Yeah, so I’m hankerin’ to play some Vampire or something before I trot off to bed, so I’ll make this snappy. I’ve had random little glimpses of complete thoughts floating through my head today, none of which warrant more than a passing mention. To wit:

After seeing some more photos of just how apparently poorly assembled the new Roush Mustang is, and hearing that the new Cobra is no longer a product of SVT but of Shelby, a product whose price tag will be well above $50,000…well, the GTO is starting to look real sweet. But the entire GTO as we know it will be officially gone in 2007—replaced with a Zeta-platformed, aggressive screamer that may even be powered by GM’s LS7 motor. Oh, drool. Oh, excitement.

We finished the entire Chobits series (except for the “Chibits” reunion special), but the new anime we rented—Azumanga Daioh—was horrid. Maybe it was designed for an audience of five-year-olds, or for people who can’t stand it if their anime isn’t filled with excruciatingly long pauses in which no dialog is spoken and nothing happens. Either way, we’re sending it back with a rating of 2/5. The Chobits extras disc is on its way, which will undoubtedly ease the pain.

There’s more. Just open it up.

Random strangers will come up to me and talk about my Trans Am when it’s freshly washed. They don’t even acknowledge that I’m there otherwise. That’s very interesting.

Today I took a different route home. Due to the lack of major roads in town, there are basically three choices of routes I can take either to or from the office. Two of them are really out of the way, but sometimes can be better than the direct route. That was the case today. After hearing another employee state that her husband had phoned her to report that the county sheriff had staked out my direct route home and was generally fucking up an already bad traffic situation by putting cop cars in the middle of the road to distract everyone, I went home a different way. It might have taken me 5 minutes longer than usual, but rather than sitting still and watching my coolant temp gauge skyrocket for 80% of the trip, I was at least moving the entire time. Now that’s the way to do it.

Speaking of the coolant temperature gauge, I learned something interesting about the 1998 and 1999 Trans Ams that illustrates the ill effect a bunch of stupid users can have on the development of a product. Back in the late nineties, apparently some F-body owners—who, I don’t know, else I would bust them in the chops—bitched to GM that their temperature gauge was fluctuating all the time. Going up and down. It distracted them terribly and gave them nervous diarrhea, I guess. They complained that something just had to be done.

So, reacting to these scatterbrains, for model year 1999 GM adjusted the F-body’s coolant temp gauge so that once the car warmed up and reached a certain temperature, the gauge would stick permanently at 190 degress no matter what the temperature of the coolant really was! So they decided that it was more important to soothe the schizophrenics than to provide accurate readings to us real drivers. GM might as well have removed the gauge altogether. I’m glad my ‘98 still has the real working temperature gauge. Yes, it bobbles around like crazy, especially in heavy traffic. That’s good, you idiots. It means it’s working. It means your engine’s running. This is the kind of philosophy that leads to instrument clusters consisting entirely of a big handwritten message that says: IT’S ALL GOOD DOWN HERE. JUST WATCH THE ROAD.

I’ve been trying to get back into the diet regimen, so as to shed a few more pounds (some of which came back over the last few months). We picked up one of those healthy cookbooks designed to provide simple yet healthy recipes at the same time, and my wife has been trying a few new things from its pages. Tonight she made a really great grilled chicken and red pepper taco salad concoction that was fabulous! If this is healthy eating, I’ll take it.

You know that story I told yesterday about the crazy Bonneville-driving boob who pulled out right in front of me and nearly caused an accident? Today I learned that the exact same thing happened at the exact same intersection, except this time it was our V.P. of Business Development who nearly creamed some stupid lady. Oh, and this time the lady in question was driving one of those $167,000 Bentley Continentals and was looking at his oncoming Volvo the entire time she was pulling into its path. The V.P. thinks she assumed the price tag of her vehicle overrode the laws of physics, and it was just impossible for anyone to actually not get magically get out of her way if she stuffed her fat butt in traffic. Gawd. To quote Carl from GTA San Andreas, “You MO-ron!”

Okay, time to go play some Vampire.