Luxury car firm Bentley is recalling hundreds of vehicles over fears that its "Flying B" hood ornament could impale pedestrians.

The recall affects 620 cars in the U.S. and Canada and a total of 1,436 worldwide, the company told msnbc.com.

It covers the Arnage, Azure and Brooklands models sold between October 2006 and October 2009 for suggested retail prices of $246,999 to $363,000.

The winged B is meant to retract if there is a collision, but the U.K.-based Bentley Motors said it had discovered the mechanism needed to be better protected against rust and corrosion.

An auto-retracting hood ornament that's prone to impaling pedestrians ? Now that is simply splendid. For too long I've been content with merely breaking the pelvises and legs of the pedestrians I run into. Sure, there's a satisfying thump as they bounce into the gutter and writhe. But, I had never considered impaling them, too! But now, well, this news changes everything. I need a Bentley! Imagine how swell it will be to snag a pedestrian off the sidewalk and carry him around the city, as he dangles, impaled on my shiny silver B, somewhat like the manatees I skewer on the rudder of my yacht (except in front, not back; and on top not below), while I tend to my affairs. Splendid!

I just hope there's a way to disable this auto-retract mechanism.

Gargoyles & Grotesques

Hazy Jane II:

It's far from being my favorite Nick Drake song (Belle & Sebastian probably love it, though - sounds just like them), so I hadn't paid much attention to the lyrics. But, just now, it popped up on my iPod and I caught this couplet (first verse):

And what will happen in the evening in the forest with the weasel
with the teeth that bite so sharp when you're not looking in the evening

... and then I was all like "Errrr... WTF?" And I assume you are now doing the same thing.

Even the greats have missteps, sometimes.

Eggs are sickening. Eggs are sickening people all across the US. Thousands of people. And much of the problem can be tracked back to one egg producer: Austin J. DeCoster. He's the owner of many huge egg producing plants, and has been sickening people with his salmonella-tainted^* eggs since the late 1970s.

We could obviously stand to have better egg safety regulations in this country. And there's a bill in the Senate that promises to help. However, one Senator is holding it up:

A Republican senator is threatening to hold up food safety legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration more power to prevent outbreaks, saying Democrats must find a way to pay for it.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma says the bill, which has stalled in the Senate for more than a year, adds to the deficit and expands the power of an already troubled agency.

...

The legislation has broad bipartisan backing in Congress and support from the food and restaurant industries.The House passed the bill over a year ago.

Adds to the deficit ? Interesting. How much?

Coburn agrees that food safety needs a complete overhaul but says the current effort is disingenuous because there is not any money dedicated to it. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost $1.4 billion.

$1.4 billion! That sounds like a lot of money!

I wonder what else costs $1.4B.

Well, seven days in Afghanistan costs $1.4B.

Given $1,400,000,000 , you can fund the US Department of Defense for 17 hours.

Yeah, I think we can find a way to pay for it.

* - than he manages to rub all those eggs on his taint is impressive, however.

Happy fall, ya'll!

Get Over It

Saucy Science

Number of mentions of the "Tea Party" on the front page of MSNBC.com:

9/15: 2:30pm : 13
9/16: 3:30pm : 10

What will tomorrow bring ?

• Wye Oak - The Knot. Recently, the A.V. Club ran a series called "A.V. Undercover", in which they chose 25 songs from various bands and invited 25 bands to pick a song and then do a cover of it, live, in the A.V. Club's little round studio. It was mostly pretty good, though a few bands suffered because their singers just don't have the chops to sing songs outside of their own style. Wye Oak, a two-piece drum-n-guitar band, did The Kinks "Strangers", and did a very nice job of it. So, I bought this record. And I love it.

  Their songs sometimes sound like the nodding narcotic fuzz of Codeine, and the singer's voice can't help but draw Cat Power comparisons. But they really have their own sound: spare and slow, alternating between delicate and pounding, a touch of dark country twang, bits of dissonance; pretty, but wistful and lonely.

  Right now, you can hear the whole thing for free on Merge's website. My favorite songs so far are "Siamese" and "I Want For Nothing".

  4 laquos: ««««

• The Antlers - Hospice. This is another band I found on the A.V. Club's Undercover series. They bravely covered Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", and I liked their cover enough to give their record a chance. Sadly, I'm having a harder time getting into this one than I did with Wye Oak's record, even though I keep playing it in my car - trying to get it to click. But it hasn't.

  A lot of it is very quiet and slow moving, even more than Wye Oak. High, thin vocals singing slight melodies, barely above a whisper, usually far quieter than the surrounding instruments. Not a lot of hooks in those parts. And the parts that aren't quiet sound like motherfucking Arcade Fire songs. Which makes me want to change the CD as quick as I can because I'm so fucking sick of motherfucking bands that sound like motherfucking Arcade Fire!

  Fuck, people, there are a million good bands out there you can rip off, why does everyone feel the need to sound exactly like this one middling fucking Canadian band ?

  fuck!

  FUCK!

  2 laquos: ««

• Tom Waits - Rain Dogs. My first Tom Waits record! I ignored him for 35 years, but finally decided to take a look. And now I'll never be able to watch another Tim Burton animated movie without thinking all the songs were written by or for Tom Waits - it's that drunken, creaky, dirty, early jazz sound. When Waits sings, I see a big-mouthed skeleton in a bowler hat, singing into a microphone made from a legbone topped with a rat's rib cage; a zombie plays piano; a one-eyed monster serves drinks.

  I could grow to really like this, or I could get bored; It's hard to say. I do like a lot of the songs - the more stylized ones more than the straightforward ones. I'm just not sure if I can suspend disbelief enough to really get into Waits' crazy drunken hobo character once the novelty wears off. Time will tell.

  3 laquos: «««

Cooking With Robyn Hitchcock