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I got triggered by this (link):

A couple months back I needed a cooler trunk for a road trip — not a soft-sided freezer bag, but the kind of thing one takes on camping, hunting or fishing trips.  I haven’t had to buy one of these things in yonks, so I was completely out of touch with the whole thing, but I thought I’d just get a Coleman because I sort of know the brand and I’ve had good experiences with it in the past.  Also, I needed something in the 50-60-quart size.

So off I went to Academy because they’re located next door to my next stop, the Kroger which in turn is next door to my sooper-seekrit mailbox place.  (Efficient, that’s me.)

No Coleman.  Okay, no sweat;  here’s Igloo:


…not bad, but a little pricey, and I want a trunk, not a box.

Here’s Magellan, which is Academy’s sorta-house brand, made (as they all are) in China:


…wait, WTF?  $200 for a smaller cooler?  Any more Igloos?


…FFS, two hundred and fifty dollars for a fucking cooler with wheels?  Does it come with independent suspension and power steering?

But it got worse, oh yes it did.  Try this proud Yeti number:

…ummmmm

Okay, I said I’m out of touch with this category, but has there been some massive gain in static refrigeration technology that I haven’t heard about?  “Roadie”?  Does it come with someone to drag the thing around?

Had I wandered into REI, Whole Foods or a Ferrari dealership by mistake?

What premium-priced hell is this, where people pay this kind of money for what is, after all, a throwaway product that lasts a couple of years before the seals rot and you have to get another one?

Somebody ‘splain this to me, please.  I’m clearly just ignorant.

By the way:  I ended up getting two styrofoam coolers from 7-Eleven for $15 apiece, just put up with the styro-squeaking for the trip, then tossed them when I got home.  Job done.

This, I Love

Bureaucracy, Gummint

It’s not often I chortle just be reading a headline, but this one got me, oh yes it did:

And here’s the story:

Highway chiefs are hunting a phantom pothole filler after an enraged motorist poured concrete into a huge crater that closed the road for months. The work was carried out in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, as the mystery volunteer decided to patch up the road which has been shut since April.

But Cornwall Highways said the work was done ‘without consent’.

Colin Martin, Cornwall councillor for Lostwithiel and Lanreath, said: ‘The latest is that the road has been closed again and will remain closed until it is ‘properly’ repaired by Cormac, but they say this could be weeks away as all available teams have been diverted to filling smaller potholes on roads which are still open.

Here’s the pic of the vengeful road re-closing:

I’m just waiting for the metal screens to “disappear”… not that I would want anything like that to happen, of course.

I love it when officialdom gets a busted nose for their inefficiency.  And I love it more when they get upset about it.

Here’s the background to all this:

So now you know.

Dept. Of Righteous Slinging

Heroism

Reader Quentin sent me this little piece of hilarious goblin takedown:

A teenager helped save his younger sister from an alleged kidnapper by shooting the suspect with his slingshot, Michigan authorities said.

The 8-year-old girl was mushroom-hunting in her backyard in Alpena Township on Wednesday when “an unknown male appeared from the woods,” the Michigan State Police said in a press release on Friday.

“The suspect had come through the woods onto the property and came from behind her, grabbed her like you’d see in the movies — hand over the mouth, arm around the waist — and was attempting to pull her into the woods,” Lt. John Grimshaw with the Michigan State Police told ABC Traverse City affiliate WGTU.

The girl was able to break free, police said. Her 13-year-old brother also witnessed the attack and shot the assailant in the head and chest with his slingshot, police said.

And then:

The suspect fled the area but was located by state troopers hiding at a nearby gas station and was able to be identified in part due to injuries from the slingshot, police said.

“The suspect had obvious signs of injury sustained from the slingshot with wounds to his head and chest,” police said.

Now, can I ask you all to rise…

Well done, youngster.  Bravissimo.

(Too bad he didn’t have a .22 rifle, but in this case, I’ll definitely take two ball bearings to the body for $400, Alex.)

I can just hear the other prisoners now:  “Dude!  You got whacked by a kid with a slingshot?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

Monday Funnies

Funny Stuff

And on we go, trying to make the whole business more palatable.

And:

And possibly my favorite pic of the week:

No, wait… this one’s my favorite (for obvious reasons):

Now off to work you go.  Because those choppers aren’t going to fuel themselves.

Bygone Broads 2

Drive Time, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Last year, I posted the first of this series, in which I lamented the disappearance of beautiful cars and lovely women from teenage boys’ bedroom walls.  That post featured a couple Ferraris and Lucy Pinder.

Here’s another such coupling [sic].  First, two cars of the Corvette persuasion:

…and second, one of the pinups who might have appeared on the opposite wall:

As the old saying went:  “Farrah Fawcett:  creating pup-tents in teenage boys’ beds since the 1970s.”

And as an older woman:

No Cheating

Drive Time

Via email, Reader Jim L. took issue with me on this post (Tinkering With A Dream), saying, “That’s an easy way out.  Almost ALL old cars would be great with modern technology.  Which old car would you choose if you COULDN’T put in modern tech?”

Okay, challenge accepted.  Just to make things more difficult for myself, I’ve excluded the original E-type, Dino and Merc 300 from the choices because even in their original offerings, they would occupy the top three slots anyway.  Also, I’ve included reliability and (reasonably-) low maintenance in the criteria (so bye-bye to Alfa, Fiat, Lancia etc.).  But above all, the cars have to have charm, beauty and charisma.

Assuming then that the car was in its contemporaneous showroom condition, here are my Top 6 Old Dream Cars:

1958 BMW 507

No need to add or subtract anything.  The only reason that BMW didn’t flood the market with these exquisite cars is because of its exorbitant price ($98k in 2020 dollars);  but by modern standards, it would be a bargain.  Today, even a clapped-out old 507 will fetch well over a million spondulicks (which says it all, really).  It was, and is, one of the most beautiful sports cars ever made, and it’s noteworthy that the few secondhand models still around have very high mileage on the tach.

1956 Citroën Traction Avant 15/H
The pre-war models were admittedly underpowered (not for the time, though), but by the late 1950s its 2.9-liter six-cylinder engine was tops.  (The “H” in the description denotes that the car was fitted with Citroën’s hydro-pneumatic suspension, which made it the most comfortable ride back then, and maybe still even by today’s standards.)  The TA was and still is wonderfully reliable, and in this old Frog limo I’d tour the country — any country — without a qualm.

1967 Monteverdi High Speed 375
Let’s see:  Swiss steel and manufacturing, Italian styling and an American engine (to be specific, Chrysler’s honking big-block 7.2-liter V8 putting out 375hp).  Find fault with any of those, I dare ya — and the combination was (and is) irresistible.  The only thing I don’t like about the Monteverdi is that it came only with automatic transmission — but in a tourer, that’s not too much of a compromise, really.

1969 Mercedes 300 SEL 6.3
More power than anyone would ever need off a racetrack (yes, a 6.3-liter engine with serious grunt), matchless reliability (built back in the day when engineering was Job #1 at Mercedes), and classic good looks.  The 6.3 actually created the “high performance” category of large luxury cars, and it took most other manufacturers nearly a decade to catch up properly.

1965 Mercedes 230 SL
Okay, this one’s as much for New Wife as for me, but I’d still take one for myself in a heartbeat.  It’s not a performance car by any definition, but it’s quick enough, and comfortable enough, and reliable in spades.  And lest we forget, it looks classy and elegant.

1963 Porsche 356 C Carrera 2
The last of the 356 line before being replaced by the 911, this one had Porsche’s 2-liter flat-four engine.  What it also had (and has) is wonderful reliability and driving pleasure.  What it doesn’t have (or need) is power anything, electronics and all the modern and mostly unnecessary crap that makes my nose twitch.

So there you have it:  six old cars, unaltered, out of the box, no changes necessary.  I would take all of them, in a heartbeat, and if forced to take only one, I’d roll the die and be perfectly satisfied with whichever number came up.