Good luck man. Gotta make dat dough.

5k? in what planet are we talking?

you gotta find yourself a mexican mechanic who knows his junkyards

i put a 60k engine into a 200k truck for a little over $2k

i had just upgraded tires and front end and wasn’t gonna throw out the old beast

same guy was offering me a bmw for $2.5K. had 200k miles in odometer but engine was about 100K. took it for a test drive—sweet sweet sweet i4 (i drive a v8).

btw you should read jalopnik. fun shit:

http://jalopnik.com

eta: this is my favorite column there: https://jalopnik.com/c/what-car-should-you-buy

5k(after labor)....still not wanting to do that. My girlfriend and I don't work far from each other and it's really not out of the way either. So we're carpooling at the moment. THat's an incredibly useful and hilarious article.

oh no no, my vortec engine was $1400, the rest was labor.

$5k is too fucking much. i mean for $5k i could have gotten a crate engine with a 3-year / 100k mile warranty (check out jasper engines) installed by a certified jasper mechanic that honors the warranty. but i went cheap w/ the used engine and 1-month warranty lol. i just needed the truck for a year into the future so that’s what i did. [eta; check this: https://www.jasperengines.com/crate-engines ]

you gotta dig a little deeper into the network, im not shittin ya. forget dealerships and that whole assortment of punks (nothing punk about them). save your money and go with the independents (also german cars will cost you more).

go where the inmigrantes get their cars fixed— it’s a whole universe out there. some real wizards. i found the frugal car yoda around my parts.

BUT yeah to carpooling and walking and bicycle. it’s better to drive less, no doubt. cars will kill us all in the end. look at poor louisiana choking in toxic fumes and drowning in poison.

since i moved my truck went from being a daily commuter to a weekend ride. slowly restoring it as an off-road/recreational thing. but i gotta fix up las bicicletas next because MOAR FUN TO PEDAL.

—

ETA: german cars are $$$ and a pain to fix :(
(but what fun to drive ha ha)

Yeah. That car was definitely fun. PowerfulAWD....man I was really able to get around cars here. And seeing that E30 on that article almost made me start looking for one.

So about that job...
My employer made a counter-offer in the eleventh hour. It’s less money than the job I was offered, but I wouldn’t have to change everything about my life. I made a snap decision and that’s that for now. I’m shaky AF because I just came from a meeting with my would-be boss where I said thanks for the consideration. Luckily we had a respectable chat and that was that.

I’m good at my job. Really don’t want to change careers for the first thing that offers more money and might suck. They also had a shitty media setup so a publicist would be operating with a severe handicap, and at great personal expense.

Well shit man. As long as your happy. Glad you’re makin’ more dough.

I don't get a "happy" vibe from Sev's post, but I'm glad the storm has passed anyway. (And maybe I'm mis-reading.)

I’m definitely glad that I will be remaining in my profession, and not straying into something vastly different for not a large enough payoff to warrant the risk, but you’re right... “happy” is not what I’m feeling. Honestly, it was an EXTREMELY stressful ordeal. I was prepared to leave the job that has become a part of who I am, and then I decided not to at the exact last moment, and had to speak to the folks who would have hired me and politely decline. I did not sleep a wink the night before last, and last night I was up late working.

So yeah. Not exactly happy, but I am relieved and I never actually wanted to leave my job in the first place.

I've been listening to a load of MDC at the moment and decided to take a look on their wiki page. I was STUNNED to find out about this whole argument regarding Big Brains.

For those who don't know it...


Always a bummer when a band you love turn out to be total cunts

i fuckin love these photos

http://www.thisisinsider.com/inside-...t-homes-2016-6

almost there... not quite

The negative space speaks louder than the spaces filled with stuff.


I either really like or already do most of that, except: I like a full fridge and cabinets. I'm not even much of a "foodie," I just like having a bunch around.

yeah a fridge full of white rice doesn’t appeal to me

my fridge is stacked with blocks of butter instead lol

but it’s pretty streamlined vs the old days

no more science experiments

Rastafari are very close-minded when it comes to sexuality. They believe an old-fashioned division of gender, one where women are not to be included in smoke "sessions" and where a man is not to be tied down to one woman. They also have very rigid views on homosexuality. Rastafari take certain stuff in the Bible as literal as Evangelical Americans.

where is the line between minimalism and fetishizing being poor as fuck?

I don't think the extreme nature of minimalist living is the right solution to consumerism. it seems like a reactionary opposite, which in Japan works because everything is expensive as fuck and there just is not much room for homes and personal belongings.

that fridge full of frozen rice is crazy.

it’s funny that you see poverty and deprivation and i see a huge RELIEF. it’s like “aaaaaaah, i can breathe...”.

i’m *always* trying to get rid of my stuff, and there are so many infinite layers of stuff it’s mind-boggling. you can’t just throw everything arbitrarily because you’ll be at the store next day trying to get new stuff to function again. because it’s not really about too many things per se, it’s about too many functions operating in your life, and how each of them interconnect in a tangled tangled web. it’s taking me years to dismount/decommission them, and really to optimize them, i’m not anywhere near finished.

i really find a huge mental relief in simplicity. it’s not a fetish, i think anyway, it’s more about having more peace and silence and pleasure. not having to care after so many unnecessary things. how can i put it: it’s good for my serotonin.

I was not speaking about YOUR desires to live minimally. more power to you my man. I was referring to the spate of high end magazines and blogs espousing minimalism as another "pat myself on the back for being such a GOOD HUMAN!" kind of thing.

If I were to divide everything I own (besides the car) into groups, 90% of it would be books, records, art/art supplies. These are things I value.

as far as most people I know? Most of their shit truly is unnecessary, redundant, or just bought/owned to try and impress people. I support people getting rid of all that type of shit.

oh right every trend or movement has its self-righteous people in autoglorify mode. just the other say i was reading about people who eat organic food being more judgmental ha ha ha ha.

but even with those shortcomings i’d rather have a world with a little more of that and a little less QVC.

as for books, man, i have marched across the world with books in tow (m-bags and library rate ftw) but i am now ready to say goodbye to their physical weight. as much as i once loved them, now they’re trophies of something i did more than serve a function. i desperately need to pare down so i can fly free.

i can’t bring myself to toss them though. i need to find them new good owners, or something.

I only keep books that are personally valuable, rare, or deeply loved. Still, it is a lot to take in from 44 years of reading.

what I hate are clothes. I hate buying them, caring for them, choosing "outfits." etc. Last year I did a full cull, and got rid of half of my clothing items.

"organic" doesn't mean shit BTW. It is a self-stamped label. there is no oversight as to what constitutes an organic product or not. it is just as much make-believe as the bullshit nutrition supplements that everyone takes and pisses away down the toilet.

oh man i hate clothes so much i’ve reduced them basically to a limited number of uniforms.

but as for beloved books, i’m ditching those too. that’s why i can’t simply “throw them out”—it’s a matter of handing them down to the correct persons. swedish death cleaning! lolololol.

it’s a form of small suicide i suppose. not a sad one—more of a freeing one. suicide of the ego anyway. trying...

man im crazy ha ha ha. but i gotta let my freak flag fly.

My editor is leaving. Took me out to lunch today and I thought she was going to tell me I was fired or some shit, but it turns out she’s leaving. After 20-plus years.

Now I guess it’s time to learn if I really love what I do, or if I just loved having a compassionate, intelligent, tough-as-fuck female boss who had my back and thought I was great.

Weird feeling.

she the one who nearly cried when you were thinking of quitting?

lissen: if the opportunity opens up again, don’t fear PR. it’s what most journos do when they tire of poverty.

what? no...

there are standards and certifications

they’re all different from each other, and levels of enforcement may vary, but yeah, it does mean something

https://lifehacker.com/5941881/what-...hould-i-buy-it

She did cry. She didn’t *sob,* but yeah... she teared up. And I damn near teared up when she told me she was quitting.

And she’s leaving for a PR gig.

Goddammit.

Lolololololololol

it would be hilarious if she’s taking the job they had offered you. i mean, likely it’s not, but it would be hilarious, because maybe she was tearing up about you taking the job from her not you leaving. or maybe it was something else, like she saying “dammit i wasted my life in this profession and now this kid is gonna walk to his dream.” bha ha ha.

but listen: this is a good lesson for you. sure sure “we told you so,” but being told something is not the same as realizing it on your own. your employer is not your friend. boot to the head! now you know-know.

sorry if this is frustrating but eh. you snooze you loose, as children say. now let’s laugh at this, as we should.

It’s not the same job. She and I actually are friends. She told me everything. Her job pays WAY more than the one I almost took, which paid a lot. Hah.

I still think I made the right choice. I’m in a field I love. I am good at my job and I’m good at it because I love it. I’m in good shape to move on to other writing work if my publication goes to hell, because... well, I have a formal accolade or two at this point. So I’m glad I didn’t switch to PR. Not yet. Later? Almost definitely.

God bless it, this has been a complicated fucking year though.

yeah, sounds like it.

me too i guess but i'd rather not discuss. ha!

and you can be friends with your colleague, just not with a business entity is what i meant.

anyway you have plenty of time to switch yeah.

i'm still waiting for the lols though! where are they. give us a good guffaw. cmon...

I hate when they bleep lyrics in songs. I will not listen to songs with bleeps in them (if I can help it).

why do you drink that garbage when you have beefeater

wtf is wrong wif you lol

I've come to the realisation that I don't actually like Scotch (or any variation of it). This after years of convincing myself that it was my drink of choice. All those years fooling myself when I could've been downing gin and tonics all along. And on special occasions, a gin martini is heaven itself.

fuck yeah. the gin martini is the only martini that doesn’t need qualifiers. hence: martini. it’s always the shitty vodka martini that needs explaining. who the fuck was it that ruined the martini with vodka? was it millennials? was it gen-xers? man.

summer my fave drink is the gin rickey: beefeater, lime, and club soda. super refreshing and no sugar and so chuggable. dont like flowerwater gins much. viva el juniper. rickey highley repeatable with rum and vodka too and tequila not sure if it’s called the same but great taste.

oh hell yeah don q rum rickeys. if that plant survived hurricane. have not seen don q in shelves this spring.

james bond did the Vodka martini

and what a twat he was :D

he had it watered down, too

basically he was just pretending to drink

If you're ever in London I'll take you to the bar at the Duke Hotel, where Fleming's Vodka Martini was invented. but where they also invented the Vesper Martini: a thing of liquid beauty.

Here's how they do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2TLPDPuW4

You're paying though.

Possibly, but no way could that be said of Fleming himself.

Here’s something.

I kinda wanna bang the waitress from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

finger fantasy.....
tabitha takes over
finger fantasy.....

charlie already did IRL. i mean they’re married lol

well. he was a writer! he didn’t have to stay alert and shoot people and save the world and shit