Month: February 2008

Now That’s Interesting

On tonight’s episode of Lost we find out that the island has some strange power over the surrounding environment and every person on it. Oh, that’s right, we already knew that…

So of the “Oceanic 6” that get off the island, we now know 2/3rds of them. In the “flash forwards” so far we have found out that Jack is so afraid of something that he goes back to being a drunk, Hurley is so afraid of something that he hides out in a funny farm, Kate is so afraid of something that she is hiding and now we discover that Sayid is so afraid of Ben he kills people.

Interesting thing about watching the show on “live” TV is watching the commercials. For the longest time I figured I was the whole wrong demographic for the show. The ads skewed way young. Old Navy clothing, birth control pills, the hip new Ford car that you can talk to get it change the music playing instead of the archaic button pushing, etc. But finally in the next to the last commercial break I felt better, there was an ad for Viagra.

Speaking of Old Navy ads, was the new Urban Safari look advertised inspired by the whole running through the jungle on Lost or is that the new look and they picked Lost to sell it because of the whole running through jungle thing?

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 38

I Know Her

We finished watching the last 3 episodes of season 3 tonight and made a vow to wait at least 4 months before we start over again with season 1.

After we finished watching Lost I caught up with the latest episode of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles online. Midway through there is this scene between the man that Sarah was living with prior to her jumping ahead 8 years into 2007 and his current wife (the Sarah replacement if you will.) He was trying to convince her that he wasn’t lying, that he hadn’t seen Sarah recently. The wife looked real familiar. I had seen her in something recently. Real recent. No, it couldn’t be. With a quick check of IMDB and I found out it was who I thought it was — Penny!

Sonya Walger

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 37

The Incredible Shrinking Car

A few months ago some new folks moved into the neighborhood about 5 houses down. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen them out and about. Which is probably not unusual, because I’d bet they’d say the same about us.

I’m a car guy, so I noticed right off what vehicles they owned. On the side street from their house there is an old flat bed truck, which I assume is the fellows work vehicle. Some times it is warming up when we drive by on our way to work in the mornings. Her car (I’m guessing) is a less than 2-year old white Lexus IS 250. I know it is this new because it is the new body style. His car (again a guess) was a black 2006 or 2007 750i BMW. Again I it is of this vintage because of it’s toned down “Bangle-butt” rear end and that is when the “5”-liter engine was available.

German cars are known for their good brakes and part of the reason for that is the type of brake pad they use. But the down side to the pads is that in short order they turn your shiny silver wheels to dark gray then to black because of the dust they give off from use.

When they moved in the BMW’s wheels were shiny. I don’t think he ever washed those wheels in the first couple of months they lived there. Eventually they looked about the same shade of flat black as the tires. One evening on the way home I noticed the wheels were bright again.

The next day on the way home, there was a silver 650i convertible parked next to the Lexus. He washed the wheels because he was trading the big sedan in on BMW’s big 2-door ‘vert.

After a couple weeks, the wheels on the 650i weren’t even dull silver yet, it was gone. Now there is a gray 550i BMW sedan in the driveway.

Somehow I don’t think there will be a 3 series car there next. The Lexus IS is same class car. I’m betting that sometime in March there will be a black Z4M Coupe there.

Spacebar

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 37

Blogger’s Night Off

Desmond Getting Pissed

Its a good thing we took a vow of poverty then innit brother?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 32

Forsaking All Others

I’m not sure exactly where the phrase “forsaking all others” is from, might have been part of my wedding vows or the oath I took when I joined the U.S. Navy or maybe it is from my college fraternity pledge, but I have been hearing it in my head a lot recently.

When I came home from work on Friday I had with me the borrowed DVD of the movie Lucky # Slevin to watch (thanks Mark.) Also on Friday, in the mail there was a red envelope with Notes on a Scandal inside. Here it is Sunday night and neither movie has found its way into the DVD player.

Not because we weren’t in front of the TV any this weekend, we were, for a good bit of it, but because we watching more of Season 3 of TDTVS.

Ben: Bring me the man from Tallahassee.
Man leaves, and Locke and Alex exit the closet.
Locke: Is that some kind of code.
Ben: No Locke, we don’t have a code for ‘There’s a man in the closet with a gun to my daughter’s head.’ Although there clearly should be.

P.S. I do know that it came from my wedding vows…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 30

Lost in Hitchcock Woods

Polar Bear PitAs a recent graduate of the John Locke School of Survival I feel right at home in the woods. But when Donna and I somehow got off our mapped trail this afternoon and stumbled on this trail, I have to admit that I became a little uneasy.

For the first time in about three weeks we finally escaped the high gravity couch and took a walk in the woods. The last time we took a hike, on that same day, we watched a couple of episodes of Season 1, Disc 5 of TDTVS. Today, along with the walk, we also watched a couple episodes of Season 3, Disc 2 of TDTVS.

Papa got a new pair of shoes!

We finished the evening off with dinner out with friends. We went to our least favorite Italian restaurant, Roma Pizza. We got the polar opposite of last visit’s service, if anything our waiter was too attentive. We decided to get something besides pizza this visit, I had spaghetti with sausage and Donna had the veal parmigiana. the food was good, but not great, we’ll be sticking to the pizza from now on.

Started down, still down.
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Optional Equipment Shown

I’ve been watching a lot more television than I used to lately and the down side of this is commercials. Theodore Sturgeon was probably a little optimistic about the percentages as they pertain to TV ads, it is more like 99% are crud.

The ads always show stuff in a positive light, except for prescription medicine which have to go on and on about the possible side effects. Car commercials have some rules too, but do their best to find their way around them. If you advertise the starting price of the car, you have to show the price of what it would cost to buy the car featured in the commercial. They show this much higher price in the fine print at the bottom of the screen and it only appears for milliseconds. This price is always considerably more than the base price of the car by thousands of dollars. The current big price jump champion is the new Nissan Murano with a base price of $26,330 with a price as shown of $38,930, nearly 50% more expensive.

A way to avoid showing this greatly inflated cost is to not mention the base price of the car at all. But to be fair if you are not featuring the base model of the car in the ad, you have to place this helpful little phrase in the fine print for a few milliseconds — Optional equipment shown.

Started up, went down, still down.
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