The San Francisco Citizen

Here’s what you’ll see tooling around San Francisco’s Mission District these days - an aging Mercedes Benz 300 SD sedan that’s been converted by Oakland’s Veg Rev to run on vegetable oil in a process called “vehicle fuel reassignment.”

So instead of inky diesel soot covering the back of this OM617 W126, we see vegetable oil. See the conversion process courtesy of this nifty video. (But just ignore a laughable MTV-style intro from the abysmal Current TV network.) The car shown can’t accelerate quickly, but in many ways is superior to (and costs about $115,000 less than) the quick, all-electric Tesla Roadster.

Of course the best way to spread the word about veggie power is to fashion a bumper sticker to make Toyota Prius owners feel bad:

Click to enlarge.

“YOUR NEW HYBRID USES GAS - HA!”

From Teh Mission with love…

Check it. Your old-school TV, the kind that most Americans have, will stop working next year as we’re going to transition to digital service in 2009.

That means that your grandmother, who watches her stories on a TV with a “rabbit ears” antenna, is going to need your help. So you’re going to get her a Digital Television Adapter for free, or almost free, courtesy of Uncle Sucker.

How? Just go here and sign up for your nifty $40 coupons and then head on over to Circuit City, RadioShack, or the Best Buy.   

And you’d better hurry before the Department of Commerce runs out of money.

Wait a second. Don’t sign up for your DTV coupon yet, because better, cheaper boxes are coming. The problem is that these coupons expire three months after they’re sent to you.

If you sign up too early, you’ll have to shell out your own money to supplement the coupon and your box won’t be all that good. If you sign up too late, then you’ll miss out on any subsidy. But if you time things just right, then you’ll get a sweet converter for free.

Or, you can just buy her a new digitally-enabled TV.

Choose wisely.