I have a Down day, and I need to write sumthin’

I don’t even know what I want to write about again, but I haf’ta write sumthin’ even if it’s just more stream of consciousness stuff. Right now I’m grooving to a meditation mix from YTM. It has like 10 minute and longer ambient pieces, that let me get a groove on and actually write something coherent.

Anyway, yesterday I picked up some stuff from the store that I’m gonna need because #1 son is moving into his house on Saturday and he’s going to be busy directing movers and shit. And tomorrow I’m going to be doing the taxes. So today I write, even though I lack a subject beyond “I have to write today”.

I told someone once about 40 years ago when I had to use a manual typewriter and paper to write because nobody could read my writing, that writing for me had the same feeling as a big BM. After I finished either one I had a feeling of relief, a feeling of emptying out that would get filled up again but was at the moment pleasantly empty. I had the same feeling back when I could still write poetry.

Current writing Jam: Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pts 1-5. Thirteen and a half minutes of psychedelic instrumental music. I think I might have mentioned I was a Pink fan because so much of their early stuff was instrumental. It’s not that I don’t like vocals, it’s just that when I’m grooving to the sounds, human voices jar on me and harsh my vibe. That’s why I liked Autobahn, and Tubular Bells, both of which took up an entire album side with (mostly) instrumental music and in the case of Autobahn even then the vocals were more of an “instrumental drone” than actual voices, being in another language. And I just put Tubular Bells on for 26 minutes of instrumental jams uninterrupted by vocals.

I had to just use the restroom and put a drop of lotion on my hands because I have to wash them so often the skin gets dry and chapped and resembles the belly hide of an alligator if I don’t. Anyway I was thinking about lotion and got to wondering about lotion for nursing mothers and what they did when their nipples got dry and sore, which I know happens. Do they have a special lotion for nursing mothers to use on their nipples, that babies couldn’t taste or that wouldn’t make the babies sick like some hand lotions do if they’re accidentally ingested (old formula Jergen’s lotion was made with almond oils and smelled good enough to eat but would make you sick if you ate it, new formula smells the same but I don’t know if it is still slightly toxic). Anyway that’s where my mind wandered after washing my hands.

And I’m still thinking about mating an LS engine with an aluminum block with a T5 transmission for low total weight for the Sprint-T, because when my mind wanders it prefers to wander down the same path after a while. So, for a stock T5, the biggest LS I could use would be the L33 5.3 motor which is right at the maximum torque limit for the trans. If I wanted to use anything bigger or tune the L33 even slightly I have to upgrade the gears in the transmission. I even did the numbers for installing a T-10 4-speed with a non-quick change rear axle because it’s light and strong enough for a tuned 5.3 LS or even a 6.2 LS before tuning, but the rear gear that would let me drive the car on the highway would cause the car to do 73 MPH in first gear at redline with the race tires without installing an OD, which negates the purpose of using the T-10. That purpose being that a T-10 is 5 pounds lighter than the T5. Seriously, that would be the only reason to go with the 4 speed over the 5 speed. And the only gearset that can handle a 5.3 LS is the one with the 2.45 first gear, the rest would break the input shaft (weak spot). With the T5 3rd gear is the weak spot, so minor tuning upgrades wouldn’t break the gearbox unless I took the Sprint-T on a road course instead of autocrossing it. Again, I have been doing some serious thinking about this for a guy with no engine to bolt either transmission to. And either one would need to get faceplated for the Sprint-T because there’s still no room for a clutch pedal so the clutch would have to be a hand clutch and shifting would have to be done with just lifting off the gas a fraction to let the shift rings unlock to jam it into another gear.

Now if I wasn’t going to drive between events, and just stick it on a trailer or use a toterhome, then what rear gear I had would be a non-issue. But that would require the toterhome or another vehicle to pull the trailer, when the budget doesn’t even allow for completing the vehicle as it is, and I totally didn’t with either the Lotto or the Powerball yesterday. Now either one would seriously benefit the Casa De El Poeta budget and allow significant upgrades and taking care of deferred maintenance to both the house and the writer, but the Powerball would pay out about $2000000 a year after taxes and would also allow building the Sprint-T to desired spec and buying that toterhome. Seriously I could fix everything that needs or will need fixing including me and Mrs. the Poet in the first year, and build the Sprint-T and buy the toterhome to drag it around the country without running out of money from the first two payments (toterhomes are kinda spendy). Without the toterhome then everything could get done the first year.

OK I’ve written, and I’ve done math, and I’ve grooved to some instrumental music with some long-playing tunes, and I doublechecked my spelling including checking for homonyms and the wrong words spelled right, and everything looks good.

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I have time to fill and I need to practice writing stuff

Specifically I need to practice writing stuff that isn’t technical wanking about cars, or bicycles, airplanes, hovercraft or any other kind of vehicle.

I know some people who read this blog have been asking me to write romantic dialog. Those are people who actually know me IRL and used to talk face to face back in the Before Times when people got together and had discussions. Well even before the Before Times I was terrible at writing dialog because I was terrible at talking with people. In order to write convincing dialog, you have to have some kind of experience in being part of dialog. And I’m just anti-social enough that I don’t actually talk with people so much as I talk to people, on a good day. Other times the aphasia takes over and I just kinda make noises in their general direction that resemble words. Or I talk at them, which is even worse but at least the words make more sense than when the aphasia is running things.

The interesting thing is aphasia isn’t near as big a problem when I’m communicating verbally but not talking, like right now. I’m using words, making phrases and sentences, but I’m not speaking at all, just letting my fingers do the talking. It’s actually faster to communicate this way than to try to fight past the aphasia, because the words bypass my mouth and run directly to my fingers. Another interesting thing is when I’m typing I have to look back and see where I made a tone or subject change and insert paragraph breaks, like I did for this paragraph. I usually don’t see them as I write, but going back over what I wrote I see where I need to insert a paragraph break.

I saw this break coming because I knew I was going to make a tone change and a subject change, the subject change is this isn’t dialog practice, it’s monolog practice, and almost everything I have done in the last 2 years has been a monolog from me at my audience. I don’t even know who I’m communicating with here, so I’m machine-gunning words in your general direction instead of to you. I know that when I stopped doing the bike wrecks my readership dropped off a cliff for a long time and is just now starting to come back a little. I guess my attempts at writing about building a car amuse some of you and some are reading out of loyalty and some because I have a unique writing style or non-style, I just write bang on the keyboard and words come out and you read them. Or not, lately it has been mostly not.

But yeah another problem is romantic. I have been married for 43 years and to do that you have to be either romantic as hell, or stubborn as hell, and I’m not romantic. Sexy, I can be sexy as bananas to a monkey, but that is not romantic, it’s romantic-adjacent. I have the physical ability to create arousal and satisfy needs, but I’m not romantic. At best I’m the porn version of romantic. I make vagina-owners happy physically, but romance to satisfy them emotionally just ain’t gonna happen. Or to put it another way, unless they keep their heart and bits on the same shelf I’m not satisfying their hearts.

Now for some people, that’s good enough for a while. They want the porn equivalent of romance, some right up to the point that outside forces break up the relationship. I have lost count of the number of girlfriends who have had a job transfer, or died, or had gender reassignment surgery. Actually only the one had gender reassignment surgery, the rest moved or died. But for them I was romantic enough to maintain the relationship until it was no longer possible to have a relationship.

So, I’m not good at the romance thing, and I’m not good at dialog. And in this case two negatives do NOT make a positive, it’s additive, not multiplicative. But romantic dialog has been requested, nay DEMANDED! in all caps with multiple exclamation points. So how does a writer that has only rudimentary romantic skills and dialog skills learn to write romance. How does a broken bird learn to fly?

That is the question, how does a broken old man learn to be romantic? It’s not from a lack of wanting, I have wanted to be romantic since I was in high school wearing bell-bottom jeans. I thought I had somehow managed when I got married, or when women were after me after I got married, but as I wrote I was “romance-adjacent”. I was sexy, and thought I was romantic. And now I’m not even sexy anymore, I’m just a broken old man who used to be sexy and now is just sad.

I should get some writing practice in

And in case you didn’t realize it, I practice here in my blog because, why not?

I actually have several topics to write about, some car building related, some just on surviving physically and emotionally during the pandemic. And some are a little from column A and column B.

So, it has gotten more and more uncomfortable to walk with shoes on because I need to get my toes done, but I couldn’t get an appointment at the nail place I get my toes done at. And also, no I’m not Metrosexual, I can’t stay bent over long enough to do the toes on my left leg because I’m no longer flexible enough to cut my own toenails. I have been so long unable to reach my toes with clippers that I’m not even sure what year was the last time I did my own toes. I’m thinking maybe 2013 or 2014? Anywho it has been a while since I could cut my toenails the way I like them, which was shortly before unable to do them at all. But that’s neither here nor there, I went to the nail salon and had my toes just shortened a bit and now my shoes fit much better,

Speaking of shoes I have had fuzzy slippers on my gifting list for at least 3 years now, and the ones Mrs. the Poet ordered were on backorder again this year. So I went shopping online until I found the kind I want with lots of fuzzy lining on top and a warm felt type lining on the insole and open back heels so they’re easy to put on and get off but that don’t fall off. They should get here sometime around the inauguration of the sane-ish President.

I’m still thinking about that LS/Powerglide, 4 wheels and enough bits to keep everything pointed in the right direction A/MOD solo racer, and how to keep it close to the minimum weight of 900 pounds with my butt in the driver’s seat. I’m checking the weight of the tires I’ll need to stick all that power to the track. Even a mildly tuned LS has about 400 HP at the flywheel, stock, and some do even better with an LS7 making a guaranteed 505 flywheel HP before fiddling with the conservative factory emissions-legal tune. The LS376/525 uses a hot cam to get 525 flywheel HP with the factory tune, but can get more with some playing with the fuel and spark maps in the computer. The bad thing is there is a lot less power below 5000 RPM compared to even a stock LS7 and power below 5000 RPM is what gets you out of tight corners. Anywho, what I’m looking at for this build is roughly 1000 pounds without a driver, which is about 300 pounds overweight. The class minimum is 900 with driver, which is about 700 pounds without me. Since that’s only a smidge over the engine and transmission by themselves and less than the engine, transmission, and the lightest rear center section that will take the power of anything not originally from a truck or SUV in the LS engine family, I’m thinking that I won’t need to add ballast for this build.

Anyway, things have been Not Too Bad so far, aside from taking care of my kidneys making frequent trips to the bathroom to pee part of my normal. Between coffee and diet colas and straight water I’m doing about 2 liters of water a day, and while this is good for keeping stones out of my kidneys it’s Hell on my bladder. I’m right on the cusp of having more pain from the strain on my bladder than I would get from the kidney stones. What scares me is I might still get the stones even with the highly stressed bladder, but that is an extremely low probability as long as I watch my calcium intake.

I think this is a good place to call a halt to the post.

Not doing nanowrimo again this year

For those not in the writing community NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month where you set out to write a 50k word “novel” in 30 days or about 1500 words a day. I can’t do that.

I mean, yeah I can write a 50k word document in 30 days, but get a story out of it? Last time I tried to write a story it took years and had like over a million words, and then the hard drive it was on crashed so hard it caught fire. My story existed in completed form for less than 12 hours and was never seen again. The opening chapter is still on this blog from many years and 3 computers ago, but the rest is random molecules on a stainless steel platter, or whatever they used to make the platters in that model hard drive.

So I’m not pursuing my dream of writing The Great American Novel, because that wasn’t a dream it was a nightmare.

When you don’t want to write about the only thing you can write about

Yep, I’m hitting the wall on the Sprint-T. I have a ton more content to write about, but just writing and not building is starting to get to me, as in frustration that nothing is getting done. This is a familiar scenario for me: planning for something for years and then having to drop it when it becomes inescapable my finances are not going to stretch far enough to allow completion of the project. I thought this time was going to be different, because I had a large reservoir of money to draw from when I bought the body. Then my parent’s house sold for about ¹/₃ of the appraised value and I lost $125K instantly from the budget, which was about 4 times what I had budgeted for the project. Projects don’t go very far when your budget goes more than $90K in the hole before you even get started. Then it looked like we were going to get a chunk of the money back, not all, but enough that I could finish the car, and I bought a few more parts like the axle and steering arms, and things beyond my control tanked it again. Now if I’m lucky I’ll have enough money to keep paying the taxes and insurance on my house until I’m no longer able to live here.

So, I don’t want to write about the car, because I’ll never even get a decent start on the car, much less drive it. Which makes writing about it rather pointless, don’t you think? Until I get enough money to finish it writing about it is a work of fiction. Low fantasy fiction, a fabrication of words instead of steel, aluminum, fiberglass and other stuff. It’s at this point that if I was sane I would be tearing out my hair in frustration, but since I’m already crazy I’m past going crazy from frustration. I’m so tired emotionally I just can’t muster the energy to pitch the fit I need to pitch to clear this from my system. Yay depression, saving the world from my anger. 😛

Considering the length of time I have been wanting this, and the cumulative time I have been planning this (this is the fourth go-round for planning this build since 1987) experiencing frustration should be considered normal. I have a sketch of what I was planning at work in 1998 back when I was working as much as 20 hours a week overtime and hauling down some big bucks working for TI making logic chips. but that job went bye-bye. Then I had the MiniMax ultralight airplane project to distract me for a while, plus I was a spoken word poet (Opus the Poet was my stage name for years) for several years, and I built and sold custom bicycles for about 4 years until that dried up in the recession of 2006. So I had some creative outlets to distract me. And as the saying goes, want in one hand and poop in the other and see which hand gets filled first. So wanting is not enough, learning fabrication skills is not enough, writing incessantly about the project for years is not enough, none of it is enough if you don’t have the money. It all comes down to money, which is something I have only a passing relationship with. As in I wave as it passes by.

So, what long-term subject should I write about now? Covering bicycle wrecks almost pushed me over the edge sanity-wise, can’t go back to that. Brain damage killed my ability to rhyme and use scansion, so poetry is out. And in spite of how depressed I am I’m not going to commit suicide. There’s a really good reason why my character in Shadowrun is nearly immortal. And getting killed really hurts as I know from experience. I can’t seem to get a coherent narrative going for writing fiction that isn’t about building an imaginary hot rod, but I do seem to have a decent ability to world-build and outline. I just can’t write dialog to save my life. So, gentle reader I implore you, what’s next? What should the Witch on a Bicycle who can’t ride a bicycle anymore write about? Anything but politics. 😛

Still working on the design

I can’t leave the house with the rain and thunderstorms and the flood watches, so I have been reading superhero books on my Kindle app and moving boxes representing assemblies around in my CAD program.

OK my current design method is to assign things a box that describes the space they occupy, rather than the actual object itself, and then move the boxes around until there’s no overlap. Some boxes are fixed, like the engine/transmission box and the body box, while some are not even fixed in size, like the radiator box that changes width depending on the radiator I’m trying to fit. I think there is a possibility the smallest radiator in the catalog will be enough to cool the Pentastar after seeing the stock radiator for one of the vehicles it is installed in by FCA. That simplifies packaging considerably, because I can figuratively put that radiator beside the steering box and have room left over for a bowling alley. The joker in the deck is the OEM radiator is double-row but the catalog radiator is double-double-row with  ¹/₃  less frontal area but a 2.25X thicker core with more fins, and I lack the data to make a direct comparison. The “double-double” refers to the tubes in the core of the catalog radiator having more than twice the heat rejecting capacity of a round tube, making the double row core the equivalent of a 4-row. There is a simple formula for comparing radiators of different designs, but catalog descriptions rarely have enough information to allow its use. And that goes double in this case, with different chunks of the equation missing from the 2 catalog descriptions. But it is my SWAG that the 22″ catalog radiator will be roughly equal to the OEM radiator, especially after I learned the replacement OEM radiator was also used for much larger engines and is just sold as a replacement for the Pentastar because it fits the hole. Ima just hafta put a huge electric fan on the catalog radiator to make sure there’s enough airflow to remove the heat, which is what I would have had to do anyway, just maybe not as huge as I’m thinking about using now.

The radiator box combined with the steering box are the same width as the engine box, which is the same width as the firewall but extends a touch to the right because of offset to balance out my “big bones” sitting behind the steering wheel on the left. Which is a very roundabout way to say the radiator and steering box are together the same width as the firewall. And that I could install a wider radiator without increasing the frontal area of the car. This also means that there will be a large hole to the left of the engine that could be use as an escape path for cooling air, or a place to install an oil cooler facing sideways. Looking at the picture right now there are several places to install a small oil cooler, above the steering box there is a 5″ wide by 18″ tall space, there’s a 7″ tall space under the radiator that could run the width of the front end if the hoses would fit under the steering box. But as I don’t see any oil coolers near those sizes in the catalog…the question is moot.

And I just found a picture online of the engine in side view, with a tape measure in clear view to use to scale from and all the driven bits hanging off the front with the belt and pulleys exposed to measure. Something to make the engine box more accurate in the for and aft dimension, might mean a bigger box, might mean a smaller box, but either way it’s a more accurate box.

And writing note, when I get on a roll writing it’s pretty much stream of consciousness, but I still “feel” the punctuation and capitalization. What I don’t have a feel for is when I need a paragraph break. And my proofreader program knows fvck-all about paragraph breaks so I don’t get a blurb about needing a paragraph like I do about passive voice or homonyms. What I’m trying to say is I know I need more paragraph breaks in my writing, I just don’t always know where to put them.

Happy Day to my fellow vets

Today is Veteran’s Day (observed), so I’m wishing a happy Veteran’s Day to all my green-blooded brothers out there (in joke).

It was cold last night but warmed up this morning enough that I wore my normal next-to-nothing today, which annoyed Mrs. the Poet as she was wearing long pants, t-shirt, and a sweatshirt over it with fuzzy socks on her feet and complaining about the cold. We have vastly different temperature tolerances all year long as I go out and walk or ride my bike in both the summer and winter in weather that has Mrs. the Poet staying indoors or kvetching about the heat/cold as appropriate for the season. I think it’s kinda funny, but that’s because I’m not the one complaining about the cold or heat. My nose does get cold when Mrs. the Poet is complaining about the cold while I’m in a pair of shorts and nothing else, and when I get cold enough to put a shirt on my ears are also getting a bit chilly while Mrs. the Poet is busy putting on everything in the closet and dresser. And I’m not as cold-tolerant as I used to be back when I wore shorts and t-shirt in freezing weather, scaring the rubes when I walked home from work. I saw people tossing liquor bottles out of car windows after seeing me walk home in shorts and T-shirt with heavy frost on the ground. This was back when I was in my 30s, long before I got hit with the truck. I can’t quite do that these days, one of the downsides of years of conditioning myself to be able to ride in ridiculously hot and humid weather.

I’m still stymied at trying to get something moving on the TGS2 build, beyond getting the spindles installed on the axle, which also hasn’t happened yet. I mean I don’t even actually have the donor vehicle in my hands yet, just a car cover for it when I get it so it doesn’t get towed for not having registration since it can’t pass inspection. Since the registration sticker is on the inside of the windshield if you park under a car cover they can’t check to see if your vehicle has current tags. I guess I should be doing something with the parts I have to work with just to be doing something that moves the car build forward, but it is very hard to become inspired for building when you will still have next to nothing to show for it when you get finished except a few more parts not in separate piles. I guess this is another symptom of my depression, the inability to inspire myself to do things. Writing I don’t consider “doing something”, it’s more of a way to avoid doing things. It’s much easier to write about doing something than to actually drag myself into a situation where things are getting done. Also I write when I’m depressed, the “the Poet” in my name came from writing free verse during depressive episodes. I even got some song lyrics down from some of my depressive episodes. Some were good, others were scary bad. Bad as song lyrics, but passable as free verse.

Having contrary thoughts here

I just read an author’s use of the Bechdel Test as a bare minimum qualifier for equity in a story. This got me thinking of a story that had no on-camera men, all the speaking characters would be women. And the only thing they would talk about would be men, and other women. Set it in a nursing home and call it “Gossip Grannies”. None of the speaking characters would talk about themselves or any of the other speaking characters, and each weekly arc would be about a particular combination, guy-girl, guy-girl-girl, guy-guy, girl-girl, whatever. For all my comic artist/writer friends here’s a free setup, just put Based on a Concept by Opus The Poet in the credits.