I’m starting to think that the country would run a lot smoother if my parents were in charge of Congress. And I don’t mean house speakers or committee chairs or anything, I mean, everything that congress did would have to be run by them. Want to put a bill to a floor vote? As long as the floor is clean. Sleep-over party with a lobbyist? Make sure it’s okay with your father. I don’t care if you’re under oath or not; I can tell when you’re lying!
Case in point: When I was 17 a guy at work was trying to sell me his old 1980 Mercury Cougar, and it was a pretty easy sell cause I wanted this thing bad. Real. Real. Bad. Granted, it smelled weird, was already 17 years old when I was looking at it (born the same year I was), ate gas, couldn’t stop in the rain, couldn’t stop on a hill, couldn’t stop pretty much anywhere, but none of that really mattered. The car was freedom, and I wanted to be free. Free to pick up and go in a vehicle that was mine and mine alone. Free to have no-one tell me what to do or where to be. I wanted the special kind of unrealistic freedom that a 17 year old kid assumes is just around the corner at nearly all times, provided he makes a couple of “good” decisions.
Anyway, I approached my parents with the idea, and they sat me down and without telling me no, told me that if I indeed wanted to buy my own car, that meant that I’d also be buying my own insurance and paying for my own repairs. Sure, the initial $800 price tag on the car was low, but after that, and after insurance payments, and after new brakes, and after everything else, I’d basically be working my entire job each week, all the hours, just to break even. I was welcome to buy the Cougar, but I was also welcome to share the use of my mom’s car at no additional cost to me. Freedom averted!
And after Hurricane Katrina destroyed levees protecting New Orleans in 2005, Congress passed a bill setting up a program to inventory and inspect levees, but it failed to provide enough money to carry that out, Dr. Galloway said. “We don’t even know where some of these levees are,” he said.
Come on guys. Really? Really?! Seems just one conversation with my parents would have completely avoided this whole thing from getting as bad as it has.
Now, how to approach the Highway Appropriations Bill. Might want to wait until after dinner…
I read a New York Times article over the weekend (which I’ve been trying to find for about ten minutes without success) about how it’s getting increasingly more difficult to sift through all the trumpeting green messages out there. Indeed, even after you tune out the plain old greenwashers, even if you ignore advertising completely, it’s still a tough job to try to live sustainably.
The article raises some good points. In addition to discussing the din of green marketing, it profiles several people who are faced with such conundrums as: New Hybrid or a used car with good gas mileage to save the extra energy that would have gone into producing a new one? And… Recyclable milk containers or reusable glass ones that need to be washed repeatedly and took much more energy to make?
And what I have to say about that is… At that point, pick something and be happy with it already! The way I see it. Living sustainably is like having a balanced stock portfolio. You try to make the best decisions that you can as much as you can. But no matter how much research you do. No matter how many people you talk to about carbon footprints, or embedded energy, or anything like that, you’re always going to find out that you were wrong about something. The best thing that you can do is to try, and to keep trying. And while you’re trying, keep reading.
As one person, none of your choices are going to have a drastic impact on the condition of the planet. However, your attitude will have a much bigger impact, as even if you aren’t doing the best job at living more sustainably, you might impress your values upon your neighbor, or the town you live in, or a local member of government.
A couple of summers ago I bought a book on biodiesel and without even getting a chance to read it, loaned it to my roommate, who wanted her cousin-in-law to read it. Her cousin-in-law is a Connecticut State Senator and see what came of that? Though I can’t take full credit, it’s nice to think that my choice as a consumer played a small part in helping to reduce Connecticut’s total emissions.
A couple of years ago I tried to spread a rumor that Tron was coming back as Tron on Ice. Though a couple of people nibbled at my idea, I couldn’t secure any investors and eventually the rumor was consigned to development hell.
So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when, while searching for a completely unrelated video on youtube, I happened across this video!
This guy sings the plots of famous movies to the tune of their orchestral overtures. He’s got more, too!
Check out this one.
And this one.
And this one.
He’s got the characters in Jaws down pretty good.
My personal favorite is Halloween, mainly because of the bald mask.
I need to do one of these for Smokey and the Bandit…
The “special” at my local pizzeria went from $5.00 to $5.50 today. I asked the guy behind the counter why the price went up.
“Ethanol,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders.
Which got me to thinking. Lately, I’ve been pretty much immune to things like rising gas prices and fare hikes. In fact, the last time I remember buying gasoline consistently it was under $2.00 a gallon (eek!). So you can only imagine how miffed I was when I learned that because the global demand for corn went through the roof that I had to pay 10% more for my slices.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying a little extra for something that is helping us all out in the long run (like organic food or phosphate-free detergent), hasn’t this little ethanol charade gotten a little old?
I see that I may have gotten a little ahead of myself, so like the intrepid explorers that we all are at heart, let’s follow this little scenario downstream and see if we find anything lurking.
My pizza costs went up because the cost of milk went up. The cost of milk went up because the corn that the cows are fed is now more expensive due to increased demand. More demand means more corn to keep pace with the demand (cause we can’t have cows or ethanol, we’ve gotta have both). More corn means more fertilizer. Most of the fertilizer consumed by agri-business is made using the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia. And what fuels the Haber-Bosch process?
Natural Gas.
You can see where I’m going with this. Ethanol is not fixing the problem, it’s just tucking it under the rug so the common consumer can’t see it anymore. Ride around in all the green cars you like, it still won’t make a lick of difference.
If we really want to fix the problem we have to change our land use, not our car use.
(Or: We, as a country, could do away with the flush toilet and pool our collective resources to create the world’s largest humanure industry, eliminating both the water deficit and the fertilizer problem in one fell swoop. Who’s with me?!)
Okay, now that the mic-check is over, I’ve got something to say.
I’ve been reading a lot about biomimicry lately. Biomimicry, in a nutshell, is looking to nature for cues on how to design something. The Wright brothers did a lot of this when they studied birds for years before building the first airplane, termite colonies offer us a lot to learn about temperature and humidity management, and infomercial producers have a lot to thank to the Venus Fly Trap. But I’m not here to wax philosophic about whale fin-shaped fan blades, or bug-shaped cars.
In my web-travels the other day, I was introduced to this video:
Pretty cool, eh? Solar towers look to be made of much cheaper materials then conventional photo-voltaic solar energy collectors. Looks to be just a bunch of concrete and plastic sheeting (with a very expensive turbine inside, of course. I’m fairly certain that it’s pretty expensive in its own right, but I’m positive that it earns out a lot faster then a PV system.
However, as I was checking the thing out, it struck me. There’s a hugeconcretestack outside of my bedroom window. And more throughout the city. In fact, they’re ubiquitous in this great country of ours. So why not start building these puppies all over the place, or converting existing stacks in buildings that have outlived their usefulness. Take an industrial complex with a couple of huge stacks, use the roof of the buildings to collect heat (hell, even plant low maintenance seedums under the plastic canopy and you’ve got yourself a lot better something from nothing. The trick would be to retro-fit the stack to allow the air inside, house the turbine, and still not impinge upon the structural integrity. Easy problem to solve, engineers love challenges.
Or better yet, think of this structure. (Photos courtesy of this very cool airport.) Imagine building the center of this thing hollow and using the very air that is superheated on the tarmac around it to power all its systems. Sure, you’d have to build it a little bigger and keep the area around it clear, but if you’re already building the thing, you might as well make it work for you too.
Bout time someone finally turned the stack effect to our advantage.
I’ve been on the fence about hybrid cars for a while. Not that I don’t think they’re a great leap forward from SUVs, rather, I’m worried about how the auto makers are selling them. The story of car ownership is often marked by a series of buck-passings, and make-it-throughs as a car goes from owner to owner. “Gotta make it to the end of the month for the oil change.” “These shocks need to last through the winter before I replace them.” “That dealer has no idea how much work this car is going to need before they can re-sell it, lucky it started when I went to trade it in.” Any car owner who’s ever dealt with a car that is over 8 years old can probably sympathize with at least one of those phrases. And since hybrids have only been around for about that time (about the car equivalent of the required colonoscopy age), only now are we as a society about to be faced with this question:
What happens when a hybrid gets old?
When my friend Johnny and I were younger (circa 2002-2003), his parents went away for a week, leaving us both to watch the house. They left him with one simple request, try to sell his mom’s old car, a 1990 Honda Civic with upwards of 150,000 miles on it. As Johnny and I were typical lazy guys, we spent the week lounging about, drinking beers, grilling hamburgers, and goofing off. The day before his parents were to return, Johnny realized that he’d done absolutely nothing to sell the car. In an effort to show that he’d at least accomplished something he drove it out on the lawn, and put a “For Sale” sign up in the window. Now, to truly appreciate the denouement of this tale, you have to know that Johnny lived on a dead-end off of Route 9. Even though his house was pretty close to the main road, it was at such an angle that no one could even see the car unless they were driving down his road. And since it was a dead-end, you only drove down there if you lived there. He knew that putting the car in the yard probably wasn’t going to move it. He’d need to make flyers, go to Kinkos, hit up grocery stores and community boards all over the place. But we were drunk at 2 in the afternoon with party plans that would carry us into tomorrow. There was no way we’d be able to start any of that before his parents returned.
By the time they got home the next day Johnny had received three offers on the car. In the eyes of his mother, Johnny looked almost responsible. But, as we learned from that experience, even when the odds are stacked against it, a 12 year-old Honda for $1000 sells itself. Any one who knows anything about cars knows that they’ve got another 100,000 miles of light-maintenance driving before the car really goes south. For an initial investment of $1000, that’s a bargain.
Would the above scenario apply to a hybrid car? Probably not. Toyota offers an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the Prius, but take a look around the next time you’re out driving. The amount of Toyotas on the road that are over 8 years old or have over 100,000 miles on them is probably not a lot different from the amount that have 150,000 miles on them, or 200,000. The point I’m making is that the Prius may be a little too well engineered for its own good. Mechanics have a hard enough time dealing with imports (Ever need to get work done on a Volvo?), so imagine approaching your average garage with a twelve year-old hybrid and a problem anywhere in the electricial system. The battery pack alone costs between $4000 and $5000, and that’s just for the part. Even if they could afford one, would a 16 year-old kid want to take on the Russian Roulette-like responsibility of owning a 12 year old Prius? And as more and more hybrids get old, who’s taking care of all these spent battery packs? That’s a lot of dead cells to properly dispose of. Are we sure that we’re doing this as well as it could be done?
None of my resale qualms are really about the hybrids themselves. Rather, I believe that the fault is not in the product, but in the distribution. The business model, namely ownership, that works so well for traditional automobiles is a completely irresponsible one for the distribution of hybrids.
It wasn’t until I read a book called Natural Capitalism, that I really felt better about hybrid ownership, and that there was a win-win way that would benefit car companies, customers, and the environment. In the book, the authors postulate that the business model that works for selling copier machines to offices should be adopted by the auto industry.
When Xerox first made their 914 model copier, it was a revolutionary product in terms of efficiency, materials used, time invested, and many other measurable aspects. However, it cost six to seven times more than it’s competition. Instead of changing the product, Xerox invented a new business model to be competitive. They leased the copiers at substantially lower cost to the consumer and instead charged a per-copy fee for copies over 2000 per month to supplement their revenue. Obtaining a copier became easy for the consumer, and they only had to pay if they used it heavily. In other words, Xerox didn’t sell copiers, they sold a service. If a copier broke, they sent someone to fix it. Old copiers were returned to Xerox, who was responsible for the proper disposal. This did a lot to spur Xerox to make a better product. Since they had to handle maintenance, it paid to make a copier that wouldn’t break down all the time.
Now let’s apply this model to the Toyota Prius. Instead of selling you a Prius, Toyota leases it to you long term. This means that all maintenance is handled by Toyota, all replacement parts are handled by them, and when you’re done with the car, you hand it back to Toyota. Instead of a free warranty (which lasts for a limited amount of time and ultimately bumps up the sale price of a car), the owner pays a per-month maintenance fee, which lasts the lifetime of the vehicle. If a car is given back to Toyota, they could lease it again and the new owner would pick up the maintenance. Toyota could charge less for the car initially because they would know that each car sold would be a guaranteed revenue stream for the next ten years or beyond. And because of this guaranteed stream of cash, it would be incredibly advantageous for Toyota to build a car that rarely broke down and lasted forever (which is something that they already do anyways), as they’d keep making money on the cars as long as they were on the road.
And this would work for any car, with any car company. Imagine that twelve year-old car out on Johnny’s lawn. We could have driven down to the nearest Honda dealership and given it back. Sure, we’d get nothing for it in trade, but I’m pretty sure that at least $1000 dollars of the price of the car would have been knocked off when it was new. Plus dealers could probably cut some sort of deal that would hack a chuck of the down-payment cost off a newer vehicle if you kept with their brand or stayed with their lot. How’s that for encouraging customer loyalty…
So now, using this model, a twelve year-old Prius sitting on a car-lot with an ultra-low lease cost, the typical maintenance fee, and no looming threat of an electrical apocalypse looks like a much better buy for young driver. Pile on the fuel efficiency and sweeten the pot even more. And what does Toyota care if you lease new or old. They’re still making money off of a car that rolled off the assembly line before the driver was in kindergarten.
I’m sure there are parts of this cockamamie scheme that I haven’t thought of, details that I’ve neglected, etc, etc, etc, but the underlying point is this. To make aging hybrid cars appeal to a wider range of people, more action and attention is required from the companies that built them. However this happens, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.
Last weekend was Monsterjam. For anyone who has never been to a monster truck show, the audience is divided pretty evenly between two groups. Dads and kids, and guys who talk to the trucks like they’re people. I don’t know who’s more amusing to watch: The wide-eyed eight-year-olds waving their checkered flags, ears-a-plugged, grins permanently shellacked on their faces. Or the beer guzzling over-tanned gentlemen in Ted Nugent shirts who debate the finer points of which truck will triumpth over which truck and why. Also, the best part about Monsterjam is that it hasn’t been overrun by stupid hipsters yet. I guess they see this as being a little too blue-collar for them to shit all over. I hope it stays that way.
Anywho, the show was a little less than entertaining this year (compared to last year), mainly because there was only one really competent driver there, that being Dennis Anderson driving Grave Digger. Now, competentcy is a strange thing in montster truck racing. Unlike every other sport, where the veterans are a little better than the young guys, but each have their strengths, monster truck racing is truly a skill that takes years to hone, which gives a 26 year veteran like Anderson a ridiculously huge advantage over the other guys. The thing is, these trucks are too big to predict. You launch it off a set of cars and it will land any which way but normal. What 26 years of driving does is prepare you for all the ways that it might bounce or roll, and what to do to keep it upright. Thus letting you drive much, much faster. The greenhorns surrounding Anderson didn’t have a chance.
What made this year’s jam a little boring, was the suspicious absence of Tom Meents from the competition. If Anderson is Monsterjam’s Grand-daddy, Meents is the Crazy Uncle that people have to keep an eye on at family events. Where Anderson drives it like he stole it, Meents drives it like he needs to kill it.
I rest my case.
I can only hope that these two titans will clash at Monsterjam, Lebanon Valley Speedway.
And while I’m on the subject, I’m proud to say that not only am I a fan, I’ve also had the unique opportunity to drive one of these things. When I was in New Zealand two years ago, we passed a guy who had a track set up behind his farm. For $150 he’d let you ride. For $250 he’d let you drive. Guess which one I chose…
I wrote down the experience a few days later, so read on if you like:
Friday was the day we left Wanaka. However, on the way out we had to make a stop: A stop at a place with a man named Ian behind the counter. A stop that my parents couldn’t believe they were making. That’s right, a stop at the monster truck track we’d seen on our way in from the Queenstown Airport.
My Dad and I walked in to the garage and a six foot four, two-hundred pound man with bleached blonde hair and a mouthful of slightly disorganized teeth greeted us with a smile and a warm handshake. His name was Ian, and he is near the top of the list of coolest guys on the planet.
He gave me a fire-retardant suit, a fire-retardant mask, and a helmet. I gave him my $250 NZ dollars.
I should break here to tell you the paperwork that I had to sign to be allowed to drive the truck: A signature on a piece of paper that more resembled a petition than a legal document.
That’s right, a single piece of paper with a list of six things is the standard legal disclaimer that these thrill-seeking outfits make you sign here in NZ. The gist of the six points is this:
What you’re about to do can range anywhere from dangerous to insane.
The company is not liable if you get hurt attempting said dangerous/insane activity.
You will not sue said company once you get back to your own country, where laws might be on you side.
You do not have any medical conditions that would impair your activity in said dangerous/insane activity. If you lie about this, then get hurt, refer to points two and three.
Next of kin or something like that.
Sound mind blah, blah, blah.
So you can imagine my amusement when Ian gave me a piece of paper with a line for my signature below tons of other signatures dating back a year or two. I signed it without looking (I’d already read the one at the whitewater rafting place, same document everywhere), and I was now “ready” to drive a monster truck. While going over the finer points of his limited liability, Ian explained to me what the ride would be like. Apparently, the NZ safety inspector strictly forbade him from allowing people to get the truck airborne. However, Ian found a way around that by structuring the track so it was possible to allow the truck to pop a wheelie (not airborne, mind you). Ian also told me that the safety inspector made him take the alcohol-burning engine out of the truck (”Sorry to disappoint you mate, but this truck is nat-trull-ley ass-puh-rated,” he said to me.) Though half of me was disappointed, the other half of me was secretly glad. An alcohol-fueled monster truck would produce in excess of 1200 horsepower, way too much for any novice (or most pros for that matter). Suffice it to say, the safety inspector was correct, despite what Ian said about wanting to make the ride “fun.”
Ian and I went out the side door where I was immediately greeted by USA Taurus. It was only now that I could see the truck up close. Two things became apparent almost immediately: One, this thing was home built and, two, it had been around for a while. The suspension was several generations removed from what is being used now, and the chassis matched. The newest thing on the truck, aside from the tires, which looked rather new, was the body. I guessed it to be a mid-nineties Chevy Silverado. (I wondered what the original body of the truck was, you never know with these things.) Ian walked around to the front of the truck and picked up a ladder. I surmised this was how I would get in. He put the ladder down and walked to the rear drivers-side tire.
“Here’s how you get in the truck.” he said. I was still trying to figure out why he had even picked up the ladder. “You put your left foot there, your right foot there, climb up here, and swing your body over the back.”
He was pointing to various parts of the wheel-well, the tire, and the frame. I was in heaven. In half a second, Ian swung up into the bed of the truck. I clamored up after him, juxtaposing his catlike movements with my own rhinoccerous-like attempts. Once in the bed, I saw the entrance to the truck. A rough hole, cut into the ceiling of the cab. For the first time I was a little nervous.
“Climb into the passenger seat, I’m going to drive down the hill.” Ian said.
I cautiously balanced myself on the much dented ceiling of the cab and lowered myself into the passenger seat. To my relief, the interior was braced by a regulation-looking roll-cage. However, that was where the relief ended. The seats were fiberglass bucket seats bolted directly to the frame though the bottom panel of the cab. Padding for both seats was courtesy of what looked like folded up egg-crate stuffed inside a giant pillow case. The steering wheel was normal, but the shifter, located between the two seats was something out of monster garage. There’s really no way to sugar coat this, it was a big metal lever, with 2×4, 4×4, REV, and PARK written in paint marker on various points on the floor of the cab under the lever itself. The lever protruded from a large hole in the floor and led directly to what I was hoping was the gearbox. My nervousness crept up a notch.
Ian slid into the driver’s seat. He was wearing what looked like a motorcycle helmet, the kind that only protected the top of the head.
Nervousness back down: he trusts his machine.
He pulled some wires out of the steering column, twisted them together, then mashed a big black button with START labeled on the dashboard next to it with sharpie marker. Nervousness back to previous level.
The engine fired once then died. Ian smiled a big, disorganized smile, pumped the gas a few times and mashed the button again. The engine caught and roared to life. I don’t know if it had a muffler or not, but it sounded powerful nonetheless. He motioned for me to put on my lap belt. That’s right, a lap belt. More nervousness.
“You’re lucky you came this morning! I’ve been meaning to take the radiator out of this one!” Said Ian over the crackling engine “truck needs some love if you know what mean.” Nervousness shooting to unheard of heights.
It was about this point that I began to look around me, but not at the interior of the truck. I was looking at the roof of the garage in front of me. Suddenly it dawned on me, I was fifteen feet up in a vehicle that commanded close to triple the horsepower of the most powerful truck I’d ever driven. Ian grabbed the lever/shifter and creaked it into REV.
“Real tough backing this puppy up, that’s why I drive it down to the track for you.”
I nodded in a whatever-you-say-is-fine-with-me-cause-I-just-realized-that- I’m-in-over-my head fashion.
As we descended to track level, Ian went over the finer points of driving the truck. “Don’t go over the cars wrong or it will roll. Don’t try to keep the wheels absolutely straight while going over the cars or it will roll. Don’t mash the throttle too hard, the gears are straight-cut and cost a fortune to replace, plus you’ll probably roll. Line up the tires with the ends of the cars, do this by sticking your head out the window and looking, that’s how the pros did it until someone got the bright idea to cut holes in the floorboards. If you’re not lined up you’ll roll.”
I felt like I was in the monster truck version of Stalinist Russia. Don’t do this or you’ll be shot. Don’t do that or you’ll be shot. If you this you’ll be shot. Deserters will be shot…
“Okay, let’s go.” Ian said. He lept through the hole in the roof and allowed me to shimmy into the drivers seat. Thankfully, it had a five point safety harness, but still the same crappy padding.
I was sitting in the driver’s seat of a monster truck. It had just become real. I was expected to drive a monster truck! I gingerly gave it a little gas and headed toward the first set of cars. Over those no problem. Now on to the ramps. Everything went fine over the ramps, the hills, the second set of cars, and the bumps. I was now approaching the wheelie ramp. Ian reached over and cut the engine (pulled the mess of wires apart).
“Doin’ well Patrick, but now is the fun part. Now, what I need you to do is inch it over this first hill, and as soon as the front wheels reach the bottom, you gotta floor it as hard as it will go. Can you do that for me?”
He sounded so sincere.
“If you can do that for me, your folks will have a great picture for you,” he said, gesturing to my family, ant-like off in the distance.
He reconnected the wires and mashed on the START button. Nothing happened.
“And remember, once you get down the hill, pull back inside the truck and brace yourself. It’s gonna get bumpy. Now, give it some gas, will you please?”
I complied and the engine sputtered to life once more. I eased down on the gas pedal and started up the first hill. Now, going up a hill is no big thing in a car, but in a monster truck, it’s utterly nerve-wracking. First of all, I’m already fifteen feet off the ground, so once the cab tips a few degrees uphill, I’m driving blind. Second, I’m no longer on the ground. I’m now on a mound of dirt that just so happens to have a level part just wide enough for a monster truck [read: 15 feet wide]. I had my head out the drivers side window, my left arm braced against the roll-cage, and my right arm guiding the steering wheel. The truck crested the hill and we started our descent. Ian tugged me back inside, I’d almost forgotten.
“Now, Patrick!”
I gave the truck some gas, but not enough. It crested the second hill quickly, but with not nearly enough momentum to get the wheels off the ground.
“Aww, Patrick, what was that?” Ian said, visibly dismayed, “More gas, more gas! Now take her around for another go.” He was already cranking the wheel to the left for me.
I resolved myself to get it right the second time, and settled in for the bumpy trip back around. We were no longer on the track, but were about to cross over a tire border back into it. I hesitated for a second. Shouldn’t we go around the tires? Wouldn’t it be bad to- Wait a minute. I was in a monster truck. A fifteen foot tall, 5 ton, fire-breathing, axle-snapping, frame-twisting, 750 horsepower leviathan. There could have been a 7-11 in the way and it wouldn’t have mattered.
I idled over the tires.
Now I was ready for my second attempt. Again, I climbed the hill. Again, pulled myself back in the cab and braced for the landing. I pushed my right foot down. The throttle kept going, further and further down I pushed. My hands were gripping the wheel hard enough to leave indentations in the plastic. The truck was still tilted down hill, chewed up dirt filling my view. And still more throttle to go!
Suddenly, the front of the truck vaulted into the air. I could see nothing but sky and a few miniscule cracks in the windshield. And suddenly all was silent. The roar of the engine seemed far away, the vibrating cab somehow far off as well. In the distance, I could see a plane beginning it’s descent into the Queenstown airport, or was it a bird-
“Hold tight!” Ian shouted.
The front end of the truck crashed to the ground, pushing me forward, almost into the steering wheel. Had he not prepared me I would have driven my face into the top of the wheel.
“Not bad, not bad,” said Ian, who was all disorganized smiles in the passenger seat. The truck sat there for a few seconds while I caught my breath. A few drops of rain spattered on the windshield.
“Lucky thing you came here so early,” said Ian, “the truck doesn’t have windshield wipers.”
An area man claims to have invented a singular solution to the greatest problem facing our world today, global climate change.
By inverting a few simple household rules, Patrick Kennedy, a 27 year-old aspiring urban planner, is staring in the face of destiny, or so he maintains in his press release.
“Remember when you were young,” begins the seventeen page tome, “and you could never seem to keep the door closed when you came in from outside? What did your mother say? She said ‘Shut the door! What are you trying to do, air condition the the whole neighborhood?’”
That is the cornerstone of Kennedy’s plan: On the hottest days of the year, run all the air conditioners possible and open all the doors and windows.
“It’s so simple, it’s genius,” said Kennedy during a recent morning show interview, “and I have my mother to thank. Who’d have thought that all that nagging would ever lead to something positive!”
Kennedy’s mother could not be reached for comment, though sources close to the Kennedy matriarch said that she was saddened by her son’s apparent misunderstanding of her words.
Not wanting to confine himself to just one calamity, Kennedy has also created a contingency plan for warding off the next ice age. Much like his global warming plan, this also revolves around a pearl of wisdom.
“‘Shut the door, you’re letting the heat out.’ that’s what she’d always say,” said Kennedy. “Well this time, it’s intentional.”
Though the formal plans were passed over in the EU, China, South Korea, North Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Harris Drive, Kennedy still plans to push for the United States to adopt his policies. I’m talking about forward motion here, true progress, and I have my mom to thank for it!”
