The Chase Lounge

So Jesse Ventura has a new show on TruTV called "Conspiracy Theory". I'd make fun, but the LA Times did it for me. If you walk up to any building and the door is locked, and your first reaction is to shout "IT'S A CONSPIRACY!" you get a TV show.

I know she's using high tech props. But this one person fills the stage with music. I can never get tired of this one.

I know reality bites but geeze! You'd think I could find somebody online every now and then. Am I gonna have to start publishing gun porn.....

'cause most of them are slap wonderful! Random Thoughts of the Day: • I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option. • Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong. • I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter? • Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk. • I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger. • The...

from Amarillo in the great state of Texas is my kinda song writer! Check out his new song " Obamanation ".

Back in the Seventies and Eighties I drove a truck for my father's company. Actually I drove several trucks; everything from a homemade mobile crane (we called it a "wrecker") that Pop had made out of a '52 Reo front end and a White rear end; to a '57 Reo that went through various incarnations as either a dump truck or a tractor; to a C700 Ford straight truck; to a W9000 Ford tractor with a 6-71 Detroit and a Fuller Road Ranger 10 speed trans. I got good enough with the Detroit that I could go up through the box without using the clutch, once I got the rig rolling. What you did was to wind the diesel out until the governor cut in (about 2100 rpm); back off just enough to unload the transmission; slip the stick into neutral; let the engine rpms drop back to a point you knew from experience would let the next gear mesh without jerking (usually about 1600); slip the trans into the next higher gear (and you literally had to feel the gears engage with the stick) and ac...

Best Levis commercial?

Now this AARP I like!

Washington, DC -- June 23, 2009 Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of September 1, 2009. The move is being made in order to save the President's $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months. It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President's term. "We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). "We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay," Reynolds noted. Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time. Gurvinder Singh, a tele-technician for Indus Teleservices, Mumbai India , will assume the office of President as of September 1, 2009. Mr. Singh was born in the U...

Ken Elder down in Carthage, NC has quite a collection of steam and gasoline engines. Here are a few pix that I shot a couple of years ago at his show. The first two are called "oil engines" since they ran on kerosene. International Harvester "Titan" Hart Parr, forerunner of Oliver Now we get to the steam engines: Avery Undermount Geiser "Peerless" Z3, the biggest engine Geiser made. And they didn't make many of them. Reeves in front, Nichols & Shepard behind 40-140 Rumley The figures are horsepower ratings. The first number is drawbar horsepower. The second is belt horsepower. And the ratings were figured differently then gasoline horsepower. J.I. Case Sawyer-Massey, a Canadian engine The Westinghouse "upright". A vertical boiler engine. And just to show that there's nothing new, here's a Lansing 4 wheel drive steam engine. And last we have an A.D. Baker engine. The Baker engine was one of the most technologically advanced steam e...

It is a slow day in the East Texas town of Madisonville. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich tourist from the East is driving through town. He enters the only hotel in the sleepy town and lays a hundred dollar bill on the desk stating he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. As soon as the man walks up the stairs, the hotel proprietor takes the hundred dollar bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to pay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer then takes the $100 and heads off to pay his debt to the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute who has also been facing hard times and has lately had to offer her "services" on credit. The hooker runs to the hote...

And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land called America , having lost their morals, their work initiative, and their will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that person known as "The One". He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but He hypnotized the people telling them, "I am sent to save you. My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego, and my association with evil doers are of no consequence. For I shall save you with Hope and Change. Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the land that he who preceded me is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed." And the people rejoiced, for even though they knew not what "The One" would do, he had promised that he would bring change, and they proclaimed "Yes We Can". And "The One" said "We live in the greatest country in the world. Help me change everything...

If you can call 8400 feet of altitude "down". I guess it's all relative... Just got back to Carolina from a week in Colorado. Meant to get down to Santa Fe and meet up with Pauls, Labrat and Stingray but it didn't happen. I had a case of the "tired" the first of the week and we ended up sticking close to the ranch for the duration. Anyway, a few pix: Coming up Hard Scrabble canyon into the Valley you start to see the Sandre de Cristos in the distance. And then you drop down into the Valley: You come to Silver Cliff first and then Westcliffe. The towns run together and you really can't tell where one stops and the other starts unless you see the signs. Silver Cliff was the original mining town. Then the Denver & Rio Grande bought cheap land outside the town and established Westcliffe. Gradually all the business migrated to the rail head as the railroad had known they would. When the mines played out, Westcliffe became the dominate town and is now the ...

Back in the US....back in the US....back in the USA! Other than having to leave the hotel for the airport at 0-dark-30 (4:45am CET but made somewhat easier since I got a ride in a Volvo stretch limo!!! ) the flights home were uneventful. The flight from G'burg to Munich took about 1.5 hours. I had a 3 hour layover in Munich; which was ample even considering that I had to go through German Immigration (interestingly the Germans stamped my passport each way while the Swedes did not at all). The flight to Charlotte took about 10 hours and fortunately I didn't have any trouble getting through US Immigration and Customs. Then I had a 2 hour drive to get to the house so Don was a tired puppy when he got home. I am still amazed at the level of service that one gets on a trans-Atlantic flight; or the connecting flight from Munich to Gothenburg for that matter. Alcohol is free on the trans-Atlantic flights and Lufthansa does a very good job of making sure that you have what you want. Th...

6:18pm CET: Everyone seems to leaves work early on Friday so we were turned loose at 3:30. I'm trying to get packed and ready to fly out at 0-dark-30 in the morning. Can you say "Don's going to crash and burn when he gets home" boys and girls? I knew you could.... As I promised yesterday here are the pix I took from the church grounds up on the hill: The water front. Ferry coming into port. She's swinging around to back into the dock. I think this is one of the ones that goes across to Denmark. Gothenburg used to be a major ship building facility, but as my Swedish friends say "Not so much any more." It is still a major port, as you see a lot of truck traffic hauling containers.

6:00 am CET: cloudy again this morning and it looks like it rained during the night. Typical "Gothenburg weather" according to the Swedes. I'm supposed to tour the Volvo truck plant this morning. Don't know if they will allow cameras in the plant, but I'll try and get some pix if possible. Update: didn't get any pix at the truck plant but we went up to a church high above the city after work and I got a bunch from there. I'll post them tomorrow because I left the card reader at work....

Up earlier then the last two days this morning, since my colleague needed to be in the office an hour earlier today. Meetings most of the day but this afternoon several of us went to the Volvo Museum and looked around a bit. It's a neat place with a bunch of concept vehicles in it. The office. Some of the vehicles in the museum: Kinda looks like a Chrysler Airflow... P1800ES, the sport wagon version of the P1800 Simon Templar's (The Saint) P1800 Concept vehicles Concept vehicle for the C30 Concept vehicle for the XC90 A look at the truck gallery from above Yes Volvo made tractors too The Titan, one of the longest produced of Volvo's truck models European cab-over tractors. And after seeing some of the windy, narrow streets in Gothenburg I can understand why they use cab-overs. Latest version of the FH16 Interior of the cab-over