Halfway through Day One, we seem to have estab­lished a theme:

But I’m won­der­ing: Until elec­tric­ity is gen­er­ated by con­vert­ing your bad karma into good vibes, aren’t we sim­ply trans­fer­ring our energy demands to things like coal-burning plants (the stan­dard in my part of the coun­try), river-destroying hydro­elec­tric or, gasp, nuclear? I mean, I’m all for zero emis­sions, but at some point it’s like squeez­ing the tooth­paste around in the tube. Oh, well. Life is the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion. Speak­ing of elec­tric, here’s Chrysler’s concept:

It’s the 200c EV, another range-extending mostly elec­tric hybrid like the Volt — the first 40 miles are all-electric, etc. What makes this car spe­cial — or hor­ri­fy­ing, depend­ing on your out­look — is its unprece­dented dig­i­tal Fun­Pak, which includes onboard wifi, and I only wish I was kid­ding, but you’ll be able to access Face­Book from your car, and your car will have “mobile bud­dies.” I look for­ward to the sta­tus updates: Tak­ing Fat Ass to Domino’s again. I’ll bet she orders the low­fat cheese. The Chrysler exec­u­tive sketched out a sce­nario where you’d start your car via your iPhone, and if it gets stolen? You pick up the same phone and tell it to come home imme­di­ately, young man, and while it won’t exactly do that, you can dis­able it wher­ever it stands and take a pic­ture of the thievin’ dri­ver. It also has some­thing called “teen mode,” to rat out your kid.

Signs and wonders.

Of course, all I see are the flaws, but it got a few chuck­les last night. Now it’s in the hands of the crit­ics, i.e., you. Go ahead, be brutal:

I don’t want you to think I’m obsessed with roller coast­ers, because I’m not. But I took this video, so what the hell. This is the Top Thrill Drag­ster at Cedar Point, a ride that lasts less than 30 sec­onds. They stretch it out with some recorded engine rum­bling at the begin­ning and run the lit­tle Christ­mas tree lights, but it’s very sim­ple — you’re blasted out of the gate, reach 120 mph in four sec­onds and climb 420 feet in the air, over the top and then 420 feet back down — straight down — with a lit­tle corkscrew twist thrown in, just in case you haven’t peed your pants yet.

Occa­sion­ally, when the track isn’t warm enough, it won’t make it over the top and returns to the sta­tion in reverse. This is called a “roll­back” and is highly prized by insane coaster fanat­ics, who try to time their rides to get one — after a rain is a good time to be first in line. And in one ter­ri­fy­ing case, it had the pre­cise amount of momen­tum to make it to the top, and no fur­ther. In that case, they send a worker up in a bas­ket to give it a push.

Some of you guys who share my coaster prob­lems men­tioned motion sick­ness. Not my prob­lem — I’m a chicken about heights. And an expe­ri­ence like that? Being stuck? I would lay lie flat on the ground after dis­em­bark­ing, and I would prob­a­bly still be there.

Almost enough to make you for­get that sore knee.

Although now my shoul­der is sore, too.

You peo­ple, always want­ing more, more, more. And here I spent the morn­ing try­ing to sleep care­fully hand-crafting a video amuse­ment for you.

After you watch that, a li’l bloggage:

One of the bright spots in an oth­er­wise damp after­noon was catch­ing this on one of my many trips up and down the Nau­ti­cal Mile: Alix Spiegel’s fas­ci­nat­ing look at two tod­dlers with gender-identification issues. From NPR/All Things Con­sid­ered. Please don’t be put off by any ooh-ick feel­ings you might have; this is as intel­li­gent and sen­si­tive a look at the sub­ject as you can ask for. You know all those trans­gen­dered peo­ple who say, “I’ve felt like I had the wrong body since I was very young?” These are those very young people.

A lit­tle past its sell-by date, my ol’ pal Lance Mannion’s sketch of his life in Indiana.

Fresh meat, thrown to the raven­ing herd! Tear it apart!

Go ahead, I can take it:

Had lunch with JohnC Fri­day. Oh, I was so smug — rode my bike down to his house, and from there we walked the three blocks to the Thai place in the Vil­lage. Look at me, I am Miss Fit­ness, a lit­tle creaky from a win­ter spent sit­ting on my spongy bum, but oth­er­wise ready to start the out­door exer­cise season.

On the way home, I tried some­thing I’d been think­ing about all win­ter — affix­ing the Flip video cam­era to my han­dle­bars with the Goril­la­pod. Bikecam!

Well, it didn’t work. I post the video below, because it gives the lie to two things: One, that you can put a video cam­era on your han­dle­bars with­out some sort of damp­ing sys­tem and expect usable footage, and two, that I am merely “a lit­tle creaky.” Granted, I grabbed this piece at the top of a hill*, but its most alarm­ing fea­ture is not the sick­mak­ing image, but the rasp­ing sound of my breath­ing. God, I am out of shape.

Next try: Helmetcam.

* The hill in this case is Grosse Pointe Farms’ famous hill, which usu­ally takes the def­i­nite arti­cle: The Hill. Any­one who lives in a place with real hills would laugh at the name, because it could more accu­rately be called The Lump. Danny, you are now free to deliver a lecture.

No, not my pups. But some won­der­ful dog faces, just the same. Music from one of Johnny Rivers’ “Live at the Whiskey A Go Go” albums:

Kate couldn’t stay awake for the eclipse the other night, so I taped it for her, lens flare and all. The Pink Floyd she just has to endure:

(It was about 10 degrees. I went inside between 30-second takes, and kept the bat­tery charged with extra boob power.)

As for Fri­day night in the Fort, the plan is to meet in the bar at Cat­ablu on Broad­way around 6:30ish. Come if you’d like and don’t worry about the time; I expect we’ll be there for a couple-three hours at least. E-mail an RSVP if you get a chance and include a phone num­ber, just so if the venue changes for any rea­son, we can alert you. Or call seven three four, five four eight, zero zero three three and get the update. Don’t abuse this infor­ma­tion, although I’m sure some­body will. If dis­as­ter strikes, check this space.

Now I have to go write a big check for some Girl Scout cook­ies. Ah, par­ent­hood. Have a good weekend.