PSA: WD-40

In the spirit of the holidays, I bring you this PSA regarding WD-40.

"There are only two tools you need. Duct tape and WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, WD-40."

This has been bugging me lately. Maybe its because its the time of year when people feel obliged to buy gifts for, among others, the rough and tumble manly men who adhere strictly to the duct tape and WD-40 regimen. (adhere!) Don't get me wrong, duct tape and WD-40 are both terrific in their own rights. As far as I'm concerned WD-40 is the master of its game for what it's supposed to do. The trouble starts when people start declaring it universally helpful and applying it where it shouldn't be used. At this point you have a pile of guys thinking they've got it under control, maybe grunting a bit, and ultimately using a terrific invention to break shit further. For shame.

Let’s start at the start. WD-40 stands for “water displacement attempt number 40.” Forty was just the time that it happened to work. The job of WD-40 is to get rid of water. Along with this goes getting rid of rust and gunk, as well as preventing the same. If properly used it’s slick as hell. When it comes to these tasks, you’ve got the magic bullet. And it smells pretty good.

What WD-40 isn’t is a long lasting all-purpose lubricant. For that, you want grease, oil, graphite, Teflon, something not this. The thing about WD-40 is that it doesn’t really have staying power. It dries up, blows off, runs away, I have no idea what it’s actually doing, but after a while it just ain’t there no mo. The other (and significantly worse) thing about WD-40 is that it eats petroleum based things like some kinds of plastic and rubber. Like I said, it’s a bit of a solvent and it kills water. It’s not really meant to grease everything under the sun, tough guy. So before you douse your [whatever] with the yellow and blue can, remember that in two days your orings, seals, and plastic bushings may have turned to gum.

So what to do...how about this: If you own a hammer, a pipe wrench, and a tape measure and try to get everything done using only those tools, go ahead and WD-40 this hell out of everything. It's not really going to make it worse. If you own calipers, torx wrenches, a torque wrench, or gaskets of any sort, consult the goddam manual.

Gratuitous video of guy smashing WD-40 can:

2008: Resolutions

Usually around this time of year I try to figure out what I resolved to do last year and reflect upon how quickly I not only failed to do so, but completely forgot what I resolved. 2007 was different. I don't think I even got around to resolving anything. That pretty much set the tone for the year.

2008 has a resolution, at least. I figured everybody's doing it, might as well. The thing is, all I could come up with was "Get to it." Feeling pretty good about it though- if by this time next year, I can look back and say, "Man, 2008. I really got to it." ...well yeah, that'd be cool.

...aaand we're back

After a not-very-well-earned sabbatical, we now return you to your very nearly regularly scheduled attempts at humor and insight. Sorry.

The christmas season came and went. The season kicked off as usual, with me and my dad getting into the holiday spirit by swearing a lot. I feel no remorse about this - there's always something wrong with the fucking christmas lights. You get all the way done and discover that one of the strings died while you were putting it up. You take that one down and replace it with another string containing an equal number of lights, only to find that this string is 3 feet shorter than the last. I will never understand why 70 lights at 4 inch spacing does not consistently result in 280 inches. Then you accordion everything downstream of that over 3 feet to match, and you end up not making it around the last window. So you add another string, and now you have an extra 20 feet of lights that you have to hide in the bushes. This cycle would go on and on forever without a) better planning or b) an eventual "eh, that's good enough" attitude. Guess which we usually end up on. Once I achieve this frame of mind, I usually have about three-and-a-half weeks to let it fester before last minute panic forces me to shop for gifts. If the mall is crowded, you're all getting extension cords.

At the moment it's storming like a righteous mofo. Blowing so hard that whole trees are coming uprooted! Actually it's kind of awesome. If the weather is going to be crappy, it might as well do it in style. Get interesting for a bit, then get done so we can go outside and have a picnic or something. Maybe not quite Katrina interesting, but there are falling sticks to dodge and random crap strewn in designated no strewing places. Why yes, that is a SodexHo food cart in the hedge. Thank you for noticing.

hell if i know

Just back from another fine weekend of practice. Except, our act is not together, whatever it is, and whenever I run to the easiest bunker in town I get shot stupid about 20 seconds in. Questions about next year are right in our faces now. Do we want to keep going, who's in, what would it take. Sponsorship, a home field, a full squad, consistent practice? We're counting players, thinking of holding open tryouts, thinking of moving, thinking of asking people on, considering pyramid schemes, something to make it work. And if it can't work, we need to figure it out so guys can get on with life or find a team and keep going. To the guys mature enough to be able to give a straight answer, thanks.

I'm going to out and admit it - I often consider quitting paintball. Some Sundays you can't take three steps without getting lit up, and you drive two hours home wondering what the hell you're doing with your time and money. Some days the only other people at the field are there for a dorm trip or to test their battle skills or some bullshit, plus one kid who thinks he's hot shit and spends all day screaming and overshooting the new guys. Some days only three guys can make it and you can't do shit, but you got up at 5:30 and came out here to sit in a parking lot. Sometimes it's when you have to pay the credit card bill you racked up for air fare, hotel, rental car, and paint and suddenly you're staying in every night until the first comes around. Sometimes your friends from the rest of life wonder why you keep doing this, after you pass yet again on another soccer league with a bunch of guys you love, or skip out on a friend's wedding because the team needs you to fly out to East Bumfuck and put some paint on some people just so. And some days, you watch a couple games from the stands and go "what the fuck is this that we're doing here?"

If you're playing to impress people, you're going to be disappointed. You learn that talking about paintball is about as good at parties as describing the chain of events that led to you switching fabric softeners. 95% of the time you end up on the wrong end of some raised eyebrows that say "seriously?", or some jackass tries to tell you about how hard his gun can shoot and how his cousin used to have this angel.

But then Wednesday rolls around and you can't wait for Sunday so you can show up and do your thing and blast some people. Thursday afternoon your roommate catches you pretending to snap-shoot behind the couch, and you have to try and play it off like you were stretching. One weekend you go play by yourself and suddenly these guys you spend your Sundays with don't have your back, and there's no way in hell you're going to trust that kid wearing the camo to get your tape so you can do your thing, and absolutely zero chance people are going to shift and lock the zones back down when the snake side starts to drop. Field layouts for the next tournament are released and automatically half your work day is up in smoke. And when it's you who spots the gap and takes the other team apart, you wonder how you could ever give this up.

Recent quotables from the field:

"It's 9:00, where the fuck is everybody? And why can't I feel my fingers?"
"That's the rage."

"I'm seriously going to cry the day we decide not to be a team anymore."

"Left nipple's hot!"

"Some guy with a chest protector on bunkered me."
(chest protectors are the Smirnoff Ice of paintball. Unless you have boobs, in which case protect away.)

"Who else gets to do what we get to do? We travel around the country shooting people. We get to do something we love. When are we going to be able to do this again?"







apologies to Matty Marshall, who said it better than I did.

Oil Spills

Every now and then something happens where I find myself really wishing I could've just been in the room when the engineers were doing their design thing. Presumably they did the best they could, and it just wasn't idiot proof enough. Here's what probably happened:

Engineer 1: So we'll be carrying 1300 tons of oil. How do we prevent it from spilling everywhere in an accident?
Engineer 2: Lets beef it up. We'll give the ship a double hull.
Engineer1: Sounds good. And what happens if we hit something pointy, and it manages to pierce both walls?
Engineer 2: Well it would be stupid to put all our eggs in one basket. Let's make 10 compartments for the oil, so if we rupture we don't lose all of it at once.
Engineer 1: Got it. Ok, what happens if they hit something really big really hard? Like, they run into a major bridge?
Engineer 2: A bridge? Fuck, man, we put a rudder on it, right?
Engineer 1: Right, steering. Ok, I think we're good.
Engineer 2: I'm going on lunch break.

Calvin

You know what really grinds my gears? Stickers of Calvin (and sometimes Susie Derkins) praying to a gigantic cross. In addition to this being a fatty copyright infringement, did these people ever actually read Calvin and Hobbes? No. No they did not.

I'm thinking as retaliation on behalf of me and whoever cares to align themself, I'm going to cook up a batch of stickers depicting [insert your favorite religious figure here] water skiing. Now I'm not saying they water skied or didn't water ski. I don't know. It's not really well documented, I'd imagine. The point is, that's not what they're about. Cowabunga!

Somebody go halfsies on this with me

If we buy two, we get five dollars off! Plus we can tape cardboard to the front as armor and have wicked jousting fun with wrapping paper tubes.

http://sacramento.craigslist.org/bik/438351939.html

"2 California Charriots with front suspension and hand brake. Minimal usage, foam grips are dry. Shock covers may have cracks, otherwise good condition. These cost $119.00 each new I believe. The other one looks about the same but is buried in my garage. $40.00 each or both for $75.00."

• Location: Cameron Park
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests