Rearranging the Chairs

Another subtle page change. Moving the deck chairs, as it were. Still the same crap.

I just noticed that, if you separate the words, it comes out rear ranging. Sounds gay.

Since I'm not willing to sit and edit html to change the width of the carriage, I decided to change to a template that was designed with a wider carriage. Another lazy back-door slacker move inspired by the Bush Administration.

Meanwhile, winter is sticking its finger up our ass and twisting. The fresh coat of freezing rain is mixing well with the cocked-up way people drive. A stretch of highway that should have taken 20 minutes took twice that long on the way home from work today. It was made all the more exciting by the sight of (a) 7 cars in various ditches and off-road activities and (b) the lunatics who saw the disabled vehicles yet still felt it necessary to challenge the speed limit. I'm not stopping to scrape your frozen dumbass off the road. Behave like that, and you're on your own.

It also makes me think about the bill of goods that the public was sold on those giant Sport Utility Vehicles. They were traveling at the same slow speed as the rest of us, so where's the big advantage? If they're left on their own to plow through, they're just as big a hazard as the weather. Constantly creeping up your butt and spraying you with road spew as they pass. I got home alongside the big trucks; all of us doing the law-mandated 35mph, only I got here for about $20,000 less and 10 extra miles-per-gallon.

I have yet to see one of them doing anything close to what they were designed to do. In New Jersey, it is illegal to drive on the beach, and there are so many roads, it isn't necessary to go "off" road to get to where they're going. Besides, they're so full of shiny gadgets and exclusive paint jobs, a tree branch would rub off a lot of re-sale value.

But, the manufacturers told us that we needed them. They used all the standard ploys. Your safety, your child's safety and "look at all the room!" Most of the reason why you're safer is because you're twice as big as everything else, including my condo. Much of what passes for safety is merely a weight advantage. If we all drove the same size vehicle, there would be no size-related safety advantages. Do parents automatically think that their fat kids are safer in the playground than the skinny kids? If that were true, then kids would just get fatter and fatter ... Hey, wait ... oh ...

That's what they're up to.