Complaining

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

There's a dating service ad that's been playing lately that is a collection of little skits of bad dates… In one of them, the girl says “let's talk about something fun — let's talk about magic!” as if that's a bad thing to talk about it. Seriously, I would be perfectly happy to talk about magic, and outright thrilled if someone could do even a few basic card tricks. I love magic! They don't really have to be able to do it, but if a person can't talk about magic, I am seriously not interested.

Speaking of magic, I think I might watch The Prestige tonight. I think I also watched The Illusionist a little while ago but I'm not sure. I liked their recreation of the Robert-Houdin Orange Tree automaton (because while I fear the robot apocalypse, automatons amuse me), but part of me wishes they'd gone with a more authentic representation rather than the CGI.

Anyway, now that I think about it… I am pretty tired so I probably won't do that today. I really need to get some sleep today because if I'm in a bad mood, even if I try my best to cover it up, rubs off on Nefarious. I don't know if that's just normal emotion sync, or if it's because me rolling around all night keeps her up because my room is above hers…

Other than that I've been interviewing a very interesting individual who was born with a highly developed immune system and whose play activities include consuming poison, which his body quickly breaks down, among other highly unusual and fascinating traits. Hey, at least life's interesting, even if it hurts most of the time!

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Too many videos for one entry

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Arrrgh! Because the weather keeps changing (which means I have to move my problem joint constantly to change what the tumor is pressing on I guess, I didn't get any sleep last night. None. That said, it's kind of weird because even though logically I know I must be, I am not consciously aware of being tired or in pain… I feel kind of dizzy and generally cranky, but that's about it. I canceled going to the gym today because it would have just been a waste, so hopefully tomorrow is a bit better.

Oh yeah, and I'm all sad because I think the winter is already over here in balmy Toronto, and I didn't even get a chance to go sledding.

Other than that whiny crap, I was reading about how Wal-Mart is China's largest corporate trading partner. Because Wal-Mart is so aggressive with pricing and is willing to go to countries like China that manufacture using extremely cheap labor, they set the price that American manufacturers have to beat in order to compete in their own market… Now, the book I was reading presented this as an inherently bad thing, but I was thinking it might not be. The end result of having a relatively high standard of living, but being forced to compete with nations with low standards of living, has made the American worker the most productive on the planet (as in they can produce more product per work hour per worker than any other nation on the planet), solving the problem with superior manufacturing techniques rather than what amounts to slave labor.

The only real problem I see is that pouring a ton of money into a country that doesn't respect its workers is suicidal, because you create a very wealthy, very well armed, but totally unstable nation.

“We call it a pole-car, because you ride on the end of a pole.”

This guy builds pretty funny stuff. As well as the “backseat driver” above, he's also got this awesome “redneck rollercoaster” where he's relocated the entire control assembly to a couch suspended over the hood!

What do you do if you only have the front of a car?

Or what if you only have the back?

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Old joys reborn!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Good news — my main surgery has been roughly scheduled for the week of March 20th… The bad news is that complicates an event I'm hosting, as well as affecting that “Test the Nation” game show I was supposed to be on… The good news is though that I won't have a reason to be in constant pain after that I hope (although they told me that it could take a while for my brain to clue in that it doesn't hurt any more). I get really tired at the end of the day, so I usually go to bed between ten and eleven, but I wake up between three and four because I guess at that point the “pain vs. exhaustion” equation tips back to where I am in more pain than I am tired, so I wake up.

Anyway… Since I have one wildly dirty vehicle in my garage, I picked up some jack stands so I can level everything out and get the car rolling again. I kind of think I should buy a junker $50 engine and drop it into the car (I pulled the engine out ages ago and put it in my Aztec 7)… it would only take me a weekend to get the car so it can drive again, and I sort of think that might be worth doing just for convenience's sake?

Here's my short-term to do list on it…
  • Clean, clean, clean, clean it!
  • Fix and level chassis and suspension so it acts as a solid rolling platform for rebuilding the body.
  • Cut off rear deck and rebuild
  • Flow body into interior and dash
  • Remove current windshield and replace with cardboard template for speedster-style wrap-around.
  • Fill in front vents and widen main grill
  • Create front and rear inner fenders
  • Fill in light pods and replace with smaller lights
  • Crop front/outside/lower edge of front fenders and add P4-style wings
  • Fill in doors
  • Create molds and cast a new body

Yeah, that's only part of it too… I'll start blogging the work either here or on my in-need-of-TLC kitcar blog. Oh, and if anyone has a scrap Beetle engine in the Toronto area they feel like giving away, let me know and I'll bolt it on!

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A very dirty car!

Monday, February 19, 2007

If you're wondering why I'm way in the background it's because one of the front wheels is seized (and one of the rears is totally flat), so we used the truck to winch it off the trailer and I'm running that, not being lazy. It took a bit of forceful pushing from the lot of us, but it's in the garage, desperate to be cleaned. I don't know if I'm going to tackle the rear end or the light pods first. None of the work the car needs is particularly difficult… more time consuming than anything.

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Great news today!

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Among other nice things… I get a phone call;

“Hey, this is Billy — you'll never guess what I've got on my trailer right now!”

So tomorrow morning some time my old chopped up Elite Enterprises Laser 917A will arrive in Toronto… So hopefully in my little garage this winter I can get a good amount into the transformation that's badly photoshopped below. It's pretty much just fill work and smoothing out (and replacing those giant light pods with something more modern, and I suppose a little TVR-ish). It's sort of a Speedracer-y very low “Lola T70 has the bastard child of a dunebuggy” thing…

Lots of foam and filler… But that car has been sitting in a ripped apart state for so many years that it will be very, very nice to finally finish it. The chassis has got to be toast, and because it's got American registration it would be a pain to reregister in Canada, so I think I may just treat it as a rolling plug and take a mold off it.
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