I’ve been having strange dreams

Strange but not disturbing dreams. Dreams about flying cars, cars I almost owned, dreams about flying bikes, dreams about just flying. Before the wreck I used to fly, things. Mostly airplanes, some hang gliders, some ultralights, a helicopter for about 5 seconds before I gave the stick back to the guy really flying it. Helicopters are not flying machines, they are contraptions that somehow remain airborne. And this was about how the dream went, flitting from one scene to another, taking in a red Honda Civic for an oil change, flying a car over a bridge to an island that was extremely urban with lots of tall buildings (not the red Honda, it was dark silver) I was just sitting in the car someone else was flying, just flying between the buildings of the city without the car no segue, just went from flying in the car to just me by myself without anything except some insulated jumpsuit and harness and maybe a helmet? Then I was flying a bicycle somehow that hovered while I was looking for a place to park, and was just a regular crank-forward bicycle when it wasn’t flying.

I woke up about 0445 because Mrs. the Poet was pushing me out of the bed. I should have taken a picture where she was in the bed when I got out. Her head was barely on her pillows and the rest of her body was angled towards my side of the bed so that her feet were almost sticking out of the covers on my side. I also woke up because my bladder was full, and standing over the toilet was almost like the scene in “A League of Their Own” where Tom Hanks drained the main vein for over a minute of screen time. Yay visuals!

Somehow we seem to have a pantry full of ants again, and we lost a full, new box of crackers to the pesky beasts. Not the small box, the “family size” box of Cheezeits that we had just bought and Mrs. the Poet didn’t get to eat even one of them. She was very mad about throwing away food we had just bought yesterday. She was hollering about the “stupiDANTS” and that was exactly how she pronounced it, with the “d” appended to the “ants” and emphasized “DANTS”, making it all one word. When I look at it from an emotional distance it’s funny, but I know it isn’t funny for her. “StupiDANTS!”

We have come to grips with the fact that the kittens have either died or just ran away. We last saw Clint in late July when he stopped coming back after we changed food in an attempt to do something about his digestive issues, and Clyde left a couple weeks later when Mrs. the Poet declared him “feline non grata” for his digestive issues leaving little poops everywhere and we had to move his food and water dishes outside. After we moved the dishes outside he refused to come back in for petting, even though he really wanted to be petted. So we are looking for another cat, older and calmer that doesn’t scratch the furniture that has its shots and already neutered. Mrs. the Poet says this time we need to start with all new cat stuff, not leftover from 2 previous generations of cats. She thinks this might result in a cat that’s more comfortable with where it lives and doesn’t need to mark everything as “mine”.

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Weird dream time

I sometimes have really strange dreams, like the ones where they build miles long slides on top of mountain highways to keep the snow off in the winter and as a tourist ride during the summer, but the one that woke me up this morning topped them all.

I was on a tour of the White House and for some reason Trump came out to meet the tour, and someone in the group used a garrote made from synthetic materials to kill Trump. It was really gross, the string almost decapitated him, and I was standing in the splash zone. Then the Secret Service started shooting people, because someone killed the *president, and I got hit 3 times. Then the guy who did it shouted “I did it! I prevented World War three!” And that’s when things got really strange.

He claimed he was from an alternate time line where Trump had managed to trigger Armageddon by invading Iraq, when forces crossed the border a small fission explosion went off in a close in suburb of Tehran. Who built the bomb, and who set it off were never determined because when it did nukes started flying like beachballs at a Beach Boys concert, laying waste to large chunks of the Middle East, Russia, Europe, (but not the UK), both North and South Korea, parts of Japan, large areas of the US, Canada, and Mexico, and even Africa. Before communications shut down there was speculation it was a Soviet-era suitcase nuke, because it didn’t make any sense for Iran to keep a nuke just outside their capitol and because it was such a low yield weapon. The only parts of the world not hit by fission or fusion bombs were Australia and Antarctica, and the guy that killed Trump said that the Mad Max movies were a Utopia compared to what happened in Australia. All food production was disrupted because seed stocks were destroyed along with pollinating insects and of course there was no fossil fuels to distribute what food there was
so millions died of famine, millions more died from diseases spread by the mountains of unburied corpses, because there were no fossil fuels to run the equipment needed open the graves, or to burn the corpses. Anyway as I said it was a weird dream.

And I think either Mrs. the Poet or I had really bad gas last night because I remember thinking Trump smelled really bad when he got killed. I’ve been downwind of fresh corpses from car wrecks, and they didn’t smell like that.

Feeling better but not my best

Things have been up and down physically for me this week, but after spending 11 hours in bed (not necessarily sleeping, just in bed) my back is feeling pretty good. Good as in no pain sitting or walking, and just a tiny pain transitioning between sitting and standing. All in all I call that good.

Last night my brain wouldn’t shut down (again) as I kept on thinking about using the engine/trans from the donor car as a SCCA A/Mod Solo race car. It wouldn’t work from a weight standpoint, as the 620 pound engine and transmission only leaves about 80 pounds for the entire rest of the car, but would work great as far as fitting in the allowed minimum wheelbase without anything hanging out too far or having to add between the wheels. There would even be enough room to put a three gallon fuel cell between the engine and the driver without having my feet hang out past the front axle.

Contemplating the A/Mod car came from thinking about the packaging of the TGS2 fuel cell and electronics as the 32 gallon cell takes up a big hunk of real estate inside the car. There is lots of space on the outside of the frame rails but inside the body for the battery and electronics, so the balance left to right can be maintained while keeping the polar moment as low as possible. Polar moment is extremely important for an autocross car because much of autocross is change of direction from left to right and vice-versa, and polar moment is the measurement of resistance to change of direction. A lower polar moment is better which is why competitors try to get things as close to the center of the car as possible. Autocross is not just grip but the ability to transition from left to right and vice-versa. Interestingly enough engine power is not a major consideration in the equation as cars do not spend much time at speed or accelerating between turns, which is why lawnmower-engine go karts are frequent contenders for low time of the day.

Can anyone tell I’m really getting frustrated with the lack of progress on the TGS2? Not having $$ for parts and raw stock is not helping things any. Not having a viable method to obtain $$ is also not helping things any, PayPal is telling me that so far this year I made less than $10 in donations from the link at the bottom of the page. If you want stuff to read I need to have stuff to write about, and I’m just about out of things that don’t cost money to do. At this point I’m really close to writing about the dreams I have the night before just to have something to write about, and believe me you don’t want that. 😀 Everybody stay safe out there on this long weekend and avoid the drunk drivers.

I had a nice dream last night on Wreck-Free Sunday

The details are a little hazy, but the gist remains. I got hit (again) and died (again) but this time when I rebooted from being dead it was hours if not days after the wreck. And I came back invulnerable, shoot me and the bullets bounced off (but still hurt like a *)^&#$%*$(#$ ), hit with a truck and I would bounce down the street cursing like a sailor every time I hit the ground, but then get up and punch out the truck, with Terminator levels of self repair. So I decided to take over the country, marched into the White House and told Obama that I was taking over and the country would be a constitutional monarchy, with me as Emperor. I abolished separate laws between the Federal and local levels, no more states except for certain historical functions. I declared the TBTF banks and oil companies to be “Terrorist organizations” and nationalized their holdings, and abolished all political parties. The government was completely reorganized so that all judges and LEO were federal, with judges subject to appointment and approval by feds with limited 10-year terms, LEO subject to charges any time they discharged a weapon away from a training range.

What I did to the legislative branch was something I consider brilliant. Since the states no longer had separate governments and laws, the state houses were the new House of Representatives, where the full-time state reps would propose and debate laws that would be submitted to the Senate in DC, with States getting 2 Senators and territories, possessions, and commonwealths getting one each, who would then vote the laws submitted from the states up or down but without changing them, so if states tried to cram too much into a bill it would most likely get shot down, as it would take a 2/3 majority to pass a bill. But neither body would be allowed to pass a budget.

Budgeting would take place in the old House of Reps, with the new reps elected to a single 2 year term and not allowed to run again with half the states electing their reps on even years and half on odd years, also the Senate was limited to a single 10-year term and also not allowed to run again. Just remembered that bit. The big thing was not to allow a political class to take hold again like we have now.

Of course I, as monarch, had full veto over anything the legislators or budgeting assembly tried to pass. If I didn’t understand it, I would submit the proposed law to the Representatives of the 12s, a group of 50 12 YO kids, one from each state. If they couldn’t figure it out either, then the bill would get vetoed. You would get appointed by your state at 11, serve at 12, and be replaced when you turned 13.

Part of the new constitution was things making common things that currently get laws passed against them totally legal, like not having a fixed address. Cities would be required to set up campgrounds with public bath houses and toilets so that homeless people could have a place to stay without getting hassled, and since they would need to get fed I would require the people making MREs for the military to create 3-meal packs of balanced nutrition to issue to the homeless once a day. Anyone could request a day pack of food at the homeless camp, no questions asked. The only requirement would be to register when you enter the camp so that we could find you in an emergency and so that your relatives would know you were safe.

Marriage would no longer exist except as a religious ritual. When people decided to become “attached” they would form a corporation. Corporations would all be taxed on net take, like they are now, except that for “domestic corporations” things like food and shelter would be subject to a “Standard exemption” based on the numbers of partners in the corporation. Children could be counted as “partners” or “products” depending on how your particular corporation was set up. Also you could have as many members of your domestic corporation as you wanted in any distribution of genders you want, subject to the bylaws of the corporation. How you wanted to organize your “domestic corporation” would be completely up to you and your partners, not the government. All the government would have a say over was minimum care requirements for progeny, much the same as we have today. Vaccinations and education, etc. would be the business of the government but assigned to the “domestic corporation” that created or adopted the kid.

Another thing I changed was road laws. Bicycles ALWAYS had a right to a full lane, and hitting a cyclist from behind, or a pedestrian at any time, would be a felony punishable by loss of your vehicle and jail time. No more highways could be built until there was a network of segregated bike paths of equal utility to the existing road and highway network in place, but maintenance would be placed at a high priority right after building the bike network. This would be in the constitution, not the laws. Projects that were in progress when I took over would be allowed to be completed, but nothing that wasn’t already in the “tearing up the old street/road/highway/Interstate” stage or further would be allowed, except repair projects that neglect had made imperative. Even after that the budget for building new roads would only be considered after funding for building bike infrastructure and maintaining existing roads and bike infra was covered. Nothing new until all the old stuff had been taken care of except for the bike infrastructure, because we have basically zero bike infrastructure now. Even after the bike network was built out, bike network projects would always have priority over other roads, but only just one priority. If there were two projects that were equally needed, the bike project would get built first.

Another thing I changed was DUI laws. You get ONE DUI, with a maximum BAC% of 0.05. With your first DUI you would lose your license for one year, and your vehicle would get recycled. When you registered your replacement vehicle after completely taking driver’s ed all over again you would get a distinctive license plate that would allow LEO to pull you over and check your BAC% at any time. If you get a second DUI that would be it for driving a motor vehicle, one year of prison and never allowed to own or operate a motor vehicle for life. And since DL would be issued at the Federal level, no moving to another state to get a “clear” license. When you get that second DUI you are permanently barred from driving. Also driving after license suspension would be the same as illegal possession of a weapon, instant prison time…

I set up my palace at an old race track east of Nashville TN that you may have heard of. After all I’m not against motor vehicles, or even having fun with motor vehicles, just against irresponsible use of motor vehicles. Driving fast at a race track, with access strictly controlled to prevent wrecks with pedestrians and cyclists, is what I consider one of the ways to responsibly enjoy motor vehicles. In my dream I added a flat ¼ mile oval using the pit lane as one straight and adding the turns and back straight to the infield between the pit lane and the trioval, so that I could have races sanctioned by the ISMA once a month. The other 3 weeks would be split between NASCAR, SCCA/IMSA (notice the switch between the S and M with the other organization) and IndyCar/USAC so that the big oval and the road course would also get used regularly. About here it starts to get fuzzy and shortly after watching the first ISMA qualifying race on the ¼ oval I woke up.

I really did not want to wake up from that dream.

PSA, Opus the practical Poet