Friday, March 28, 2008

Confused Jackasses

So today I was driving downtown in my global warming inducing diesel service truck. I was sitting at a red light when I see some bumper stickers on a car in front of me. One of them said, " Get U.S. Out Of Iraq", and the other one was a " Hillary" sticker. My first thought was "Jackass", but then when I pulled along side of the car I saw something that made me realize this person was no normal Jackass. On the drivers side rear window was an "NRA" sticker. What The Hell? I,m sorry, but you can't be a Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton and be an NRA supporter at the same time. You can be a Republican and support the NRA. You can be a Libertarian and support the NRA. You can be Green and support the NRA. You can be Black, Jewish, Elderly, an illegal immigrant, or most anything else and still support the NRA. But you can't be a Communist or a Democrat and support the NRA!. You can't. The Democrats spend a huge portion of their time trying to eliminate, override, defeat, and otherwise render useless the second amendment of our great Constitution. If you are going to support them, you cannot be an NRA supporter. The NRA wants people to be able to own, carry, shoot, and buy and sell weapons, including handguns and "assault weapons". These guns are scary enough to make proud Democrats piss themselves.
So I took a look at the driver of the car to see what kind of confused individual would send such mixed messages. As soon as I saw her the answer was crystal clear! The driver was a woman in her fifties ( I'm guessing her age). She had an extremely short, you could say
masculine haircut, and no makeup. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, so I feel qualified to say that when my gaydar goes off it's accurate!, and it was blasting loud and clear!
Now I understand how she could be so confused about her political views. She's confused about her own identity. She's not even happy with her own vagina. Who wouldn't be happy with a vagina? That's one of natures greatest inventions! She probably hates all men and really needs a gun to protect herself from their evil intentions. She probably even has a concealed carry permit. I just hope for her sake, that politically she doesn't get her way because if she did then she would most likely lose her right to protect herself from all of the evil men she has to be around every day!
The Hillary thing is equally hard for me to understand. I can kind of see her attraction to Hillary, her being out diked only by Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano, but as far as Lesbians go, I thought that our current President would be a much more natural choice. After all, don't Lesbians and Bush go together like.....well...... Lesbians and Bush!
And yes, I probably am a chauvinistic racist homophobic stereotype believing angry white man! Only I'm not angry and I'm usually right.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Project Conquest Complete

The Conquest that my son and I have been building the engine for is done. It looks cool and it runs great. I think it will make an awesome first car for my boy. Some might think a crappier car would be a better way to go for a teenagers first car. I have my own thoughts on that situation.


My son now knows what it takes to put a car like this into good running condition. He bloodied his own hands and learned first hand the expense involved with repairs on a car of his own. I think that this experience in itself will help him make better decisions when it comes to how he cares for this car. I've seen friends who have bought their kids beaters for their first vehicles, and the kids treated the cars like beaters. They never developed the respect for their vehicles that someone who builds their own does, and it shows on their driving records and their fenders. Having pride in something that you helped create is a good thing, and he will feel that every time he drives his new car. I can't think of a better way to start driving.


Here are a couple of pictures. We did the motor yellow so it would look at home in the factory yellow engine compartment. As far as Conquest engines go, I think this one is one of the cleanest I've seen, and it runs as good as it looks. It doesn't have the balls out horsepower that some of the v8's I've built had, but the turbo works well and it definately gets with it. This car handles as well as anything I've ever driven. It's fun to drive. It kind of gives me the same rush I get from riding a motorcycle. I hope the boy can keep his foot out of it!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Project Conquest Update

We got the engine back from the machine shop on Friday. It had been there for quite a while. While it was gone, we dodged snowstorms and spent the time detailing the engine compartment. I discovered that my son does a very good job on work that requires alot of attention to detail. This was a nice surprise, since most of the time he only seems to put forth the minimum required effort on anything he does.
I was very surprised with the condition of the engine that was in the car when we got it. I expected the engine to be a high mileage original. But while the block was the original, the engine had been recently butchered by someone who has no right ever opening the hood of a car ever again. The head was an earlier year head. Now this is o.k. if you use the correct rockers with the cam that's in the head, but they ran mechanical rockers on a hydraulic cam, resulting in a worn out cam and rockers. The block had been bored .020 over, but the dumbasses ran standard pistons. I know!. Not only were the pistons standard, they were 9.0:1 compression flat top pistons. This is a turbocharged engine, it's supposed to have 7.0:1 dished pistons. No wonder it barely ran! Anyway, we decked it, bored it, balanced it, replaced the head with a new casting, had a new cam ground, replaced the valvetrain, eliminated the silent shafts and jet valves, did some mild porting on the exhaust runners and now we're assembling. We've got the rotating assembly together, and we'll start the external stuff tomorrow. My son is learning more than he ever wanted about his new car. That is the whole idea behind this project. Help him understand the way a car works, and get some good father son time. I can't wait until my daughters get old enough to drive, I've already been looking at cars I think would make good father daughter projects!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

My Sacred Things

When I was a kid I had friends whose fathers were contractors. Because their fathers were contractors, their garages were filled with all kinds of really nice tools. These same tools were within reach, but deemed to be off limits under the penalty of death! I never liked or completely understood this. I guess you could say the fathers didn't trust the kids. Now that I'm a father, and I have more cool tools than most people know exist, I disagree with the "stay out of my stuff" policy even more strongly than I did as a kid.
My kids all have full use of any of my tools that they think they can handle. As long as the tools are clean and back where they belong before I have to use them for work, they are fair game. What's mine is theirs as far as I'm concerned...... except for three things.
Don't ever touch my gun. My Para Ordinance P-12 45 goes with me everywhere I go. I very rarely actually shoot it. I don't need to. I just love the fact that it is there. It is a beautiful peice of machinery. In fact , in my eyes, it's a work of art, a masterpiece. I call it my Buddy. So, Daddy's sacred thing number one, my Buddy.
Don't ever touch my chainsaw! My Stihl Farm Boss is the second sacred thing in my tool collection. When we need firewood, this baby gets it done. I don't want to be surprised with a worn out chain or some kind of starting problem. I keep it nice, and it works for me. So stay away from my chainsaw and you won't meet my Buddy!
My Peaks. Don't touch my Peaks. "What the hell are Peaks", you ask? Duh. they're my sunglasses stupid. Everybody knows that. But these are not your run of the mill dark sunglasses. These are special. My beautiful wife got them for me, and that's not all. These Peakvision glasses are specifically designed for golf, and that's MY game. The importance of these shades and the emotional attachment I feel to them cannot be measured using any currently recognized system of measurement. So the third item on my list of sacred things is my Peakvision sunglasses. If someone was to damage or lose my peaks, both my Buddy and my chainsaw would be put to immediate use!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

My Political Truths

I have been an observer of the political scene for about fifteen years now. I will never be a member of any political party. This has allowed me to view the action from an unbiased point of view. Here are a few of my observations.

1) Do Democrats ever shut up?
A) Since the answer to this question is a resounding NO!, the next two questions will be purely hypothetical.

2) If a Democrat were to shut up, would they still be lying?.........and whining?
A) YES!! Democrats aren't even honest with themselves about who they are and what they want, and Yes the only time a Democrat stops whining is when they stop breathing!

3) When Republican Lawmakers leave Congress or the Senate, do they get their spine and testicles back?
A) No!, Hillary keeps them.

4) Should people of Jewish descent, who had about six million or so of their recent ancestors removed from their homes, terrorized and murdered,(by their own government) be considered ignorant for supporting a party that promotes removing their only source of personal protection from their posession in their own homes.(like Hitler did)
A) Yes! extremely ignorant. History repeats itself. Jewish Democrats should be run out of the Jewish religion by every Jew who remembers the holocaust.

5) Why do the Democrats hate George W. Bush so much?
A) They don't hate him, they are just jealous because he somehow kept his spine and testicles when he became President!

6) Is Al Gore really a robot?
A) Yes, he was sent by aliens to destroy our economy with environmental restrictions.

7) Is John McCain really the oldest man on earth?
A) No, there is a man from Brazil who is rumored to have been born six months before Mr. McCain in 1840.

Democrats are the most racist segment of the American population.
Black Democrats are the most racist segment of the Democratic party.
Anyone who says they want to pay higher taxes is a complete idiot or a liar.
The voters of New York who voted for Elliot Spitzer should have their right to vote revoked for showing a severe inability to judge character...... They got what they deserved.
The voters of California should be given a timeout and have their crayons taken away!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Inspiration and Street Racing

Sunday morning, Sunday paper, Breakfast, check the weather channel. I caught a few seconds of a religious channel. A preacher doing his thing on stage in front of a packed house. Ahh! inspiration! I haven't posted in a while because I haven't felt anything worth saying. But today has been an inspiration storm!
Why can't all those people in the audience at the religious show see that the guy on stage is really creepy? I wouldn't let any of my kids get within twenty feet of that guy. It's just not normal for a man to get that emotional over anything, especially a glorified rulebook. Men don't like being told what to do anyway, especially when threats are involved. Threaten normal men, they'll fight, not cower and praise. That preacher is not being honest about who or what he is and that should be obvious to everybody,not just me. So what the hell is wrong with the folks who are applauding and giving him money? Maybe someone can help me out with that one.

I read an article in the paper that was espousing the dangers of street racing. I had to check my calender to see what year we are in. My god man,this is not news. It is not new, and it is no more dangerous today than it has ever been. This subject hits really close to home with me, and not just because street racing was my main receational activity from the moment I turned sixteen until my early twenties. Also because the article mentioned that in California, street racing is now a crime punishable by jail time. Participants cars are siezed and publicly crushed, and in some places it's illegal to just watch a street race. How times have changed!
My typical evening as a teen was to head over to my friends house, make sure my car ( a 400 h.p. Camaro) was running good, and then hit the Boulevard. We lived only twenty minutes from Sears Point Raceway so hot rods and racing were a major part of teen culture. There were bracket races at the track on Thursday nights, and everybody who had a car would show up and run. Friday at school, we all still had our times on our windshields as kind of a badge of honor. The fastest guys were the ones who everybody wanted to beat, and the Boulevard is where these challenges took place. During the week, and especially in the weekends, we cruised. The Boulevard was the place to find the other racers. When we saw someone we wanted to run, we would "jack them up", which means to cruise next to the and accelerate hard briefly so that the front end of your car jumps. Some guys could spin their tires. I could get my front tires off of the ground in two hops. Sometimes we would go right there, from a roll, without ever even saying a word. These races were usually short, with the winner outrunning the loser in dominant fashion. These races were the most common when the other guy was from out of town, or obviously
wasn't very fast. Usually after it was over , we would look for uor next victim. If the race was close, or we knew the other guy, or his car just seemed fast, we would talk shit back and forth for a minute, and then follow each other to Frates Road. Frates Road was the road used for the race scenes in the movie American Grafitti. In the movie it was called Paradise Road. Frates Road was wide, flat, long, seldom used, and had a Quarter Mile clearly marked on the pavement in white paint in a checkered pattern. We would pull off to the side near the starting line and wait until we didn't see any oncoming headlights coming at us. When it was clear, one of our passengers would jump out, run to the center of the road on the starting line, wait for the two cars to line up, point at both cars, raise his hands and then drop them to start the race. I personally did this several times a week. Most of my friends did the same . Some Friday nights we would have a hundred or more people show up to see several races. When the cops showed up, everybody ran. It was chaos, and it was fun. Back then the police couldn't catch most of our cars, and we didn't hesitate to run. I have run three times that I can remember, and never been caught. Today if you run, you get shot!
I moved away from California because I could see the direction things were giong years ago. Today if you live in California, you are doing something illegal. You might be breathing, or maybe your shoes are tied too tight, or you may have washed your underwear in non-government-approved detergent. Whatever it is, it's definately very wrong and you'd better straighten up and start following the rules before someone gets hurt. (or has fun) I hope things will stop moving in this direction, but I believe that California may be too far gone at this point. So, for now I'm going to be glad that I don't live there, and continue to discourage anyone else from moving here!