So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

belfastboy said:

In my house we keep a bottle of Southern Comfort on the kitchen table. We each take a splash in our morning coffee. It is the closest we have to ritual in our house. It started when we RV'd in the US..... where you can buy Kirkland brand Irish Creme for $10 a litre....we use it instead of creamer. In Canada we have to buy the real Bailey's for $40 for 750ml....so we don't. Southern Comfort is the most palatable of the cheaper booze so it is our poison of choice.

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And it works well as a sweetener. I remember once having had a rest of SC in a glass that dried in what caused a nice layer of sugar crystals on bottom of the glass.

Turnip said:

And it works well as a sweetener. I remember once having had a rest of SC in a glass that dried in what caused a nice layer of sugar crystals on bottom of the glass.

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Yes, just sweet enough but not too. We bought a bottle of honey infused moonshine (white whiskey) from a small distiller in Ennis, Montana that was perfect for coffee but alas have not been back to pick up more. In the meantime SC will have to be the fill in.

Turnip said:

And it works well as a sweetener. I remember once having had a rest of SC in a glass that dried in what caused a nice layer of sugar crystals on bottom of the glass.

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Yeah, that stuff is sweet. Drinking it straight is not recommended.

ChiTownScion said:

Six figures for a vehicle does seem obscene... although my pulse quickens as much as anyone's at the sight of, say, a Shelby Cobra or a '55 T- Bird convertible. Let alone a Duesenberg or Boattailed Auburn.

But I do grasp the notion of long term economy, IF it actually plays out in real life. If a decent Mercedes model will actually outlast the four or five Chevys that could be purchased over its lifetime, that's all well and fine. We all know, however, that it's a lot more costly to maintain a Mercedes ( Replacing a broken headlamp alone is a pricy proposition.) than a Chevy. So it's never an easy call.

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I’ve owned dozens of automobiles, and with the exception of a few lower-end British sports cars and a ’47 Dodge school bus and a ’56 VW and a much more recent wheelchair-accessible Toyota Sienna van, I’ve been the cars’ last owner before they got crushed, as memory serves.

There comes a point with a car where squeezing more miles out of it is really just throwing good money after bad, but that point comes much later than many people seem to think. Modern cars (like, built in the past couple three decades), even the lower-end ones, can easily go a quarter million miles without failure of any major component, provided they are driven by people who wish to make them last.

tonyb said:

Modern cars (like, built in the past couple three decades), even the lower-end ones, can easily go a quarter million miles without failure of any major component, provided they are driven by people who wish to make them last.

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Then you know european cars bad. The clutches are crap and that's only one thing of the list.

Even our beloved Kia Sephia, brother of Mazda 323, had no failures in the major parts until the end by 130.000 km. Still first clutch.
And then look at the german 90s cars.

I took my '90 Civic to over 300k. What finally got it in the end was a nagging electrical issue. My wife cried when it was towed away.

No unibody car in Maine will last longer than eighteen years before the rust gets it. I've owned a '69 VW Beetle, an '81 VW Rabbit, an '88 VW Fox, a '97 Toyota Corolla, a '99 Subaru Impreza, and with the exception of the Fox, which only lived to see 16, they've all been pronounced Uninspectable at the age of 18, in every case due to excessive underside rust. Engine mileage is completely irrelevant -- the bodies are eaten by the winter road treatments and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Sometimes the damage ventures on the catastrophic -- when I traded in the '69 VW, it broke in two as it was hoisted onto a hauler to carry it away.

Currently I've got a 2013 Subaru, and I do not look forward to having to buy another car in 2031. Car-buying ranks with kidney stones, migraines, and cable-tv talk show personalities among my least-favorite things in the universe.

tonyb said:

The “decorative” arts are furniture and tableware and other items of utility in everyday life (one display had a WE 302 on a deco office desk). There’s no good reason that a water pitcher, say, shouldn’t be an attractive water pitcher. It makes everyday life a little better.

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This is why I love mid-century modern stuff so much; for me, the perfect combination of art, comfort, and spatial qualities.... by which I mean we recently replaced an early 90s leather recliner (not a Lazy-Boy, but something similar) with two Ikea Strandmon chairs - wingback armchairs in the mcm style, a reissue of a model Ikea did in the late 50s. Lovely things to sit in, incredible comfort, marvellous build quality. But the best of it is that visually they take up no more space in the room than the big recliner did, with the end result being we have an extraseat in the room for no compromise in space - and somehow the room seems bigger.

LizzieMaine said:

I never understood what one could do in a six figure car that they can't do in a four figure car, or even a three figure car. I'd feel like the french fries I drop on the floor would have to be gold-plated.

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Funny thing I've noticed with everything in which I have ever been interested - cars, phones, clothes, guitars, fridges.... there's a basic price you have to pay to get something that is utilitarian and does basically everything you want of it. You pay a little more in increments, you get increments of quality improvement. Whether those increments are worth the extra money is very subjective - and certainly the law of diminishing returns kicks in hard. There will always come a point, though, where that improvement, no matte how real it is and how much it can be measured, is not of any benefit or even perceptible to the average person. There's only so loud I can play music at home; I don't need concert-venue level volume without distortion. Sure, it's a sign of quality, but I will never be able to realise it. If I can't hear a difference in quality from one turntable to another, all other things being equal, there's no point me paying for the extra even if the improvement is definitely there and can be measured. With technology it can be hard not to get sucked into "bigger, better, faster, more", but last year when I went to replace a phone handset, I went looking for something that was a significant improvement on what I had and that met all my needs. I discovered I didn't need a flagship at £500; a £100 handset with a great camera did everything I need. Smaller hard drive than I wanted so I just added a £20 200GB MicroSD card.... I guess if I wa really into phones I might have thought the flagahip worth paying for, but...

Of course with everything there comes a point where it's just not possible to improve function, so you pay for intangibles and form - designer brand, limited edition finishes.... I'll never forget the family jeweller showing us a watch with a retail value of £20K and a £10 movement in it.

Trenchfriend said:

One thing, that TICKS me really off:

This fashion of the last ten years, that people put the "to be honest" in their sentences without any need.

Which moron started that crap??

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It's been used in my local dialect for years to mean "I recognise that you may not like what I am about to tell you, however I am choosing to be honest with you rather than say what I think you want to hear." Serves a purpose.

tonyb said:

I can appreciate the engineering that goes into extremely expensive cars. But in a world of 65 mph speed limits and traffic jams it’s hard to argue the utility of a Ferrari or a new Porsche 911. Those kind of cars, while still far from ordinary, aren’t such a rare sight, either. I just hope never to collide with one.

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I've always found the Ferraris quite ugly. An awful lot of supercars are just crass in my eyes; I'd rather a Ford Mustang than any of the European supercars of recent decades. I was dismissive of Porsche for a long time (and aesthetically I do not like their cars much post 1980), but my Dad picked up a '78 911 in a trade some years ago, and I was impressed with that. I totally agree on the pointlessness of racecar performance for driving legally on the road, but that old 911 reeked quality from every pore, right down to the way the door closed. I have to admit it did make me appreciate that it was on another level quality wise. That said, I'd still only drive one if somebody else was paying the bill. Including the insurance and the fuel. And I had of-street parking. And....

Hercule said:

Though I still find Porshe SUVs amusing (they seem to be mostly driven by women - I wonder if they know that Porshe made tanks during the war?), and I am quick to ask my Lexis driving friends how they like their Toyota (they really appreciate my interest).

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I get the notion of hire purchase for a car somebody needs as practical, reliable transport, but this idea of leasing a car where folks are sweet-talked into upgrading every so often like with phones so that you're never really paid off on anything... ugh.

Those Porsche SUVs are ugly auld things... I'm surprised they took off, tbh. If I wanted a jeep, I'd go to a company that made jeeps. I wouldn't go to Huntsman to make me a pair of work-jeans... Those things are what my dad would call 'badge-engineering'.

I remember Lexis coming out; pal of my dad's worked in a Toyota dealership at the time. I recall the scepticism over an "expensive Toyota". Toyota made a decent motor - my dad drove many of them for years until they priced themselves too high for the UK market (something to do with the pound and the Yen as I recall. Don't see so many of them around now as was once the case, though the Prius is hugely popular for minicabs here in London, as cars driving electric don't have to pay the congestion charge.). I've never been convinced a Lexus is worth the upcharge, but there must be enough folks who are or they wouldn't still be around....

GHT said:

View attachment 289571
Porshe SUV's are one thing, standards have really dropped when Rolls Royce produce an SUV. A quarter of a million pounds, since you ask.

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I'm sure the quality and the performance is still there, but Rolls Royce haven't produced an attractive looking car since about 1984. Ugly as sin the new ones - they all look like a Tonka toy reimagining of the real thing. Like that VW Golf they stuck a jellymould on and proclaimed it a "new Beetle". Engine's not even in the right end!

KILO NOVEMBER said:

I recently got an ad for Kevlar shoelaces. That has some appeal, practically unbreakable. Then I saw the price, $13.00 a pair. So when the plague is over, I'll keep in mind where I keep those spare shoelaces, maybe sort them by color and length, and plan a five-minute retard of my leaving time.

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I've had shoelaces break at awkward times. That sounds good, though, the kevlar ones... Pricier, but if they lasted a decade well worth it for regularly worn boots.

Hercule said:

Reminds me of my college days when I wore a Pea coat. I had a devil of a time with buttons staying on. I tried everything (rug yarn seemed to last the longest) until my brother (in the Navy at the time - hence my source for Pea coats, and boondocker boots - it was always a treat to visit the PX when he was home on leave) gave me lengths of suture thread. Don't know what it was but I never lost a button after that.

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Best discovery I ever made was waxed thread. My dad put me on to it - they used it for something or other in GPO Telephones back in the day. Soon as a coat button shows signs of being loose, I get at it with that, never a problem.

Harp said:

I enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago when in college so I could avail its research library before
I discovered this was the place to meet girls.

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I knew a guy at university who signed up to do a course on Women's History because he figured it'd be a class full of girls. I never did hear how he got on with that, though!

ChiTownScion said:

But I do grasp the notion of long term economy, IF it actually plays out in real life. If a decent Mercedes model will actually outlast the four or five Chevys that could be purchased over its lifetime, that's all well and fine. We all know, however, that it's a lot more costly to maintain a Mercedes ( Replacing a broken headlamp alone is a pricy proposition.) than a Chevy. So it's never an easy call.

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There's definitely a line. Personally if I had big money to put into a car, I'd go looking for something that had a chance of appreciating in value (one of those new 'old' Mustangs does appeal), but then it's all relative. If I earned ten time what I do now, I'd only ever fly business class....

LizzieMaine said:

Car-buying ranks with kidney stones, migraines, and cable-tv talk show personalities among my least-favorite things in the universe.

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Certainly agree as to that. Finding a good car sales rep is tougher than finding a decent clergyman. We found a guy who was nearly a ninety minute drive from us who was a lot more like (in appearance and manner) a college professor than a car salesman. Honest, hard working, forthright.. everything that a car salesman is NOT supposed to be. Bought four new Hondas from him over the years.

Alas, we moved across the country. I'll travel 2 hours to buy a decent car. Three days: fahgetabout it.

Edward said:

This is why I love mid-century modern stuff so much; for me, the perfect combination of art, comfort, and spatial qualities.... by which I mean we recently replaced an early 90s leather recliner (not a Lazy-Boy, but something similar) with two Ikea Strandmon chairs - wingback armchairs in the mcm style, a reissue of a model Ikea did in the late 50s. Lovely things to sit in, incredible comfort, marvellous build quality. But the best of it is that visually they take up no more space in the room than the big recliner did, with the end result being we have an extraseat in the room for no compromise in space - and somehow the room seems bigger. ...

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As I’ve become better versed in these things, I’ve come to recognize that the “
iconic” (a much overused term, but in this case a fitting one) MCM designers — Saarinen, Eames, Nelson, etc. — owe a whole lot to designers working a few decades earlier.

No matter what Tom Wolfe (who wouldn’t have known art had it bitten him in the seat of those silly white suits of his) might’ve had to say about it, the Bauhaus crew — Kandinsky, Klee, Breuer, Mies, Gropius, etc. — drew, in the 1920s, the blueprint for the remainder of the century and beyond. Much of that stuff is pushing a hundred years old now, and still looks as fresh as tomorrow.

As to IKEA ...

I shall always remember strolling into the Renton, Washington IKEA store behind a young couple as the boy half said to the girl half, “The secret to IKEA’s success is they know how to make cheap s**t look good.”

I own a few things from IKEA — a couple of Klippan loveseats (one of which is falling apart), a pair of oversized drum shades I use as swag lamps over dining tables (we have a furnished apartment in the basement of this house, hence the multiples). I once had a Poang chair. I understand why that stuff sells. It’s comfortable, it’s stylish, it’s inexpensive. But I wouldn’t call it well-built, with the exception of some of the kitchen stuff, from cabinets to cookware. A friend put IKEA cabinets in one of his rental units something like 35 years ago, when he had to motor up to Vancouver to buy the stuff, seeing how IKEA had no stores in the states back then. Those cabinets still look nearly new, last I saw them.

LizzieMaine said:

No unibody car in Maine will last longer than eighteen years before the rust gets it. I've owned a '69 VW Beetle, an '81 VW Rabbit, an '88 VW Fox, a '97 Toyota Corolla, a '99 Subaru Impreza, and with the exception of the Fox, which only lived to see 16, they've all been pronounced Uninspectable at the age of 18, in every case due to excessive underside rust. Engine mileage is completely irrelevant -- the bodies are eaten by the winter road treatments and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Sometimes the damage ventures on the catastrophic -- when I traded in the '69 VW, it broke in two as it was hoisted onto a hauler to carry it away.

Currently I've got a 2013 Subaru, and I do not look forward to having to buy another car in 2031. Car-buying ranks with kidney stones, migraines, and cable-tv talk show personalities among my least-favorite things in the universe.

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I’ve never lived in a place where vehicle safety inspections are required by law. Emissions, yes, but not such trivial matters as structural integrity.

I imagine that some enterprising types are pulling the engines and transmissions out of relatively low-mileage rust buckets in the Northeast to sell for transplant into high-mileage but rust-free cars in warmer climes.

"GOOD STICKER WILL RUN" is the most common phrase you'll find in classified car ads in New England.

And if you can't get a sticker, there are alternatives:






Some people do put more effort into it than others.

A friend who lives on Whidbey Island recently gave away a Toyota Tercel with 290K on it. Still runs well and has only superficial body damage. Too good to crush. We can assume that its scrap value will be no less a year or three from now as it is today. And in the meanwhile it’s getting people where they need to go.

tonyb said:

Yeah, that stuff is sweet. Drinking it straight is not recommended.

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We used to call it “sudden discomfort”

tonyb said:

As I’ve become better versed in these things, I’ve come to recognize that the “
iconic” (a much overused term, but in this case a fitting one) MCM designers — Saarinen, Eames, Nelson, etc. — owe a whole lot to designers working a few decades earlier.

No matter what Tom Wolfe (who wouldn’t have known art had bitten him in the seat of those silly white suits of his) might’ve had to say about it, the Bauhaus crew — Kandinsky, Klee, Breuer, Mies, Gropius, etc. — drew, in the 1920s, the blueprint for the remainder of the century and beyond. Much of that stuff is pushing a hundred years old now, and still looks as fresh as tomorrow.

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Everything builds on everything else; even self-proclaimed "year zero" types depend on what went before to the extent that what you reject can be as formative as what you follow...

As to IKEA ...

I shall always remember strolling into the Renton, Washington IKEA store behind a young couple as the boy half said to the girl half, “The secret to IKEA’s success is they know how to make cheap s**t look good.”

I own a few things from IKEA — a couple of Klippan loveseats (one of which is falling apart), a pair of oversized drum shades I use as swag lamps over dining tables (we have a furnished apartment in the basement of this house, hence the multiples). I once had a Poang chair. I understand why that stuff sells. It’s comfortable, it’s stylish, it’s inexpensive. But I wouldn’t call it well-built, with the exception of some of the kitchen stuff, from cabinets to cookware. A friend put IKEA cabinets in one of his rental units something like 35 years ago, when he had to motor up to Vancouver to buy the stuff, seeing how IKEA had no stores in the states back then. Those cabinets still look nearly new, last I saw them.

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I've seen Ikea get a lot of hate over the years, mostly from folks with limited or no experience. They definitely do produce some stuff which is not great - the really bottom end stuff. Though at that, it's cheap.... if I had to be somewhere for a year and didn't want the hassle of taking furniture with me again when I moved.... it has its place. Their higher end stuff is another matter. 90% of the furniture I bought twenty years ago when I moved into my place is IKea - I bought careful and went with solid wood. Only problem is now that we're replacing some of it due to taste rather than necessity (it's all got at least another two decades in it), it turns out I'm struggling to find someone to take perfectly good furniture... so many people now just want new (even if that means a compromise in the quality), it's impossible to sell any furniture here bar rare antiques second hand (and a lot of those don't fetch what they used to). I hate waste... there's something really unpleasant about how much perfectly serviceable stuff just gets binned nowadays. And people wonder why the planet is dying...

^^^^
For a few years the missus and I lived in an apartment complex a short distance from a state college, so our neighbors there were mostly students. At the end of each academic term the dumpsters were filled with perfectly serviceable furniture and housewares. Yet I’m confident most of the people sending that stuff to the landfills would consider themselves ecologically sensitive. A renter in one of our properties did the same thing, left without much more than her clothing.

I figure that the “main” furniture — seating, tables, dressers, bookcases, etc. — ought to last several human lifetimes. There’s really no good reason it shouldn’t, provided it isn’t abused. But most newer stuff, and not just IKEA’s, just isn’t made to last. I pushed down on an arm of a chair in the basement apartment here, to boost myself up from a seated position, and the arm broke off. A low-end furniture store about a mile from where I sit at present does a steady trade. They advertise on TV and in newspapers and by direct mail. Their delivery trucks are a daily sight. And they play up that they offer financing. So people are going into debt to acquire furniture that will be on its last legs by the time it’s paid for.

Almost all of our stuff was used when we acquired it — quite used, much of it. Even those IKEA loveseats I alluded to a couple posts back I found on Craigslist. (They are quite stylish, gotta give ’em that.) Most of the larger pieces in the basement unit I acquired from a friend (since deceased) out Seattle way. Had I not been renting a truck already, to move a bunch of other stuff, it would have been less costly to buy similar secondhand furniture locally. The kitchen appliances in that unit were used when I got ’em, free. A friend here (also since deceased, alas) was gonna send ’em to the scrapyard. They work fine, and I expect they will for a good long while.

Edward said:

Everything builds on everything else; even self-proclaimed "year zero" types depend on what went before to the extent that what you reject can be as formative as what you follow...
...

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My point precisely. As we’ve discussed before, most of that “hip,” cutting-edge stuff we — the first post-War generation — thought was remaking the world in our image was actually the work of people our grandparents’ ages.

I’ve long been receptive to arguments that there is an innate human aesthetic sensibility, that it isn’t all learned. Echoes of cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago are found in 20th century art. It’s beautiful stuff.

When did companies stop to celebrate such christmas partys??

Edward said:

...there's something really unpleasant about how much perfectly serviceable stuff just gets binned nowadays. And people wonder why the planet is dying...

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Particularly with regards to the electronics junkies. I've lost count of the number of people I've known who stood in line for hours in order to buy the "newest and bestest" cell phone on the day it was made available, even though their previous/current cell phone was in perfect working order. Or the newest gaming console. Or...you name it. It's appalling. Conversely, I'm the guy who refuses to replace my cell phone while it's still working even though it has long outlasted everyone else's because I've used mine far less than they used theirs. I just can't make sense of "retiring" a perfectly good...well, anything.

This is my biggest objection to Modern Tech. I refuse to be a patsy for the Boys. If I can't do it on the tech that I have, I just don't do it. And it ain't no great loss. I can't think of a single worthwhile thing I've missed out on by refusing ever to own a mobile phone, and I can think of a great many worthless things I've avoided.