Telling it like it is

Un-fucking-believable. This guy woke up to find a burglar in his house, and apparently threw him out of a fourth floor window. The burglar died of his injuries and the homeowner has been arrested and charged !!!!!! Article This is just wrong on so many levels. So now the police back in England are quite happy to arrest people in their own home for defending themselves and their property. That's almost more corrupt than the Bush regime over here.

Just got back from the tyre place, again. This time with Yokohama YK520 tyres. Balanced perfectly, first time. No fuss, no muss. I said it yesterday and I'll say it again today : BFGoodrich tyres are absolute shit. I've had a couple of potential buyers on the GS too. The first guy came around on thursday evening, the second one came around today. It looks favourable for selling it if the offer is right from one of them, which leads the way to the Tiger.... Mmmmmm. Tiiiiigggerrrrrrrrr.

What's this?

I just got back from my fifth visit to the tyre place. Out of the 8 BF Goodrich tyres we've tried on my car, 6 of them have been bad. I have never had this sort of problem with tyres before. I can only come to the conclusion that like everything else made in America, they're absolute shit. I'm going Japanese. I've sworn by Yokohama for the last 14 years - this was the first time I tried something different. The car is going back tomorrow and they're taking those American-made pieces of shit off the Honda, and replacing them with Yokohama YK520s instead. The guys at Discount Tire have been incredibly patient with me - hats off to them. They did a wicked deal on the Yokohama's too for all the trouble. They should be $90 more expensive per tyre than the BFGs and they're doing them for $30 more a piece. I don't have any problem with the way they've treated me.

Hummmmmmmmmmmm...... This popped up in Chilled Out Euphoria CD2 (Solar Stone) when I had my music on random play this afternoon. I've not heard it for years. 11 years in fact. From 1996 then, Spacemen by The Beloved.... Remember when the water froze and the sky was still, And you looked out of your window on the world, And then you went against your will? If you could see that far, See back from where you are, Then you will always be, Somewhere inside of me, You're not alone... And then you held me in your arms, And you told me not to cry or be afraid, I felt protected by your calm. If you could see that far, See back from where you are, Then you will always be, Somewhere inside of me, You're not alone... From the silence of my heart, There's a picture in my head, An image frozen of you travelling through time, From long ago to far ahead. If you could see that far, See back from where you are, Then you will always be, Somewhere inside of me, You're not alone... If t...

Mmmmmmm. Solitude pre-season passes at $36 a day instead of $60. It's $3 a day more expensive than last year but that's no biggie. It's still $24 a day cheaper than doing it daily. It does seem odd buying ski passes in the summer though. Deja vu. I said the same thing in my post on August 15th last year.

Discount Tire (sic) re-did the three dodgy tyres for me this morning and the Element is now rock-solid on the motorway, at speed. They'll be calling me when the new rim is in to fix that and then I should be done.

Okay. The "design team" at Subaru have clearly gone batshit crazy. After years of super-hot Imprezas, then the bug-eyed problem in 2002 that they fixed in 2004, this is the 2008 Impreza. Or more obviously, the 12-year-old Daewoo Lanos. What. The. Hell? 2008 Impreza: 1995 Daewoo Lanos:

Since getting the new tyres and wheels for the Element, the balancing's never been quite right. They re-balanced the wheels for me a couple of weeks ago, but that didn't cure it so I went in again yesterday and got them to do a roadforce balance this time. That showed up 3 out of the 4 tyres as being bad - so out-of-balance from the factory that they were essentially unsafe. So tomorrow I have to go in for three new tyres. I went to clean the wheels this morning and have now discovered that with all the faffing about, they've dinged one of the wheels - looks like with a tyre gun. So now I have to demand a new wheel off them too. This is really testing my patience now.