i driving back from rosh hashanah dinner last night with mom from grandma’s in her car (C300 Mercedes). we were taking home some leftovers that included pickled tomatoes in a psuedorubbermaid container. dropped my mom off at a friend’s house to check up on him after a surgery while i took the car down the hill to fill up the tank. on my way down the hill, someone in front of me slammed on their brakes and caused me to do the same. shortly thereafter, i noticed that the intoxicating new car smell had been replaced by that of pickled tomatoes. in that instant knew exactly what had happened. the cylindrical container containing the coveted russian delicacy had popped open in the bag carrying the leftovers and an amount of liquid equivalent to that of a regular cup of starbucks coffee had spilled towards the front passenger seat.
figured there wasn’t much i could do about it till i reached the gas station, i kept driving. about 45 seconds after the incident, the dash and center console lit up like a fucking christmas tree. every conceivable error message began popping up one by one. the car still ran fine in terms of engine & drivetrain, but the whole electrical system was shot. the windows wouldn’t go up or down, the turn indicators were non responsive, and the center console (which at this point controls everything from entertainment to climate control) was just dead. the only electronics that did work were the brake lights and the hazards.
got to the gas station and wiped up as much of the spill as i could from under the passenger seat. this is when i realized that the remote locking mechanism was no longer functioning. not just the remote, even the internal lock/unlock button decided it didn’t want to work. once the car was turned off, the lights still remained on even after turning the headlights off the automatic position to just off. suffice to say, at this point i was rather frustrated.
about 20 mins later, after picking up my mom (like i said, minus the whole part where none of the fucking electronics worked, the car ran fine), we were heading to drop the car off @ Keys Mercedes in Van Nuys. on the way there, it seems that the components under the passenger seat were drying out (by drying out i mean short circuited enough creating heat and evaporating the liquid) and beginning to come back online one by one. the christmas tree was turning into a menorah and then into the dark of night. by the time we had taken care of all the paperwork, even the windows were operational and the remote locking mechanism was back in action.
reflecting back on the whole incident, all i really have to say is WHAT THE FUCK, MERCEDES?!?!? i mean i’d expect this from a Ford or something along those lines, but are you really trying to tell me that one of the flagships of German engineering can be brought to its knees by spilling some liquid under the passenger seat? way to lose some major points in my eyes. what in the world could have inspired the engineers to design this car in a way that would allow for sensitive electronics to be located in such an area or leave vital cabling uninsulated on the floor of the cabin. shit happens. design should keep this in mind and in this instance obviously failed, miserably.
Edward Wyatt’s got a great piece in the New York Times, Managing the Bailout: He’d Do It for Nothing, talking to William H. Gross about what else could be done with this $700 billion bailout. Gross is the manager of PIMCo (Pacific Investment Management Company) which has a STAGGERING $830 billion under management. their minimum investment is something along the lines of $250 million. basically when Coca-Cola and let’s say Venezuela want to invest their money, the go talk to PIMCo. Shawn’s dad, Charles, works for them, and i’ve heard nothing but great things about the company and the amount of brilliant people who work there.
on the more humorous side of things in regards to the economy, there’s a Vanity Fair article by Julian Sancton, “How Much is $700 Billion Really Worth?“, trying to put a real world feel on how much $700 billion really is in terms of every day things. and some not so every day.
then there’s this. Wolf and John on CNN late edition talking about the SNL sketch by Tine Fey and Amy Poehler’s take on the Palin / Couric interview.
the fine people over at SNL have done it yet again with Fey and Poehler spoofing the Palin and Couric interview from earlier this week. hats off to Fey for doing such an uncanny job of embodying Palin in every way possible.
came across this little gem while browsing today…watch out Alaska. Putin’s comin’ to get ya!
it seems the senator has harnessed the power of space and time in order to leap into the future and gleam the results of tonight’s presidential debates.
psst…McCain…
next time you one day decide to postpone your campaign and ask your opponent to delay the presidential debates, you might also want to pull the advertisements which inexplicably run the morning before the debates that claim you’ve won said debate…fuck this hurts my head.
i was talking on the phone with Shawn a bit earlier about the whole clusterfuck that was the Palin/Couric interview of the last two days. as he got off the phone, he was sent an article talking about the same thing by Los Angeles Times writer James Rainey, “Palin talks to Couric — and if she’s lucky, few are listening”. i’ve never seen someone’s brain short circuit before. it’s rather mesmerizing. it’s on the scale somewhere between a train crash and turtles humping.
ok. and now a little bit on America’s wang, courtesy of Sarah Silverman and FunnyOrDie:
battle of wits between democrats and republicans:
so i guess piracy is still rather rampant off the coast of Somalia. pirates just jacked a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks and assorted arms. Russia’s kinda pissed off about it and is sending a warship to the area to protect their interests.
y@rrrr!!11!
Dubai’s projects just keep getting more badass every six months. check out the Atlantis Palm Hotel. want to go so bad. anyone wanna sponsor me?
so the word on the hill is that both parties have for the most part come to a consensus on the principles of the bailout, but the details are still in the works. seems as though there’s a bipartisan effort going on in the senate with both democrats and republicans working quite well together. on the other hand, the republicans in the house appear to be rather internally conflicted between reaganomics and reality. by some accounts, this internal conflict is stopping the republicans in the house from being able to play with the kids next door.
ok. so i’m a couple glasses of white wine in, but i have to finish this up before i head off for Digital LA @ The Roosevelt Hotel. i just hope that section 8 of the Paulson plan is removed. there needs to be some accountability with what happens with $700 BILLION of taxpayer dollars. that’s a must. the other thing is this needs to somehow be packaged as an investment into these companies on behalf of the taxpayers of the united states with expected payback and potential profit to the fed and thereby back into our infrastructure/services. and you know what. fuck the CEO’s of these companies that are going belly up. fuck their chairs. these are the greedy bastards who allowed this to happen. i’d laugh in the face of anyone who told me that even at the time this whole sub-prime fiasco was a good idea to begin with. i remember the day someone explained it to me and i was astounded that anyone with any sense at all would do something so risky. damn i wish i was keeping up with my blog back then.
alright. with that rant somewhat finished, here’s a couple clips from McCain and Obama about today’s events.
McCain
Obama
oh. btw. washington mutual finally went belly up. people have been talking about this since about the middle of last week, so that’s not really a surprise. purchased by JP Morgan Chase.
ok. this is fucking funny. i kinda take offense to the whole BMW M3 driver character (ugh. i play electronica too ), but i know they’re out there, and i want them to die…in a huge fireball. so yeah. just thought i’d share.
yesterday Palin met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and Henry Kissinger in an attempt to bolster her foreign relation credentials. right. one could only hope that some substance was involved, but i’ve yet to see anything from the meetings with Karzai and Uribe. as far as i know, the Kissinger meeting was closed to the press. the little clip i’ve seen a couple times has to do with Karzai telling Paling that he just had a son and named him Mirwais. he went on to explain that the name means “The Light of the House” (which is pretty fucking badass if you ask me) to which she replied “Oh nice.” i’m sorry, but if that’s what they’re trying to chalk up as foreign relations experience, i give her a D-. anyhow. afterward Palin was kind enough to sit down with Katie Couric for an interview.
ok. back to the main topic. so as some of you may have heard, McCain has decided to postpone his campaign (and thereby the presidential debates scheduled to begin this friday) because of the current economic crisis. come the fuck on. where were you last monday when shit began to hit the fan and you were still saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong? i’m sorry, but this just seems like a huge political stunt from a guy clearly running out of options. i’m going to give it up to Sen. Charles Schumer on this one:
along with those shenanigans, McCain’s campaign is asking to postpone friday’s debate as well as the following VP debate (humm, more time for Palin to practice her notecards?).
as i see it, McCain is trying to pretend like he’s doing something in congress (mainly for the people who are actually still thinking about voting for him) about the current economic crisis (when he’s already stated that he doesn’t understand economics in general). so what the hell is he going to accomplish by being in attendance when there are already more than enough qualified people on the job. and by qualified i mean as qualified as possible for the current administration. *shakes head* the point is, the man’s got a campaign to run. you’re not going to do anything in washington to fix this current problem, so go do the one thing you still have on your plate…DEBATE OBAMA.
over the last week i’ve had the chance to talk to a lot of friends who own small businesses and every single one of them says the same thing. this is the worst economy they’ve ever seen in their lifetime. as i’ve said before, i don’t know why more people aren’t freaking out, but then i remember that most people just don’t get it. i agree with Paul on certain issues regarding the natural selection of economic markets to weed out those who risked our whole financial industry on risky potential profit. bailing them out with our tax dollars is not the solution to the greater problem that is our economy. i also agree that one of the main reasons the whole real estate bubble collapsed is because housing prices were too high. they weren’t too high nationally, but if one takes a look at a map of foreclosures by state, the picture becomes quite clear as to where the house prices were inflated above reasonable means for the local population compared to income. i would have to respectfully disagree with him about the fact that critical sectors of our economy do not need regulation. we’ve seen what happens when these markets “regulate” themselves, and it doesn’t seem to work out so well for the majority…
The Bush administration draft of legislation, in section eight, proposes that actions of the Treasury under the act “are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
i’d like to act surprised, but seeing as this administration doesn’t know the meaning of accountability, i’m not.
in other news, found this little gem:
reported as possibly being inaccurate. pfft. supposedly martial law starts october 1st. i remember how shit went down with the Rodney King Riots here in L.A. back in 92. people went batshit over a cracked out dude getting beaten by the cops (yeah…i’m paraphrasing). it’s not all that far fetched that a whole nation can go batshit when they realize everything they’ve ever worked for might be worth nothing and our whole economy has “cratered”. good times. like i said, don’t know how much merit this thing’s got, so consider it brain fodder.
then there’s Campbell Brown ripping the McCain campaign a new one for not giving the media access to Sarah Palin.
this woman’s got some huge balls. love it. the sexist angle is cute, but we all know that they’re not giving the media access because every time she opens her mouth, McCain’s poll numbers take a dive. TAKE A FUCKING HINT PEOPLE. correlation is a motherfucker.
and this is just unbelievable. the Sun-Times out of Chicago reported yesterday that a man was arrested in the vicinity Obama’s house wearing a bullet proof vest and a gun in his car. i mean i know there’s racist ass motherfuckers out there, but i thought people just joked about some redneck assassinating Obama (except the guy in question is an african american convicted felon in his 30s, wtf?). just goes to show there are some people in this country are really fucked in the head. ugh.
), but i know they’re out there, and i want them to die…in a huge fireball. so yeah. just thought i’d share.
