Consider the classic hypothetical scenario: Your house is on fire and you can take only three things with you before the entire structure becomes engulfed in flames. What would you take?

This one’s pretty easy for me. There’s not a chance in hell that my brain would know what to do beforehand. I don’t have a mental rolodex of things ranked in any kind of way–importance, expensiveness, color, anything–that I can get to fast enough to affect my decision of what to take from my burning house and what to leave behind, once I get past the people and the animals. I’d have to think about it, and the scenario is set up, obviously, in such a way that I can’t think about it.

So in the end, when the firemen arrived, they’d probably find me sitting on the curb in my smoking clothing holding two bananas and a spoon.

My heart was in my throat, wishing them well
In their mighty trek

around all those helper verbs

Through that thicket, that rock n roll briar patch
Past the bleaching bones of stupid warriors

“She had taken his hand, she had become like they are”

Bless their hearts.

Abraham Vigoda, b. Feb 24

“Big-assed Birthday Extravaganza” is an annual holiday observed in parts of the United States on the third Monday in February. This year it is February 15. Big-assed Birthday Extravaganza was originally celebrated in 2007, when someone noticed an unusually large number of his friends, relatives, and famous people  had been born in Februarys past.

The original charter:

Since B, K, Copernicus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, one of my brothers, my dad, and my mother-in-law all have birthdays within the same 2 week span, I propose we combine them all into one big holiday, to be observed on the same day in February from henceforth. I propose that it should fall on the third Monday of the month, and we call it “Big-assed Birthday Extravaganza.” I propose that it should be a day that department stores hold “white sales,” on account of all of them are white, even Copernicus, probably. I propose that only women, women of every color, every stripe of the rainbow or multi-hued towel, may take advantage of the sales, except for beer, which of course is largely consumed by men of stout heart and should always be on sale. I propose the holiday should be a time of blithering, that every citizen should have the right to blither about any damned thing without fear of ridicule or benign indifference from his or her fellow countrypersons.

Happy Big-assed Birthday Extravaganza!

If this is what Italians think English speakers sound like, we sound pretty frickin awesome. And talk about our dance moves!

PS: People of Massachusetts? Go fuck yourselves.

You know how it’s said that a hybrid gets better city mileage than highway mileage because 1) the gas engine shuts off when the car is stopped, and 2) because of regenerative braking? That’s gotta be bullshit, and here’s why:  an object in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton, law-giver.

For example: say you’ve got your Prius cruising along at 40 mph. You see the light up ahead turning yellow, so you slow to a stop. Yes, the regenerative braking is recovering some percentage of the energy the car put into accelerating to 40 mph, but it’s not recovering 100% of that energy. In fact, a website I went to today (since navigated away from and lost) rates regenerative braking as delivering between 5 and 10% of a hybrid’s fuel economy (which translates into some unknown but less than 100% efficient energy conservation). In other words, if the stoplight hadn’t been there, the Prius would’ve continued merrily along at 40 mph without losing any energy to braking.

Second, at the stoplight, the Prius’ engine shuts down for the wait. Yes, no fuel is being used at the stop, but on the other hand, no mileage is being run up either. It’s a wash. But, you say, when the light turns green and the Prius accelerates back up, most of that acceleration is accomplished by the electric motor before the engine kicks back on; there’s your savings!

Im gegenteil mein freund!  The electric motor is solely charged via the gasoline-powered engine. Yes, in the several seconds after the stoplight, the energy is taken from the electric motor, but at some point down the road, that energy has to be replaced by transferring it from the gasoline engine back to the electric motor’s battery, with some concomitant loss of energy during the transference. Newton.

So why are hybrids touted to be so much more efficient in the city than on the highway? It just don’t add up. It just don’t add up. My guess (and it’s just a guess, albeit an incredibly educated and insightful one) is that it has everything to do with average speed and wind resistance. My guess–educated, insightful, and of an overall incredible nature–is that if a Prius were tested on the highway (meaning no starting and stopping) at an identical average mph as that achieved in city driving, its mileage would be significantly better than what it could achieve in the city, owing to reduction in wind resistance (from that at normal highway cruising speed to that at 40mph) and Isaac Newton. Because speed increases linearly, while the amount of energy necessary to overcome wind resistance increases exponentially (several of my brain cells swear this is a true statement based on graphs they remember seeing long ago, and that’s good enough for me).

Insightful, you say? Incredibly educated? Darn tootin’.

In sum: it’s obvious and goes without saying that a hybrid gets better gas mileage in city driving than a non-hybrid because of its ability to shut down its gas engine from time-to-time, as well as its being equipped with regenerative braking. But given the same average speeds (admittedly not going to happen) in highway vs city driving, a hybrid does not magically pull energy out of a hat to become somehow more efficient in the city than it is on the highway; the only reason that a hybrid achieves “better fuel economy” in the city is that, at average city-driving speeds, wind resistance is much less of a factor than at average real-world highway speeds. Therefore, the commonly-understood, commonly cited, but wrong, assumption that a hybrid’s better city mileage versus highway mileage arises from some laws-of-physics-defying aspect of stop-and-go driving is an often-parroted but chowder-headed massive misunderstanding of what is really going on.

And that’s the way it is, this eleventh of January, 2010. Courage.

I used to be the guy you passed on the road and said “Jesus, I’ve got to get in shape!” I’m not that guy anymore. It’s been a few years now since I was that guy. Maybe I’ll be that guy again, it’s hard to say.

At least I’m not the guy you pass and say “I hope he talked with his doctor before doing that” or even the “My God! Somebody call an ambulance!” guy. Nope, I’m not either one of them.

I’m hoping to go in the other direction, back upstream. Upstream was a nice place as I recall. I think the “Jesus” guy is the sweet spot (or, for this metaphor, the slickest rock in the creek). I liked being him, if only for a little while. It takes a little maintenance to be that guy (which is why he isn’t me right now), but I think it’s still possible. Sure; why not?

There is a guy who’s fitter than that guy: the guy you see riding along the side of the road, perfect form, even breather, lightning quick. The guy other people, as they pass him in their cars, prayerfully urge to eat shit and then immediately get to dying. Now that’s a guy!

But he’s not the slickest rock in the creek. That title goes to the guy who can eat a slice of pizza or have a beer whenever he wants to.

In a recent commercial for Allstate, Dennis Haysbert intones that drivers who switched from Geico to Allstate saved an average of $396 per year on their auto insurance. He then intones “Surprised?”*

Not really, Dennis, and here’s why:  My guess is that most (if not all) drivers who switched insurance companies switched because the switch saved them money. But there are all these other drivers who didn’t switch, and they didn’t switch because they found out the switch wouldn’t save them money.

So for the purposes of disingenuousness, Allstate selected out all the people who came to the conclusion that switching companies was expensive and stupid before they averaged anything. Those left over–90% of everyone? 3.5% of everyone? Allstate doesn’t tell us–those left over saved some average amount of money. Allstate tells us that average was $396. Allstate doesn’t tell us how much money the other 10% or 96.5% of drivers saved, on average, by sticking with Geico. They left that up to Geico to do in some caveman or googly-eyed money-wad commercial somewhere down the road.

And they knowingly left us to mis-translate their carefully-crafted copy in our heads, so we’d be left thinking that the average driver would save $396 by switching to Allstate, instead of what they really said, which was merely that the average driver who discovered a reason to switch saved $396 by doing so. Crafty!

It’s a pretty disingenuous commercial, but you have to be suspicious and cranky to realize it. That’s where I come in. You’re welcome.

How’s Dennis feel about the commercial?

Haysbert… is happy to be in the Allstate ads. He says it’s the first ad work he’s done in about 15 years, because “most commercials are not very dignified.” But, he says, Allstate is different: “These had integrity. They have a team of lawyers that hover over each word I say. It might be a little frustrating, but it works. I can have the confidence and knowledge that what I’m saying is true.”

I conclude that Haysbert is neither suspicious nor cranky enough for his own good. And he has lawyers hovering over each word he says, like angels.

Somebody came up with this idea, other people okayed it. Actors were hired.

In the paraphrased words of Ignatius J Reilly: “Filth! How dare they pretend to be virgins. Look at their degenerate faces. Rape them!”