Four Dollars a Minute...

Four dollars a minute... that is the drunkard's math in figuring out his cost/her gross revenue for paying for the attention of an exotic dancer. At 20 bucks for a 5 minute trouser grind, the cost-benefit analysis is not dificult to understand. (Ironically, her business model is the same as mine. At a billing rate of 4 dollars a minute, and assuming that she generated equivalent funds for an hour shift, she and I both generate nearly half a million in gross revenue every year for our respective employer [and, yes I realize she is more likely an independent contractor but that is unduly complicated, but she can deduct her slutty clothes as a business expense and I get health and retirement so it is a fair trade-off], yet we both receive as compensation about one dollar an hour).

What is difficult to understand is why we don't apply the drunkard's math to more important matters. At the age of 35, between the MS, stress, family history of diabetes and heart disease, my undying love for wreckless and uncontrollable driving fueled by a motorcycle and now the Chevy Vega stationwagon with a 350 small block shoved in the engine compartment like a quarterback with his hand in the homecoming queen's skirt, it is likely that even with medical advances (and assuming that our eventual Chinese overlords do not mandate euthanasia at retirment age), it is safe to say I can make it to the age of 70.

On most days, by the time I get home, eat, change clothes, chase those damn kids off my lawn and lock away the mental abuses from the daily interraction with butt-nuggets at work (and assuming it isnt a head-fixing night, a Girl Scouts night, or a scheduled in-home demonstration of organic insect based slabs of meat in order to get the free chest freezer with the built in waffle maker and snowcone machine) it is generally 8 pm before I get to time that really feels like my time. Kids go to bed at 8:30, and at 10:00 I am horizontal as well. I stopped working weekends when I accepted that I am ordained to always be a worker bee, never a queen. So, that means each week I roughly have 2040 minutes of "my" time within which to live a life. That is 53040 minutes a year. Assuming no significant life style changes, that leaves 1,856,400 minutes left before our future Chinese overlords organically compress my remains into heating oil. At just over a dollar an hour, (and not adjusting for wage increases, unemployment, divorce, scandal, incapacity, inflation or rabies) that means the remainder of "my life" has a value of just about $2,000,000.

It ain't money in the bank, and it is not a comment on any particular intrinsic individual value. It is a line of credit that the universe has extended to me, accepted at millions of retailers world-wide. I can spend my dollar a minute credit with my kids, ignoring my kids, or looking for new and creative ways to write off my children an business expenses. At the bargain rate of a dollar a minute, I can find stupid reasons to be angry at my wife, or I can enrich her life and allow her to enrich mine, all for 2 dollars a day.

Two weeks ago, I got to see Child #1 and Child #2 for about 20 minutes. We talked, laughed, exchanged some gifts, acted almost like a normal modern family. It was damned sure worth more than a dollar a minute.

This one I been holding on to for a while. Two weeks ago, a rookie cop stopped to help a young woman on the highway change a flat tire. While in his patrol car, a 20 year old penis with legs who had been drinking too much slammed his car into Dwayne Freeto's patrol car at 84 miles per hour. Freeto was trapped inside, and burned to death. Officer Freeto was 34 years old, had a wife. Had two children. His family has shown incredible restraint in the wake of this senseless loss, so I have been waiting for my own anger to subside. A year later, I still have an unresolved anger about the shooting of Hank Nava, who also left behind a wife and offspring. Freeto didn't get to max-out his credit card of life. His time was inherently worth a helluva lot more than that of the most of the rest of us. Men and women like Officer Freeto and Officer Nava stand between us and the drunken walking penises so that we can safely arrive home and play with our children, whom they were protecting at school and on the bus ride home. Four dollars a minute doesn't even begin to cover the things that police and firefighters do for us. (The walking penis survived the crash. I pray that his case goes to trial. Next week I am going to renew my voter's registration, just on the off-chance I can get on his jury panel. Gonna save him a seat on my party-bus to Hell).

Today, my wife took the second of three strikes that could lead to a diagnosis of cervical cancer. Dollar a minute, dollar a second, whatever. I will pay it as long as I can get it. There is no dollar equivalent for the time we share together.

Come one, come all. Your hot spot for male entertainment. We take all major credit cards, and have 28 ATM's on site! This week only guys, for your visual pleasure, coming to the center stage (cue the techno umptiss-umptiss dance music) the lovely, the talented... Formerly Living.

Christmas Time Call to Action!

Beloved, I have been wanting to tell you all about BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) in a well thought out, organize, humorous and informative manner. Such is not to be.

Some time ago I told you a little bit about riding with the Patriot Guard Riders, an organization of bikers dedicated to honoring this nation's Armed Forces. While the experience is breathtaking, especially to someone who never had the balls to serve in uniform, it is also exceptionally painful.

For reasons best left to the psychiatrists right now, I have found an equally honorable and respected group of bikers. Indeed, I have found an extention of my family, through BACA. Without belaboring the point, BACA provides some incredible and unique services to children who have been subject to abuse. The BACA founder, a child psychiatrist, discovered that all of his positive work with abused children was easily undone when the perp still had means and access to intimidate the child and child's family; or worse, was able to continue the abuse.

BACA adopts the child into its family. Anyone who knows anything about bikers understands what this means. I have personally witnessed the fire and joy return to a child's eye when he or she meets 40-50 men, women and children who pledge their heart and soul to the protection and happiness of that child. It is a beautiful sight.

But I digress. This year, our chapter was the recipient of a beautiful, hand-crafted Betty Boop motorcycle quilt. Since Texas has apparently outlawed "raffles", we are taking donations for the opportunity to be given the quilt. I guess. I wish I knew a good lawyer to vet that language. (By the way, maybe we should open up a community post about why gambling is illegal in Texas, except for the state's own lottery...).

Anyway, the suggested donations are 1 ticket for $3 or 2 for $5. The quilt is being given away Friday night. The proceeds are being used to buy Christmas presents for the kids our chapter has adopted. Please email infinitegtr@gmail.com now to make arrangements to get your tickets.

BACA Child = Baca Loved, Baca Protected... Formerly Living

Every Dog has its Day

Today was nearly, a heart beat away, one last fitful display of pride away from being my last day as a lawyer. Others have gone on before, and have done well for themselves. I have a mortgage (two of them actually), and enough children to field a basketball team. The oldest starts college in 3 years, the youngest will be under my roof for another 16. Ringing bells for Salvation Army and filing pro bono appeals for death row inmates ain't in my immediate future.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the office. Moses wretched down from the heavens and handed me the stone tablets again. Here they are, mostly in there original form, but also with a few updates...

This list, and a better attribution to the original source, can be located here:



1. One Top Fuel dragster's 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first four rows of the Daytona 500.

2. A stock Dodge Hemi V-8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger.

3. With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

4. At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air-fuel mixture for nitromethane, the flame front temperature measures about 7000 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hygrogen, seperated from atmoshperic water vapor by the searing heat of the exhaust gasses.

6. Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each sparkplug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.

7. Spark plug electros can be totally consumed during a single pass. After half-distance, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel source (or by dropping enough cylinders that the supercharger blows into billions of pieces from the backpressure).

8. If a spark plug fails early in the run, unburned nitro can build up in the affected cylinder and explode with sufficient force to blow the cylinder head off in pieces, or split the cylinder block in half.

9. In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of more than 4 g's. In order to reach 200 mph before half-distance, the launch acceleration approaches 8 g's.(The Space Shuttle has a launch acceleration of only 3 g's. The shuttle requires 6 seconds to clear the tower, and 8 minutes to reach its top speed of 17,000 miles. A Top Fuel Car essentially launches at 100 mph, reaching top speed by the end of a 4.5 second run). The 8 g claim is disputed by some heretics, who have been banished from the church of Nitromethane. An F-16 fighter takes off at 0.9 g's. A Top Fuel dragster reaches 300 mph before you have completed reading this sentence. (The Space Shuttle, landing in Florida, begins its re-entry over Hawaii. Since the inception of the shuttle program, less than 200 missions have been flown. A Top Fuel dragster typically has a shutdown area of 3/4 of a mile or less. The engine and transmission is completely broken down and rebuilt, test fired, and in the staging lanes in 75 minutes).

10. The exhaust gasses alone are believed to provide as much as 2,000 pounds of downforce during acceleration. When a Top Fueler drops cylinders on one side of the block only, the loss of equilibrium, results in a loss of traction on the block side throwing cylinders. One dropped cylinder wont necessarily prevent a complete pass, but two or more on the same side of the block will almost always cause the rear-end to fish tail and drop out of the groove.

11. The rear wing provides 8,000 pounds of down force. High speed, high defintion cameras reveal the "bowing" of the a Top Fuel dragster frame during acceleration. Structural failure of the frame can send a car airborn, as Cory MacLenathan learned earlier in the 2006 season. Structural failure of the wing can send a Top Fueler into orbit. Even when all the pieces stay on the machine, aerodynamics can still temporarily defeat gravity, with spectacular results.

12. With a redline that can be as high as 9500 rpm, Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from stage to finish light. Including the burnout, the engine only needs to survive 900 revolutions.

13. Assuming all equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and nothing breaks, each run costs about $1000 per second. (A single rear Goodyear tire runs $425. Top Fuel cars might get four passes from a set of tires. Last season, the average cost to run a Top Fuel team was $3,000,000).

14. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 set by Tony Shumacher at the conclusion of the 2006 season. The top speed record is 336.15 set by Shumacher in October 2005.

15. Parachutes are used to assist in stopping the Top Fueler. Pulling power and deploying the chutes results in 3-4 "negative" g's. A detached retina caused from the forces of the parachute assisted stop led to the end of the career of Big Daddy Don Garlits.

So sayeth the Gods of Speed. And the choir said... Formerly Living.