WASHINGTON — Some people have become so desperate to find cheaper fuel for their cars they’ve begun making ethanol at home.
There are dozens of Web sites explaining how to make ethanol from homemade stills.
Bill Sasher, owner of a Tennessee company that sells ethanol stills and kits, said that once you’re set up it costs about 75 cents a gallon to brew your own fuel.
Sasher said that with gas prices nationally closing in on $3 a gallon, his business is booming.
Most cars can run on a mixture of ethanol and gasoline, and the new flex fuel cars can run on 85 percent ethanol or regular gasoline.
(oh..and I plead the 5th on the Alan Jackson reference.)
Pretend you work in the marketing department for Honda. You have to make the new subcompact car, ?sexy?. What would the average consumer want to know about the car you are selling?
1. What kind of fuel economy does it get?
2. How much does the car cost?
3. What cool features does the car have?
4. Will an alpaca fit in the back seat?
I’ve been spending time converting all of my music to digital. It is truly a time consuming process, but oh, the old friends I have remembered/re-acquainted myself with. I remember the days when my classmates had 101 jokes to make fun of Suzanne Vega’s “new” song, “Luka”. I found it to be a very moving poetic work. Now, 20 years later, her use of words still inspires me today. Long after the words/lives of my classmates have all been vanquished to the realm of the forgotten, her words continue to enchant me.
From “Song In Red And Gray”
The reproach in your daughter’s most beautiful face
made me wonder just how she could know
of that something that happened between you and me
so much more than a long time ago
Her mother, I can see, lives within her still
cause she looked at me with her eyes
though I had only just met her right then
I feel that she peeled back my guilty disguise
Did i break the thread, or did you break the thread?
well at this point we could ask who cares
as for the promises broken and frayed
it’s 19 years late for repairs
The grey pewter vase held the deep red rose,
one piece of coral shone white,
by the brass candlestick near your red velvet coat,
is everything I can recall of one night
Will you please tell me why I remember these things
after all of this time, I don’t know
i must have left all those feelings inside
cause that year I had no courage to show
Was i the name you could never pronounce?
or did i even figure at all?
all of this happened before she was born
did i shadow her young pencil marks on the wall
Still i am sure i was only but one
of a number who darkened that door
of your home and your hearth and your family and wife
who’d been darkened so often before
Oh, the red leaf looks to the hard gray stone
to each other, they know what they mean
somewhere, their future is still yet to come
in ways that are yet as of now unforeseen
When I was growing up, I noticed that Santa made two different kinds of deliveries; pre-assembled and some assembly required. My house got the latter kind. (When Santa is a single parent with four kids it only makes sense.) On Christmas morning I never felt like I got the raw end of the deal. Quite to the contrary, I loved puttering around with things; mixing and matching neighborhood bike parts to create a ?super bike?, rearranging the insides of transistor radios and walkie-talkies or building stuff out of wood, metal and miscellaneous spare parts. (One of my favorite summers entailed my neighbor and I trying to create the ultimate portable, wood-burning cooker for our afternoon hikes. Hey, anyone can eat a soggy ol? sandwich on a mountaintop, but how many kids make bacon and eggs or heat up some soup? But I digress.) So anyway, by Christmas afternoon I thought I was in heaven if I happened to receive a gift that also required assembly.
The sentiment has stayed with me. (And fortunately for me, I live in a very ?some assembly required?, pre-fab world.) I still look forward to the challenge and fun of assembling stuff, from the very simple (adding the legs to chairs) to the more complex (the hundreds of pieces that ultimately form a gas grill?that fire/cook thing seems to be a theme here.) Don?t get me wrong; sometimes this stuff can frustrate the bejesus out of me. I?ve been known to cuss like a sailor at inanimate objects and threaten to bitch slap plumbing that doesn?t ?give it up?. But the ultimate reward is still the feeling of accomplishment when the project finally comes together.
Perhaps the folly of Bush is that somewhere along the way he truly began to believe his own press. Our elections are more akin to toothpaste ads* (Chomsky) than to real debate and democracy. The spinmeisters work to push their ?product? into the limelight with glowing statements and false personas (strong leader, forceful decision-maker), while the ignorant public cast deciding votes based on power ties, rolled up sleeves, brown suits, hair-styles, life-styles and cliché ³logans.
But Crest? never comes to ?believe? it is ?recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists and therefore better? than Aquafresh?.
I can?t help but watch/listen to this man and sense that I am witnessing a mediocre mind wrestle with extraordinary dilemmas. His failing is that he has somehow deluded himself into believing that he truly is equal to the task.
