Dear Mister Jones Random Roy

What’s in a name?

At one point in my high school experience, we happened upon an old 2-door, beat-up Datsun B210 that my dad was able to purchase from the owner for a whopping $50. I remember taking pride (oddly) in the fact that I had to pay more for insurance than we had paid for the car. As guys often do, my friends and I gave the vehicle a name - calling it the ‘Nuclear Tomato‘.

It had been red at one time, but by the time I was its proud owner, the finish had long since disappeared and the paint had faded to sort of a burnt orange color. It had a chalky texture to it, and if you rubbed up against it with a white shirt, you’d come away looking like you’d just been hit with a well aimed shot of Tang. It had 4 white mag hubcaps.

For anyone that was lucky enough to witness its passage, it screamed that we were at the upper echelons of lower class teenage children. Its greatest feature was the fact that it was missing 3rd gear, so we’d drive around town with the engine RPMs nearing redline all the time in second gear, and occasionally we’d quick-shift into fourth gear while passing girls so they wouldn’t be overpowered by the high whine of the engine. I don’t remember what eventually happened to the car, but it had a very short life. I think it eventually lost fourth gear as well, and I believe we ended up selling it and still making a profit on it.

When my son’s old enough to drive, I’m looking for something similar to the Nuclear Tomato. It didn’t do much for my dating life (the passenger door only opened from the inside, I just remembered that), but it increased my coolness factor with my buddies in the way that only things like broken bones, belly button lint, and never-been-washed T-Shirts can.

As far as names go, I’ve always thought that we had dibs on the coolest name ever given to a car. Saying that you were heading out to go somewhere in the ‘Nuclear Tomato’ always elicited fun responses.

Can you identify these 11 famous cars?

Here are some nicknames given to some famous movie and television cars. How many can you identify just by their name? See if you can recall where they appear before clicking to find out. FYI - 8 of these are from movies, and 3 are from T.V.

• Chitty-chitty-bang-bang
• Greased Lightning
• Christine
• General Lee
• Lightning McQueen
• Ocho
  
• Kitt
• Bluesmobile
• Ecto-1
• Eleanor
• Dragula

What other famous car’s are out there with well-known names? What are some of your better nicknames you’ve had for your own cars?

There’s just something wrong about the fact that solar powered calculators do not have an off button. Even though it’s been this way for the several years that I’ve owned my Texas Instruments BA-35 Solar, I still check occasionally, just on the off chance that I’ve missed it all of these years. When I’m unable to turn it off I somehow feel like I’m wasting the sun’s energy. Someday someone is going to find out that the combined heat from all of the solar powered calculators on the earth was the tipping point that kicked off the whole global warming situation. Help save the earth, turn your solar powered calculator face-down when you’re not using it.

I wonder why they haven’t created a solar powered TV remote control yet? Sure, it’d still have to use batteries at night, but if we can harness the power of the sun to calculate the square root of pi, then why can’t we figure out how to use it to flip to the Daily Show?

I knew the day would come when they’d have laptops with art on them - and it’s about time! HP has a new notebook featuring the artwork of some winner in a Global Design Competition. I’ve wondered for a long time why more companies didn’t at least offer more colors in their laptop models. I’ve always wanted chartreuese (actually I don’t even know what that color is, I just think the word sounds cool).

I think this is just the beginning - we’re going to see a lot more options become available in the choice of color and design that can be configured into a laptop.

Mark my words, 2 years from now you’ll be hard pressed to find a laptop computer that isn’t sporting at least one symbol or image meant to convey our independence and unique spirit (as long as you choose from one of 10 available models). Then we’ll start talking like we’re some kind of elitists, “Check it out dude, see the latest tattoo I got for my tablet?”

I don’t know how many of you have been following the story over at CanGoogleHearMe.com. It’s about a guy, Aaron, who has an idea and decided it was important enough to him that it be heard, so he flew to California with the intent of camping out in Google’s lobby until someone agreed to hear him out. Well, he actually got a meeting with them, and they liked the idea enough to tell him to put some proof of concept together and come back. That started a year long adventure where Aaron and some programmers he recruited met regularly and worked late into the night on many occasions to be ready to go back to Google to show their stuff. Well, it’s been a year and now they’re on their way back to California to meet with Google again.

I am located in Idaho and know two of the programmers on Aaron’s team really well - which is how I first heard about the experiment and met Aaron. I’m amazed at what they’ve accomplished and at their ability to realize an idea. Wish I could be with them this week in California as a fly on the wall - it’ll be fun to hear their stories first-hand when they return.

Good luck guys! I like the pseudo-realistic plastic airplanes they sell in the airplane gift shops, if you’re bringing back souvenirs

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Then I got cold, and a little hungry. So I came back home, made myself a turkey sandwich, and ordered the book so I could go to the woods vicariously from the comfort of my couch. Since it would take several days for the book to arrive, I played Guitar Hero and got my highest solid note-run ever.

Pretty productive day, I’d say.

Some other articles that you might find interesting:

• Go on the Guitar Hero Tournament circuit (seriously)
• Careful, you can hurt yourself playing Guitar Hero (this guy broke his knee!)
• How to play Guitar Hero (because it’s so hard)

I feel sorry for the Jar Jar Binks guy. I remember seeing little shorts on the Star Wars site leading up to the release of episode 1, where the Jar Jar guy would take us around and show us stuff on the set. I’m sure he was thinking about how great it was going to be as a permanently remembered part of the next great Star Wars trilogy. Now I’m sure he dreads going over his resume. It’s not like showing off a Golden Raspberry award is going to garner a lot of job interviews.

“Wait, you’re that guy?!”
“Yes, I’m that guy …”
“Dude … I’m sorry.”
” It’s okay, I’m over it now - just don’t ask me to do the voice, okay?”

The guy who did the voice for Chewbacca, however - he’s probably invited to enough parties to be swimming in chips and guacamole every day of the year.

“Come on, do the growl one more time!”
“Well, it’s actually more like a gargle and clearing the throat at the same time.”
“Whatever man - do it like where he’s mad and ready to go wookiee and rip my arms off!”
“Oh, all right …. (growl/gargle/clear throat)”

Funny story - I just did some searching to find out who ‘owns’ the voice of Chewbacca, so I could link him in above. Well, it turns out that the voice of the Wookiee was actually a mix of sounds put together by sound designer Ben Burtt, and consisted of animal sounds from walruses, camels, bears, and badgers.  One of the more important voices was that of Tarik, a black bear from the Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose, California.  Kind of sad, really - to discover that there’s not a real voice out there that is responsible for the voice of Chewbacca. Despite, that, however - that hasn’t stopped just about every young man from the age of 12 to, um, 99 from trying to wookiee up and make the sound themselves.

This guy seems to be closer than anyone else I’ve ever seen:

I’ve never owned a hot tub - they have always seemed like too much work for what you get out of them.  I like to do my relaxing in front of the T.V.  Well, with these Wonder Sauna Hot Pants, I could get the best of both worlds.  I’m sure these models rue the day they accepted the gig to take a picture wearing these things.  Even with the passage of time, I’ll bet their friends and neighbors still refer to them behind their backs as "the ones that wore those big tubular underwear".

via the Goat.

I remember the time I actually fell for the quarter glued to the sidewalk trick. Who wouldn’t stop to pick up a quarter? That’s like, almost a month of good luck. The worst part after trying to pick it up and realizing it is attached, is standing up and then trying to decide whether to look around and see whether anyone is watching you or not. I opted for pretending to put something in my pocket and grinned stupidly while I went on my merry way.

Now I carry around a small putty knife in my back pocket, just in case. I’ve realized that quarters glued to the sidewalk aren’t actually all that common. and sitting down with a putty knife in your back pocket isn’t all that comfortable.

I once heard a story about a horse who bit a man on the shoulder while he was teaching it how to wear a bridle and saddle. After getting bit, the man went inside and baked a potato. He then placed the potato under his shirt on his shoulder, with a cloth to separate his skin from the hot potato. Then he went out again and began working with the horse. This time, when the horse went to bite him, he quickly maneuvered so that the horse bit full into the hot potato on his shoulder. It shocked the horse and after that it never bit anyone again.

Top that, horse whisperer.

Pretty cool story, but how would anyone really be able to pull this off? I mean, how would you know the horse wouldn’t just bite you somewhere else the next time, like on the ear or something? No thanks, I’m keeping my potato on my plate and my ear attached, and I’d just sell the horse.