The slow death of a car

So my little grand prix is on it's way out. It's been having little issues here and there. It's had the normal things go wrong like needing new shocks, brakes and such. Last summer, I had a little plastic coolant line spring a leak. It's not easily fixed because it's a plastic tube, not a hose, and the tube is wedged between the manifold and belt tensioner.

My attempts to repair this tube over the year was actually thwarted back in 2002 when a man without any form of engineering degree got loaded on beer and cocaine and designed the engine for a 2002 pontiac grand prix. I'm assuming that scenario to be true because of how hard it is to work on this car. You have to remove a 2.5 ft long engine support just to take out the battery. Want to measure your power steering fluid? that's behind the engine, about 2 ft down. you need to have a hand the size of an infant and an arm like stretch armstrong. It might be easier to take the engine out to check the fluid level.

So needless to say, i have been unable to fix the problem. I tried to fix it properly last friday by removing half of the engine (coolant lines, alternator, 1 belt tensioner, belt, water pump pulley, coolant overflow tank, and fuse box) all removed to try to get to that little plastic tube. I failed and had to put it all back together when the final bolt holding me back was discovered to be behind the power steering pulley, which requires a special machine to remove and replace.

I decided the way I was going to fix the hose was by slathering JB weld all over it and letting it seal the crack. That worked great for 2 days. Last night on my drive home, the JB weld gave way and all of my coolant proceeded to spew from my engine into my engine compartment. I got home, noticed a lot more steam than usual coming from the hood, opened it and discovered this:

That sound you hear is boiling. It sounds a lot like frying something on your stove. It's a nice mix of water and the oil coating the outside of my engine boiling. The water raining from the hood is where most of the spray was directed on my drive home.

I have made 1 more attempt to seal the tube. let's hope it works because right now I have to put water in my car before I drive it. Every time I drive it. The car can go roughly 20 miles at a time before I need to stop an put in water.

This just in: all commercials are the same now

So apparently the only thing that sells products anymore is a guy doing outrageously cool things and acting like it's completely normal. Here are the examples. Feel free to let me know if you know of others:

The most interesting man in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYdwe3ArFWA
The Oldspice guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtF13U5t8xE
Edge Shave Gel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZtCv1gfmo
Heineken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0KvbSqfd28&feature=related
Dairy Queen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VtH5xdbMtU&feature=relmfu 

And slightly different from the above, but using basically the same concept:
Keystone Light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tzc-dB8Xuk
Progressive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQNk2Ssx0q0
DirecTv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0fa_BaljjQ


I mean, come on people....Keith Stone and the guy from the Progressive commercials could be the same guy.

I try not to get into current events

I also try to not make comments on politics or people in politics.

I am a seasoned non-voter. I know most of you just cringed and mumbled something about me being as bad as hitler or something. I don't care. I don't vote, it's my choice not to vote, and i also choose not to complain about the government or how things are being run....because i don't vote.

The purpose of this quick blog post is to send a little shout out to all the people singing the national anthem, painting USA all over their faces and screaming about how we're the best nation in the world because we finally killed 1 horrible guy after 10 years. So when we kill something we think is horrible, we're allowed to be patriotic to the point of being ugly. This is america and we have that right. Just don't forget how pissed off you were on 9/12 when the video came in of people in afghanistan, pakistan, and the likes singing, dancing, and waving their flags over the towers falling.

That is all. Commence poop jokes and pictures of my cats...

Goose Attack 2011

There are a couple of geese attacking a window at work. We've tried to combat it by hanging pictures of snarling dogs on the windows, but they just move to a window without the picture. Here is a short video of goose attack 2011. It's pretty much just this, over and over again, non-stop.

I survived goose attack 2011 and all i got was this lousy blog post.

what's a barcode.......what's lettuce?

so tonight i witnessed one of the most amazing things ever.
tonight i stopped by kroger to pick up a frozen pizza. i got into the self checkout line because the full service lines had about 30 people in them. most of the time, the self check out lines are fine. the times the self checkout sucks....oh man does it suck.

tonight i watched a lady who had very obviously never used the self checkout before. she was scanning items from her cart simply by chance. what i mean by "simply by chance" is she was grabbing her items and just waving them around in the area of the scanner. waving, twisting, shaking....anything that might get the bar code in front of the scanner. and by that i mean it was apparent that the lady had know idea that the bar code had to be scanned. she just knew that people walked up to the machine, waved their selections in front of it, it beeped, then they got to go home with their selection.

so after watching for several minutes as she waved items randomly around in the hopes it would beep, she came to her head of lettuce that she had placed in a bag herself. those that have ever bought a head of lettuce that wasn't pre-packaged knows that they don't come in a package or with a bar code. the best you get if you're paying attention is the little 4 digit number that tells the computer what the produce is.

so i watch her start waving her head of lettuce around the scanner in the hopes it would scan. but jason, you say, there is no bar code. there is no way it will work. she's wasting her time. of course. i know this, you know this. everyone but this lady knows this. so i continue to watch her attempt to scan. most people would have eventually stopped her and explained to her what her fault was. any other day, i may have agreed. today...i needed to see how long it would take her to figure it out. so i watched her for almost 7 minutes until she finally gave up and asked the attendant for the self serve checkout.

how is it possible that you have no idea that store clerks scan a bar code on the package, and if you're that dumb,why would you choose the self checkout. i feel fulfilled and empty at the same time.

60W vs AwesomeW

So tonight, while i try to build my comic buffer so that i can be done with comics until i get back from a wedding in Savannah next week, i discovered that the light above my stove went out. so i replaced it with a 100w equivalent CFL bulb. what that really means is that i replaced it with a 100x better bulb with better lighting. now i know some of you will disagree.....Heather...You like the old filament bulbs. look! look at our kitchen. it's wonderful. i bet you didn't even notice it until i wrote it in this article.

point being:
    does the bulb take a min to warm up?  - not anymore
    is the bulb bright white? -  not anymore!!
    does the bulb take 10billion watts of electrons? (no...but it's still more efficient than the older bulbs)

huzaa for CFLs that match/better incandescent bulbs.

mustache rides for everyone!!!

And the creepiest picture of the year goes to.....Me!!!!!.


This was mid shave after i decided to end my month long beard. I thought creeping heather out with a big white-trash mustache was the way to go. It lasted for about 45 seconds as we were both too creeped out by it....That is, after i kept stroking it and dancing.

The final beard looked like:

I would also like to thank the lighting in the picture for making me look high and the stupid smirk on my face (on purpose) for making me look more white trash.