Hi Amy !


Hey, hey ! Your very own nutwad ! Félicitations !


According to The Nutwad today, le 05 avril, you used to drive a car without a "catalyic converter" (sic).


Mein Gott ! Doesn't she know what might happen if everyone goes around cavalierly converting those "catalyics". Anything could happen !

L'Amerloque

I was quite fond of my Rambler, which was my very first car, which I bought for $3,000 when I had only about $32 to my struggling writer name. It was actually quite fuel efficient as it was more of a planter most of the time than transportation. It was also very good for the economy, as it must have sent several mechanics' children to private school. I'm sure they all went into mourning when it was no more. Its replacement was a more modern $3000 Mercedes, an emergency purchase from an 85-year-old symphony conductor after the insurance company stopped paying for the rental car (because George Gomez aka Fred Lopez, thanks to the LA Times' weenie lawyers, stole my car. George, not Fred, of course, went to jail for the crime. Those DA's don't pussyfoot around). If I could do it all over again, in both cases, I'd recognize that car payments are much cheaper than mechanic payments.

Now that I'm a little more middle class (in income only!), I've naturally bought the most fuel-efficient car on the road, the hybrid Honda Insight. (Sizewise, it's a cousin to the Smart car.) The biggest problem with it? I get gas so infrequently I sort of forget how. I just left my gas cap on the roof the other night. The only design flaw so far that I see in the thing is that they forgot to attach the gas cap by a little plastic thread to the door of the gas cap area. Luckily I heard it the pavement and drove back to look for it. Flakey Amy!

Amy,

By the looks of So Cal gas prices, it's a good thing you can "forget" how to fill up. Ouch!

Up here in V-8 country, big-iron SUV and truck dealers are languishing, awash in unsold vehicles. Detroit just doesn't get it. They fought tooth and nail against increasing average fuel economy for SUVs/pickups/minivans just a couple years ago.

Their protestations lead to a paltry 1.5 mpg increase mandated by 2007. Simultaneously, Ford Motor Company argued for voluntary fuel efficiency increases by automakers, promising a 25% increase in average fuel economy for the truck class by 2005.

Well, it's 2005, and the verdict is in: According to the US EPA, Ford cars and trucks have had the worst average fuel economy of all the major automakers for the last five years in a row.

Now everyone is bleating about how the drop in light truck sales is caving in the Michigan economy.

Hard to feel sorry for them.

Okay, I went to the sewbeautiful site through your hyperlink, and EWWWWWW! How 7th grade is *that*? In my opinion (notice, it's an opinion, so there is no grounds for accusations of libel here), if she had any class whatsoever, she would have just not responded at all. What's that old saying? "Better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it."

YIKES. I need to check my grammar before I post.

You should e-mail her to tell her to correct the spelling of your name in the blue bar at the top of the screen.

Hi Jeff R,

Here's a great discussion from Democracy Now this morning that might interest you:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/05/1334200

Oil prices have risen almost $15 a barrel since the year began, briefly topping a record $58 a barrel on Monday. While the Bush administration is fond of blaming oil prices on OPEC, the group says the pricing is beyond their control. We take a look at the current state of oil with Jim Paul of the Global Policy Forum and Michael Klare, author of "Blood and Oil.”

Thanks for the link Lena. Interesting dialog, although a little too geopolitically left of center for my taste. The take-home point was right on though: Oil supply is tight because global oil consumption is rapidly escalating.

I read some where about 20 years ago that the US has about 5% of the world's population, but consumes 95% of it's non-renewable resources. Looks like the rest of the world decided to jump on board the consumption wagon!

If you think there's an oil crisis now, just wait until a couple billion Chinese are driving cars. Yikes!

Clothing can NOT BE COPYRIGHTED, TRADEMARKED or PATENTED. That's the LAW! Baumann can NOT copyright her designs.

Baumann's so called "Original" purse called "Highlander" looks just like the famous Burberry bags. That is Burberry's signature pattern. Check it at http://www.kbaumann.com/kbweb_2000/products/origin_hm/origin1.html.

Paying $1000's is amazing considering designers only shetch and pick fabrics for their products. Prototypes are inexpensive. Years ago there was a lips purse available that looks just like Baumann's.

As I said some time ago in our email correspondence, I have contacted ALL the designers we replicate and NO ONE has asked for payment. Many said I was the first person that ever asked.

You should be spending your efforts on ABS (Alan B Schwartz) who owns a very large company in LA that replicates all the runway and Hollywood awards gowns. I suspect you are afraid to go after the "Big Guys". Since he is Jewish, I think he would be very insulted if you called him a NAZI or associated him with Nazi's as you did our company.

Contact Bloomingdale's, Saks, Neiman's, etc who sell replica clothing. They make more money in a day off their replicas than I will see in a year. Do you really need to go after a small company in the midwest?

We have yet to make an exact replica of any designer as clients choose different fabrics, buttons, linings, etc. That is the beauty of custom work. A pattern is made for each client to their exact size. They choose fabrics from many swatches.

Go after the big guys since your diatribe about us will not cause anyone to go bankrupt, loose jobs or go without food. The big companies are making the money. I doubt Chanel and the other designers will go bankrupt because of Sew Beautiful By Natasha and Jane (www.sew-beautiful.us). As any good reporter knows "follow the money". I DARE YOU TO COMMENT ABOUT THE BIG GUYS. Come on Amy ...I dare you.

Your dog, LUCY, is a cutie. I named my favorite cat LUCY too. Perhaps that is the ONLT THING we have in common! She is a QT

Jane, I was only interested in you because you sent me a press release crowiing about profiting from knocking off other designers work. I put cards on SUVs that say:

How many dead Marines did it take to gas up your SUV?
Stylish, aren't you?

...with my contact info on them, too. If there's anything I'm not, it's afraid. At this point, I'm mostly amused that you keep emailing me and spend so much time searching out places I've posted on the Internet so you can post random sites about the site you created about me. But enough about me. Let's talk about you.

When's your fashion show in France?

I do not email you 10 times a day. Besides, why do you respond?

Well this is my LaSt post Amy. My laywer said you will be getting a letter from him soon about what you say is not LIBEL!

The site was revised to showcase the dresses. I update it often.

I do not email you 10 times a day. Besides, why do you respond?

Well this is my LaSt post Amy. My laywer said you will be getting a letter from him soon about what you say is not LIBEL!

CARPE DIEM!

Jane, is that the same lawyer who said it was real groovy to stick up photos of Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, and Reese Witherspoon to advertise knockoffs of the dresses they were wearing? I'm terrified. But it still doesn't change opinion into libel.

When is it you're going to France? Their laws against knockoffs are much stronger than ours. I want to be there when you go through Passport Control.