Kaila stands awatch, sedentary, above the gradient blue silhouette of a bike that stands unaffected below her in my living room. She is clad in a reflective, almost luminescent silver top that neglects to obscure what approaches a unanimous majority of her torso. It is suspended by two transparent spaghetti straps embellished with vaguely orange beads that dissapear behind her shoulders. The remnants of a white skirt that has encountered a liberal set of hands and a pair of scissors covers no more than what is absolutely necessary to keep her appearance this side of pornographic.

Kaila greets me today with the same gloriously innocent expression she gave me yesterday and the day before. She is the first to see me as I step through the front door to my apartment. I traverse the cold tiles of my living room and relish the transition to carpet in my bedroom. Today, I notice the BMW catalog that I left carelessly the night before on my desk. The 3 series coupe straddling the cover is like a Topaz Blue island lost on the black center of my corner desk.

And I know I want it, that bmw - the one that omniscient car junkie/liberal arts major after omniscient car junkie/liberal arts major has put down in tirades that usually conclude that everyone and their half sisters from South Central Los Angles have BMWs these days. Now there's an argument for the Mercedes camp. Let's all buy a Benz so that we can differentiate ourselves from the destitute common folk from across the tracks that can still afford BMWs.

Don't think that I'm dropping the poser label on anyone who has bought a vehicle meant to be driven hard. Afterall, there are plenty of BMW drivers out there who know that LSD stands for limited slip differential and not lysergic acid diethylamide. I've even met a few, but not many. BMWs and Mercedes have always been status symbols in the general psyche - no one's ever denied it. But is every guy who buys one a poser hell bent on showing the world his "drive" and how good he looks in a convertible?

Say you saw a Jonathan, perhaps of the Tse variety, driving a 2002 Laguna Seca Blue M3 down the highway, hair combed and gelled, sunglasses obscuring his eyes.. Would the average passerby predict immediately that I was a self absorbed poser trying to elicit attention from every other decent looking female in sight? Would he even consider for a moment that I was perhaps just off work and on my way to a twisty section of mountain driving in Rockville, about to get the driving kick of my week?

Not all of us buy sports cars to meddle in the pool of attention-seeking driving neophytes who think that their cars are somehow extensions of their personalities. Some of us buy cars because we honestly cannot get enough hair pin turns and decreasing radius sweepers under out belts to stop our blood from boiling long enough for us to pull off of the track (it's usually the boiling coolant that does for me.) Affirmative, mam, one day I want to be able to afford a sporting machine because squirelly automobile antics on roads (with turns) make my day. Yes, I one day want to be able afford a high dollar sports car. No, I do not think that it will somehow increase the radii of my testicles, nor am I unhappy with the size of mine to begin with. So I sit here, laughing at the Bavarian Motor Work versus Mercedes-Benz debate. If I needed a status symbol, I'd wear hundred dollar bills on my collar and gold plated boxers that would only subtly show if my Versace pants dropped too far below my waist. (I don't happen to own anything Versace.)

The chase for money is undeniable. I'm in school because I'm afraid that if I leave, I'll be unable to sustain myself in the future. Chances are that you are too. I'll be the fifth perhaps today to admit that it goes beyond sustenance. I'm not afraid to admit that I want nice cars, a decent house, and hopefully a hot wife i'll get along with after the honeymoon's over not because I need to show anyone what I drive or where I live, but because I personally enjoy barnstorming around the mountains on the weekends and because I want to have a garage big enough to house my rig (and my bikes... "Bikes: keep it real.")

As for the supermodel wife, Kaila awaits in the living room. "Jonathan - Love, Kaila" signed on her money spot - must be a sure thing.

I've come to a long-awaited (at least personally) conclusion :

Performing a hockey-style stop on ice skates really involves nothing more than the techniques we all use everyday to "drift" (powerslide, or "induce excessive oversteer" if you prefer) around tight turns in our automobiles. "Drift? Powerslide,?" you may ask. If you're a car enthusiast (like we in the official Davis, CA carbon fiber domicile are), you'll recall that powersliding a (rear-wheel-drive) car around a corner involves entering a corner at a god forsaken speed, waiting until the midpoint (apex) of the corner, jerking the steering wheel to the direction of the exit of the corner while modulating the "loud" pedal (throttle) in order to induce a loss of traction and throw the rear end of the car sideways, countersteering in the opposite direction when the nose of the car is pointed in the direction you desire while simultaneously easing off the throttle to regain traction, and finally straightening out the wheels when the car is moving in a straight line so you can happily scoot along again.

How is this simliar to stopping on the ice like a hockey player? Well, a hockey style stop requires nothing more than a brief loss of traction between skates and ice so that a hockey player (or occasional ice rink visitor like myself) can turn his skates perpendicular to the direction of his momentum without altering the direction he travels in, followed by a regaining of traction (end analogy) so that the friction between the skates and the ice can stop the hockey player. This is simliar to drifting a car because both involve travelling in a different direction than the front of the car or skate is pointed toward. They involve sideways travel. Ice skates are interesting - their blades actually have two sharp edges - one on each side of the 2 or so millimeter blade. The bottom of the blade is actually dull so that it doesn't bite into the ice. This means that if a skater wants to lose adhesion to the ice for a brief moment (to do a hockey stop, for example), he can manipulate the lateral angle of his skates so that the dull part of the blade touches the ice and lets him slip his skates sideways compared to the direction of his motion, after which he can once again use the sharp part of the blades to regain traction and let the blades scrape against the ice and stop him. Looking cool as you spray ice all over your envious friends is purely a fringe benefit. =)

Happy birthday, Crystie Cakes. March 21 is Crystal's birthday. IM her at isreme and wish her a happy bday =)

A report on my adventures in Vacaville (yes, cow town) coming up tomorrow.

True story:

It's 9:35 pm, yesterday. A huge white and red sign with the good 'ol colonel greets me as I pull up to the local Davis, California Kentucky Fried Chicken drive through.

Girl working drive-through: "Hi, welcome to KFC. Take a look at the menu and let me know when you're ready to order."

Me: "Can I get two breasts, please?"

(Inexplicably long pause)

"Excuse me?"

"Two breasts, please."

"That'll be 3.89 at the window. Thank you."

I slip the clutch a little more than usual so that a nice 2000rpm tenor exhaust grunt'll trail me all the way to the window.

"3.89 please. You know,I thought you were kidding when you asked me for two breasts."

At this point, I'm wondering how common my order must be - two chicken breasts at a fried chicken joint. She hands me a box, and I open it to find two of the largest breasts I've ever seen from KFC.

She smiles. "Would you like some hot sauce with that?"

Since the readership of this little rant lottery is probably pretty low (for now) and localized to people I know pretty well, I'll keep it "spicy." We'll find out just what that means soon enough.

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