As far as I'll go

woot.com humor that will fly by too quickly due to a woot-off

Oh, You’d Be All About This If They Were Two Chicks

iPods. Sansas. They’re okay. They have their place. But the Coby 2GB Media Player is a different sort of player. Can’t it have a place in the world too? Can’t it find… someone special?

“Hey, Trisha! There’s a concert in my pants and you’re invited!”

ugh

“No? Okay, well, Polly? Concert in my pants? You’re invited?

Grow up, Stewart

“What? I’m just trying to- Janet! Janet! Have you heard about the concert in my pants?”

“Whoa, whoa, Stewart! What’s going on!”

“Aw, Bobby, I’m trying to tell people all about the Coby 2GB Media Player. Look at this, it’s so tiny, but the speakers are built right in for better sound!”

“Hey, they swivel out! That is cool!”

“Yeah, and you can play music and movies and there’s a built-in FM radio and everything! I’ve got about eight hours of video on there right now, which is perfect, because now I’ve got-”

”-a concert in your pants. Got it, Stewart. But you know, women don’t always see things the same way us guys do. You can’t talk to them in crude and frank manner. Unless you’ve got muscles and a cool car. Which, let’s face it, you don’t.”

“What? That’s crazy! Then women are stupid! And I hate them!”

“I’m very glad you think so, Stewart. Because I’m really interested in that concert.”

“Really? You want to know more about the concert saved on my Coby 2GB Media Player?”

“No, Stewart. I’m talking about the one in your pants.”

“Bobby, I… I never noticed until right now how beautiful your eyes were…”

“Come on, Stewart. Let’s drive up to Vermont and destroy the institution of marriage… together.”

Why I'm keeping my PhillyCarShare membership

Some aspects have not been disputed from all I spoke with:

• PCS has been agressivley mis-managed - including its finances, customer service, gas-card scandal, & last-minute stealthy membership change
• PCS has strayed from its mission (perhaps unwittingly)
• The loss of PCS leaves Philadelphia with a single carshare provider
• Folks who rent once/month or less will pay more under the new pricing

So, those things leave me the following questions:

1. Might there be opportunities to get PCS restructured for transparency & competency?
2. Can PCS sustain a business model capable of funding its operations through times of lean grant & foundation funding?
3. How bad could it be in a zipcar-only city?
4. Does careshare represent a good value for me?

(my) Answers, in order

1. Yes - I believe there will be extremely vocal minorities among both the group that stays and the crowd that leaves (but might come back under the right circumstances).  The thing the public has in its corner is PCS’s focus on one market - if they don’t serve it well enough they’ll be increasingly marginalized.  A couple of brave board members can suitably shake things up with well-timed exposure.  Finally, I believe Philadelphia hungers for a successful PCS, even given it’s righteous anger over the current debacle.
2. Absolutely.  With unemployment so high, the future of american automakers uncertain, credit scarce, and all of the more ordinary reasons car ownership is only questionably worthwhile - there is certainly money to be made.  Anything including a renegotiation or re-bidding of their current insurance contracts, on-vehicle advertising, aggressive marketing for fleet-replacement, etc - could tighten up the business model.  I think profits from organizational fleet replacement contracts could subsidize accessible monthly rates for low-income residents in a limited fashion; fundraising development might restore full accessibility or grant programs in the futre.
3. Fuckin’ lousy.  Their “philly wheels” plan has a built-in expiration date of PCS’s bankruptcy or acquisition.  Further, Philadelphia is merely one of many markets that will be served in a profitable rather than blanket manner.  I feel Zipcar has a place here - visitors should have a carshare option while in town, and frequent travelers shouldn’t have to buy two memberships.  But as a working-class town with strong non-profit & DIY communities, we owe it to ourselves to maintain a homegrown non-profit solution.  If PCS is allowed to fail, it’ll be extremely difficult for something else to rise anew if it has to face an established national competitor.
4. Sometimes.  I don’t own a car anymore and don’t plan that changing soon.  Bicycle, septa, carpooling with driving friends, and some walking are my M.O.  I also like a taxi regularly enough, it’s perfectly spontaneous for one-way trips about town.  AND, for the times I need a car rental it’s sometimes better to rent from a chain.  All that said, the ladie & I have been using cars a little more often than once/month between the two of us.  It’s a useful option when I need to make or combine short spontaneous trips.  Further, PCS has a little-advertised option to pay $125 for a year of membership instead of $15/month.  That comes out to a little over $10/month, a significant difference.  It makes that one trip/month cost about $20, which is still cheaper that what it’d usually cost for the round-trip taxi.

I understand folks who don’t want to take the gamble on a year membership and/or are rightly angry at PCS for dropping the ball.  I hope PCS gets strong enough to regain your business, and keep mine.

how my soup happened, 2009 edition

1. look through recipe books since I never use them in lieu of internet
2. put them back on the shelf briefly after irritation since they’re better suited for planners, go-getters, and do-gooders.
3. go back to tried & true method of throwing a bunch of ingredients in the search bar & seeing which recipes get spat back out
4. open 8 or 9 tabs, read through each recipe, find slight dissatisfaction with each one but useful tidbits on relative quantities
5. time to bring the laptop into the kitchen to start cooking
6. fuck, even trying 3 different tactics to reduce tearing from onion gas, my eyes still hurt.
   • As of this writing, with soup simmering, eyes still hurt.  I’m glad I chopped up that spiteful onion.
7. in a groove, mirepoix is about to happen.  Oh, I was planning on adding spinach or a leafy vegetable & these celery stalks come with leaves that I normally chop off.  Not this time, Gadget.  In the back of my head.. “I hope this doesn’t taste like ass”
8. laptop forgotten as just a fancy radio.  I got it from here, Bruno
9. and there goes my hopes for mirepoix when the carrots are moldy in the bag.  That crisper failed at its duties, it’s getting demoted to the rank of drawer, with a half-written addendum of “whom could’ve been simply a shelf”. In my last house, I stuffed the drawers in the basement and simply used the space as a shelf for the same reason.  DON’T TEMPT me drawer.  Shape the fuck up.
10. looking at other vegetables, I guess scallions & some more celery are gonna pull double duty tonight.  A few mushrooms, jalepeno with seeds, a few cloves of garlic, & the rest of a wrinkled ginger round out the raiding of the drawer.

Steve’s soup of what he’s got left and hopes it tastes good:

• 3 onions
• 2 full stalks of celery
• 1 bunch of scallions
• 0 lbs of carrots because they’re fuckin’ moldy
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 jalepeno
• ½ pack of mushrooms, or a whole pack if you have it
• about 1 man’s pointer finger to the first knuckle worth of ginger (skinned)
• olive oil
• soy sauce
• 1 lb tofu
• 1 qt of vegetable stock
• some wheat noodles (I used ½ lb of buckwheat thin noodles)
• salt & pepper

1. Chop yo’ shit.  dice onions & celery, chop scallions, slice mushrooms, mince garlic, finely dice jalepenos without cleaning out seeds, carefully mince ginger.
2. Saute yo’ shit.  Olive oil, in bottom of the stock pot.
3. Once the onions start to turn clear, add enough soy sauce to coat everything without it pooling much at the bottom.  Let it continue to cook uncovered, mixing occasionally.
4. Dice tofu into 1cm squares (more or less), & pan-fry in olive oil until the sides are partially browned.
5. Add vegetable stock & tofu
6. Add about 1 qt of water, using the vegetable stock carton if your stock was store-bought.
7. Add some more soy sauce (I used something near 1 cup?)
8. Salt, pepper.  yeah.
9. Add noodles.  Reduce to simmer.  Blog about it.
10. I just tasted it, it is edible.
11. 8-)