Road Hogs: A Look At The Recent Past
Marik_Steele
To rule in hell... Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9466Members
To rule in hell... Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9466Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Oink! Another Dave Barry article</div> Today I noticed gas prices are starting to level out or drop in my area -- a select few fuel stations have adventurously set prices down to only $1.999 a gallon for regular, and not seeing a "2" is refreshing.
It reminded me of another Dave Barry article reposted in my newspaper. It's been quite some time since <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=68873' target='_blank'>I last posted one</a>, and the response here has been pretty good. This article was written all the way back in 1999, the good ol' days when the SUV industry was only <i>threatening</i> to compete with the school bus industry, as opposed to how they now actually make vehicles comparable in size.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If there's one thing this nation needs, it's bigger cars. That's why I'm excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o' metal that will offer consumers even more total road-squatting mass than the current leader in the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet Suburban Subdivision -- the first passenger automobile designed to be, right off the assembly line, visible from the Moon.
I don't know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the "Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure." In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface -- all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual road. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds and other wildlife species that have fled from the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.
In the real world, of course, nobody drives Sport Utility Vehicles in the forest, because when you have paid upwards of $40,000 for a transportation investment, the last thing you want is squirrels pooping on it. No, if you want a practical "off-road" vehicle, you get yourself a 1973 American Motors Gremlin, which combines the advantage of not being worth worrying about with the advantage of being so ugly that poisonous snakes flee from it in terror.
In the real world, what people mainly do with their Sport Utility Vehicles, as far as I can tell, is try to maneuver them into and out of parking spaces. I base this statement on my local supermarket, where many of the upscale patrons drive Chevrolet Subdivisions. I've noticed that these people often purchase just a couple of items -- maybe a bottle of diet water and a two-ounce package of low-fat dried carrot shreds -- which they put into the back of their Subdivisions, which have approximately the same cargo capacity, in cubic feet, as Finland. This means there is plenty of room left over back there in case, on the way home, these people decide to pick up something else, such as a herd of bison.
Then comes the scary part: getting the Subdivision out of the parking space. This is a challenge, because the driver apparently cannot, while sitting in the driver's seat, see all the way to either end of the vehicle. I drive a compact car, and on a number of occasions I have found myself trapped behind a Subdivision backing directly toward me, its massive metal butt looming high over my head, making me feel like a Tokyo pedestrian looking up at Godzilla.
I've tried honking my horn, but the Subdivision drivers can't hear me, because they're always talking on cellular phones the size of Chiclets. ("The Bigger Your Car, The Smaller Your Phone," that is their motto.) I don't know who they're talking to. Maybe they're negotiating with their bison suppliers. Or maybe they're trying to contact somebody in the same area code as the rear ends of their cars, so they can find out what's going on back there. All I know is, I'm thinking of carrying marine flares, so I can fire them into the air as a warning to Subdivision drivers that they're about to run me over. Although frankly I'm not sure they'd care if they did. A big reason why they bought a Sport Utility Vehicle is "safety," in the sense of, "you, personally, will be safe, although every now and then you may have to clean the remains of other motorists out of your wheel wells."
Anyway, now we have the new Ford, which will be EVEN LARGER than the Subdivision, which I imagine means it will have separate decks for the various classes of passengers, and possibly, way up in front by the hood ornament, Leonardo DiCaprio showing Kate Winslet how to fly. I can't wait until one of these babies wheels into my supermarket parking lot. Other motorists and pedestrians will try to flee in terror, but they'll be sucked in by the Ford's powerful gravitational field and become stuck to its massive sides like so many refrigerator magnets. They won't be noticed, however, by the Ford's driver, who will be busy whacking at the side of his or her head, trying to dislodge his or her new cell phone, which is the size of a single grain of rice and has fallen deep into his or her ear canal.
And it will not stop there. This is America, darn it, and Chevrolet is not about to just sit by and watch Ford walk away with the coveted title of Least Sane Motor Vehicle. No, cars will keep getting bigger: I see a time, not too far from now, when upscale suburbanites will haul their overdue movies back to the video-rental store in full-size, 18-wheel tractor-trailers with names like "The Vagabond." It will be a proud time for all Americans, a time for us to cheer for our country. We should cheer loud, because we'll be hard to hear, inside the wheel wells.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It reminded me of another Dave Barry article reposted in my newspaper. It's been quite some time since <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=68873' target='_blank'>I last posted one</a>, and the response here has been pretty good. This article was written all the way back in 1999, the good ol' days when the SUV industry was only <i>threatening</i> to compete with the school bus industry, as opposed to how they now actually make vehicles comparable in size.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If there's one thing this nation needs, it's bigger cars. That's why I'm excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o' metal that will offer consumers even more total road-squatting mass than the current leader in the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet Suburban Subdivision -- the first passenger automobile designed to be, right off the assembly line, visible from the Moon.
I don't know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the "Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure." In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface -- all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual road. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds and other wildlife species that have fled from the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.
In the real world, of course, nobody drives Sport Utility Vehicles in the forest, because when you have paid upwards of $40,000 for a transportation investment, the last thing you want is squirrels pooping on it. No, if you want a practical "off-road" vehicle, you get yourself a 1973 American Motors Gremlin, which combines the advantage of not being worth worrying about with the advantage of being so ugly that poisonous snakes flee from it in terror.
In the real world, what people mainly do with their Sport Utility Vehicles, as far as I can tell, is try to maneuver them into and out of parking spaces. I base this statement on my local supermarket, where many of the upscale patrons drive Chevrolet Subdivisions. I've noticed that these people often purchase just a couple of items -- maybe a bottle of diet water and a two-ounce package of low-fat dried carrot shreds -- which they put into the back of their Subdivisions, which have approximately the same cargo capacity, in cubic feet, as Finland. This means there is plenty of room left over back there in case, on the way home, these people decide to pick up something else, such as a herd of bison.
Then comes the scary part: getting the Subdivision out of the parking space. This is a challenge, because the driver apparently cannot, while sitting in the driver's seat, see all the way to either end of the vehicle. I drive a compact car, and on a number of occasions I have found myself trapped behind a Subdivision backing directly toward me, its massive metal butt looming high over my head, making me feel like a Tokyo pedestrian looking up at Godzilla.
I've tried honking my horn, but the Subdivision drivers can't hear me, because they're always talking on cellular phones the size of Chiclets. ("The Bigger Your Car, The Smaller Your Phone," that is their motto.) I don't know who they're talking to. Maybe they're negotiating with their bison suppliers. Or maybe they're trying to contact somebody in the same area code as the rear ends of their cars, so they can find out what's going on back there. All I know is, I'm thinking of carrying marine flares, so I can fire them into the air as a warning to Subdivision drivers that they're about to run me over. Although frankly I'm not sure they'd care if they did. A big reason why they bought a Sport Utility Vehicle is "safety," in the sense of, "you, personally, will be safe, although every now and then you may have to clean the remains of other motorists out of your wheel wells."
Anyway, now we have the new Ford, which will be EVEN LARGER than the Subdivision, which I imagine means it will have separate decks for the various classes of passengers, and possibly, way up in front by the hood ornament, Leonardo DiCaprio showing Kate Winslet how to fly. I can't wait until one of these babies wheels into my supermarket parking lot. Other motorists and pedestrians will try to flee in terror, but they'll be sucked in by the Ford's powerful gravitational field and become stuck to its massive sides like so many refrigerator magnets. They won't be noticed, however, by the Ford's driver, who will be busy whacking at the side of his or her head, trying to dislodge his or her new cell phone, which is the size of a single grain of rice and has fallen deep into his or her ear canal.
And it will not stop there. This is America, darn it, and Chevrolet is not about to just sit by and watch Ford walk away with the coveted title of Least Sane Motor Vehicle. No, cars will keep getting bigger: I see a time, not too far from now, when upscale suburbanites will haul their overdue movies back to the video-rental store in full-size, 18-wheel tractor-trailers with names like "The Vagabond." It will be a proud time for all Americans, a time for us to cheer for our country. We should cheer loud, because we'll be hard to hear, inside the wheel wells.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
Heck, the crownvic that I drive is only smaller than a Suburban by a few inches.
Where can I read more?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--><u>College</u> by Dave Berry
College is basically a bunch of rooms where you sit for roughly two thousand hours and try to memorize things. The two thousand hours are spread out over four years; you spend the rest of the time sleeping and trying to get dates. Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:
1. Things you will need to know in later life (two hours). These include how to make collect telephone calls and get beer and crepe-paper stains out of you pajamas.
2. Things you will not need to know in later life (1,998 hours). These are the things you learn in classes whose names end in -ology, -osophy, -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay in college for the rest of your life.
It's very difficult to forget everything. For example, when I was in college, I had to memorize, don't ask me why, the names of three metaphysical poets other than John Donne. I have managed to forget one of them, but I still remember that the other two were named Vaughan and Crashaw. Sometimes, when I'm trying to remember something important like whether my wife told me to get tuna packed in oil or tuna packed in water, Vaughan and Crashaw just pop up in my mind, right there in the supermarket. It's a terrible waste of brain cells. After you've been in college for a year or so, you're supposed to choose a major, which is the subject you intend to memorize and forget the most things about. Here is a very important piece of advice: be sure to choose a major that does not involve Known Facts and Right Answers. This means you must not major in mathematics, physics, biology, or chemistry, because these subjects involve actual facts. If, for example, you major in mathematics, you're going to wander into class one day and the professor will say: "Define the cosine integer of the quadrant of a rhomboid binary axis, and extrapolate your result to five significant vertices." If you don't come up with exactly the answer the professor has in mind, you fail. The same is true of chemistry: if you write in your exam book that carbon and hydrogen combine to form oak, your professor will flunk you. He wants you to come up with the same answer he and all the other chemists have agreed on. Scientists are extremely snotty about this. So you should major in subjects like English, philosophy, psychology, and sociology-subjects in which nobody really understands what anybody else is talking about, and which involve virtually no actual facts. I attended classes in all these subjects, so I'll give you a quick overview of each:
ENGLISH: This involves writing papers about long books you have read little snippets of just before class. Here is a tip on how to get good grades on your English papers: Never say anything about a book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example, suppose you are studying MobyDick. Anybody with any common sense would say that MobyDick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper, you say MobyDick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor, who is sick to death of reading papers and never liked MobyDick anyway, will think you are enormously creative. If you can regularly come up with lunatic interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English.
PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to lunch. You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a lot of drugs.
PSYCHOLOGY: This involves talking about rats and dreams. Psychologists are obsessed with rats and dreams. I once spent an entire semester training a rat to punch little buttons in a certain sequence, then training my roommate to do the same thing. The rat learned much faster. My roommate is now a doctor. If you like rats or dreams, and above all if you dream about rats, you should major in psychology.
SOCIOLOGY: For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far and away the number one subject. I sat through hundreds of hours of sociology courses, and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never once heard or read a coherent statement. This is because sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of their time translating simple, obvious observations into scientific-sounding code. If you plan to major in sociology, you'll have to learn to do the same thing. For example, suppose you have observed that children cry when they fall down. You should write: "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrymatory, or 'crying,' behavior forms." If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will get a large government grant.
EDUCATION: Like sociologists, educators want desperately to believe that they are scientists and that there is something involved in teaching which is esoteric, above and beyond, one person telling a group of people things to memorize. I once sat through a class in educational techniques where the topic of the semesters was The Need For Openness In The Modern Classroom. We memorized the need for students to be free to express themselves in class both verbally and physically without restraint, as we sat in neat rows repeating exactly what the professor, and other educators had agreed we should memorize. Another example: if you want to say at a particular student is lazy and need to have his butt kicked, you must translate as follows: "The paradigm established by the environmental constraints imposed on the student by an autocratic, patriarchal, and thereby outmoded system of values, has created an apathetic mode of response on the part of the student which requires stimuli be applied via a systematic outcome based approach with a goal of enriching the student to alternative multiculturally based, non-violent methods of self actualization"
Good Luck!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where can I read more? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Go to the library. He made a few compilatons of his best articles and published them.
Dave Barry = Lewis Black?
It appears to be so!
The college article is right on the money too...
<!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> So. True.
:V:|
This man is not aware that he has an alligator on his head.