Saturday, October 3, 2009

I Suck At Who Killed The Electric Car?

With the dreadful downpour of showers today, I thought I would be somewhat productive around the house and work on the garage. And by "work on the garage", I mean install two compact florescent light bulbs in the garage door opener which took probably all of five minutes.

Luckily, I'm not a blonde. Sorry, the whole light bulb thing reminded me of the "How many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb?" joke. For anyone curious, the answer that I find comical to that joke is ""What's a lightbulb?". (It's things like that which make blondes so shiny and attractive.)

Anyway, with the energy saving light bulbs installed, my garage door opener installation project is officially complete. Of course, this was after I had to attach pieces of wood to the garage joist to hold the garage door opener, tape and compound the drywall, and actually install the garage door opener itself.

I even had to get new batteries for the garage door remote because I had waited over two years to start this project. Consequently, the garage door opener remained in its packaging for those two years, taking up space in the very garage that it was supposed to open a door for. But the project is finally done. Karen and I can now park our car in the garage again, which is quite an accomplishment. In my opinion, garages are a must have to protect cars from the harsh elements on New England.

Unfortunately, my garage has two bays. Although one bay has a garage door opener, the other one does not. Some day I'll work on installing a garage door opener for the other bay. Baby steps. I do actually have the other garage door opener for the other bay. It has also been sitting in the garage taking up space. (Yes, I tend to procrastinate when it comes to personal home improvement projects.) And not to get my hopes up too high, I spent some time today marking up the walls and ceilings to plan for the installation of the next garage door opener.

Aside from that, I was not too productive... unless of course you consider making my legendary mac 'n cheese meal productive. For anyone curious, my mac 'n cheese dish would beat my friend's (Hot Amy) mac 'n cheese hands down. Hot Amy, after all, has a genetic predisposition to losing... and that includes her taste buds.

Anyway, as Karen and I stayed in today, we ended up watching an interesting movie on one of our favorite channels: Planet Green. The movie we watched was "Who Killed The Electric Car?".

(The video below is a preview of Who Killed The Electric Car?)


According to my friend Wikipedia, the movie "is a 2006 documentary film that explores the creation, limited commercialization, and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the US government, the Californian government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles, and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology."

Now I suck at "Who Killed The Electric Car?". I know the description does not make the movie sound interesting. The movie, however, was actually very good. I would recommend it to anyone. Of course, the movie only increases my annoyance with things like President Reagan, President Bush, oil companies, and car companies like General Motors.

Plus, the movie had a former Baywatch actress in it. Granted, it was Alexandra Paul. The movie also had other celebrities like Tom Hanks, Ed Begley, Jr (of course) and a very grizzled Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson, with narration by Martin Sheen.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. I must say... after watching the movie, I almost feel compelled to purchase an electric car now because it just makes environmental sense. Zero emissions... how can you beat that? (Right now, the Nissan Leaf seems very intriguing.)