But nothing could be farther from that. In fact I'm experiencing about the opposite of writer's block. I've been flush with things I've wanted to express, or simply post here as a query, but getting my thoughts congealed into a firm piece of writing is difficult when I can't find a string that I can thread all these thoughts together with. I guess that can be a starter right there...
A string or a thread, or maybe more properly a great number of stitches made with thread.
This last week my wife was going through a number of things that the boys are no longer using, or that they've outgrown. One type of item that they still might be able to use, particularly because the boys are still about the sloppiest eaters I know besides myself, but they've outgrown are their monogrammed bibs. These things were made by a very industrious woman that Melanie's mom found on eBay. They are made from some pretty cool printed fabrics, with basic Terry cloth back, and they have each of the boys names embroidered on them. We have about 8 for each boy. Melanie was wondering which of these bibs we should be keeping, and I couldn't see how I was going to help pick out which ones would be saved from the trash can. I don't think the childrens' goods consignment shop would be able to sell these bibs with our sons' names on them. Then an idea came to me...
A quilt! I could make a quilt for each boy from the bibs. How cool would that be? A quilt made by your dad, using all these cool fabrics with surfboards and airplanes and sushi prints, and personalized to boot!
Problem is I don't know the first thing about making a quilt. Yes, I sew, but there's more to making a quilt then simply sewing a bunch of assorted pieces of fabric together, isn't there?
Geez, this is all I need. I need to learn another non-archetypal, archaic, solitary, and possibly costly skill like I need a 2 inch hole in my head.
I don't have time to make all the beer I want.
I don't have time to make all the various dishes I want to try.
I don't have time or money enough to finish my ham radio shack.
I don't get to fish, or take out the motorcycle, or play golf, or learn Java, or finish my AS, or tune up the Buick, or paint and waynescoat the dining room, or write the great American novel.
I guess it's a bit like the whole quandary with trying to spill out hundreds of ideas into a coherent stream of thought right here in this little read corner of the mass conglomeration of ego we call the world wide web.
No one really gives a crap, but I still pretend like what I'm doing is somehow adding value to other people's internet experience. It's really simply a ploy to get people to look at me. It's about the same as a mohawk and a tattoo, only with less dedication and staring.
Now just where the hell did I put the other sewing machine I have that does more than a simple straight stitch?
Anyone know where to read up quickly on quilting basics?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
So I've been brewing long enough to know this...
Erlenmeyer Flask(photo from Wikipedia)
But I didn't make a starter for my latest batch of FDSB.
A starter is a batch of yeast that has been activated and is ramped up, or multiplied, before pitching into the wort. This is recommended by everyone with any real experience using liquid yeasts. To date I've only used dry yeasts that I either sprinkled right on the wort, or rehydrated in a cup of water for 15 minutes to get it started before pouring into my wort. With a tube or mylar pouch of liquid yeast there's supposed to be plenty of yeast cells to work with a lower gravity beer, but if there's any doubt about the viability of the yeast, a starter is the first thing everyone asks about. You make a starter basically like a micro batch of beer. A small batch of wort is made using either dried or liquid malt extract, with dried being the preferred ingredient, and water. No hops are required, because you're not going for good taste, just a healthy environment for the yeast. The starter is generally made in an Erlenmeyer Flask of 1000 to 2000 ml, and if it's a Borosilicate glass you can boil the malt and water in the flask right on the stovetop. Then you pour your liquid yeast vial/tube/pouch into the COOLED flask of wort and put a cover on it that can allow the CO2 to escape, like a stopper with an airlock. over 24-36 hours this will propogate a large number of yeast that you can then dump into your batch of beer and it'll be rockin' in the primary in just a few hours, instead of days.
I don't have any flask, and I don't keep any DME around the house since going all-grain.
I simply pitched the tube of White Labs WLP005 on my wort Sunday night around 10:30 PM.
It took until tonight, Tuesday, to get going. That's not really ideal because this lag really give any bacteria or other unwanted growths to get hold and infect the beer.
I sanitized pretty well, so I doubt I'll have any issues, but 48 hours is the longest I've ever waited for a beer to start fermenting, and I came really close to pitching a packet of Safale-04 on this brew to get it going. Fortunately the owner of my local beer supply shop, Lumina Winery, told me to wait it out, and I came home late tonight to a bubbling airlock on my Ale Pail.
Whew, I was sweating it there for a while...
So, if you need another idea for a Christmas gift this year, a couple Erlenmeyer flasks in the 1 liter size, and made from Borosilicate glass would be more than welcome, and shouldn't break the bank. Just don't bother with Amazon on this one, as these shouldn't be over $10 a piece, and they're going for like $40 over there.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Whew, glad that's over...
Had a long weekend, and I'm a bit sore today. Got some chores checked off the "Honey-do" lost, and got another batch of brew made.
First, about the chores; I couldn't have done them without the Odyssey. I was kind of dreading doing many of the things I needed to get done around the house because I felt I needed a truck. I miss having a pickup. The old F-150 would have been awesome these past couple days, but in the end the new Honda was more than up to the task. I had a bunch of stuff piling up in the garage that needed to get to the recycler's or the dump, which happen to be in the same place here in Northern Brunswick County, NC. The Stow 'n Go third row seats were flipped down into their stowed position, and I had quite a bit of space available to haul a bunch of junk out of the garage to make more room for my Ducati. I also made more room on the front porch by tossing out some of the furniture out there that had been slowly falling apart. Problem with that was now there was a void that Mel just couldn't leave be...
A funny thing about the South is that people down here seem to be easily swayed into doing thing based solely on what their neighbors do. When I lived in CA I don't recall ever thinking to myself, "Gee, Joe SoAndSo got a new brass door knocker. Now I need one too!", yet that's exactly the kind of thing people down here appear to do. All our neighbors have patio furniture on their front porches, so apparently we need that too. It's Halloween time again and all our neighbors have ornate decorations up, so we need to get some up pronto! All our neighbors have nice looking yards, so I need to fix that while I'm at it as well. Get the Picture?
So after all the trash haulin', I put the Odyssey to work as a landscaping truck. On the list of things to get at the home store was pine straw, something I don't recall ever being considered a good thing in dried out and fire prone CA, for flower bed covering, and hay bales. The hay isn't for horses, or for ground cover, but instead for this display of Halloween pride that now graces the front porch of my home. There's pumpkins, of course, but there's also orange tinsel with black spiders all over, like I need a reminder about the recent Black Widow invasion! There's also a wooden witch, but if I were to say anything about that I might get in trouble, so I'll just say it's there. There's a few dollar store scarecrows, but they're hardly scary and we don't have crows. I don't recall ever having this kind of display in CA, and even if one neighbor did, no one else felt compelled to go to such lengths. They would simply go admire the work someone else did and go back home, where they had a carved pumpkin or two on the porch. Not here in the South. Our neighbors had dioramas with hay bales, we needed one too! So I loaded up a surprising amount of pine straw and hay bales in the back of the minivan, which Wally and I agreed smelled pretty good. Wally seemed to understand that his dad enjoyed using the normally docile school commuter vehicle as a brawny work truck, and we had a great time being guys checking out the cool lawn tractors, as well as playing with the garden fountains, at the home store. It's good to be men, but hard to look like it in an "Ocean Mist" blue minivan. Particularly one with a bumper sticker that says "Republican women are the life of the party!".
She can't believe me, but I already canceled out her votes...
So as a reward for all this 'round the house work I did get a bit of "me" time. I got the Bratwürst Brown ale out of the primary and into the bottles. I got the Wine Experts Island Mist Peach Apricot Chardonnay racked from primary into secondary. That last one's not really for me, but more for Melanie, but I love making beer and wine, so even if the end product's not for me I still get to enjoy the process. Finally, I got the beer made that I posted the recipe for here earlier. I'm calling it FDSB, which is Fat Duc Special Bitters. After having such a productive weekend around the homestead, it really felt rewarding to get in a good brew session on a Sunday evening.
The beermaking last night went really well, and I guess I had a number of things happen that just went right, which culminated in one of the best times I've had since I started brewing at home. I've been trying to get my mash efficiency, the amount of actual fermentable sugars extracted from the grain in relation to the potential, up to a higher number. Most of the senior brewers on HBT claim to be regularly hitting 90%+ efficiency, and I've been right around 70%, which is acceptable, but I wanted better. My grain mill is a Barley Crusher, and it's got adjustable rollers for crushing the grains used for making beer. The malted barley that you need to make beer needs to be milled before you can mash it, and it's pretty critical how this is done. Not fine enough and you don't get the sugars out of the grain. Too fine and you end up with a mass of goo that you can't get any of the water back out of for brewing with. I've been tightening up the rollers on my mill a little bit each time I brew, and I finally hit a sweet spot last night. I got 91% efficiency out of my mash! I locked them rollers down on that mill, and I'm not changing them again, unless they need to be reset to the exact same gap (.036" if you're curious). The boil went off without a hitch, and I didn't even have the slightest bit of boilover. The temperature was cool, down into the low 50's, and I had a really nice evening out in my garage cooking beer, and admiring the space I had, and the new pine straw in all the flower beds. I didn't even turn on the radio, I simply sat there stirring the brewpot and enjoyed my neighborhood. It was good.
Man I hope this beer turns out good.
I still miss having a truck.
First, about the chores; I couldn't have done them without the Odyssey. I was kind of dreading doing many of the things I needed to get done around the house because I felt I needed a truck. I miss having a pickup. The old F-150 would have been awesome these past couple days, but in the end the new Honda was more than up to the task. I had a bunch of stuff piling up in the garage that needed to get to the recycler's or the dump, which happen to be in the same place here in Northern Brunswick County, NC. The Stow 'n Go third row seats were flipped down into their stowed position, and I had quite a bit of space available to haul a bunch of junk out of the garage to make more room for my Ducati. I also made more room on the front porch by tossing out some of the furniture out there that had been slowly falling apart. Problem with that was now there was a void that Mel just couldn't leave be...
A funny thing about the South is that people down here seem to be easily swayed into doing thing based solely on what their neighbors do. When I lived in CA I don't recall ever thinking to myself, "Gee, Joe SoAndSo got a new brass door knocker. Now I need one too!", yet that's exactly the kind of thing people down here appear to do. All our neighbors have patio furniture on their front porches, so apparently we need that too. It's Halloween time again and all our neighbors have ornate decorations up, so we need to get some up pronto! All our neighbors have nice looking yards, so I need to fix that while I'm at it as well. Get the Picture?
So after all the trash haulin', I put the Odyssey to work as a landscaping truck. On the list of things to get at the home store was pine straw, something I don't recall ever being considered a good thing in dried out and fire prone CA, for flower bed covering, and hay bales. The hay isn't for horses, or for ground cover, but instead for this display of Halloween pride that now graces the front porch of my home. There's pumpkins, of course, but there's also orange tinsel with black spiders all over, like I need a reminder about the recent Black Widow invasion! There's also a wooden witch, but if I were to say anything about that I might get in trouble, so I'll just say it's there. There's a few dollar store scarecrows, but they're hardly scary and we don't have crows. I don't recall ever having this kind of display in CA, and even if one neighbor did, no one else felt compelled to go to such lengths. They would simply go admire the work someone else did and go back home, where they had a carved pumpkin or two on the porch. Not here in the South. Our neighbors had dioramas with hay bales, we needed one too! So I loaded up a surprising amount of pine straw and hay bales in the back of the minivan, which Wally and I agreed smelled pretty good. Wally seemed to understand that his dad enjoyed using the normally docile school commuter vehicle as a brawny work truck, and we had a great time being guys checking out the cool lawn tractors, as well as playing with the garden fountains, at the home store. It's good to be men, but hard to look like it in an "Ocean Mist" blue minivan. Particularly one with a bumper sticker that says "Republican women are the life of the party!".
She can't believe me, but I already canceled out her votes...
So as a reward for all this 'round the house work I did get a bit of "me" time. I got the Bratwürst Brown ale out of the primary and into the bottles. I got the Wine Experts Island Mist Peach Apricot Chardonnay racked from primary into secondary. That last one's not really for me, but more for Melanie, but I love making beer and wine, so even if the end product's not for me I still get to enjoy the process. Finally, I got the beer made that I posted the recipe for here earlier. I'm calling it FDSB, which is Fat Duc Special Bitters. After having such a productive weekend around the homestead, it really felt rewarding to get in a good brew session on a Sunday evening.
The beermaking last night went really well, and I guess I had a number of things happen that just went right, which culminated in one of the best times I've had since I started brewing at home. I've been trying to get my mash efficiency, the amount of actual fermentable sugars extracted from the grain in relation to the potential, up to a higher number. Most of the senior brewers on HBT claim to be regularly hitting 90%+ efficiency, and I've been right around 70%, which is acceptable, but I wanted better. My grain mill is a Barley Crusher, and it's got adjustable rollers for crushing the grains used for making beer. The malted barley that you need to make beer needs to be milled before you can mash it, and it's pretty critical how this is done. Not fine enough and you don't get the sugars out of the grain. Too fine and you end up with a mass of goo that you can't get any of the water back out of for brewing with. I've been tightening up the rollers on my mill a little bit each time I brew, and I finally hit a sweet spot last night. I got 91% efficiency out of my mash! I locked them rollers down on that mill, and I'm not changing them again, unless they need to be reset to the exact same gap (.036" if you're curious). The boil went off without a hitch, and I didn't even have the slightest bit of boilover. The temperature was cool, down into the low 50's, and I had a really nice evening out in my garage cooking beer, and admiring the space I had, and the new pine straw in all the flower beds. I didn't even turn on the radio, I simply sat there stirring the brewpot and enjoyed my neighborhood. It was good.
Man I hope this beer turns out good.
I still miss having a truck.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
On deck at the Fat Duc Brewery...
(Nice shot of some hops)I'm going to be making a nice Old World English style Special Bitters.
The planned recipe for this batch is:
Grains
- 9.5 lbs Muntons Maris Otter Malt
- 8 oz 120L Crystal Malt
- 4 oz Belgian Biscuit Malt
- 1.25 oz Kent Goldings 4.8% pellets at 60 minutes
- .5 oz Kent Goldings 4.8% pellets at 20 minutes
- .25 oz Kent Goldings 4.8% pellets at 1 minute
- White Labs WLP005 British Ale liquid yeast
- .2 oz Irish Moss at 15 minutes
- 60 minutes at 151°F, single infusion, batch sparge
- 60 minutes boil
I'm just hoping that between all the things on Mel's list of chores for me, and getting my Bratwürst Brown Ale bottled up, that I'll find time to get this one done and in the Ale Pail before the weekend's over.
How the Special Bitters should look when done
How the Special Bitters should look when doneThe last few beers I've done have been a bit higher in gravity, which means a higher finished alcohol percentage. While that makes for a beers that has more "depth" and a brew that also ages well and has a long shelf life, it also doesn't do great as a beer that you can have more than one of without feeling the effects. By lowering the potential alcohol content, brewers make what they call a "session" beer. This is a beer that is more easily enjoyed while doing other activities and socializing over a few pints, without getting trashed.
I think I'll do a Cream Ale after I get this bitter done...
I think I'll do a Cream Ale after I get this bitter done...
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Hummmmmm-
Us.
Get it, hummus!?
I made a nice hummus this afternoon. Pretty basic, really, and the wife thought it was outstanding. I guess that's why you're reading about it here.
Here's the recipe:
Today we used both Trader Joe's Oganic Tortilla Chips, as well as Frito-Lay Scoops cornchips. Both were quite tasty, but the scoops were cheaper while the TJ's were healthier. Your call.
You could add tahini, but I didn't have any.
Either way, it's damn good, and not that bad for you either.
I have to say that I used the boat motor, or stick blender, on this and I was disappointed with the effort it took and the clean up. Use your blender or food processor, really.
Get it, hummus!?
I made a nice hummus this afternoon. Pretty basic, really, and the wife thought it was outstanding. I guess that's why you're reading about it here.
Here's the recipe:
- 1 can chickpeas/garbanzos, drained
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2-1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- fresh ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 teaspoon ( or 2-4 cloves) minced garlic
Today we used both Trader Joe's Oganic Tortilla Chips, as well as Frito-Lay Scoops cornchips. Both were quite tasty, but the scoops were cheaper while the TJ's were healthier. Your call.
You could add tahini, but I didn't have any.
Either way, it's damn good, and not that bad for you either.
I have to say that I used the boat motor, or stick blender, on this and I was disappointed with the effort it took and the clean up. Use your blender or food processor, really.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Eureka!
I found it!
What, you ask?
A song. Yep, I found a song.
We've all had an "ear worm" before. That's when some jerk puts on Beck a tune and the next two weeks your singing about "Two turntables and a microphone", or worse yet "Get crazy with the Cheese Whiz", and yet while you can't stand it, you can't stop.
How would you like it to be a sliver of a song that you liked? How would you like it to be from a song you heard on a radio station that was as short lived as a Summer? How about the idea that the tune was by a completely different band than you had believed for a long time? How long? Close to 25 years.
Back in the early 80s I was totally hooked on the Synth Pop, electronic, post punk, new wave, whatever you want to call the genre that included bands from ABC, Depeche Mode, English Beat, DEVO, you get the idea. I still love this era and genre.
Sacramento was hardly a hotbed of new music in the 80s. The king of the FM dial was still 98.5 KZAP, with Bob Keller's lunchtime cafe show and the daily blue plate special. It was all about Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, you get the idea. Not that I don't appreciate that sound now, it was played out in 1984.
Dr. Don on KFRC out of San Fran on AM was long gone too.
My biggest thanks to Nigel King was that he somehow knew before me, a Sacto native, and introduced me to one of the radio stations (KPOP) that was renowned for being a disco/r&b format and had quietly changed to a modern rock station that was actually playing new music from Yaz, ABC and Blue Zoo among hundreds of other bands that people in Sacramento had never heard before. It was incredible!
I had a very small amount of income at the time, and what I had I started spending on clove cigarettes and records from Tower Records. Sacramento is home of the original Tower line of stores. We had a few of them. While the old store downtown was cool, it was the one on Watt Ave. that I always gravitated to, partly because it was closer to my home, but also because it had an ice cream and coffee shop next door called Double Rainbow. They had espresso. I could go there in my new wave getups at the time, buy a new Gang Of Four album at Tower and pickup a copy of the new Tower Magazine, and then go get an espresso at Double Rainbow and sit out front looking all unique reading that mag, displaying the new album, smoking a clove and drinking a coffee. I'm sure I looked like an immature punk, but I was sure I was the coolest thing there at the time.
And it was at this time that I picked up an ear worm. It wasn't even really a hook, just more like a feel and sound of a verse. While I can still sing along with songs from that time that I haven't heard in over a dozen years, there was this one tune that has haunted my brain for like 2 dozen years now, and while digging through Wikipedia tonight I deciphered my ear worm and possibly why I've been mistakingly searching through the wrong band's discography for years.
There was an Australian band called Machinations. They were big down under for a few years, and they had a few songs that actually made it into rotation on the US Modern Rock stations. One of those songs was called "Do The Sway". I remember liking a song by Machinations, and that possibly my ear worm was one of their songs, but with the advent of YouTube, and many people posting all the greatest videos from the early 80s, I actually found the Machinations couple most popular songs. None of them were the one.
Tonight I'm looking though other bands of the era on Wikipedia, and I start reading Shriekback's discography. In there I find a tune called "Sway". Is that it? Nope, not the one, but on the same album I start looking for other songs and one stands out that stops me dead in my tracks, "Lined Up". And there it is, my ear worm!
I don't know if this revelation has now dropped my stress level, or made room for me to now develop ESP or Telekenisis from the freed up processing power of my brain, but I do think I'll sleep a bit better tonight.
What, you ask?
A song. Yep, I found a song.
We've all had an "ear worm" before. That's when some jerk puts on Beck a tune and the next two weeks your singing about "Two turntables and a microphone", or worse yet "Get crazy with the Cheese Whiz", and yet while you can't stand it, you can't stop.
How would you like it to be a sliver of a song that you liked? How would you like it to be from a song you heard on a radio station that was as short lived as a Summer? How about the idea that the tune was by a completely different band than you had believed for a long time? How long? Close to 25 years.
Back in the early 80s I was totally hooked on the Synth Pop, electronic, post punk, new wave, whatever you want to call the genre that included bands from ABC, Depeche Mode, English Beat, DEVO, you get the idea. I still love this era and genre.
Sacramento was hardly a hotbed of new music in the 80s. The king of the FM dial was still 98.5 KZAP, with Bob Keller's lunchtime cafe show and the daily blue plate special. It was all about Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, you get the idea. Not that I don't appreciate that sound now, it was played out in 1984.
Dr. Don on KFRC out of San Fran on AM was long gone too.
There was an English family that moved in behind my family home, and their oldest son, Nigel, was a huge catalyst in my exposure to everything labeled "New Wave" at the time. He had the hair, that hair with the cool long bangs that made a Japanese fan across his forehead and covered at least one of his eyes. It wouldn't move, even in a storm, from all the hairspray. He had the clothes, including the tapered leg pants in various plaids, and the genuine Jam shoes that he brought right from London. He had the accent. He played soccer, and well. He was a senior and my friends and I were sophomores. He made the girls at Elk Grove HS swoon, and for all these things he was some kind of idol that everyone in my group of peers were envious to know I lived near.
The Jam ShoeMy biggest thanks to Nigel King was that he somehow knew before me, a Sacto native, and introduced me to one of the radio stations (KPOP) that was renowned for being a disco/r&b format and had quietly changed to a modern rock station that was actually playing new music from Yaz, ABC and Blue Zoo among hundreds of other bands that people in Sacramento had never heard before. It was incredible!
I had a very small amount of income at the time, and what I had I started spending on clove cigarettes and records from Tower Records. Sacramento is home of the original Tower line of stores. We had a few of them. While the old store downtown was cool, it was the one on Watt Ave. that I always gravitated to, partly because it was closer to my home, but also because it had an ice cream and coffee shop next door called Double Rainbow. They had espresso. I could go there in my new wave getups at the time, buy a new Gang Of Four album at Tower and pickup a copy of the new Tower Magazine, and then go get an espresso at Double Rainbow and sit out front looking all unique reading that mag, displaying the new album, smoking a clove and drinking a coffee. I'm sure I looked like an immature punk, but I was sure I was the coolest thing there at the time.
And it was at this time that I picked up an ear worm. It wasn't even really a hook, just more like a feel and sound of a verse. While I can still sing along with songs from that time that I haven't heard in over a dozen years, there was this one tune that has haunted my brain for like 2 dozen years now, and while digging through Wikipedia tonight I deciphered my ear worm and possibly why I've been mistakingly searching through the wrong band's discography for years.
There was an Australian band called Machinations. They were big down under for a few years, and they had a few songs that actually made it into rotation on the US Modern Rock stations. One of those songs was called "Do The Sway". I remember liking a song by Machinations, and that possibly my ear worm was one of their songs, but with the advent of YouTube, and many people posting all the greatest videos from the early 80s, I actually found the Machinations couple most popular songs. None of them were the one.
Tonight I'm looking though other bands of the era on Wikipedia, and I start reading Shriekback's discography. In there I find a tune called "Sway". Is that it? Nope, not the one, but on the same album I start looking for other songs and one stands out that stops me dead in my tracks, "Lined Up". And there it is, my ear worm!
I don't know if this revelation has now dropped my stress level, or made room for me to now develop ESP or Telekenisis from the freed up processing power of my brain, but I do think I'll sleep a bit better tonight.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Odd stuff 'n things...
So I'm visiting one of my favorite website (I know, there's like 200 of those...), Autoblog.com, and I see another story about another European car we'll never see on this side of the pond.
It's a Renault. Those old enough to remember when Renaults were sold here in the states will have pained looks on their faces thinking about the Alliance, or the Le Car.
OK, so how about a more reputable name? Perhaps one already well known to even the younger car buying crowd?
How about a Nissan Cube. Yep, Japan only... maybe. We might just get lucky and see this one in the USA.
The point I'm getting at is that I still don't understand the big 3 here, and why they insist on pushing unimaginative crap on the home market. Yeah, I'll gladly drive a new Mustang. Corvette? No doubt. Problem is, realistically, I'm not going to afford the 'Vette. Ever. Mustang? Maybe, but I don't think I'm going to score one any fancier than a v6 base model. Not as long as I have kids anyways.
Honda Fit? Now we're talkin'. Room for me and the family, at least around town. Great mileage. Kind of daring looks. CHEAP! The Scion lineup? Daring. I'm sad to say they toned down a model or two, though. Nissan can totally steal the "quirky" market with the Cube. PT Cruiser? it was daring for a couple years, but really, without any new "fun" different styles Chrysler was just asking to see their marketshare dwindle farther. How sad of GM to release the HHR after the PT and think they were exploring new and uncharted water?
Then Ford goes and forgets that there's such a thing as the internet and sells a compact that is environmentally kind, great mileage with over 50 MPG, and stylish, and they think that no one's going to find out about it back home while they sell it overseas. Really Ford? And the new Fiesta lineup as a whole? Think anyone here is going to be all excited about it here when it's years old and renamed the "New Focus" by the we have a crack at buying one?
And now the American customer has to bail out the same companies that ignore them, to the tune of $25 billion. I think it's time to use a fraction of that money and offer to retrain the UAW members a new trade, or offer to relocate them to towns where Honda and Toyota are building cars now, and save the taxpayers a whole lot of cash.
Screw the big 3.
...things...
I noticed my wife's minivan (HONDA!!!) is missing its McCain/Palin sticker. Maybe she's joining me on the other side of the fence for an election cycle? I doubt it. It's still kind of odd.
It's a Renault. Those old enough to remember when Renaults were sold here in the states will have pained looks on their faces thinking about the Alliance, or the Le Car.
OK, so how about a more reputable name? Perhaps one already well known to even the younger car buying crowd?
How about a Nissan Cube. Yep, Japan only... maybe. We might just get lucky and see this one in the USA.
The point I'm getting at is that I still don't understand the big 3 here, and why they insist on pushing unimaginative crap on the home market. Yeah, I'll gladly drive a new Mustang. Corvette? No doubt. Problem is, realistically, I'm not going to afford the 'Vette. Ever. Mustang? Maybe, but I don't think I'm going to score one any fancier than a v6 base model. Not as long as I have kids anyways.
Honda Fit? Now we're talkin'. Room for me and the family, at least around town. Great mileage. Kind of daring looks. CHEAP! The Scion lineup? Daring. I'm sad to say they toned down a model or two, though. Nissan can totally steal the "quirky" market with the Cube. PT Cruiser? it was daring for a couple years, but really, without any new "fun" different styles Chrysler was just asking to see their marketshare dwindle farther. How sad of GM to release the HHR after the PT and think they were exploring new and uncharted water?
Then Ford goes and forgets that there's such a thing as the internet and sells a compact that is environmentally kind, great mileage with over 50 MPG, and stylish, and they think that no one's going to find out about it back home while they sell it overseas. Really Ford? And the new Fiesta lineup as a whole? Think anyone here is going to be all excited about it here when it's years old and renamed the "New Focus" by the we have a crack at buying one?
And now the American customer has to bail out the same companies that ignore them, to the tune of $25 billion. I think it's time to use a fraction of that money and offer to retrain the UAW members a new trade, or offer to relocate them to towns where Honda and Toyota are building cars now, and save the taxpayers a whole lot of cash.
Screw the big 3.
...things...
I noticed my wife's minivan (HONDA!!!) is missing its McCain/Palin sticker. Maybe she's joining me on the other side of the fence for an election cycle? I doubt it. It's still kind of odd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)