Here is young Cole, being adorable. Because that is what he and all other babies do, so we don’t kill them when they break someone’s nose in the library when they are sophomores and get banned from the library for the entire year (mom’s reaction- “at least you didn’t hit him in the bathroom”) or get kicked out of school for mooning people off the back of the swim team bus or get arrested for public urination and have all the students and colleagues at their father’s college think that he was the John Cole written up in the local newspaper (and not me, the guilty party) for urinating in public or misbehave and run through town with dad chasing while a certain young punk yells “You’re old, you can’t catch me fat man!”
Wait. You mean this doesn’t happen to all kids? Shit.
At any rate, young Cole:
While I like his parents and hope he is a good kid, I see rosy cheeks like that and see all kinds of ornery. Ornery I can identify with.
NonyNony
And yet somehow you avoided the “parent’s curse”[*]. Amazing.
[*] “Someday you’re gonna have a kid who acts just like you. And I’m gonna sit back and laugh my ass off.” – uttered by my mother. Many, many times in my memory. And probably many that I’ve forgotten…
Chat Noir
Squee factor at epic levels. That’s a face that can be described as ” totally delicious.”
kmeyerthelurker
Cute as a button. I’ve enjoyed watching you come out of your shell, btw.
Is this an open thread? If it is, can I please ask WHY THE FUCK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT SOME IDIOT WHO WOULDN’T VOTE FOR OBAMA UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PRETENDING TO MAKE SOME BRAVE POINT ABOUT NOT VOTING FOR OBAMA BECAUSE DRONES ETC?
If not, cute Godson. Good on ya.
S. Holland
ADORABLE…totally adorable!
Comrade Mary
It’s a baby! A baby with a bunny on its head! Squeee!
I was at a party a few weeks ago with a big mix of people, including a three month old baby named John, who was the most fucking mellow being this earth has ever seen. Yes, even more mellow than young Cole. Let’s just say that this baby would make the Dalai Lama look like a maniac with Tourette’s.
I got the great pleasure of getting to cuddle Baby John and dance with him for a good 15 minutes. He seemed to really like Purple Rain, snuggled and dozed, and only started frantically eating his own hand near the end of our session, so I gave him to his mom so she could get some proper nutrition into him. What a goddamn little charmer he was.
Violet
So cute! And he’s growing up so fast. What a sweetie. Sounds like this Cole is an easy baby. Were you an easy baby? If so….cue “Jaws” music.
James E. Powell
Current heir-apparent?
The Fat Kate Middleton
Well. I’ve just written you out of MY will. And young Cole is a delicious little apple of a baby boy.
Addendum: I voted early today. It felt soooo good.
Spiffy McBang
(Please bear with me. I went to post this in a different open thread, but it took so long that by the time I finished, the thread had basically petered out. But I really have nowhere obvious to put this, so I thought I would post it on the blog I read the most. And, hopefully, the many pet lovers here might empathize.)
My car died this week.
I bought my Dodge Neon, new, in December 1998, after a wreck carried my little Cavalier wagon to the Great Racetrack In The Sky. I couldn’t tell you why I got it; I’ve always run on feel to a large degree, even more so back then. There was a commercial for them, I decided I was interested, and when I saw her in the lot- the last of the 1998 models in stock, the one nobody else wanted- I knew. The test drive simply confirmed it. I was twenty-one.
Seven months later, that Neon and I drove around the country. 12,500 miles in forty-five days. I met my first girlfriend on that trip. (Bit of a late bloomer in that game.) She saw me through a pair of long-distance relationships, endless trips out of state or cross-state to visit friends, and back across the country again, from the east coast to here in California. When I got out here, started school, and needed a job that would work around classes, she was there, as good a car as a delivery guy could hope for. And for the last four years, half of them after graduating into a barely functional economy, she’s taken the worst of beatings in that job and still chugged through all of it.
There were problems, obviously. All cars have them, and Neons were somewhat notorious in that regard. My friend had a Neon that he only kept for four years because it simply fell apart. But anytime something broke on mine, the repair was never at a break-the-bank level. Even with the more expensive repairs, it was always more economical to fix my car than to look into another vehicle. Plus, nothing ever broke twice. Sometimes a friend would suggest I sell her while she still had value; but Neons aren’t worth that much used, and that amount went down by the year, so I eventually decided there was nothing for it but to drive her until she passed on her own.
Sunday afternoon she lost acceleration driving down the freeway. At first the mechanic just thought it was a timing belt; but when it came to actual testing, it turned out the engine had seized. For a time I still considered getting the $2000 repair done, to replace the engine and fix the coolant leak that had caused it, simply due to the cost of any used car I could find outside of Craigslist (and given my roommate’s recent experience, there’s no chance I’m buying a car from someone there). But the mechanic, who is fantastic and who I trust more than anyone I’ve ever met in these matters, had a Mazda available for not much more that he had just finished fixing front to back. It would have been lunacy to go with the repair instead. And I didn’t.
But if I’m being honest, the real reason I didn’t was because I knew it was time.
She wasn’t healthy in general. The dash gauges were flaky, there was a sensor that would need replacement eventually, the front tires were shot, the brakes weren’t in great shape, the muffler needed replacing. It wasn’t as if I could throw two grand at her and expect that to be all I would spend apart from maintenance in the next year. And these are just the things I knew about. It’s tempting to say I’d had so much stuff replaced that it would be hard to find anything left to fix, but when you don’t know much about cars, you have to remember that just because you can’t think of anything else that could break, doesn’t mean there’s nothing else that can break. At some point you have to say goodbye.
I knew her so well, though. No one I know drives their cars as hard as I do mine, but the way the ride was always smoother when I accelerated faster, she clearly liked it. I knew her rattles, shimmies, and shakes. I knew she needed extra braking space, and how to drive her fast without allowing that to become a danger. I knew when the tires would slide a little on a sharp turn, and when someone else did something stupid, I knew when I could accelerate out of trouble and when I’d need to slow and just get out of the way. My roommate and I always liked to joke about how I was going zero down the freeway the times the speedometer stopped working, even though it stopped working most of the time by the end.
I’m not really a pet guy. Hell, I’m not even really a car guy- I’m as good with cars as most of you probably are with veterinary work. I mentioned the pet lovers here, though, because it really does feel like that kind of loss. I basically grew up with my Neon. That car has seen every notable moment of my adulthood, which is something very few people can say. When I talk to my dad, he usually asks how the “baby car” is doing; maybe he was more right in calling her that than he realized.
Today I’ve taken care of most of the footwork with getting the new car registered and so forth; I’ve been fighting back tears whenever people have been around, and crying my eyes out when alone. There’s a pink sheet of paper I need to fill out, which I’ll give to the mechanic tomorrow and which he’ll use to donate my car to a charity that helps train future mechanics. Or, as I prefer to think of it, we’re donating her body to science.
I’ll clean her out. I’ll leave. Soon enough she’ll be gone. And I’ll never see her again.
I don’t post here often, so I don’t know if requests like this are ever made, much less granted. But in the spirit of the pet threads that come up from time to time, if any front pagers see this and are feeling charitable, I think it would be nice to have an open thread for people to discuss any cars (or other… non-biological objects, I suppose) which have passed through our lives in a manner that very much imbued them with lives of their own. I would really like to say goodbye that way.
Howard Beale IV
Neotney always works.
eemom
Baby’s cute, yeah.
But what we REALLY need is another Conor Jerkoff thread.
SP
Aha, you’ve previously said that he’s always smiling, but here we see that you’ve just weighted your picture poll samples to favor the smiling party vs. the red jowl party. I see through your mathematical ploy and I’m going to start the “unskewed baby photo” site.
Tom Levenson
@eemom:
Don’t tempt me. ;)
(Don’t worry. Once in a blue moon is enough to feed young Conor’s need for attn.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade Mary:
I know! The onliest thing that would make it better is if it were a baby with a bunny with a pancake on its head!
Origuy
@James E. Powell:
Given that hat, FIFY.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Spiffy McBang:
I would love to wax nostalgic with you but seriously dude Neons are a box of bolts thrown into a pretty shell, we bought one from a Dodge dealer once that had a transmission that was so shot it cost us $1,500 to fix it, the mechanic called the dealership (because he had recommended them) and basically tried to shame the dealership into contributing to the cost of the repair and the dealership rep said “you are on your own, we don’t do warranties for Neons”
kmeyerthelurker
@Spiffy McBang: It’s a good point … I had a Saturn that I just loved … never any problems, etc, got me through several lean years with minimum maintenance, and we were hit in a head-on, when some miscreant crossed the center line and forced us up onto the curb. Cracked the front axel, mashed the front end. Totalled. They drove off, I chased it for 6-7 blocks on foot before I lost it. No help from insurance, cops just said “Gee, that’s too bad. Nothing we can do.”
She was a hand-me-down from my big sister, we named her “Flo,” and were planning to put at least another 100,000 miles with her. I’ll always miss that car.
Not quite the same as losing a pet (ya just can’t snuggle with a car, or wake up with it curled around your head), but I feel ya.
Spiffy McBang
@Litlebritdifrnt: You can still wax nostalgic with me. :)
Part of why I loved my car was precisely because of what you said. I took the one no one wanted in a line that turned out to be notoriously unreliable, and I had fewer serious issues with my car than most people I knew, regardless of what models they had. I like to think that I got the best car off that particular assembly line.
I got lucky, basically. And I know it.
@kmeyerthelurker: That sucks. It’s basically how I lost my first car, which was also a hand-me-down- old woman turning at the worst possible moment and sending me headlong into the bushes of an apartment building. That was sad too, but I’d only had it a couple of years, so it was more disappointing than anything.
poco
@Spiffy McBang: I feel for your loss. I am not a car person, but you post was beautiful and really conveyed how much the car meant for you.
Mary G
@Spiffy McBang: I felt that way about my first car, a 1973 VW beetle I named Betsy. She was still going strong when some jerk high on pot lost control of his penis mobile, hit her in the rear, pushed her and the Cadillac parked in front of her up over the curb and into the neighbor’s house. When I came running outside he was trying to restart his car to drive away. A little later he asked me out on a date and I will never forgive the firefighter who held me back from ripping his head off.
the Conster
That sweet face is why we need to fight the fucking stupidity walking the earth in the guise of Republicans. These children need us! We need to run up the score for Democrats so that the Republicans crawl back into the hole they came from, and then we can work on pushing the Democrats back to the left so we can solve the problems of diminishing resources, global warming and income equality.
We can do this!
dance around in your bones
Am I a terrible grandparent for introducing my 6yrold grandboy to Mr. Bill?
We were having a great time watching him (“Oh NO, Mr. BILL!”) until his mummy came in and said Mr. Bill always freaked her out when she was a kid.
Reviewing some of the Mr. Bill shows, I think perhaps my judgement is skewed. However, “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” and “Danger, danger, Will Robinson!” is part of my Kid Lexicon.
SiubhanDuinne
@Spiffy McBang:
Well, I’m with you. I bought my Saturn SL-1 on August 31, 1998. Fourteen-+ years ago. Now it’s 226,300 miles later. I’ve driven this car from Atlanta-Ontario six times, twice to Chicago and back, and 50 miles/day commute.
Still runs, but is showing all the wrinkles, grey hairs and arthritic joints you would expect at that age. I keep thinking, “OK, this is finally the weekend I’m going to buy a new car,” but week after week I end up not doing that. Part of me is genuinely curious just how long I can keep a car going, but another, larger part of me is like you, Spiffy, and just doesn’t want to say goodbye. This car (no name, no gender) has been a solid, reliable friend. Also too, at my age (70) I’m pretty sure that the next car I buy will very likely be my last, and I’m a little reluctant to make that final commitment.
I like to keep cars going as long as I can. This is only the fourth car I’ve ever had.
dmsilev
Heh. Nate Silver just posted this evening’s update. Obama’s win probability is up another two percentage points to a hair under 84% (and almost 98% in the Now-cast). It should be amusing to watch Romney in the debate next week; desperate men usually don’t think very well on their feet.
Gin & Tonic
I see Cole’s feeling better.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: I got over 280k on an SL-1 before the head gasket blew.
ranchandsyrup
Cole is a handsome ornery young man.
Here is a vid of our daughter doing some dancing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTJSqUHBsd8
Soonergrunt
@Spiffy McBang: The car I traded in for the Focus that got wrecked was a 99 Mercury Sable. By the time I traded her in 2010, she had 194,000 miles on her. The heat and the AC were hit and miss, and the power steering had failed, but that car ran about as well as could be helped in the face of my college-cost-caused indifferent maintenance right up until the transmission died.
I was planning to run the Focus into the ground but never got a chance to do so.
I feel your pain. Take a knob or something from your old lady, and stick in on its counterpart component in the new lady, or failing that, your keychain if it’s small enough. Then take your new lady out and show her a good time. New wash/wax/detail job, and a cruise in the country before the weather gets too cold.
Soonergrunt
That boy looks like he’s full of energy. Is he crawling/cruising/walking yet?
Just Some Fuckhead
Damn, thought we were finally getting treated to a pic of Young Conor Friedersdorf.
dance around in your bones
We had a Volvo that went to almost 300,000 miles before giving up the ghost. It had various body damage from (in one case) losing the brakes on a highway exit, and getting bashed in the back end from a guy who fell asleep whilst driving back from a nightclub from LA.
We thought we had been boosted into hyperspace or warp drive. Later we put an “Urban Assault Vehicle” bumper sticker on the old gal. Kinda funny.
I’ve actually never owned a NEW car. I guess I’m one of those 47% losers.
Spiffy McBang
@Soonergrunt: I’ve been trying to decide what to do along those lines. I was thinking of doing something with the keys- I have two- but if there’s something I can pull out of the Neon, I may do that.
Man, now I’m crying again. Well, fuck it. If Cole can admit to pedicures, I can man up and acknowledge when I’m typing through tears.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Maybe I should hang in there another couple of years. I’ve heard of an SL-1 making it to 300k. The competitive part of me would like to top that.
Soonergrunt
@SiubhanDuinne: “at my age (70)”
Wait, what? I had you pegged as early 50s, tops.
? Martin
@dmsilev: Man, Obama’s really taken a hit from earlier today when he had Obama at 373% chance of winning.
Anne Laurie
It’s all good, Cole — it’s Octoberfest, and the best season for some sour Kraut with our beer! :)
gbear
I saw the title ‘Godson Update’ and wondered why we were going to have a post about Hitler.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Few years back there was one parked at the dealer where I bought mine that had 350. The SL-1 is the only car I’ve gotten over 200.
TaMara (BHF)
That is one cute godson. But I kinda have a question…are you sure you didn’t, um, you know, father that kid? Kinda looks like you.
dance around in your bones
@Soonergrunt:
Siubhan comes across as much younger, no? I am – I guess you would call late 50’s, but I still feel like I’m 18, in a lotta ways.
It’s only when I pass a mirror that I wonder who that old lady is. Fucked up, man.
Violet
@Spiffy McBang: Aww…I know what it’s like when your first car goes. I looooved my first car. Sympathies, even though you know it’s time.
Dennis SGMM
@Spiffy McBang:
My lovely wife saw me ogling an old Mazda Miata that was sitting at the edge of town with a For Sale sign in the windshield. I was up for some rather nasty back surgery at the time and she bought the car for me, knowing that I’d driven Brit roadsters back in the day.
It is high mileage and we’ve put several thousand dollars into an SCCA spec motor (The original one seized one day) and various major and minor repairs. It’s our Last Fling car and it’s so much fun to drive that we’re going through a to-do list that will result in our having a brand new 1999 Miata. The best part is that my wife loves to drive it and she often uses it for her commute (She knows well how to work a manual transmission)in preference to our KIA crossover.
I mentioned high mileage; it presently has a bit more than 252,000. The other day I drove out east to the desert and got it to an indicated 128 mph with the top up (119 top down) before I chickened out. I figure that any car still on its wheels at that point is worth saving.
? Martin
@TaMara (BHF): Not really, Cole looks more like the palm of my hand.
Downpuppy
Cars & kidz?! I mostly keep cars about 6 years because I buy cheap & dump ’em (even the fab Festiva) when the maintenance starts getting high.
Kids, there’s not that option. Maintenance actually drops, behind that door that’s suddenly closing in your face. But what can you do?
Seriously. I’m looking for suggestions. Sure, she’s still operational. Good chassis, smart, perfect grades, polite, affectionate. But we all know where it’s headed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Soonergrunt:
@dance around in your bones:
Probly because I say “fuck” so much. Back in my day, old ladies didn’t say “fuck.” At least, not in public.
mai naem
Nate Silver’s got Obama’s chances of winning at 83.9 percent.
MikeJ
@mai naem: Down from earlier today when it was 370-something percent.
Loneoak
Looks like you should have a nice guest room in your basement in 15 years, because that kid is probably crashing at your place eventually.
muddy
@dance around in your bones:
My dad told me that sometimes he scared himself silly while shaving. He said when you shave you’re looking in the mirror, but not really *looking*. Then suddenly there’s this old man! Eek!
I find I don’t look in the mirror as much as I did when young. I don’t try not to, but I just don’t, I wash up like Dad shaved, autopilot. Sometimes I get in the car and am looking in the rearview and see I have not brushed my hair or have clay on my face or something.
Dennis SGMM
@Spiffy McBang:
You might consider taking one of the rear view mirrors and mounting it on a nice plaque.
gnomedad
@gbear:
Heh, I read “cute Godson” as “cue Godwin”.
Dennis SGMM
@dance around in your bones:
The first thing I learned back in my acid head days was to never look at yourself in the mirror.
As for growing old, I have a little sign with the words of Satchel Paige:
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”
Violet
@Dennis SGMM: I actually lived for a couple of years without a mirror. Okay, I had a tiny mirror that I could use if I held it with one hand, but otherwise I couldn’t see myself at all. I didn’t use that mirror much, especially after the first year. It was utterly freeing. I highly recommend it if you can do it.
Soonergrunt
@gnomedad: “Heh, I read “cute Godson” as “cue Godwin”.”
chuckle.
Anya
What an adorable baby.
@Just Some Fuckhead: Don’t give the front pagers any ideas.
Richard
@mai naem:
I really hope that a huge chunk of GOP voters get so discouraged that they simply stay home, and the result is a shitload of tea-partiers get shitcanned, from the House in particular. Good riddance, fuckers.
PurpleGirl
AAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Cute baby. And that hat is so squee too.
Ash Can
Lulz. I was thinking as I read this post: “This isn’t the voice of experience talking, now, is it?” I predict that, some years from now, either Cole or his godson is going to be posting here, complaining about how he just had to go and bail the other’s sorry ass out of jail, and all of us readers can go fuck ourselves for laughing and making fun, because it just so TOTALLY isn’t funny, and we can all go to hell.
mainmati
@kmeyerthelurker: Yeah, this Conor guy represents exactly no one or very few for sure and the various BJ commentators (notably DougJ) have pretty much made him look like the useless concern troll that he is.
Citizen_X
Wait, never mind everything else: how the fucking fuck did you get into a fistfight in the motherfucking library?
Geez. No wonder you became a Republican.
dance around in your bones
@SiubhanDuinne: Ha! The other day one of my grandkids asked if they could say Gawd Damn like Nana does.
@muddy: I avoid mirrors like the plague. That way I can retain the illusion.
@Dennis SGMM: Oh, man, do I know about that! I can remember being on acid and thinking how weird it is that we SLEEP half our lives away, The Mirror thing was too damn scary by half. Prolly would be even weirder now, if I still indulged in the psychedelics. You know, I remember reaching a point where (whilst tripping) I kept saying to myself “I KNOW this already, I KNOW this already” – that was back in the 70’s and I never really did acid again after that.
Well, except for that one unfortunate incident when I chewed up some mushrooms a friend had given me ( before a party – I remember washing up some bell peppers for the dinner and thinking how fucking beautiful they looked!) and then spending most of the night thinking I was a fish in the swimming pool while everyone else was sure I was drowning.
I am told that I got out of the pool and walked straight to a couch, where I passed out, dripping wet.
I have no recollection of this.
You gotta maintain. That’s the last time I did any psychedelics.
Ash Can
@Spiffy McBang: When I met my husband, he was driving a cream puff of a 1972 Chevy Impala that he had inherited from his great-uncle. He loved that damned aircraft-carrier of a car, and I really felt sorry for him when it finally keeled over and went to the great junk yard in the sky. My sympathies.
Hill Dweller
Stewart just did a bit about some wingnut teacher writing a song whining about the new school lunch guidelines, and filming her students singing it.
Judging from the clips Stewart aired, ABC and Fox are acting like it’s a national scandal. I swear, they’ll overstate anything concerning Democrats for their precious balance.
Hill Dweller
Speaking of cars, Jaguar released a sweet new roadster at the Paris Auto Show today. I’ll never own one, but it looks like a nice car.
wonkie
@We’ve been through
Some things together
With trunks of memories
Still to come
We found things to do
In stormy weather
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you run.
Well, it was
Back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift
On the long decline
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you run.
Maybe The Beach Boys
Have got you now
With those waves
Singing “Caroline No”
Rollin’ down
That empty ocean road
Gettin’ to the surf on time.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you runSpiffy McBang:
Dennis SGMM
@dance around in your bones:
Heh. I started with that stuff when you could still score Owsley acid. There are subsequent parts of my life that other people had to tell me about. Still recall the tooth grinding, astonishing, later times when they started kicking acid with strychnine and/or belladonna. After a while it was like driving down the same road so I finally gave it up.
? Martin
Ooh. Our long national tomato nightmare may finally be over. The US is recommending to end a trade deal with Mexico that made it nearly impossible to profitably grow tomatoes in the US. Most of our tomatoes are imported from Mexico, and while you can get decent ones here in SoCal, a few hours from the fields by way of farmers markets, the ones that survive to reach New York are shit.
Mexico is almost certainly going to impose tariffs against the US to balance the deal out (we’ve always kept it pretty balanced) but good tomatoes are important.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Citizen_X: Prolly a gang of Straussians trying to prevent him from taking his Oakeshottian succor. Library is hell.
suzanne
That kid is just adorable. If you ever do have kids, Cole, I recommend having the second one first. Way more fun that way. Unfortunate that that would entail a cable-knit of the fabric of space-time, but meh.
@Spiffy McBang: Hugs. I lost my first car, a 1990 Toyota Corolla, while stopped at a light. Some douche in a fuck-you truck hit me so hard the entire back end of the car was destroyed. He hopped out and drawled, “I’m so sorry ’bout that, I was looking at the floor of my truck for my cellphone.” His truck was so much taller than my car that the bumper was unscratched—he hit all metal. I got into so much fun trouble in that car, I still miss it. More hugs.
Ash Can
@dance around in your bones:
Tell me about it. I’m still an irresponsible 17-year-old, as far as I’m concerned.
Dennis SGMM
My thanks to the commentariat here. You bucked me up when I was recently at a very low point. You never fail to express genuine sympathy and empathy for those who see bad times. That’s a damned nice thing and a tribute to Cole despite himself.
General Stuck
Cute kid
Not a cute stunt pulled by the wingnuts. Displaying once again the craven asshole of their nature.
It looks like they lifted the hold, but after congress went into recess until after the election.
Any odds on how long it takes Romney to whip out an ad claiming Obama and democrats failed to pass the COLA increase, as well as the rest of the miscreant republicans running for reelection.
Calming Influence
Sure, he’s cute and innocent now. But trust me, it’s never to early to start educating them about the dangers of butt chugging.
You can thank me later.
Spiffy McBang
Thanks wonkie and Suzanne. I think whatever I do tomorrow, I’ll have to work that song into it.
suzanne
@muddy: I’ve started getting enough gray hair that I now dye my hair out of necessity rather than choice. But when I’ve let my roots go too long (like now), I’ve caught myself in the mirror and seen a couple of gray hairs, and I’m just like FUUUUUUUUUUCK.
The REAL kick in the ass, though….so I had pretty horrible acne as a teenager, but was consoled by the assurance from my mother and others that My skin type would be slow to wrinkle. NOT TRUE. I have acne AND wrinkles. FUUUUUUUUUCK.
KG
I’ve had 3 cars.
An ’89 Toyota pickup (originally bought brand new for my cousin who had a tendency to crash it) at 16. Put that thing through hell and it kept going. Sold it back to my folks when I was 21 and bought a brand new ’99 mustang. Had a lot of fun in that car too, sold it when my folks bought me a new F-150 as a law school graduation present. Totaled the truck about two months ago. I put at least 150k on each of those cars. They were all fun in their own right and in different ways.
suzanne
@Calming Influence:
I obviously did not have enough fun in college.
MikeJ
@General Stuck: “Coincidentally”, Mittbot today claimed sequestration would, “affect services for veterans, including the men and women returning from conflict overseas who need psychological counselling.”
? Martin
Hmm. I would like to point out that since a lot of these polls showing Obama opening up relatively large leads have come out – there have been no polls in lean Romney states like MO, IN, AZ, MT, GA, etc. If Obama is showing 10 point leads in places like Iowa, those states might be a LOT closer than any of the national analyses like 538 are showing.
Jennifer
The great thing about babies is that you can make them look ridiculous and they’re powerless to stop you – they don’t even know that you’ve made them look ridiculous!
My grandniece (who turned 2 months old this week) lays around sucking on a clear pacifier with a big black mustache on the front of it that I gave my niece the day the baby was born. HI-larious! And she hasn’t a clue that we’re all laughing at her.
RE: death of the car: I felt kind of the same way when I watched the kid who bought my ’88 Mazda 323 drive it away. It served me well for 10 years; then I decided to finally buy the car I had always wanted as a teenager – a new ’98 Mustang convertible. Here it is now, almost 15 years later, and I’m still driving it. I never intended for it to be a mid-life crisis car, but it’s the car I had when I hit mid-life and I haven’t been able to afford to replace it. Thing has 180,000 miles on it and still runs like a charm – the a/c blows cold and other than routine maintenance and replacing worn-out parts, I’ve not had to put anything into keeping it going for over 10 years now. I know my luck won’t hold out forever, and I really would like to get something more age-appropriate (and fuel-efficient), but after all these years, when the time comes, I know I’ll have mixed feelings about it.
Richard
@General Stuck:
I’ve always thought that the anonymous hold is about the most vile and undemocratic feature of the Senate. No individual Senator should have that kind of power, least of all, be able to keep their obstructionist ways a secret.
Dennis SGMM
@General Stuck:
Hanging is too good for that Senator. Characterizing it as a “stunt” is like characterizing the Killing Fields as a Day Camp. Disabled vets’ benefits range from $127 a month up to a maximum of $3100 a month (If they lost limbs). Surviving spouses of veterans collect $1195 per month plus $296 for each dependent child. Every extra penny would make a difference to most of these folks.
Once again, the Republicans have managed to demonstrate that they are not a political party, but a mental disorder.
burnspbesq
Buy that kid a pole. He’s got defenseman written all over him. Agile, mobile, and hostile.
muddy
@suzanne: I find not wearing my glasses works very well. Everyone looks great. I use henna nowadays, I don’t mind the white hairs, and there’s even a cool stripe, but the red hairs are not very red, just blah no color. But everyone that knows me thinks it’s my same hair from before, I wasn’t done being the redhead girl. However my aunt Gertrude had Bozo orange curls at 80, that is really pushing it. Once I got the color too red, and my dog was really pissed, he just kept glaring at the top of my head and barking. Funny one.
General Stuck
@MikeJ:
The mean little lizard brain gears are spinning madly to make the right bucket of bullshit to sling against the wall. 40 more days and I might start slinging myself agin it
joel hanes
First car was a year-old 1975 Mustang II automatic
My father’s idea of a young man’s car, but a complete POS.
Mixed SAE/metric fasteners under the hood.
Died in 1980, briefly resurrected in 1981, only to be euthanized a few days later.
In 1982, I got a real young man’s car:
1982 Mazda RX/7.
A perfect driving car, always went where you pointed it (even if sideways), the match between the five-speed manual, the low-power high-reving rotary, and the nearly-weightless body was made in heaven. Drove it for thirteen years and broke many speed limits. Still miss it, but rotary engines don’t last, and the replacement I put in at 125,000 died horribly at 195,000. Sold it to a lady doctor who raced them.
Wife had a 1973 VW Beetle on its second engine when I met her; it had a Porsche mechanical-advance distributor that made it touchy as hell to drive, and you had to heel-and-toe sometimes at a light or it would stall out — but if you hit the sweet spot in the throttle, it would boogie. We knew a good independent mechanic: that old bug was over 330,000 when some idiot rear-ended and totalled it.
After the RX/7, I got a 1996 Saturn SW/2 and used it for the skiing/camping vehicle while the kids were growing up. At about 220,000 a sensor went out, making the SES light come on and stay on, making the care unlicenseable in CA, and the cost of the sensor repair was greater than the value of the car.
? Martin
@Dennis SGMM: Oh, so you want to further enable those people who are too lazy to take responsibility for their lives?
Ooh. Isle of Man TT sidecars on! Love watching those crazy motherfuckers.
dance around in your bones
@SiubhanDuinne: Ha! The other day one of my grandkids asked if they could say Gawd Damn like Nana does.
@muddy: I avoid mirrors like the plague. That way I can retain the illusion.
@Dennis SGMM: Oh, man, do I know about that! I can remember being on acid and thinking how weird it is that we SLEEP half our lives away, The Mirror thing was too damn scary by half. Prolly would be even weirder now, if I still indulged in the psychedelics. You know, I remember reaching a point where (whilst tripping) I kept saying to myself “I KNOW this already, I KNOW this already” – that was back in the 70’s and I never really did acid again after that.
Well, except for that one unfortunate incident when I chewed up some mushrooms a friend had given me ( before a party – I remember washing up some bell peppers for the dinner and thinking how fucking beautiful they looked!) and then spending most of the night thinking I was a fish in the swimming pool while everyone else was sure I was drowning.
I am told that I got out of the pool and walked straight to a couch, where I passed out, dripping wet.
I have no recollection of this.
You gotta maintain. That’s the last time I did any psychedelics.
Ok, FYWP tells me I have submitted this comment already. However I have no recollection of having done so.
Prolly + 4 or so, so never mind.
Dennis SGMM
@? Martin:
Heh! We should just mail them each a set of bootstraps and let them pull themselves up by them – just like Romney who started out with just a few million in his pocket and then made something of himself.
joel hanes
@MikeJ:
returning from conflict overseas
kvenlander
Shit, talk about mirrors and age, I just looked at my passport photo from 4.5 years ago and there’s this fit guy in it who looks fifteen years younger than the guy in my mirror in the mornings. WTF?
Need to get back in shape, stat. Especially because I’m going to start flying around the planet on bidness. I’m thinking pilates.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@General Stuck: Fillibuster aside, who ever came up with the senate rules? We would be better off giving each senator two red flags per session, monitored by the now retired temporary nfl referees.
joel hanes
@dance around in your bones:
I so wish I’d known you back in the day.
? Martin
Since we’re doing cars.
First was an 83 Rabbit which was shit. Ran okay but would barely reach 60. Flipped that when I was 18 being a dumbass.
Replaced it with a 79 Rabbit which was much better. Refused to break. Would run it on 3 cylinders when it rained and one cylinder wouldn’t spark. Blew the radiator hose out several times – and it still wouldn’t overheat. And it wouldn’t just do 60, but it’d do 85 without a hitch.
Then I got out of college, and went without a car for a while. Met my wife and she had a 96 Jetta. Fun car, but unreliable. When we got engaged, we decided to trade it in for a Saturn SL2. For a last drive in the Jetta we headed up to SF for a weekend. Averaged just over 100MPH on the way up. On the 580 this little Rabbit/Golf thing pulled up next to us at about 90 and challenged us. At 130 we backed off and he raced ahead. Must have had a little porsche help under that hood – it was damn fast.
The Saturn lasted a while but we got an MPV to keep it company in anticipation of the 2nd kid. As the Saturn started to hit maintenance costs we sold it and got a Honda Element which I still drive and will miss dearly when it leaves us. We love that car – it’s just awesome for a family of 4 with a dog. The MPV still runs and we idly toy with replacing it, but don’t really want to drop the money – the Element is the primarily car anyway. Maybe when the electrics/hybrids settle out a little more it’ll feel right to make the jump.
PurpleGirl
@suzanne: …entail a cable-knit of the fabric of space-time, but meh.
I love that concept and image. Truly creative.
dance around in your bones
@joel hanes: Darlin’, I wish that too.
Odie Hugh Manatee
It sounds like you led a pretty mild youth John. I’m not even going to try to talk about the crazy shit I did growing up (and for some time afterward).
Pleading the fifth. :)
Celebrated our 26th anniversary today by dyeing 2/3rds of my wife’s hair and then giving the cat a dunk in the sink.
Boy am I settled into my life.
? Martin
@Dennis SGMM: Hey, it’s a lot of pressure when you start at the top of the ladder. You know how many lives you need to destroy in order to achieve a measure of success that exceeds what you started with? Mitts life would have been soooo much easier if he’d been born in squalor.
But why should we send those military widows bootstraps? Surely their deceased spouses have a pair they aren’t using any more. Christ, they feel entitled to everything, don’t they?
FlipYrWhig
@kvenlander:
You mean washing your hands of it, a la Pontius?
? Martin
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
Principled centrists.
Mnemosyne
One of the other threads yesterday got me thinking about my first car, which was a brand-new 1987 Toyota Celica that my dad bought me in exchange for me agreeing to go to community college for my first year. I loved that car and took it on many road trips, including a spur-of-the moment trip from Los Angeles to Monmouth, Oregon and back again over a four-day weekend. (It didn’t look that far on the map, and my best friend’s sister was horrendously homesick.)
Sadly, it was stolen and stripped when it was only 8 years old — I had stupidly let my car insurance lapse, so I got $100 bucks for the shell of it. After that, I drove my brother’s Camry for a few years and then got the RAV-4 that I am still driving today. For some reason, the axle boots keep cracking (probably because of all the damn speed bumps on our street) but other than that I haven’t had any major trouble with it.
Mnemosyne
@kvenlander:
Pilates is awesome, though you really need to do it a minimum of two days a week for the best results (three or even four is better). The day after my first session, it literally hurt to breathe because all of the muscles of my torso had been worked like they’d never been worked before.
daverave
I totally read that title as “Godwin” Update and assumed that some politico somewhere brought up the Third Reich… but then I’ve been drinking all night while whatching R. Rice do nothing for my FF team. Ca va.
daverave
@Mnemosyne:
My first car was my future wife’s 1977 Toyota Celica that we drove from Albany to Buffalo for our first date, a Stones show back in 1978. Then we drove it across country from LI to the Bay Area for our “honeymoon” in the dead of winter 1980. Good times.
dance around in your bones
Fuck.
I tried to say that the last cool acid I did was in Nepal, supplied by the Grateful Dead (clear windowpane) on Easter Day.
We boiled , colored and hid about 300 Easter eggs and then promptly forgot where they were.
We had to set up a leech inspection station on the (Hog Farm) bus and a second leech repair station farther on. So many people were wandering around in the wild and coming back with leeches all over themselves.
Gawd, I have to stop with the personal stories.
Lavocat
Your post is the reason why parents kill their children.
Your mistake was living a VERY public life. In my experience, if you want to misbehave in truly unparalleled ways, it’s best to remain anonymous.
To this day, there are things I will NEVER admit to.
suzanne
@PurpleGirl: Aww, thanks. :) I’ve been knitting a scarf for my mom, so I have cables on the brain.
kvenlander
@Mnemosyne: Heh, that sounds about right what I need. Lazy body needs some asskicking.
psychobroad
@Chat Noir: You said it better than I ever could!