All's well

That ends badly.

I'd like to apologize to all my fans for not writing more often. A couple years back, I could look at any situation and see something blogworthy. Now, I look at every situation and see something mundane.

CherkyB has lost his edge.

It's not really my edge that I've lost. It's my pain.

Oh wait. Here's MaxieC. My pain is found.

[Brief interlude of playing PS2 games with him.]

A few days back, my wife asked me why I didn't become, "One of those famous humor bloggers." I guess she was talking about Frank J, cuz I'm not really aware of any other famous humor bloggers. Funny people, by and large, don't need to immerse themselves in the internet as an outlet for their humor. No, funny people just go around being funny, and then they have to beat the pu$$y off with a stick.

With a stick.

Speaking of which, I told a slow motion joke last week. Damned if I can remember what it was (it was more of a humorous topical reference than a funny joke, per se), but it traveled in a wave at about 1 ft per second. I was sitting at a lunch table with three other guys, and then I put the fish in the water. The guy diagonally across from me said, "I don't get the reference," and then stared, confusedly. Then a couple seconds later, the guy across from me went, "Oh, yeah. Heh."
Then the guy next to me got it. Finally, the guy on the diagonal figured it out. It was really something to behold - how often do you actually get to see humor propagate as sub-sonic speed? It's like one of those videos of polar bears humping.

Or something.

Many Things

First, I'd like to say that I was on edge all day over the special election in Massachusetts. I even had to watch the results live on TV. In the end, Good triumphed over Evil, which quite honestly was kind of a shocker for me, as I figured the Devil has our future all wrapped up in her handbasket already, and only a large stockpile of guns and ammo would pry it loose.

Shows what I know.

Which brings me to an old joke that I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks now:

Q: How can you tell when Obama is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

But it's not a political blog. I risk alienating one or two of my readers with that above joke. So, you know, it's just a joke. His lips don't actually have to be moving.

--

As you weather fans know, I promised you a review of The Hangover. It was good. I recommend seeing it. It wasn't anywhere near Superbad good, though. It has been claimed that this is the best comedy ever set in Vegas, but I must say I can't personally name any other comedies set in Vegas. A lot of Smokin' Aces was set in Tahoe (or, more accurately, Stateline, NV), and it wasn't technically a comedy either. If it had been a comedy set in Vegas, it would have been better than The Hangover.

I almost got to create a Something Not to Do episode from the movie, when after it ended The Mrs. was bitching about something or other (I tune it out now, after so many years), and I told her she should consider which of the movie's characters she is most like.

Once you see the movie, you'll understand that.

--

I'm thinking of going to Napa. I've always liked wine country.

--

The clincher, I think, happened when I realized how I've been using only blower levels 1 and 4 on the HVAC system in my Dodge for a couple months now, and how 4 is too high, and 1 is too low. It'd be nice if there were some levels in between 1 and 4. Say, 2 and 3. But where 2 and 3 should be, there are instead two levels where all you hear is the fan rattling around on worn-out bearings.

And my truck is from 2003, a time when Chrysler Corp. quality was supposed to be at its peak.

My guess is that Fiat hasn't added a whole lot of quality to the situation.

Time to give Ford another shot.

You don't know the half of it

I was sitting in the back at 4H tonight when the fellow two seats over from me leaned over to his wife, who was seated next to me, and whispered to her, "Boy, Hannah must be a handful at home."

I'm normally quite decisive

But it seems that picking out a new vehicle is one of those things that always takes forever. In general, I think this is because they cost so much more than I want to spend, and then they promptly lose their value. I know, I know, I should buy used. But I've never had particularly good luck with used cars, even in cases where I know that the car was impeccably maintained because I bought it from, say, my parents.

I'm also a very clever person. Not just clever in a "CherkyB brings new life to weather reporting" kind of way. Clever in a "that boy is too clever for his own good" kind of way. You see, a while back I had this grand plan to trick The Mrs. into letting me buy a new truck. It went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "I put the back up higher on HannahC's booster seat."

The Mrs.: "Good. She's been complaining that it was too low."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. It's all the way up now."

The Mrs.: "Well, when she grows some more, we can take the back off and just use the seat part, right?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes. [sigh] But there's a small problem with that."

The Mrs.: "What's that?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, it'll work fine in the van. My my truck is so old that it doesn't have headrests in the back seat. So when we take the back off the booster seat, her head will be right in front of the back window. If we get in a crash, her head will go through the back window, and it'll shoot glass into her brain stem and kill her."

[Note: this is actually a pretty common way to die in a pickup truck. It's not something I made up. Though, more often, you just get a horrible concussion from smashing the back of your head into glass instead of a headrest.]

The Mrs.: "Oh. You should probably get a new truck."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, if you think so."

So now it's almost bonus time at The Company, and this was not too bad year for us, as we're not as dependent upon the US economy as a lot of companies are. Most of the rest of the world is exiting the recession reasonably rapidly, whereas we are at best holding steady and more likely heading deeper because of the reckless and amateurish economic policy of Mr. Hopenchange.

I have about four weeks until all the bonuses roll in (and I find out the size of them this week, in theory), so I'll need to be striking while the iron is hot. Problem is, I still haven't figured out what to get.

I've narrowed it down to two choices: Ford F-150, and Ram 1500. You may note that it is no longer "Dodge Ram 1500", as Fiat decided to spin off the truck division from Dodge under the Ram label. So you can now buy something called a "Ram Dakota", which would be very similar to my current ride - a Dodge Dakota - except it'd be newer and better in nearly every way. And it'd also be one of the worst-selling pickups on the market, outselling only the badge-engineered Chevy Colorado sold as a GMC Canyon and the same vehicle rebadged and slightly modified sold as a Hummer H3T (and possibly the Ford Ranger rebadged as a Mazda and the Toyota Tacoma rebadged as a Suzuki - trucks I didn't bother to look up the sales figures for).

I guess the good news is that I've eliminated Chevy/GMC, Toyota, and Nissan from the running, each for different reasons. Not coincidentally, I get an affiliates discount from both Ford and Chrysler through The Company which gives them a price advantage over the competition, though this is not a deciding factor (especially since, right now, it looks like the Ram "preferred pricing" is a whopping $250 discount - but they have thousands of dollars of incentives and rebates available to all that makes them largely comparable to the Ford with the affiliate discount).

I would summarize the pro's/con's of the two this way:

• Everything I actually do with my pickup, the Ram is better at than the Ford. But Ram is owned by Fiat.
  
• All those things I wish I did but never actually do, the Ford is better.

For instance, if I were towing a 7000lbs. trailer, the Ford would be better (though, honestly, one should be looking at 3/4 ton class trucks for that kind of weight). I don't actually own any trailer. The only things I might consider buying that I would tow would be a fishing boat, which would have a towing weight of somewhere around 2000lbs., or a pop-up camper, which would be even less.

The ride with a 1000lbs. payload is much better in the Ford than in the Ram, though the opposite is true when unloaded. This is my daily driver vehicle. Guess how often I have 1000lbs. in the bed. Six times a year. 3 loads of shredded redwood bark for the mulch beds, and three loads of compost for the garden. Sure, I move some furniture around on occasion, and our trips to Sam's Clubs are legendary in their volume, if not their weight. But, gosh, it feels like I should optimize for unloaded, no-trailer.

There is really no question that for me, the Ram is the better truck. My Dakota has been quite reliable (as good as our Honda minivan - and quite possibly better), and after 6 years and 60k miles, with half of those miles sitting idle in traffic in San Schmose, there's nothing at all wrong with it that a new set of shocks wouldn't fix (except for a lack of headrests in the back seat). But, gosh, Ram is owned by Fiat. What are the chances it'll exist 6 years from now?

I dunno.

Don't worry. It happens to all guys...

...as they get older.

Just words, they were. Yeah yeah, all guys but me.

But it happened to me.

Yep. I mixed a drink, took a sip, and I said to myself, "Self, that drink is a little too strong."

God have mercy on my soul.

Vocabulary Corner

I learned a new word today: "fatocalypse." I was reading this wonderful article called "The Misandry Bubble" that is a rather longish article about, among other things, the changing nature of the marriage "contract" in Western society, particularly in the US, and how these types of changes have in all past societies that have implemented similar systems proven unsustainable and have led to the disappearance of that culture, and all of a sudden I came across a new word.

Here it is, in context:

We earlier discussed why marriage was created, but equally important were the factors that sustained the institution and kept it true to its objectives. The reasons that marriage 'worked' not too long ago were :

1) People married at the age of 20, and usually died by the age of 50. People were virgins at marriage, and women spent their 20s tending to 3 or more children. The wife retained her beauty 15 years into the marriage, and the lack of processed junk food kept her slim even after that. This is an entirely different psychological foundation than the present urban feminist norm of a woman marrying at the age of 34 after having had 10 or more prior sexual relationships, who then promptly emerges from her trim chrysalis in an event that can best be described as a fatocalypse.

I suggest you read the whole thing.