St. Elmo's Fire

Well, between a work week that's been a little insane and reading about Jeff Gannon, I think I have a few minutes to actually post something.

Perhaps the weirdest thing I saw this week was on Monday morning, when I was up bright and early so I could get to work before the sun appeared and ruined my arrive in darkness, leave in darkness, motiff that I've embraced with my new project. I was parked behind an SUV at the red light near my house, and I noticed that the area right over his bumper, where two little decorative ridges in the SUV body protruded like pouty little SUV lips (or maybe love handles, who can really say), was flashing. I looked around to see if he was getting reflection off of a light, or if there was a cop behind me, but there wasn't a thing. When I looked more carefully, I noticed that it wasn't a reflection, but small arcs of electricity jumping between the gap in the ridges - dozens of them just constantly hopping the gap. I don't know if it was static electricity, a faulty wire on his SUV, taser fun in the front seat, or the nearby presence of hidden UFO hyperdrive, but it was freaking me out. Your chances of blowing up your car from static electricity are small, but what if there's a charge constantly playing across your truck? That can't be good for anyone.

On another note, I'm trying to find information about how much ethanol (% wise) you can put in your Saturn SL w/o messing it up. Not how much you can use without voiding your warranty, that went away a very long time ago, but how much you can use without destroying the car or drastically shortening its lifespan. I heard on MPR that you can get away with about a third to forty percent (you just mix the 85 and regular, keeping in mind that regular unlead is still about 10%) and I'm interested in anecdotal information before I try it out. I'd love a car that ran on corn, but I can't bring myself to buy a weird Ford Taurus just for that reason.