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Three Good Things for Thursday, March 7th

No time to waste, let's hit those Three Good Things:

1. "Fifteen bucks for the whole seat but you'll only need the edge, Edge, EDGE!"
An impossibly red, impossibly cute 1997 Suzuki X-90. It looks like a real-life Barbie car, a mini two-seater pickup, minus the bed and with a little spoiler on the back. Also it has a T-top.

In college some buddies and I drove up to Cleveland one weekend to see the monster truck rally at the Gund Arena. Were we genuinely interested in it? Was it an act of willful irony? We were the last gasp of Generation X, so there is truly no way to know.

What I remember most aside from the noise and fumes was that the promotion ran a contest in between "acts" where local schmoes could try their personal vehicles on the motocross track they'd constructed on the arena floor, with the fastest time taking home a cash prize. 

One of the first contestants roared out of the gate in a huge, very obviously brand new, very obviously expensively tricked out Ford F-250. When the light turned green he floored it and got an incredible amount of air off the first ramp. It hung in the arena lights for a magical moment or two, before gravity reasserted itself authoritatively.

It landed square on its nose with a huge bang, tearing off the bumper and leaving a huge divot in the track. In addition to the bumper, the transmission was clearly fucked as the thing could barely limp off the track, and the frame was bent - it looked like how an old dog runs, with their body at an angle to the direction they're running. The best part was the arena announcer absolutely taking the piss of of the guy about his totalled truck and going on and on about how mad his wife was going to be.

A number of other truck guys gave the course their best shot, perhaps with a little more caution after seeing one of their number light $40,000 on fire. But the truck that took home the cash was some wiseacre who absolutely tore the course up in one of these tiny little Suzukis, beating the next fastest time by like ten entire seconds. It was glorious.

Also there were monster trucks, a motorcycle race, and a demolition derby. Probably the best $15 I've ever spent.


2. New Word Puzzle: Squeezy!

I saw Mark Popham post about this today on BlueSky: a great new word puzzle game with several fun gimmicks! This one's definitely going into the rotation along with the NYT puzzle app games.

https://imsqueezy.com/


3. Jack.

A brown striped tabby gets chin rubs in the kitchen, his eyes closed.

This handsome little fellow is awfully sweet and friendly, but his food-seeking neuroses are driving everyone a little bonkers. If anyone has any ideas about how to help a cat realize that he's not being starved to death and is actually being fed four times a day, leave hints or good vibes in the comments. 🙏

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