Cars Cubed
Posted at 5:45 AM on August 10, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(27 Comments)
With the success of the Cash for Clunkers program comes a new problem - a surge in the number of crushed cars. Fortunately for us, Spin Williams has been discussing the potential upside of this with his cohorts at The Meeting That Never Ends, and he included us in his memo routing list.
People, we have a great opportunity to solidify our standing as the world leader in Car Cubes with this Clunkers program, and we need to take advantage of it by promoting the heck out of them! People don't realize how useful Car Cubes can be!They're as heavy as regular full-sized cars, but they take up much less space! They have an interesting visual texture! And once you place a Car Cube somewhere, you're not going to want to move it. It gives a feeling of solidity, stability and permanence - something people are seeking in their lives right now. Car Cubes are handy for all sorts of purposes at home, including landscaping, as structural elements, and of course they're great as features of bold interior design. They look beautiful. To me.
Imagine the interesting conversations you'll have once you tell friends that your beloved F-150 pick up truck is now the living room coffee table! (As if they won't already know it, the moment they walk into the room!) Or a retaining wall out in the garden! A counter weight for grandma's elevator chair. A piece of yard sculpture. A backstop at a ball field in your neighborhood park. Play equipment for the children! (Make sure they wear their Kevlar rompers!)
The possible uses of crushed automobiles is limited only by our imaginations. I'm stoked! I'm pumped! My ride is crushed and chunked! Car Cubes!
Spin Williams is a trend watcher, dealmaker and visionary.
What could you do with a nicely crushed and squared-off car?
Comments (27)
hmmmm. cubed cars. sounds to dangerous for a goat-toy hill. i guess i thought all those old cars were recycled in some way - the steel especially. thanks for helping to think of a solution, Spin!
goat cheese month recipe: stir some sweetening (honey, sugar, or your preference) into goat cheese. dollop on vanilla wafers, top with fruit.
busy, busy day today getting ready for the Carlton County Fair, readying my taters, onions, soap and Steve will enter photos. goat show is thursday at 9! and Cynthia will be at the Historical Soc. - come see us!
Those chrushed cars are not as attractive as Spin suggests. I don't think I want one. However they might work well as joke material here in my home town.
In the past some of my nieghbors have found old out houses in their front yards that were placed there in the dark of night as a joke. I would think the same people who set out houses in yards might consider putting a crushed car in a yard as a joke. They would need a fairly big fork lift to put the crushed car in place, but I bet they could do it.
It's a good thing Spin thinnks of all these things we can do with the crushed cars, they're surely piling up! How many times does $4,500 go into a billion, anyway? I know they do take the tires off because there is a market for the rubber, but as the steel market has fallen lower than my bisqucts, those car cubes might indeed litter our landscape for a while.
Isn't the heat/humidity somewhat lovely and quite summer-like? Have a popsicle and enjoy! Rock in a porch swing!
You'll never have arriving guests miss your house or need to call for directions again if you place a car cube in your front yard. "It's the house on the left with a car cube... you can't miss it." Unless, of course, your neighbors had the same great idea for house identification.
Happy Monday, all, even if that does seem a bit of an oxymoron.
dale could you ask spin to come up with a link as to where we could get these cubes? i think there could be serious applications for these pet rocks of 2009
Greetins Heartlanders! Car Cubes -- leave it to Spin to come up with a new way of looking at old or junky things. I wish there was a useful, beautiful or more interesting way to recycle these car cubes.
It reminds me of the skyscrapers of garbage cubes in Wall-E. I assumed they recycled most of the car parts in some way -- what a shame.
How about building houses out of car cubes? You'd need a way to fill up the cracks and insulate - but if people can make houses and cabins out of shipping containers (which they have), why not car cubes? MIght want to stick to single-story structures, at least to start, but I bet exterior maintenance would be pretty minimal (maybe a little bondo every now and again to patch, some Rustoleum paint...)
I think Tim could get one of those "beautiful" car cubes at a local junk yard. They would probably be glad to sell you one, put it on a flat bed truck, and deliver it. Of course you might need to check on your local city ordinances. We aren't allowed to have cars that aren't fit to drive on our property where I live.
Three words: Life Sized Legos
I want to note Mike Seeger's passing. My late husband, David and i went to the Master Musician's festival in Kentucky in 2001. We went to one of Seeger's workshops. David and Seeger spent a good deal of time talking and playing, and continued emailing for quite a while. How cool was that? So how about a Seeger tune in his honor.
Nice idea, Anna.
Any architects out there with more ideas on how you could build a structure out of curshed cars? Or why you wouldn't want to?
Yes, for most city ordinances they would have to be disguised with a little paint (Anna's Rustoleum seems best). We do need a new retaining wall by the garage...
Maybe we should also think of uses for those cars that don't qualify for the C for C program... In '81 on the farm, we discovered it was the perfect temp inside a defunct VW bug to make yogurt... I just googled "song-yogurt" and got a sort of disturbing collection of things, but didn't find one you'd have in the library, Dale.
Hi all,
I thought of a couple possibilities on my way to work, both spurred by earlier comments.
1) Car cubes with marble lions mounted on top could be used for country estate pillars at the front gate or at the end of the driveway;
2) There could be an artist contest like the Peanuts cartoon figures that different groups decorated and were placed around town. Nothing says downtown like car cube sculptures!
Our clunkers are too efficient, so won't be adding to the plethora of car cubes anytime soon.
I do think they're eventually recycled for the metal - it's just more efficient handling them cubed or flattened.
Barb-Thanks for the recipes. We put goat cheese in a salad last night-yum. My dad had some cousins who made a snow fence around their farm yard with upturned cars that hadn't been squashed. Their place was right along Highway 75 near Pipestone, and my mom was so embarassed whenever she saw those ugly cars.
Did I miss something? How come I keep hearing Dales voice after 9:00, and it's not a plug?
Hi Dale,
Are we still hearing you live????
I came back to my desk and heard your voice, looked at the time and got a little confused.
What's up?
Thanks for the Caetano Veloso this morning, Dale! Nice to hear some Brasilian music after a week "up nort" near Bemidji, Ely, etc., where some leaves were already changing colors. I think they were jumping the gun a bit....
And yes, although it is great to hear Dale's voice after hours, what's up? Did I miss a programming change while we were gone?
Hi Jennifer and Kate,
Oops you caught me. I didn't think anybody was listening. I'm working in the studio this morning, planning out some Saturday night broadcasts. It's a little complicated, but basically Jasper has control of the station right now, though I can see what he's doing on a computer screen. Every so often there's a 15-20 second break with my recorded voice - something generic. Mike and I figured out that I can record something a little more current that refers to the weather and the blog today, and pull a switcheroo - Jasper is none the wiser.
So I'm hosting without hosting. As an experiment, just to keep Monday interesting.
Cool! Glad Jasper is the one who is none the wiser. :)
Barb -- ditto Renee's thanks for recipe. It's lovely on an apricot half. Wouldn't be amiss to have another recipe of the goat cheese month some time...
Shhh! JASPER will hear!
Dale's experiment reminds me of the old Star Trek episode called, "The Return of the Archons"? It's where the residents of the planet Beta III were mysteriosly controlled by the being called "Landru"...which turned out to be a computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Archons
Anyway, that's what it feels like to do things without JASPER's knowledge!
Dale -- how so very Minnesotan of you to think no one was listening or would notice -- I was wondering myself what was going on.
Cool, Mike -- I love any Star Trek or science fiction reference. Didn't that town have a short time of total chaos scheduled once in a while? Folks went wild, women were loose, men were lusty and all inhibitions went out the window for a short time. There was a word for it that I don't recall. Just make sure Jasper has some control there so you guys don't go wild or anything ... :~)
You're right, Joanne! I looked it up and it was called 'The Red Hour' - 6pm every day.
Geez...my nerd tendencies are showing.
I noticed your extended presence too, for instance the intro to the Beach Boys song when you speculated they'd lament seeing a car cubed.
I remember 'Return of the Archons' as well. Didn't the landing party say they were from 'the valley' and had come for the 'festival'? Archon was the name of a Federation ship which had disappeared there some years earlier.
How about using those car cubes for blocks for jetties? Gots lots of little hidey holes for little fishies & crustaceans.
Thanks for the comment, Chris.
Hidey holes are good things. Maybe our car cubes can be used to protect low lying areas from rising sea water. Do we have enough to wall off New Orleans?
"Archons" was also the first of the 'Kirk vs Evil Computer' themed episodes that they would revisit every so often. Season Two's "Changeling," "The Ultimate Computer," "The Apple," and Season Three's "That Which Survives" also fall into this category. And Season Two's "The Doomsday Machine" kind of fits in here too, just on a larger scale.
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