Get your post counts here! *read 1st post for rules*

[jclo3313]

Kill me please.

[TEHxFALLEN V1.2]

That Geo Metro is a monster!! If I were that guy, I'd rip off that Turbo badge and beat up the outside a bit more lol

[jclo3313]

r4.jpg

[jclo3313]

2007-dodge-charger-srt-8--10_800x0w.jpg

[TEHxFALLEN V1.2]

^ all of the above are equipped with VTEC!

[*MAD DOG*]

^

I swear one day you'll marry VTEC

[Black Yaris]

get it right.... it is V-tach, yo

[TEHxFALLEN V1.2]

Oh yeah! VTAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

[KCALB SIRAY]

beer

[KCALB SIRAY]

another beer

[*MAD DOG*]

beer beer beer

[Bob_VT]

Shot of scotch....... JW Blue

[jclo3313]

It's a little early for scotch.

[Bob_VT]

Never too early for the good stuff!

[jclo3313]

It is if you were in the cheap stuff the night before.

[jclo3313]

51889_main_large.jpg
Man boobs.
There is an art exhibit in New York I’d really like to see, but won’t be able to make: “Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan,” sponsored by the Japan Society. See the guy just above? That’s a work from the exhibit — a late 15th-early 16th century image of Budai (“Hotei” in Japnese), a “marauding priest of the street.”

He looks a little weird for a priest, doesn’t he? Check out the pot belly, the man boobs, the five o’clock shadow, the robe that’s two sizes too small and full of rips and holes, and probably hasn’t been washed in about a month … if you saw a guy like that walking through your neighborhood, you’d probably call the cops. And look at the expression on Hotei’s face. He is completely comfortable with his life, himself, and the way he looks, and if you don’t like it, well, that’s your problem.

One of the aspects of Zen figure art that is so appealing to me is the depiction of major Zen Buddhist figures as regular guys. It’s really hard to imagine a similar depiction of Jesus in traditional Western Christian art, looking as he may have actually appeared: a skinny, scraggly, half-naked, dirty little brown guy, an enigmatic half-smile on his face. Most of the time, he looks like a member of the Allman Brothers — maybe Duane and Greg’s long lost brother, Jesus Allman. And Jesus is typically depicted with a huge smarmy smile and an outstretched hand like he’s running for city alderman, or else is given the primly stern look of the school hall monitor, the overly serious kid with no friends whom the teacher always asked to take names when she had to leave the class.

Of course, there are plenty of boring images of Buddha in that traditional pose of serene adrogyny – looking a little like a glam era David Bowie who’s had a frontal lobotomy. I don’t care much for those. But that image of Hotei I can relate to. Not necessarily that we should all wander around fat and half naked, but that we should simply be what we are and be comfortable with that – stop trying to conform to someone else’s rigid, impossible physical ideal. That’s one of the things I like about trail running, because many people who run trail races are far from the accepted ideal for physical specimens – there’s little of that aggressive hyper-leanness I often seem to encounter in some urban marathoning circles. Most trail runners I’ve met seem very comfortable in their own skins. And that’s also what I like about a lot of Zen figure art. Here I am: back and ear hair, bald head, pot belly and all. Gotta love me, because this is all there is.

[jclo3313]

"Day that shall live in Infamy".

Pearl Harbor Raid, 7 December 1941 --
Overview and Special Image Selection
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese agression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead. Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya.

These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan's far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered.

However, the memory of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on. Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan's striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.

[TEHxFALLEN V1.2]

VTEC YO!