More Fun with Morford
As always, when I can take the time to read Mark Morford's Morning Fix I am amazed, astonished, disgusted and filled with oftentimes guilty laughter. I submit a couple of today's topics for greater consumption and highly recommend subscribing to his screeds. They are rife with literary genius.
Exploding Frying Pans and Are All Hummer Owners Idiots which is a lovely little diatribe against ALL SUV owners really but picks out the new H2 as the least respectable of the bunch because of its utterly over sized, I've-got-a-small-dick-so-I-need-a-big-truckedness. Now, I know some people need a truck for their lives to function properly, but some people's "need" is based on purely self indulgent egoism.

Like the mom who drives her Suburban all over the place with no one else in it, guzzling gas like its going out of style (hey, surprise, surprise, it is going out of style!). Or the studly wankers who get a shiny SUV and then plaster every chromed widget they possibly can on to it in a totally unnecessary attempt to "stand out". Ummm, you're driving 3 tons of metal that can crush other cars like tin cans and you want to stand out more?

I know friends that have SUV's, in fact my own brother has one but you know what? They also have kids, they also live in New York and drive into upstate New York and New England all the time. They can justify the SUV (additionally they park it for weeks at a time when they're in the city) but ninety percent of people DON'T need one. They want one.

And the biggest danger they represent is a combo plate. Studies have shown that sitting further up from the road surface, as in an SUV, tricks the brain into thinking that 60 miles an hour is closer to 50. Think about how fast go karts feel like they're going when they normally top out at 50 mph or so. So we have people driving these wheeled tanks faster and thinking that they are sports cars with 4 wheel drive, swerving in and out of traffic like its some post apocalyptic death race. Combine the higher speeds with the fact, when these suckers hit another car, usually a regular sized car now referred to as a compact, these behemoths can go straight over the hood and basically shear off the cockpit! With whoever happens to be inside going with it. Or just the impact of a 6000 pound vehicle smacking another car at 60 or 70 miles an hour is enough to LAUNCH the smaller vehicle from the roadway entirely.

Anyway, before I rambled off, read Morford. He's always a kick and I'm going to go back and read my last few issues to catch up.