role.