Street racing then and now

I've occasionally taken a run down memory lane to revisit the glory days of street racing. Oh, those were glorious days alright! We thought we were the coolest cats in town, melting the polyglas tires off our 340 Dusters (275 hp) and 396 Novas (375 hp).

Over the years my cohort has shed a lot of tears bemoaning the fact that the "younger generations" don't have the interest to keep the sport of driving fast cars fast alive...

What were we thinking?

In the old days, something that made an honest 500 hp was considered a scary ride. Nowadays half a dozen manufacturers will happily sell you over 700 hp off the showroom floor. The youngsters tuning the twin-turbo Vipers and 1000 hp Mustangs today would consider the twelve second rocketships of my era embarrassingly slow.

The "tuning" is different too. It used to involve screwdrivers and feeler gauges. Now it seems to involve plugging in a laptop. Sounds simple enough, but I haven't a clue what they're actually doing with the computer technology. My computer know-how is pretty much maxed out when I watch these videos, never mind tuning a 1600 hp engine from my laptop.

And the speeds they're hitting these days are incomprehensible by 1970 standards. These guys are dipping into the sevens at speeds approaching 200 mph. Those would have been funny-car times back in the day. Now they're doing that with cars that have power steering and air-conditioning!

So, apologies to the younger generations - you've obviously kept the flame alive!

But here's what I find sad. Back in the day, any goober with a job could get into the game. I don't think that's the case anymore. Driving fast cars fast has become a rich kid's pastime.

Pity!

Meet Mickey Two-Traps

Into a world short of heroes, a new legend is born; Mickey Two-Traps.

Mickey's adventures in the pantry have gone viral in Mouseworld. Many have ventured into the pantry. Few have lived to tell the tale.

And what a tale Mickey has to tell! 

"The morons who own the joint have gone in for those laughable Victor "quick-set" traps. Right away the odds of surviving go from zero to fifty-fifty. That maybe led me to let my guard down a little, but I wasn't ready for what happened next. Thinking I'd caught a whiff of peanut butter, I went into the corner to investigate, and... WHAM!

When I came to, I tried to shake the damn trap loose, but I couldn't see anything, and next thing I know, I back right into another trap! 

SNAP! 

Now I got one trap on my head and another one stuck on my ass and I'm starting to think I might not make it home... 

And then, a miracle! The dorkshit who set the traps gives me a lift out to the compost heap and let's me go free!"

Yup, it's all true. They're raising pints in Mickey's honour all over Mouseworld. He has become a living legend. 

Enjoy the glory while you can, Mr. Two-Traps. I've set up an old-school Victor "original" in the pantry, just for you.

Come back any time you like.

Greasing the skids for war on China

The Yellow Peril demonization pogrom continues apace in Canadian national media. At the Globe and Mail it fell to Campbell Clark to carry the can today; "Canada must embrace Biden's China alliance."

There's an obvious typo in the title; it's an anti-China alliance Biden is crafting, and he's hot to trot. In fact, in his first call with Justin after the election, and apparently Campbell was on the line, Biden was "effusive about working with allies."

How effusive was he? Not effusive enough. Mr. Clark suggests we "should be pushing" Biden in the right direction lest he waver in his resolve to confront the Yellow Peril, "we" being the allies who have shivered through four years of darkness waiting for the light of freedom to shine again in Biden's City on a Hill.

Meanwhile, over at the CBC, Evan Dyer wants us to follow Australia's lead and ramp up the Yellow Peril rhetoric. Perhaps if we join Australia in pushing back against Chinese aggression it'll stiffen Biden's spine? That's a somewhat unlikely scenario. Canada and Australia together spend about 7% of what the US spends on "security" every year. Fortunately, the prospects of pipsqueak me-too nations like Canada and Australia bringing China to heel are purely imaginary.

After four years in the shadow of the Orange Ogre, The Nations of Virtue are uniting again behind the leadership of the Exceptional and Indispensable Nation, the nation with the most powerful military machine in history.

Be afraid.

Best of times for Amazon and Walmart; worst of times for independent retail

As Toronto re-enters lockdown on account of the "second wave," there's umbrage in the air over the fact that Walmart and some other big chains will remain open, while independent retailers are forced to close.

Independent retail has been up against it for a long time, long before the pandemic. In a nutshell, the reason is this; people would rather save a few cents shopping at Amazon or Walmart, than to pay a little more and keep their local independents in business. 

The pandemic is the final nail in the coffin for a wide swath of independent businesses. We'll be happy enough to blame the virus for their demise, when the truth is that everyone who's ever shopped Walmart, Costco, or Amazon deserves a share of the blame. 

When we are conditioned to measure our lives by how much crap we consume, a retail model that optimizes crap-per-dollar will inevitably prevail.

Shame on all of us.

The worst of times; the best of times

Have you noticed that all the folks telling you you gotta stay home have cushy jobs where they can work from home?

While this plague is the worst of times, it's the best of times for folks who know how to make hay under the pandemic sun. Check out this headline; How billionaires got $637 billion richer during pandemic.

And it's not just billionaires. 

This pandemic summer has been the busiest in memory for building contractors around here. Real estate is booming. Folks who can afford it aren't shy about building new homes.

And don't cry too many tears for the front-line workers. Any nurse who's been working double shifts for the last six months is having paydays like never before in their careers. They're buying those new builds.

There's a Harley dealership in Pennsylvania having its best year ever. Seems every other yokel in the county signed over their covid check as a down payment back in the spring. Most of those purchasers were operating on the "we're fucked anyway" premise. The world is going for a shit anyway, so I might as well get a couple of months tooling around on the Harley of my dreams.

By the fall, most of these customers had defaulted on their loans, and now the dealer gets paid by the lenders to repo all those bikes. 

Business has never been better!

Enjoy those winter driving blues, Parker

 My nephew Parker is about to set out on his first cross-country solo drive. Good on ya, kid! I repost this "Winter Blues" missive from a few years ago in your honour!

Winter Blues

Back when I toiled in the Budd plant in Kitchener there was a shorthand used to refer to your co-workers.

We worked among Rastamen and Polskies and Ukes and Newfs and Frenchies and Krauts.

Every Portugese guy was known as Goose or Magellan or Vasco de Gamma.

One night after second shift let out we headed for the all-night liquor store in Stratford. A couple of home boys and a couple of Rastas in Frenchy's Javelin, with Frenchy driving.

I don't know to this day whether there actually was an all-night liquor store in Stratford, but we almost died trying to find out.

I do recall there was a 24 hour beer store in Toronto. We did make it there one night.

But Frenchy's Javelin ended up in the ditch on its roof that winter night, with five thirsty guys just getting thirstier.

Winter blues.

There's something about winter that makes desperation more desperate.

Me and Kipling headed out west to make our fortune in the dead of one winter. Went in the ditch 50 miles east of Winnipeg. Went in the ditch at a high rate of speed while I was both napping and driving simultaneously. 

Winter blues.

If you're watching this at home, kids, don't drive and nap simultaneously.

It's not a happy thing.

There was a Neil Young song popular at the time that glorified going to Alberta. I think most of us were just going to Alberta because Neil Young had sung a song about it...

Years later me and Terry ran out to Calgary in the dead of winter. Lost a wheel bearing somewhere around Bumfuck Manitoba in the middle of the night when it was -40 degrees outside.

You can't fix a wheel bearing without going outside.

-40 is really fucking cold!

Winter blues.

Winter adventures.

The Kid still swears that the best day of his life, and he's had an awful pile of great ones, was the day I picked him up at the hospital in Vegreville, in the dead of winter, and we toured all the way into the foothills and beyond, all the way to Mount Robson, him with his bottle of pills and me with my case of beer, and we ended up in Edmonton totally fucked up and just in time for a Triumph concert.

In the dead of winter.

Winter blues.

********

Happy trails, Parker!

China threatens to "poke out eyes" of Uncle Sam's chorus girls

Well, here's some nasty trash talk from the Yellow Peril!

Seems the commies have their knickers in a twist over this joint statement released yesterday by the foreign ministers of the US and their toadies in the "Five Eyes" club. That's a mighty impressive finger wag on freedom of speech, coming from a cartel of America's most obsequious ass-kissers. The Five Eyes are devoted to free speech so long as it's aimed at the enemies of Empire. If, perchance, free speech is wielded by the likes of Julian Assange, these stalwarts of free speech and rule of law don't hesitate to run roughshod over the law to stifle freedom of speech.

You'd think the junior members of the Five Eyes club would take a moment to survey the battleground they are preparing. They are hitching their little me-too wagons to the exceptional, indispensable nation, the nation that hasn't won a war since 1945 in spite of having started so many (ok,ok... they whupped Grenada fair and square).

What could go wrong?