Month: January 2024

Weird But Wonderful

Drive Time

A Reader (lost yer email, sorry) sent me this little look at The Most Odd-Looking Vintage Muscle Cars Ever Made.  I have several problems with said list, mostly because more than a few of the cars cannot be termed “muscle” cars by any stretch of the imagination, e.g. the Heinkel Kabine of the late 1940s:


…which featured a 174cc engine which generated 9hp.  That’s “muscular” only if you’re a Gen Z snowflake or an eco-moron.

Of course, there are a few strange ones on the list, but I have to say that more than a few did catch my eye, and I would have no problem owning / driving one of them, even today.  Here they are:

BMW Z1 (early 1990s) Sorry, but that’s just lovely.  The retractable doors (!!!) make it strange, but I’d still take one in a heartbeat.

E-type Jaguar (1960s)
That’s not “odd”, you morons, it’s a classic.  Even back then, it wasn’t odd, just beautiful (pace Enzo Ferrari, who knew a thing or two about the topic).

Lotus Europa (1970s)

Yeah, it looks a little strange, but it handled better than any road car of the time.  You could take corners at speeds that would have killed you in any other car.

Corvette station wagon (1970s) 
Yeah, I’d have one of these.  It looks a little like the Europa, but it solves the perennial problem of “How do I fit both my girlfriend and my rifle/shotgun cases into a sports car?”

Toyota 2000 GT (1970)

Sorry, but 150hp in a car that weighed almost nothing, handled like a dream and should never have ceased production?  That’s not weird;  the decision to stop making it was weird.  Like the E-type, it was a classic.

The one that really caught my eye, however, was this one:

Buick Centurion (late 1950s)

I think it’s glorious, not weird — and I’d take one in a heartbeat.

Feel free to peruse the others, and make your own choices in Comments if you want.

There’s also a list that contains some weird motorcycles, but to me they all look the same (like people in various non-European racial groups), so I couldn’t pass judgment.

True Confession

Bad News

I was going to do one of those retrospective lists about 2023 — you know, like Dave Barry’s funny take — about “10 Best” or “10 Worst” whatever.

Couldn’t.

In the first place, I couldn’t find a single entry for the “10 Best” — everybody sucked, there are no heroes, and they’re all out to get us.

Okay, maybe this guy:


…but he’s just one guy, and he’s way the hell away in Argentina and not in Washington D.C. where he really belongs.

As for the “10 Worst”… fuck me, where does one even begin?  As Insty so often puts it, I’d need a bigger blog, and trying to whittle down the list of 2023 awfuls to only ten (!!!) would likely take me most of 2024.

Good grief, I could do a 10 Worst People just by listing some perennial Golden Oldies:  Hillary Bitch Clinton and her husband Pedo Bill, Nazi George Soros, Chuck Schumer, Barack The Token, etc. etc.  You get my drift.

But trying to identify the newcomer assholes… sheesh, once again:  where does one even begin?  Hell, some of the Oldies from days of yore wouldn’t even feature today, given that finding the current worst is like trying to identify which rabid raccoon out of the pack of fifty you encounter in a forest is the most dangerous.  They’re all malevolent, all evil, and they’re coming at us from all directions.

As for events:  Ukraine (ongoing), Gaza (new entry), California (ongoing)… see where I’m going with this?

So, no.  No humorous retrospective this year, because frankly, everything and everybody in 2023 just flat-out sucked.  There were no rays of sunshine, no reasons for hope, no worthy heroes, too many assholes and the sooner I can forget about last year, the better.

Feel free to disagree with me in Comments, but be warned that you’d better bring your A-game.

To make us all feel better, here’s a picture of Markie Post:

The late Markie Post.

News Roundup

Bad News

First Roundup of 2024.  Try to contain your excitement…

And off we go:


...which is as it should be, and not just in Brazil.  Can’t see the problem, myself.

And in Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© News:


...come on, Al, you can do better than that.  Why not five billion?


...they don’t work if there’s no wind, they break if there’s too much wind.  Fucking Goldilocks machines.

From the Waste Of Time Department:


...Susan who?  Is she still alive and fucking things up in Congress on behalf of the Downeasters?  And on a related topic:


...this is what you get when you prevent law-abiding Irish citizens of the non-IRA persuasion from having their own guns:  they have to use steak knives.


...and can White people in New York defend themselves with guns?  Don’t be silly;  they can’t even use steak knives because of the No Pointy Stabbing Stuff Law of 1973.


...never trusted them damn Commanches anyway.


…


...could have been worse;  he could have used it for a legitimate purpose, e.g. buying some trannielit for a third-grade class.


...way I see it, Christmas Day for murderers should be when they’re excused their daily scourging, let alone getting a fucking “festive dinner”.

In International News:


...expect our own socialists to send observers down there to see how they do it.


...longest ever recorded, so far.  And to make it truly international:

(same principle)


...fucking scientists are always pissing in someone’s soup.

And in similar INSIGNIFICA:

And finally, in TV Actresses You’ve Never Heard Of News:


…here she is as a youngin:

 

And here she is today, at age 40 in the aforementioned bikini:

Weeny or MILFy?  I report, you decide.

Insane Build

Drive Time

Okay, so you have an old Alfa Romeo 105 GTV rust-bucket body (is there any other kind?), and you decide to rebuild it, only instead of the original four-cylinder two-liter engine, you say, “What the hell, I’ll just drop a Ferrari 360 V8 into it and see how things shake out.”

Here’s the result.  Take the 15 minutes out of your day, and feel better about the human race, that it can still throw out men like this.

And he’s Strylian, which makes it all the more memorable.  Best quote:  “I had to make everything!”

Including handmaking the leather seats.  (!!!!)

Alfarrari?  Why not?

Not Just No

Drive Time, Gummint, Watermelons

…but “fuck off and die” no.

I refer here, of course, to this push to make us all give up our regular gasoline-powered cars and replace them with fucking Duracell* vehicles.

Here’s one tale of woe.

And here’s the problematic infrastructure.

So fuck ’em.

Come to think of it, we could always switch to horses, except that those assholes at Peta will probably throw a hissy about that too.

I think I need to go to the range (he said, apropos of nothing).  Those guns aren’t going to shoot all by themselves, you know.

*And I mean no disrespect towards Duracell, who make excellent batteries.  I’m just not going to use them to power my car.