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Seen a while back while waiting on the freeway for roadside assistance: A large pickup truck, painted on the tailgate in huge letters with:

I'D RATHER BE CUMMIN THAN STROKIN

In or out of context this is a jarring thing to see on the road. I hereby provide context:

The owner of this truck owns a Dodge pickup which uses a Cummins brand diesel engine. He feels strongly that said brand of diesel engine is superior to Ford diesel engines, which are called "Powerstroke."

I understand the intent of his message. Clearly he wants to indicate that his engine choice implies a sexual choice: he does not wish to masturbate, hence "strokin."

However, the activities of "cummin" and "strokin" are not exclusive. Aficionados of masturbation will immediately object: Hey! We stroke in order to come! And then we're cummin!"

Since I was stuck on the shoulder of Interstate 710 at Atlantic/Bandini at the time I didn't have time to follow this gentleman and point out the contradiction inherent in his signage.

Perhaps he should have said: "I'd prefer to be cummin due to my conquest of a female human than strokin my own male member in order to achieve orgasm on my own, which is humiliating to me, and I feel the same way about my engine choice of Cummins Diesel over Powerstroke Diesel. It is the right choice for diesel engines without a doubt and gives me the same sense of control and desirability that mutually consensual coitus does over masturbatory activity."

Or maybe he should of just gave the fuck up and not painted his truck with that sign.

I went to two doctors today, both for minor reasons. Both at Newport Center.

These doctors' offices are full of very old, tremulously decrepit white men in cheerful retirement clothing. They're in aloha shirts and khaki shorts and running shoes, slowly dying.

The parking lot has a very low clearance. This results in comedy with SUVs. One patient made it in driving a Suburban; another with slightly larger tires did not, providing a condensed symbol of the Californian relationship with cars and a satisfying crunchy noise.

The pharmaceutical rep in the waiting room was qualified as a fashion model: almost six foot, slender, leggy, cheekboned and coiffed. Thieves and murderers always send out the best courtesans.

I did not buy the pigurines in the pharmacy window.

Where is a good local body shop? I have enough money to pay for something that isn't broken or cheesy, but not enough to go to the Insurance Disaster places with the big fish tank and the statuesque receptionist.

best,

The guy with the dented front end

Car accident: dumb. Car accident in parking lot at 3 mph: super dumb. Car accident at 3 mph in psychotherapist's parking lot, partlally due to side effects of therapy: dumb enough to be funny. Said accident being with therapist's own parked car: COMEDY GOLD.

Price to fix just her car: $1200. And then I get to fix mine. Hey, this shit ain't funny now.

1. Hybrid cars are not intended to save fuel, and do so poorly. They are intended to reduce emissions. The reason they exist is that auto makers are required to reduce their overall emissions and to provide some zero emissions vehicle by law. In order to continue producing luxury trucks with inefficient pushrod V-8 engines, they must produce a token amount of the hybrids, on which they lose money. When you purchase one you are personally producing less pollution as you drive, but the overall problem is not solved, nor are these vehicles a solution of any kind to the problem of the car.
   
   
2. Biodiesel requires more petroleum to produce than ordinary petroleum-based fuels, according to recent studies. This is because industrial agriculture in the United States requires so much energy, from the nitrogen fixation to the machinery used, that the fuel oil produced from crops is basically inefficiently converted oil. Biodiesel is a great idea if you already have a source of free biomass around, and it is a great idea for a small number of vehicles that can live off the waste biomass others discard. The overall problem is not solved, nor are these vehicles a solution of any kind to the problem of the car.
   
   
3. Ethanol and ethanol-gasoline mixes do not reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Ethanol is made almost entirely from corn. The corn is indeed domestically grown in huge quantities and not imported. However, the corn yields depend absolutely on high-powered artificial fertilizers which require so much energy to produce that they are basically congealed electricity. Unless the plants that produce these fertilizers are somehow powered by some unknown renewable or domestic energy source, this country is still absolutely dependent on oil to make the fertilizer so that the corn can be grown and converted into ethanol. When there is a surplus of corn and a temporary shortage of petroleum, ethanol is a fine idea, because it reduces the consumption of gasoline in the short term. The overall problem is not solved, nor are ethanol-based fuels a solution of any kind to the problem of the car.
   
   
4. Great strides have been made in improving the passenger car. If the current technology was appropriately used to its maximum, pollution and fuel consumption from cars could be reduced tremendously. However, almost everything in this country is distributed by truck. It would be difficult to change this, because the country is very spread out. Commercial trucks predominantly use older diesel engines which are inefficient and dirty. Even if every new truck sold was required to be much, much more efficient and clean, the current trucks would be on the road for a long time. Trucks are rarely replaced; they are repaired. It's very expensive to replace them. Any large-scale change in the trucking industry would require a tremendous amount of government subsidy to compensate the small companies and individual contractors who own these trucks, because they can't afford to upgrade. A sharp increase in the cost of trucking would be felt throughout the entire company. There is currently no good solution to the problem of the truck.

Have a nice auto-doom!

The promoters of the movie Cars have rented the entire automotive journalism establishment for a month. It's amazing. Every car magazine, tv show, web site, blog-where-people-are-paid, everything is simultaneously doing "stories" relating to that movie.

I realized things were headed this way in publishing some time in the 1980s when I walked by the big newsstand on Cahuenga in Hollywood and saw the same actress's face literally 15 in a row, 15 different magazines, all the same month, promoting the same star of the same movie.

In artillery, a "time on target" is a technique in which different batteries at different locations and distances from a target time each of their firings so that all of the shells arrive in the same place at the same time, multiplying their effect with terrifying simultaneity from all directions.

The marketers have us bracketed and they are firing for effect. Help!

My father was a true Southern California, born in Pasadena in 1921. Like everyone else he was car-crazy. Later in life after living in Europe he became crazy for tiny little European sports cars.

He made this list for a piece he wrote in the Los Angeles Times late in life in which he talked about the cars he'd owned. He was astonished at how many there were, and especially at how many enjoyable sports cars he had as a graduate student. I personally got to drive the '67 MG (he says it's a '68 which I think is a mistake), which was a delight; he didn't get rid of it until the 1980s sometime. The 1990 Volvo my mother still has. I inherited both T-Birds in series.

The Fiat station wagon famously died by dumping its engine on Irvine Avenue with a uniquely Italian flair. I wish he'd kept any of the cars before that. Wow, what a list! The Renaults were, of course, purchased in France and all the Italian cars when he was living in Italy.

1. '30 Ford Model A phaeton
   
   
2. '30 Ford Model A 2-door touring car
   
   
3. '36 Ford V-8 coupé
   
   
4. '30 Olds coupé
   
   
5. '47 Crosley
   
   
6. '38 Lincoln touring convertible
   
   
7. '40 Chevrolet coupé
   
   
8. '47 MG-TC
   
   
9. '51 Sunbeam Talbot
   
   
10. '48 Morris Minor convertible
    
    
11. '51 Morris Minor sedan
    
    
12. '52 MG-TD
    
    
13. '55 Austin Healey
    
    
14. '56 MG Magnette
    
    
15. '60 Chevrolet Corvair
    
    
16. '58 Chevrolet station wagon
    
    
17. '59 Alfa Romeo Giuletta Sprint coupé
    
    
18. '62 Fiat 600
    
    
19. '60 Fiat 1800 station wagon
    
    
20. '70 Opel Kadett statio wagon
    
    
21. '73 Volvo 144
    
    
22. '67 MGB-GT
    
    
23. '77 Renault 6TL
    
    
24. '70 Jaguar XJ
    
    
25. '84 Ford Thunderbird
    
    
26. '87 Renault II
    
    
27. '90 Volvo 740 sedan
    
    
28. '91 Renault 19 Chamade
    
    
29. '93 Ford Thunderbird LX

If you're interested in the document we found in the files, a scan is behind the cut ( like so )

Idling at Kéan with Mike (used to have a big black beard Mike) today, I saw a stream of Newport Beach stereotypes including:

• 85-year-old man with perfectly trimmed white beard parking a brand new $200,000 200mph Porsche Turbo sports car, which I then observed to have an automatic transmission
  
  
• A young woman of classic magazine cover head-turning beauty accompanied by two rich and tough-looking beefy older guys. The three of them were having a business meeting, no doubt about her career. They toasted one another with Bubble-Up. The two guys looked serious the way Mafia guys look serious. She looked depressed, which in someone with her looks comes out as a pouty, puppyish yearning look. She smiled once, revealing 47 very bright white teeth.
  
  
• This woman's Ghost of Newport Past showed up, too: a 14-year-old future model, all dressed up in fluffy sweater and tight jeans and slightly-too-grownup heels. Same perfect model face. Her mother was identical and 35, with a very hard and focused look to her.
  
  
• An assortment of very large expensive cars with grilles on the front that looked like BIG MONSTER FANG TEETH MOUTHS. Each of these cars was larger than the others. Several very large diesel trucks driven by small, finely-built men in pressed jeans are included in this category.
  
  
• One 80something gentleman all covered in liver spots and combover who was trying to guide in his friend Mike to the place. He kept getting the names of things wrong, and telling Mike that he wanted to meet him at Plums but they had an hour wait "even after I told them who you ARE". There were at least five of these calls. Two other people showed up to sit with Liver Spots but Mike never showed. His dog, an ancient cocker spaniel named Annie, was doing about as well as he was and kept walking into things like brick walls and trees and then harrumphing.
  
  
• An outrrrrrageously Italian employee of Kéan. This guy was maybe 30 and looked a lot like Antonio Banderas. He was wearing the kind of lacy, frilly shirt that only guys from the Mediterranean can wear. He was slightly sweaty and had a huge 500,000 watt grin and whooshy airy hair that he held back with a headband. I don't know how he carried it off, but he was every housewife's dream European waiter/lover. Jean-Luc!