Neanderpundit

when my sense of self preservation was almost nonexistent. It was not uncommon for me to flip or roll a car, and I went through rides like clean underwear.

Of course, at the time, you could buy a reasonably reliable used car for$200. That was a weeks wages, in the day, and so long as I managed to get a few weeks out of a car I was ahead.

My insurance provider (My mom’s best friend) assured me that as long as the trashed cars went to the yard and not to a police impound, my rates wouldn’t rise. I had a friend with a truck and a towchain and whatever I managed to trash, we got it to the yard, and more than once the yard gave me almost what I had in it.

In retrospect, I sent a dozen cars to the yard with nearly full gas tanks. Well, it was only 60 cents a gallon then, I suppose.

Nowadays, like most people, I’m much more sedate, because I cannot afford to damage my daily driver. Oh, I still drive, but I don’t take any chances that might result in sufficient damage to immobilize it.

I still work with people who have an income level that would allow them to destroy cars- new cars! At the rate I used to, and some of them still do. Two of my co workers cannot get anyone to ride in a car with them at all, including their own families.

I often think of buying one of those old beaters again. I think about the times I regained consciousness in the car on it’s side running because I pushed it too hard around a curve and ended up in a cornfield. I think about the understeer in the Escort as i tossed it around the local farm roads until I snapped the suspension off the right hand side. I think about the local cop who pulled his gun and pointed it at me and said “LET ME OUT OF THIS CAR RIGHT NOW”. I think about the pee stains he left on the seat.

I drove and trashed a lot of cars. A friend has a Corvair I could put my hands on but I’d have to get it across the country; it would be perfect for those purposes and no doubt a hoot to drive. I love tail heavy cars and that’s the grandmother of them, here in the US.

There aren’t as many places to do those things, anymore. And frankly, driving like that is safest when limited to closed roads of tracks, there are too many idiots.

But I do miss the days of driving cars like I stole them, title in the glove box already signed ready to take to the yard, mismatched tires and rims, smoking exhaust and steaming radiator and carpet that smelled like cheap cigars and cheaper booze. I had a lot more fun driving then than I do now.

Conair is making an electric trimmer to deliberately leave beard stubble.

Stubble is now a grooming choice.

Get off my lawn, you unshaven little cocksuckers.

Right from CW McCall to Bobby Sherman.

I don’t know what’s worse, having the song stuck in my head, or remembering him acting like he’s dancing in the stupid video.

As of yesterday, only Nathan and Ed seemed to understand that it is possiible to reverse the tide of liberalism in a non bloody manner using the slow and steady tactics of the enemy- lobbying, paying off the right people, etc. The Gun nuts have been doing so successfully for years, though it is a constant and uphill battle. Creeeeping incrementalism got us here, and can get us out, though it might well take a hundred years. When a normal person encounters something ignorant, like the EPA, your immediate reaction is “Hang all the bastards” but “How about letting them exist but removing their power, just making them a reporting agecny” is something even the unwashed could think “Well, that seems reasonable” even though it is clearly NOT.

Replacing your normal instincts to kill and maim with a new set of plans that slowly ratchet back the stupid, by doing the opposite of what the morons have been doing all these years, creeping incementalism and choking thier “reasonab;e” ideas in equally “reasonasble” regulations.

Freedom is in our DNA, most of us. We can make this work.