Hello

There is a very large class of people that own 65/66 Mustangs that, as far as I can tell, anyway, have been, for the most part, ignored entirely. They don't really want that 100 pt. show car that is so nice and was soooo expensive that they're afraid to drive it, they also don't want to make their car capable of achieving warp factor three. They just want this car that they dearly love to be able to cruise around smoothly and reliably, without having it dump them out on the side of the road or have it start making weird noises or belching out big clouds of funky-smelling smoke. And I think, truth be told, that this is by far the largest class of Mustang owners. They take their car to some technician when what they actually need is a mechanic, and this, frequently, does not work out very well at all for the owner. They don't want to re-engineer the entire car, they just want someone to fix what broke. These are the people that I am trying help out with this blog. Some problems require a little bit of back and forth, as in, "Try this." "I tried that and it didn't change anything."
" Oh. well, you probably need to try that." " I tried that and it helped, but it still isn't quite right." "Now you need to try this...." If you go to http://www.allfordmustangs.com/ and then go to the classics forums, you will be able to do that with a pretty hefty gathering of some very knowledgeable people that also happen to be very friendly. None of that ridiculous one-upmanship, no flaming or abuse, none of that stuff. Just good, solid advice from people that know what they are talking about.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Christopher Hitchens passes away

I know that this has absolutely nothing to do with an old Mustang, but, a truly great man has passed away, and I must acknowledge that. On thursday, December 15, Christopher Hitchens passed away at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX.  He died of complications resulting from esophageal cancer.The bare-bones version of who he was is that he was an author and journalist. He was a frequent guest commentator on literary and news programs that went all the way across the ideological spectrum. The reason for this was very simple. He was that rare combination of being both blindingly brilliant and supremely clever. He is the only man that I have ever seen that could make you laugh while he was destroying your long cherished ideas. He was also a frequent participant in public formal debates. To be on the other side of the issue from him would be a brutal experience. A frequent tactic in that type of debate is to quote sources or reference incidents that are so obscure, you are confident that your opponents have never even heard of them. I never saw Mr. Hitchens get caught by that. People tried it, of course, but, it always turned out that he was thoroughly familiar with the incident, knew the history of it, all of the principle players in it,  and might even have previously written something about it. He had no patience for the hypocrite or the ignoramus, and had no problem at all with having a good deal of fun at their expense. He drank heavily, and he was a smoker. He did quit smoking, but, he quit too late. The cigaretes ultimately killed him. He was who he was, and he offered no apologies for that. He was a columnist and literary critic at Vanity Fair, Slate, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, along with several other media outlets. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect. He will be sorely missed by many, myself included.

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