Yugo Stops Production This Week

The Yugo was born to be joke fodder:

Man to car dealer: "I'd like a gas cap for my Yugo." Dealer: "Sounds like a fair trade." And my personal favorite- Why does a Yugo have a defroster on the rear window?
To keep your hands warm while you push it.

"Of course, Yugo was never a BMW or a Cadillac, but I think most Americans did not know how to appreciate it," said Momcilo Spajic, a proud Serbian owner of a Yugo â one of the nearly 800,000 produced by the Zasava, or Flag, factory since 1980.
"This is driving in its most natural form. You feel every bump, squeak and jolt, and one can enjoy the sweet smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes," he said. Further he says,"No car can replace it." World News Feed At last, he said something we can both agree on.

There are two things I remember about the Yugo: the trim, door handles and window cranks would practically fall off in your hands if you so much as touched them and toward the end of their run in the US real car dealers would give one away with the purchase of a higher end car to get them off their lots.

Actually, there are three things I remember: there was a notorious case of a girl being blown off a bridge in one and falling to her death.

The Yugo started production in 1980 and will be replaced by a Fiat who has acquired the company.

I Rant

The Mars Exploration Rover -MER cost 870 million dollars. I could not be made to believe the space program has cost anything less than a trillion dollars since it started. I know each shuttle mission costs over 500 million dollars. Yet, in our country bridges fall into rivers with people on them. Regions of our southeast ran completely out of water in 2007. Infrastructure in our cities are so old and decayed up to 18% of water treated and piped for delivery is lost in the ground due to leaks. Electrical grids for entire regions teeter on collapse when challenged.

This is not rational nor reasonable and it's not a case of my failing to see the big picture. Man will never live on Mars and if they do it will be as one big gigantic, expensive science project not a self sustaining colony. If we just acted as though we had a modicum of common sense and intelligence and used the talent and money that has been flushed down the toilet for the past forty + years in the space program we'd be fine right here for thousands of years. If we run out of room and resources some day? So what, we had our chance and the future would decide whether we made the most of it or blew our chance. Right now we are blowing it badly.

We have failed ourselves and our children, for what? Bragging rights, cool freeze dried food for camping and Velcro.

Try eating or drinking any of them and tell me the space program was worth it.

Wednesdays Digressions

• The jogger who was bitten by the rabid fox is still headline news. My moms Avon lady when I was a boy had a son who died of rabies. I assume she knew what she was talking about anyway- she told me about it when I brought some mangie stray dog up to the house while she was visiting with mom. She went into gory detail about how the doc was there at their house and they locked him in his room in the final stages and could only listened to him convulse until he went into a coma and died. Could she have been lying about something like that? Good grief, now that I think about it I don't know.


• Headline: "Suge Knight" faces drug and battery charges." What are the odds?


• My new phones charge doesn't seem to last any time at all. My old phone would run down quickly if I used it a lot of course but, also oddly if I didn't use it at all. If I used it frequently but, briefly it could literally last a week or more.


• Still weird!? My son uses the same type phone as I.


• Still don't know what to think about people who wept when Obama won or the folks who seem equally determined to not get over McCain losing.

OJ Verdict In Latest Caper

Simpson could face life in prison for armed robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy among other charges. The verdict came 13 years to the day (Oct. 3) after he was acquitted for murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Makes me think the prosecutors there in Vegas were making some kind of a big statement like, We want America to know he didn't get away with those murders after all or maybe Let's see if we can provide some kind of grounds for a new trial.

Well, anyway as for the life sentence I'm sure a lot of people feel they'll believe it when they see it.

I sat on this illustration and thoughts for a while hoping for more news to input. I stumbled across the draft and then looked the story back up- nothing really- found an article with pics of his supposed cell but, no real news.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Mondays Missives

• I just read the football huddle was used first by players from a deaf school so their hand signs wouldn't be read.



• The story I read even included the QB's name. I still don't buy it- way too convenient and would have evolved the same without such a cool story. Something huddle-ish would have to happen from the start. The composition and formalities would evolve very rapidly.



• When I was a boy in Decatur TX A friends dad was known for supposedly being orphaned and so without a place to go and not wanting to go to the family members assigned to take him he ran away and went to a home for deaf children and stayed until he was 18. I don't know if it's true or not but, that friend said he'd seen his dad sign with strangers.



• That kids brother went to prison for murder as a teen. He got caught burglarizing a barn and shot the elderly man who confronted him. He was missing an index finger because of sticking his finger in a bicycle chain when he was a little kid. I remember he used to gross us out by sticking his stub up one of his nostrils and making it look like his whole finger was buried up there.



• I listened to the 80's band The Thompson Twins yesterday. Man, we got A LOT of things wrong in the 80's but, not the music.


• It seems like a lot of the women who kill their husbands for insurance or inheritance money they spotlight on those shows were addicted to some type of horse showing/breeding/racing activity.

Absolutely Knew This Would Happen

News browser headline from this evening: American Idol hopeful mocked by Simon Cowell commits suicide. -Daily Telegraph

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¡Ojalá se quede en una simple broma!(Si la propuesta llega a hacerse en un país lleno de complejos como uno que yo me sé, ¡se aprueba seguro!)