Perhaps Ox Power?

Horses really are quite beautiful, and powerful, animals. Whenever I get near one I can just imagine the destructive force that thing could deliver. And it seems to follow naturally that it occurred to someone thousands of years ago, that you could ride one. Horses have been tremendously useful and quite influential in our history. Imagine battles without cavalry, cowboys and Indians without horses, and let's not forget about Incitatus, the first horse to be considered a Roman Consul. At least we hope he was the first horse for that, and the last for that matter.

But there's one thing that sticks out that seems a bit odd to me. Do we really have to measure how powerful our engines are in horsepower? Isn't that just a bit redundant? I could see how back in the day it was relevant. I could see a car salesman saying, "Yeah, you got yerself a horse alright, but how about 22 horses? Ya got that? This thingamabob is equal to 22 horses, and ya don't even need to feed it!" Great sales pitch. If this was 1910.

But it is now 2010 (almost 2011). My Honda Civic has 198 horsepower. I'm really glad to know that if I strapped nearly 200 horses to the front of my car, I could save on gas and go just as fast. I hope people are beginning to see what I'm getting at. It's a useless measurement, and yet we keep using it. And it is so prevalent. Even NASA scientists still use it. Do we really need to know that the main engines of the space shuttle had 37 million horsepower? Has anyone ever seen 37 million horses at one time? What does this prove? I guess I can imagine strapping 37 million horses into a giant rubber band so I could go to space, but that's a lot of truck fulls of hay, not to mention all the horseshit. My launchpad would consist of nothing but manure. The sheer mechanics of all this is mind boggling. So why do we do it? Isn't there some other system we could come up with? How about Model T's? Or my car? Can't we just take 200 horsepower and call it 1 Car? It's a pretty even ratio. Not too hard to figure out. Easier than converting miles to kilometers.

Thingamabob is actually a word?

The Tide of My Fingers

As I'm home for awhile it's time for me to get back into the blogging habit of mine.

Now that it is the holidays I'm waiting to hear of two things: One is someone gets trampled to death because it was their life long dream to die while being the very first in a store at 6am. The second is to hear the words "war on Christmas." I'm not sure what war this is. As far as I'm aware it is simply people exercising their constitutional right for religious freedom. If Christians don't like people advocating against Christmas Trees and Santas being in department stores, then I would suggest they move to a country that does not have religious freedom. Like China. I'm sure they'll see all the Christmas trees they want while there. Or maybe not. Maybe if they want to see Christmas trees in public places, they should go to Rockefeller Center. There's a big one there.

And if someone is going to push the dilemma on me "What if the tree in Rockefeller Center was wanting to be taken down." My response to that would be if the Supreme Court deemed a tree there was unconstitutional, so be it. But for those Christians who just can't celebrate and be merry without having a tree everywhere, don't worry. The Supreme Court would never make such a liberal decision.

I'm quite tired of these commercials polluting the airwaves, taking Christmas songs that are already stuck in my head and substituting their own cheesy lyrics. "We Dish you a Merry Christmas." "Happy Honda Days." Really? Since these companies are wanting to be so clever with advertising, I've some ideas of my own.

"Do you beer what I beer?" Budweiser.
"Jingle Bells." Trojan condoms. No rewrite needed.
"Frosty the Bank Man" Chase or Bank of America foreclosing houses.
"Wreck the Halls" Any restoration/remodel company.

That's just a few, but you get the idea.

I'm told it's dinner time. That might make some of you hungry.