poet laureate of fordfestiva.com?

[bobstad]

I'm "bobstad" there too, "afterlife" from Burgess Howell's old Yahoo! Festiva website group; and Howl he did once I'd recommended STILKO's tp oil filters.(is Burgess really a NASA guy?)

my '91 "the FestivaL car" has been in my hands since June of '99 when discovered atop my heavily modified '73 Windsor Carrera Sport 10-speed.(exact same model as purchased new here in B'ham while working a 90 day student temporary gig getting my B. A. at The Evergreen State College south of here in Olympia, WA, found in the Eureka, CA flea market for $20 after a French Ballis I got at Urban Ore in Berkeley for $2 frame only was stolen in Eureka I fixed up and stupidly locked to a barbed wire fence someone cut with some vice-grips probably...the Fairhaven Windsor suffered someone who'd borrowed it to work as a dishwasher at an Ojai, CA restaurant in a bowling alley, being run over by someone in a four wheel drive pick-up who didn't like him I salvaged a few parts off of which ended up on a Raleigh Colt 3-speed I got just as I got onto disability/SSI[due to ramification of spinal diseases earlier in life] early in '85 left on a ranch inadvertently near Owhi Lake east of Nespelum, WA on the Confederated Colville Tribes Nation, I'd retrieved after a Wovoca there was murdered not long after that fall of '89 I guess must've enjoyed the Raleigh a short while whose death I learned of via the Jan 6th, '91 WENATCHEE WORLD the same issue they'd published my letter they'd titled from a sentence of mine HOMELESS ARE THE TRUE LEADERS in protest of the upcoming war with Iraq)

I've discovered this place via a thread at Ford Festiva DOT com I've recently introduced in their "General" topic discussion forum, about mileage claims for the car I'd disputed as grossly inaccurate due to the apparent manufacture of the car for 13" rims Ford sold with 12s. I'm still a little hazy, but I multiply times 1.03 with 155R80-13 tires to get my gas mileage figures while someone there who'd referred to this website says 1.077 would be more accurate I think I will have to prepare myself to dispute if my hunch is correct: Though on list of things to do; around having a beer with Howell on the moon.

Hey, is the star and crescent of the Muslim faith to represent a celestial body about to collide with the earth? I distributed 10,000 copies of the Communist Party USA's public consumption paper the PEOPLES WEEKLY WORLD in Eureka, Arcata and McKinleyville, CA in 2003 & 2004, and joined the party in Berkeley in '94 where I was mentored by the late Jim Moore who passed away just into triple figures a few years ago now; and in a PWW issue just prior to the 9/11/01 attack on the World Trade Towers, Pentagon, etc. there'd been a letter to the editor from Muslim who'd said there was common cause between people of that faith and Communists due to the vast poverty of this quarter of the world's population: And the only worthy purpose ultimately I see for the past five millennia of mostly technological development of the human potential at the expense of just about every other attribute of our species would be to prevent some thing nasty from[me too!] outer space slamming into terra firma?(I'm a fan of Georges Ohsawa's take on the human potential, founder and theorist of the modern Macrobiotic movement; so befuddled in the liberal veneer of the reactionary political dominance of this country which is said to be pretty hip in Europe-which I'd had a chance to taste when hanging out with newlyweds the winter of '90-'91 when a friend snagged a wife from The Hague in Amsterdam named Tineke' who got me hip to cooking technique while pissing off hubby flirting with me gregariously finally, we've all not too well put behind us; I'd begun the study of yoga in '73 thanks to a love affair then of five months with another Tina, Blade out of Mount Vernon, WA near here where her Pop Walter still owns BLADE CHEVROLET so that the Festiva sports a "genuine Chevrolet parts" sticker on the hatchback window and the chrome bow-tie from the '75 van where the Ford's blue plastic grille insert used to be; which I'd been trying to fix up to live out of whose motor unexpectedly thru a rod just after a late night stop at a Eureka Mom & Pop to stretch my legs coming up from the east bay to check a post office box in Wenatchee, so that I got stranded there April of '96 and moved here to Bellingham last February after a hostile eviction drama via new owners of my apartment I'd been in since just after I'd gotten the Festiva I'd saved the money to buy thanks to breaking up with a woman my age whose beloved single sibling a sister a year older with two teen daughters died in an Orange county car wreck...my second big five month affair with Cynde' Gehman["as in German"] who I'd run into at her day gig as a legal secretary in the three county area's sole low-income good guys legal aide office[and got to know facing another eviction we'd resolved amicably enough except I got stiffed for my deposit when I moved out a few months later by the biggest slum lords in town] who is a local performance artist and self-described "theatrical person" she says I don't understand about her?)

I'm currently romantically involved for the duration with F__d(aka S___h) S______n-Z____r; self-described "anarcho-syndicalist, professional community and labor organizer, aspiring accordionist and trained puppeteer I met volunteering in the Eureka-Arcata Tenant's Union early in 2004 now working for the SEIU in Frisco.("?)

Here is a good thread I've recently made a post at: <http://theicarusproject.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11100&postdays=0&postorder=asc&sta rt=15>

Nice to meet you all!

[Funny]

I really don't want to know man, but did the 60's really kill your brain that much? How can you believe that what you just rambled off is a cognitive thought process? You strung a bunch of random words together in an attempt to convince those of us with a weak understanding of the world that you are an expert on this subject. Shame on you.

[bobstad]

My thought is some people have to work at depths they themselves have never experienced; and are so unfamiliar they miss what could be more interesting to someone with an open more active mind.

For the site here; I do wonder at the 1.077 factor recommended I multiply by to get an accurate odometer/speedometer reading? I'm already about 2 mph shy of reality at an indicated 70 mph, so definitely with the just exchanged TOYO SPECTRUM 155R80-13 tires the data given here is not accurate.

What is wild about that is that two parties at the fordfestivaDOTcom web site in a recent discussion which yielded a link to this web site, posting to my thread, both with GPS insisted their very different tires gave perfectly accurate figures on their speedometer/odometer; which since there are no alternate toothed speedometer gears or any such mods available seems impossible?(one person had 175R70-13 tires and the other the stock 155R80-12 size)

Anyway, to each their own, and perhaps I will find a more kindred soul than my previous commentor? If not I don't mind agreeing to disagree, but respect your right to speak your mind, deficient and corrupted by inanity as that may be?(lol...cars should all be driven by at least a dozen clowns at a time and never be any larger than a 500cc FIAT TOPOLINO!!!)

[Funny]

Originally Posted by bobstad

For the site here; I do wonder at the 1.077 factor recommended I multiply by to get an accurate odometer/speedometer reading? I'm already about 2 mph shy of reality at an indicated 70 mph, so definitely with the just exchanged TOYO SPECTRUM 155R80-13 tires the data given here is not accurate.

What is wild about that is that two parties at the fordfestivaDOTcom web site in a recent discussion which yielded a link to this web site, posting to my thread, both with GPS insisted their very different tires gave perfectly accurate figures on their speedometer/odometer; which since there are no alternate toothed speedometer gears or any such mods available seems impossible?(one person had 175R70-13 tires and the other the stock 155R80-12 size)

Anyway, to each their own, and perhaps I will find a more kindred soul than my previous commentor? If not I don't mind agreeing to disagree, but respect your right to speak your mind, deficient and corrupted by inanity as that may be?(lol...cars should all be driven by at least a dozen clowns at a time and never be any larger than a 500cc FIAT TOPOLINO!!!)

Impressions are the first thing I have a tendency to screw up, as a result, I have a tendency to screw up first impressions in gargantuan fashion. My apologies if I have offended you, I just disagree with much that you stated and had difficulty following the post. Again I am sorry.

On to the matter at hand: Have you verified this discrepancy with a satellite program such as: Google earth? If so, there is not much that you can adjust in the order of speedometer cable and gearing. If you have changed your tires, may I suggest this: Tire Size Calculation Tool. Granted this tool does not adjust for PSI changes, I would be lead to assume the PSI is the sidewall maximum recommended for that size tire. Good luck in your searching, and forgive me for being a presumptuous, pompous ass.

[bobstad]

Takes one to know one, eh?

I'm doing "eh?s" on everything now; after getting turned away at the border 10/4/08 just 30 miles north due to a DUI in California April 15th, 2001. Both tax day & Easter Sunday; lightly grazing on the right by jumping a curb at the bottom of a freeway off-ramp someone with "PHYSIX" vanity plates dawdling at the stop sign.*

Due to a brake malfunction from a poorly lubricated pin which locates the right front brake caliper-that is supposed to float on to function properly.(a recent brake job had been a selling point I'd bought from a jet helicopter mechanic in the Coast Guard in Eureka, CA I speculate his teen son may've worked on?)

My first moving violation since '70 and I guess some sort of a cosmic joke about my love of cynical biblical scholar John M. Allegro's work, and my disability/SSI lifestyle since early in '85.

I began to perceive an odd enough "synchronicity" in my life, so that I now spell that word personalized as "psynchronicity"; the winter of '83-'84 staying with some friends of one of my sister's, the Smith family. Their 250 acre farm is adjacent to my grandfather's homestead who'd made his life as a professional logger and owner of five logging companies at Winston Creek nearby. When I'd had a '66 VW square-back I more or less lived out of between '82 & '94 which turned over 01984 on the odometer 1/3/84 the year my 33rd birthday(shared with Louis Armstrong and also the first day of the French Revolution) was 8/4/84.

Now a pre-science event, predicting my subsequent mirroring of that classical fictional protagonist Winston Smith's victimization by and rebellion against an oppressive totalitarian state in the George Orwell novel NINETEEN EIGHTYFOUR.

Which I try to chronicle various aspects of I'd gotten started with by feelings of paper wasting guilt early in '92 throwing away lonely letters to friends I'd not mailed or often never finished after alienating a few more successful seeming, with degrees of candor not well phrased or proffered. So that now I have about 30,000 hand-printed pages in several boxes/yet also have kept alive at least a one-way correspondence with most all the usual suspects; if not quite as voluminous an endeavor.

*Avoiding rear-ending the 82 year old Trinidad, CA resident when the brakes finally locked 125 feet from the end of the off-ramp, leaving a precise straight skid mark all the way up to almost the rear of the other car; which greatly challenges the version of the event given on the police report and whose on-sight breath tests in Humboldt county are considered suspect: Now also given to occasional slayings of mildly disoriented denizens of humble character and means.(see the Copwatch posts @<http://www.humboldtrevolution.org>)

[bobstad]

Originally Posted by Funny

...and had difficulty following the post.

Funny,

I've got an on-going difficulty expressing myself, where the conceptualizations as experienced via my thoughts, are translated into print in effort at communication with others.

I do this because of a feeling I'm interesting and worthy, and perhaps unusual.

As a writer, I'd been first mentored by world famous hobo journalist, writer, publisher and printer John Patric I worked part of the summer of '67 for when I was fifteen; around that time commenting of himself in his weekly single sheet newspaper THE SATURDAY EVENING FREE PRESS that "my sole ambition at the age of 68 is to become the world's greatest general nuisance."

More recently about ten years ago I discovered novelist and poet Malcolm Lowry and his posthumously published book OCTOBER FERRY TO GABRIOLA I fell in love with, the only book I've ever read so enjoyably I reread the whole thing all over again without putting it down I've done twice now.

This is a book where often a person has to resort to an unabridged dictionary six times in a single page, and where one chapter is a very long single sentence, but there is always a feeling of economy of expression rather than flaunting of vocabulary or other writing skills; which leaves me at least feeling very rewarded for my time spent.(Lowry's UNDER THE VOLCANO is considered universally as one of the 20th century's greatest novels, the very autobiographical book about the last day of a tragic alcoholic's life in Mexico where he is murdered at the end)

I'm a person given both the experiences and skills, sort of, to be a writer. Yet have to work hard to make a product both inclusive of my insights that also communicates well.(J. R. R. Tolkien of THE HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RINGS fame, was supposed to be practically indescipherable to his students he taught at Oxford as one of the dons there; who for a more public consumption evidently learned to clean up his act)

I'm doing this as a learning process as I go along; living on disability/SSI from ramifications of congenital and juvenile spinal disease. Which helps me to maintain and/or develop self-esteem from sharing what I believe are fundamental insights not often proffered in a global society greatly in need of mental liberation from often millennially contrived systems of mind control; once perhaps necessary now becoming rapidly and painfully ever more obsolete.

[Funny]

I am unfamiliar with either of the books or of the author Lowry, however I had heard of the difficulties Tolkien had illustrating his views to the students.

I myself have a favorite author of a more objectivist nature. A woman by the name Ayn Rand. Her most famous novel, Atlas Shugged, is possibly the best book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It gives insight into the world we now live in, even though it was published in 1957. I highly recommend it. It is not a light read, at over a thousand pages, it is likely one will have to put it down for time to sleep.

I must say that I have difficulty, though not unwelcome as they are thought provoking, reading your posts, and hope that my previous diatribe has been forgotten. I may not share your world views, but behind all of the convoluted speech, there is still and intelligent human being that must be respected as such. Cheers.

[bobstad]

I don't think of Rand as being worthy, though when I was twelve years old and more naive' I think I read everything she wrote.

If you enjoy reading autobiography you might like singer Mel Torme's IT WASN'T ALL VELVET, who mentions being an Ayn Rand fan himself. He also wrote a biography of his close musician pal drummer Buddy Rich, who I was surprised to find had been a compulsive marijuana user.(though once knowing this, I'd not been surprised at all)

If you read Torme' you can see how I might find his take on Rand instructive; since his life is so incredibly ordered in the sense of promoting his gifts to greatest advantage who was a great child prodigy. Such a person could find the plutocracy virtuous; and you get this feeling from such a virtuoso musician where their art is enough of a talent to shield them from the more prurient sides of society and commerce.

I think evidently Rand must've also had reason to see that or similar sides of the tiny hierarchy which runs society, though if I ever did know much about her life I've forgotten that now.

But, contrast her fictional hero Reardan, to the sociopathic *****s like those who ran Enron for instance. As captains of commerce to one of industry, which to me seem inter-related.

Or, a more personal experience is of my grand father, who'd owned in his life five different logging companies, but had an inferiority complex. This was not out of any doubts of his talent or intelligence, but from a habitual honesty which always put him at a disadvantage dealing with the robber barons who ran the industry as a whole.

He'd been a natural humanist, who when during the second world war the government was paying cost plus ten per cent to the owners of businesses important to the war effort, yet had frozen the worker's wages; my grandfather aware of this obvious injustice and efficient enough he'd of made a profit without the huge advantage of only having to total the cost of doing business and then add ten cents on top of every dollar spent to the total the government paid anyone they did business with; had put every family member of any of his workers on the payroll as if they too were working full time, in order to give a small portion of what he was making to those who worked so hard for him at one of the most difficult and dangerous, exhausting livelihoods known to man.

I think someone like Rand, who tends to idolize corporate autocracy, must find easier to publish her books and ideas, than another writer very critical of the strata of society most involved in whether someone is allowed to widely distribute their thoughts.

You might really enjoy three books written by someone my grand father hunted and fished with in the '60s in British Columbia, Richmond Pearson Hobson, Jr. He'd been a New York real estate agent when the depression hit who'd never given up a childhood dream of becoming a cowboy.(his father had been a rear admiral during the Spainish-American war)

He'd drifted from New York to Wyoming where he'd spent six years shoveling manure in a barn without ever once riding a horse; when he'd met a veteran cowboy his age named Panhandle Phillips.

His three books are the stories of their many adventures in the '30s, '40s & '50s opening up the last unmapped open range area in North America; and all true stories rather than the idealized fiction Rand pedals and proselytizes with. GRASS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS, NOTHING TOO GOOD FOR A COWBOY and RANCHER TAKES A WIFE; about their incredible experiences ranching the wilderness interior of B. C.