Where does the time go? When does the spring arrive?
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Suzanne said on March 23, 2013 at 11:25 am
Honestly, this year, I think it won’t.
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basset said on March 23, 2013 at 11:44 am
Indeed it might not. Got up before dawn this morning to walk along the river upstream of the house and look for otters, which I have been told are there and which might well be there but I have not yet seen; cold and gray then, cold and gray now. No otters, either.
Washing bottles this morning, will bottle homemade hard cider as soon as Jr. gets in from work. Then dinner and a movie night with the neighbors, at our house this time; stuffed pork roast, a Batman serial episode from 1943, and “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” We eat and watch a classic movie every month or so, don’t know if this one qualifies but that makes no difference.
Still gonna be winter though, might even snow a little.
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alex said on March 23, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Basset, to take up the Toyota truck discussion of a couple of threads ago, I’m still laughing my ass off at the failed attempts to destroy that old Hilux. True the Tacoma has grown pretty fat this last time around, but it’s still one of the few pickups you can buy with a stick without having to settle for a completely stripped-down model.
It looks like Chevy is still building the Colorado, but Ford phased out the Ranger. The Dodge Dakota was pretty plump in its final years and when the Dodge truck brand name was changed to Ram, it got phased out as well. So you’re right, there aren’t a lot of compact trucks left. For a while Ford was building an Explorer pickup but not sure if that’s still happening either.
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LAMary said on March 23, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Klatu barada niktu, Basset.
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Sherri said on March 23, 2013 at 1:28 pm
We didn’t have snow all winter here, then woke up to snow yesterday morning. Only an inch, and school wasn’t cancelled or anything, but still annoying.
After all the gray, I’m ready for sunshine!
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Prospero said on March 23, 2013 at 2:31 pm
The Michael Rennie Day the Earth Stood Still is unquestionably a classic movie. The remake with the cardboard Keanu cutout was sacreligious.
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Prospero said on March 23, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Could the Tribune Co, papers get more stridently authoritarian right wing? One of the most hilarious things around is the stupidity of the typical LA Times letter writer whining about the liberal media slant of the paper. They mean Jonah Goldberg, I presume. Could the Chicago Tribune find a more obnoxious rightwing faux tough guy than Kass? Koch Kriminal Konspiracy ownership of TribCo would be an abomination. (And, Yeah, Randolph and Mortimer undertake absolutely criminal deals with Iran all the time. Everyone knows it and nobody does anything about it. USJD shoould put their flabby wrinkled old asses through a law enforcement ringer.)
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basset said on March 23, 2013 at 11:35 pm
Alex@3, a completely stripped-down model is exactly what I want… stick shift, hose-it-out interior, plain ol’ work truck the size of a pre-07 Hilux. Don’t seem to be any these days, though; if the current Nissan pickup would get any kind of gas mileage we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, it doesn’t though.
I was hoping the Mahindra pickup would get some kind of traction in the USA, didn’t work out though and from the reviews I’ve seen from South Africa we’re probably better off that it never got here.
Dinner went over pretty well, fell asleep just before the end of “earth stood still” but I don’t feel that I missed much. The Batman serial would go over great with some of that face-melting weed y’all were talking about a thread or two back, though.
And, Pros, that’s “wringer.”
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coozledad said on March 24, 2013 at 9:32 am
Hideous racist family. Maybe Obama should have offered to polish Babs’ fetal slop jars:
“He is like the most focused, disciplined guy. To imagine being a former president and not having an opinion on anything over the last four years, really? I mean, to have that discipline, to be respectful of the president that hasn’t been as respectful of him as he should have been? Man. I could have never done that.”
— Jeb Bush, in a CNN interview, on his brother, former President George W. Bush.
Via Taegan Goddard
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Scout said on March 24, 2013 at 10:12 am
@ coozledad: yeah, probably the reason he’s had no opinion for four years is because Darth Cheney isn’t feeding him talking points any more.
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beb said on March 24, 2013 at 11:00 am
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of misuse of cite, site and sight — in professional works where you would think someone who cared would have noticed. I think it’s gotten worse than the misuse of its it’s.
Of course Jeb Bush would speak well of his brother, but if he’s going to take a whack at the current president he should have some real examples instead of just claiming that Pres. Obama has dissed the Shrub.
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coozledad said on March 24, 2013 at 11:03 am
Scout: Shouldn’t it be sackcloth and ashes for these people? On this of all weeks bitching about a lack of respect.
Maybe they’ve all been reading Neil’s company’s latest offering “Hooked on Kennephonics” and they’re stuck on Chapter Four: Talking Down to the Help.
It’s awful ugly when white trash forgets its origins.
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Mark P. said on March 24, 2013 at 11:43 am
I wouldn’t want to rub it in, but we had a free day Saturday (several people at the company where I work are on business in the LA area through today) so we took the boat to Santa Catalina Island. It was like I imagine summertime in the Mediterranean to be. I have a little sunburn today.
About trucks — I had a 1984 Nissan pickup, 4-wheel-drive, manual transmission and a four-cylinder, the only engine available then. Today I have a ’12 Nissan Frontier, 4WD, automatic, V6. It’s way more comfortable, way more powerful, and gets about the same mileage, 21 on the highway. I understand that the last Ranger with 4 cylinder, manual and 2WD could get nearly 30 mpg on the highway. Right now there is little advantage to getting a “compact” pickup over getting the bottom-of-the-range full-sized pickup.
I followed the Mahindra story from the beginning, and my prediction back then was that it was never going to happen. What sealed it for me was learning who the importer was going to be. A lot of diesel fans were looking forward to getting a small diesel-powered pickup, but the specifications just didn’t add up.
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basset said on March 24, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Sure was ugly, too…
http://jalopnik.com/mahindra-genio-double-cab-pickup-the-jalopnik-review-350905882
and even from those pictures you can tell the build quality was positively AMC-esque… I remember reading one review of Mahindra’s more traditional pickup in a South African newspaper site which said the glovebox door didn’t even have a hinge, it just pivoted on a scored line in the plastic as if it were a pencil box or something.
and here’s an Australian site which did a comparison test between the Mahindra and a Chinese knockoff of a Holden (GM product) and recommended not buying either of them:
http://www.carsguide.com.au/news-and-reviews/car-reviews-road-tests/mahindra_pikup_v_great_wall_ute
Something like this is more like what I had in mind, would have to be made by someone else though:
http://www.carazoo.com/newcars/carreview/mahindra/maxxmaxitruck
Let’s see, 11/14 km to the liter… that works out to 25.9/32.9 mpg. Get that past the EPA and the crash tests and they’d sell a bunch of ’em.
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alex said on March 24, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Basset, this afternoon I happened to see a Mazda pickup pass by, but when I tried to read up on it on the internet it appears that Mazda stopped selling trucks in the U.S. in 2009. Otherwise there’s Isuzu, which has never had a good reputation.
Is the current Tacoma really too big for your purposes?
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Prospero said on March 24, 2013 at 4:22 pm
re Shrub: The battery ran out in the little box on Shrub’s back.
Basset: I’m aware it’s a wringer. Thought that was what I typed. Maybe the software thought better of it.
Anyone with a bracket still standing probably didn’t know very much about college hoops anyway. Thing about pools is somebody always just guesses, just to join in, in which case somebody might have picked the hideous early exits by both the Hoyas and the Zags. In typically self-defeating fashion, I picked Gonzaga to lose because I can’t stand the team or the coach. Biggest whiners in college sports since Boeheim mended his ways and Paterno got canned. I usually throw my picks away early by ridiculous, emotional choices. I have picked the entire Elite Eight twice, and once the Four, which won a bundle, but I almost always make some dumbass picks because of enmity for a team or a coach. I saw the ending of Butler’s game and thought the refs ruined a terrific game right at the end.
ESPN’s coverage of the Women’s tournament is monumentally disrespectful, no matter what they call it. They show one game of four in progress, with superimposed real time scores from the other three and an occasional voice over comment from the games not being shown. Baylor’s probably invincible, but I would like to see my alma mater, whose coach is in the pantheon in college coaching of any kind, with 800+ career victories. Meantime I’m ordering a teeshirt to commemorate UGA’s fifth NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship. Hooray for Allison Schmitt (Ann Arbor Swim Club, now Wolverine), Academic All America psych major. One of the all-time great American swimmers.
I don’t think the Mahindra looks so bad, and at that price and mpg rating, I’d consider buying one.
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Connie said on March 24, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Alex, we used to have a 96 Mazda B300 pickup truck, which was an exact twin to the Ford Ranger. In fact my brother’s 96 Ford Ranger pickup (his winter car) now bears the Mazda’s tail gate.
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coozledad said on March 24, 2013 at 5:11 pm
I don’t know which is the more powerful drug- the meth, or the stupid.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VuPcoqv8FdA/UU4b2GwONMI/AAAAAAAAMFk/umYM-YdvKAE/s320/timberwolves-suns-basketball.jpg
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Mark P. said on March 24, 2013 at 5:26 pm
So the Mahindra gets a little better than 23 mpg, and it’s crude and agricultural. That’s not enough better than my Nissan to bother with, considering that the Nissan won’t jar your fillings out and will go faster than 60 mph. It will probably outlast a Mahindra, too. If you’re going to use it on a farm, you would probably be better off getting a purpose-made farm vehicle instead.
As I said, I had hopes for Mahindra when I heard they might come to the US, but there’s no way on Earth that vehicle will ever be sold here. Not as a street-legal vehicle.
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Sherri said on March 24, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Pros, the coverage of the women’s tournament is so much better than it used to be. At least it’s possible to see all the games online now. If Georgia gets past Iowa State on Monday, you’ll probably get to see at least some of their regional semi-final game next weekend on ESPN2 or ESPNU, because ESPN usually expands the coverage to two channels during the regionals.
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Basset said on March 24, 2013 at 10:34 pm
Alex, the Mazda truck was indeed a rebadged Ford Ranger – and the small Ford truck back in the Seventies was a rebadged Mazda, believe it was called a Courier.
The most recent Isuzu pickup was a rebadged Chevy Colorado.
The current Tacoma is more than I need and not nearly utilitarian enough; I’d settle for something that size, though, I’d I could get a plain one with rubber mats on the floor, manual 5- or 6-speed, diesel engine and cargo takedowns around the bed the way Toyota used to make ’em.
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Basset said on March 24, 2013 at 10:35 pm
Tiedowns, I should say. Autofill strikes again.
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brian stouder said on March 24, 2013 at 11:09 pm
Pros, I got roped into running the office pool this year; haven’t run it in probably 10 years.
The basketball geeks back in engineering-land had oddball scoring rules that rewarded early-round knowledge over late-round lucky picks.
My rules are – 32 points per round, period. So the way to approach it is – pick your Final Four (8 points each) and then work backward (and of course, you get 16 points for each correct final-game pick, and 32 points if you picked the winner). The geeks can have 5 or 6 more correct picks in the first round, and a piker like me could still have a lucky late-round pick or two, and remain alive!
Plus, my points system also pays $3 for the lowest score in the pool, and this makes it people-friendly, too.
Because, really, all these experts and so on are just bullshit artists; they make a career out of telling us why a thing that has already happened happened; and they’re just as piss-poor as the rest of us at predicting anything ahead of time!
Who picked LaSalle? Who picked Harvard? Who picked Georgetown to go down? (in our 30-sheet pool, one or two idiots actually DID pick Florida Gulf Coast versus Georgetown, although not a single soul selected LaSalle!)
And right now, I’m killing time ’til the late games end, so I can finish the scoring update for tomorrow’s bulletin board!
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Sherri said on March 24, 2013 at 11:41 pm
Florida Gulf Coast has busted many brackets, but they are entertaining to watch. In today’s buttoned down, stand around, defense-oriented game, they’re bringing back a breath of Phi Slamma Jamma!
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MarkH said on March 25, 2013 at 4:28 am
Basset, Courier is correct for the small Ford version of the Mazda, ’76-’84. Although Ford has owned that name since the ’50s when they put that name on their panel delivery vehicles.
Alex, that’s not my memory of the Isuzu pickups. They weren’t that stylish, optioned or comfortable, but they sure were tough. The Chevy competitor to the courier was the LUV (Light Utility Vehicle), built by Isuzu from 1976-82. My geophysical exploration company had a small fleet of four assigned to us permit agents in the early ’80s. They were slow and uncomfortable as hell, but they were reliable and damned indestructible. And we tried to kill them after we learned they might be replaced with Bronco IIs when they wore out. No such luck, as we could take them anywhere and accumulated over 100,000 miles on each.
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