Now I KNOW.

Okay, so a couple weeks ago I got pseudo rear-ended whilst on my way to return merchandise to the local Best Buy. (this is not an endorsement of Best Buy, in fact, tally that up on your list of reasons why retail is for suckers.) It was the old triple car bumper brawl where one person hits another and the hitee drifts forward like a jackass and crunches my tail as I gaze fixedly at the mirror in disbelief. Anyway, it wasn't very serious, but the bottom of my bumper was cracked thusly:

Do you see it? That line near the light part? Well, there's also some spider cracking of the paint in there too. The kinda thing that would have pissed me off every time I walked past the back of my car. If it'd been the civic I might have been less of a stickler about it. But I like my car and since I was just sitting there, and completely not at fault, I wanted them to fix it; damn it. So I jumped through all the insurance company loops. Talked to adjuster after adjuster; gave no less than 4 recorded statements; drove to my insurance company's office to have an estimate written. After an excruciatingly long period (of about 6 days) they all finally agreed that I shouldn't have to pay for the repairs. Booyah; I drop the RSX off at the body shop they specified and was shuttled to the Enterprise to take possession of this behemoth.
It was this or a white panel van. Seriously, that's all they had on the lot. Whatever, I was just glad I wasn't paying for a rental or taking the bus. I drive a small car with a tight suspension; this durango was absolutely cavernous and handled like a uhaul truck. Maybe I should have gone with the van. So after a week of walking in a soccer mom's shoes I think I'm in a better position to make this statement. SUVs suck. There is no reason for someone who drives on roads to haul around that much metal. I mean, yeah, it took speed bumps like a champion, but at what cost?

I didn't actually keep track of the mileage I got, but I have to assume it wasn't great. Here's the fuelly page for durangos, and while the 2007's may end up getting better mileage than previous years (there aren't any recorded fuel-ups for 07s) I'm gonna guess its not all that much better than an 18 average. Luckily I got to fill it up with that cheap crap fuel I haven't bought since 2007, so the 17 gallon half-tank was about on par with my usual full-tank price.

Whatever, I know, and you know, that SUVs get terrible gas mileage as a natural result of weighing a ton* more than my car. (*actually only 1829 pounds more.) What I really learned from this week was more about how an SUV drives. I actually got fairly comfortable maneuvering in close quarters. The turn radius was reasonable and the side mirrors were like full-length hallway mirrors. So when you see someone floundering in a parking lot, making 15-point turns or parking in two spaces, that person has either had their SUV fewer than three days or they are a terrible driver. No, the real concern to me was the transmission. I know its been a while since I drove an automatic, but I distinctly remember that when you let off the gas pedal the car begins to decelerate. This is not the case with the durango. At highway speeds removing my foot from the accelerator completely had virtually no effect for about a half mile. I'm not sure if this is a result of the engine's idle speed or the vehicle's mass, but I find it completely unacceptable.

In fact, in most cases, if I wanted to stop accelerating I had to tap the brake pedal. I'm not sure if I've ever decried over-use of brakes on the highway here, but I believe it to be the cause of numerous collisions and at best billions in wasted fuel and time. Although now I somewhat understand the phenomenon. These goram cars won't slow down without braking! Ridiculous. Now more than ever I think we should push to require tail-lights to be analog.

Anyway, I just figured I share my findings. There is a reason SUVs needlessly brake so much, although I'd rather we got rid of them than fix the problem.

Update
damn i love my car.

Back The Eff Up.

Okay, so this is another little PSA for some of the people I've seen out there who just kinda suck at life.  I know there are quite a few of you, so if I haven't made it around to addressing the particular aspect at which you suck, please bare with me.  I've got a lot on my plate.

Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it.

So when you're driving a car you want to make sure that you've properly positioned yourself.  A common mistake is to rest your chin on the steering wheel as you adjust the seat, however this is not proper procedure.  Also note that, with your back against the seat, you should not be able to place both you hands and elbows on the steering wheel.

Note Shortround here.  Obviously too close to the steering wheel, as evidenced by the number of crates, boxes, rickshaws, and other items he smashes into on the way to the airport.  In fact when you crash (because with the way you drive it is an inevitability) you're gonna want to be as far away from that air bag as possible.  So please, get a phone book, tie blocks to your feet, whatever you have to do.  Remember... coordination and dexterity start with planning and preparation.  Now you know, and knowing is half of not being a jackass.

Politician

I think I'd feel better about the leadership of this country if our leaders' statements were swapped out for lines from movies and TV. Instead of

"If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down." -George W Bush

Instead imagine fox news cutting to a clip of

"Shit just got real." -Martin Lawrence

It really conveys that he understands the gravity of the situation. And I wouldn't feel nearly as bad about the vacuous drivel coming out of a possible world leader

"Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today." -Sara Palin

...if it was complete and utter hilarity.

"Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do." - Dennis Reynolds

Update

Holy Crap. I don't mean to harp on this (well maybe I do) but this person isn't fit to run a Jamba Juice stand.

• Palin: Her Own Parody
  

At around 4:45 in this video Katie talks about the current administration's penchant for "nation building" and asks how Sara would change or improve the strategy.

Katie: "How, specifically, will you spread democracy throughout the world?"

Retarted Gameshow Contestant: "Specifically we will make every effort possible to help spread democracy for those who desire freedom, independence tolerance, respect for equality; that is the whole goal here..."

I'm sorry this isn't the final round of Family Feud and the category wasn't 

"concepts that make your tummy feel warm."  Using the word "specific" does not magically make your answer specific.  That would entail not using vague declarations someone beat into your head 15 minutes ago.  Lets see if I can trim this down to just the facts.  "How will you spread democracy?" "Effort."  Which immediately brings to mind the poster on my wall:

"When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do."

 McCain's inclusion of Palin on the ticket makes the entire campaign unqualified, dangerous and unelectable.

Big Balls.

Its amazing how many videos there are of people getting hit with/ hurting themselves with those big ass balls. Thank goodness for the advent of user-submitted content otherwise I don't know how we would entertain ourselves.

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Just Squirt It Into My Mouth.

Yes, ez-cheese meets breakfast. I can't really begin to describe how disgusting I find this. Not the pancakes oozing out of a pressurized container part, but the absolute waste and laziness this product represents. If you can't crack an egg and pour some milk, you don't deserve pancakes. There's 8 pancakes in this conveniently disposable and landfilling container, as opposed to the about 300 servings found in a cardboard box of pancake mix. What's next, some kind of potted meat aerosol sausage machine? Please don't buy this. Go get some Eggos if you're too stupid/lazy to make pancakes from "scratch".

• Strange New Products: Pancakes from an Aerosol Can

*Note: Actually making pancakes from scratch isn't really that hard, and using a premade mix is even easier. If you need to squirt them out of a can, I'm not sure you're gonna be able to handle the arduous tasks of flipping them over, pouring syrup from a bottle, and putting them into your mouth with a fork.

Is You A Moron?

Its difficult to decide whether you'd prefer a stupid leader or a deceptive leader.  On the one hand, you don't want someone in charge that's going to purposefully lead you in directions that only serve his own best interests.  Of course on the other hand you don't want someone who's too stupid to know that he's not serving anyone's best interest at all.

Lets imagine for a second that President Brush is in charge of dividing up a cake at a party.  Everyone watches as he cuts 6 pieces for 12 people, gives one to Chaney and then puts 2 on the floor for Barney.  Would you rather he did this because he was trying to screw people out of cake and is obviously an asshole, or because he is an actual, legal, moron?

I'm not saying that's exactly what's going on in Iraq, its obviously more complicated.  But those are just about the only two reasons I can think of to explain his stubbornness.  This Slate article does a nice job summarizing the "What the fuck are you talking about" crowd's reactions when Bush says things on TV.  Things like:

 "Al-Qaida is going to fight us wherever we are"
"If we were to fail, they'd come and get us."
"Al-Qaida will be emboldened"
"The Middle East looked nice and cozy for a while."

What?  That last one is new to me.  Hasn't the middle east been a hotbed of violence since like the beginning of religion?

• Bush bungles a press conference. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

But My Creepy and Unsafe Pet Monkey Was Different.

Sorry lady, all my monkey sympathy got used up when Ross had to give Marcelle away to a zoo.  (I still think that's code for 'taken out back and shot cause he had rabies')  Go ahead and give the article a read.  I think this is the best thing to happen to the lady; devoting that much of your life to a pet wearing OshKosh B'Gosh isn't healthy, I don't care where you live.  As, for little Armani, well he'd probably be better off in a jungle or something.  But don't worry; all monkeys go to heaven, right?

• Over a Barrel About a Pet Monkey - washingtonpost.com

How About Actually Using Less Gas?

Email chain letters and The Myspace groups organized yesterday as a "buy no gas day" in hopes of sending a message to oil companies.  I guess the goal is to back up supply lines one day and show that we can eff up some plans if we want to.  But everyone would just buy that gas the next day, so its not really a big deal.  Not to mention that Americans can't really boycott gas for a day.  Buzzfeed links to Break the Chain, a snopes for chain emails, that lays out the failed "no gas days" that have been attempted since 1999.  Attempted and failed.  I'm not buying gas today, but that's just cause I filled up on Sunday.

In more important news, I didn't receive a single email about this.  Awesome.

• Gas Out - BuzzFeed

Boobie Booze.

I've never read a pregnancy book. I hear, though, that there are a few things you shouldn't do while pregnant. You know like, drinking, smoking and shopping cart escalator surfing. I'm just going to take for granted that people are going to abstain from that stuff; but you've still gotta watch what you do even after the kid pops. Cause aside from watching what you do, the kid is basically eating what you eat; if you go the sweater cow route. So you're still not really allowed to drink.

Although that's apparently harder for some moms than others, as evidenced by this product. Milkscreen is a litmus test for alcohol in breast milk. So you can throw back a couple shots and little Cleatus won't feel the effects in his breakfast nip. Alright, fine. But I can't help wondering if breastfeeding is actually better than just formula for a kiddo with a sauce monster mommy.

• A simple 2-minute test for the detection of alcohol in breast milk.

What Big Teeth You Have.

Crackhead creationists. I never though there was much trouble with letting people decide what they want to believe. I think that's mostly because I'd like to believe that deep down, most people aren't stupider than a barrel of oatmeal. I'm wrong. People are dumb. Take for example, the creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. They've got a bunch of exhibits of dinosaurs with humans, and explain that Noah took baby dinosaurs onto the arc with him. Best of all, they claim that the T-Rex had big fuck-off teeth to crack open coconuts. See, all animals were vegetarians before Eve created original sin, so despite all the obviously predatory evolutionary developments animals had, they didn't go around killing each other. Right. Stop pretending to educate people.

Alright, I know what you're going to say. Recent investigations cast doubt on the T-Rex's predatory status. Its large olfactory and legs combined with small arms and eyes may point towards a scavenger role. But one thing is for sure, that son of a bitch ate meat.

• T Rex Ate Coconuts

Good Thing Video Games Weren't Realistic When I Was In School.

Another case of a school freaking out and then trying to come up with a legitimate reason for their actions.  A student made a map of his school for Counter-Strike.  The school called the cops and expelled him.

The police found nothing illegal in the student's bedroom, but confiscated five decorative swords in the search.  Sword ownership rights have been under heavy fire since they were determined to be the leading cause of death during the Siege of Acre in the third crusade.

Basically knee jerk reactions cause people are scared of everything these days.  Maybe this is just our way of sticking it to middle-east extremist terrorist groups.  You can't frighten us cause we're already more scared of ourselves than we'll ever be of you.  Or maybe we're slipping back into those good old days of witch-huntery where you'd better accuse someone else of not following the crowd blindly before they decide to dunk you underwater first. 

• Student expelled for high school Counter-Strike map | The Register

Babies Get Terrible Gas Mileage.

That being said, you're still not allowed to trade your baby for a car. A woman traded her 5-month old to a couple in Colorado for a used Dodge Intrepid and an "unspecified amount of cash." Wow; now that's leveraging your assets. The three are in police custody and the kiddo is in a foster home. I can't help but wonder what a baby actually goes for on the black market, and obviously I have no idea. But I think it'd be more than the cost of a used Intrepid.

• AutoBlog: Baby Used as Down Payment

Nothing Beats A Good Kite Festival.

Oh yeah, the tranquil beauty of a kite soaring above. The loops the twists, the oohs, the ahhs, the screams, the gunfire, the wail of ambulances. Sounds great.

You may be saying, 'Wait, haven't I already heard about this? Wasn't there already a kite festival with a tragically high number of deaths?' Yeah, but that was a couple years ago when nine people died in 2004. The government in Pakistan banned in it in 2005, but finally lifted the ban for a few days in 2007. I guess they figured people learned their lesson and would stop using "sharpened kite twine". Well they figured wrong, with 10 (some reports say 11) dead in two days, the government's warning about using razor and glass shards to better your kite's odds were obviously unheeded. But lets not blame this all on the kites, some people got so pumped up about the kites that they couldn't help but fire off a couple shots of celebratory gun fire. But that's not the kite's fault.

• BBC: Pakistan Kite Festival kills 10

99% Complete Doesn't Count.

Think-Of-The-Children-ist Jack Thompson is pushing a bit of legislation through the Senate that would require video game raters to have played the entire game before rating it. Yeah, we're back to the "hot coffee" hack in San Andreas again. Just when you thought people could move on. Jack, when is the last time you played a video game, let alone a masterpiece like San Andreas? Techdirt thinks we should make him play it before he gets his way, just so he can see how impossible his proposal is.

That's right, you have to get all the oysters, the horseshoes, the snapshots, the tags. You have to beat all the mini races, all the properties, all the derbies and collect all the cars. The taxi misions, the ambulance missions, the firetruck missions, the vigilante missions, the garbage truck missions, the car dealer missions, the pizza delivery missions, the airplane missions, the hovercraft missions. You have to beat all the arcade games in the convenience stores night clubs, bars and restaurants. Oh, and you have to beat the actually storyline of the game, which is a feat in itself. And after you did all that you still would not have found the hot coffee hack because its not part of any of that stuff. So you have to try out all the cheat codes, all the mod items, the easter eggs, all the post-consumer additions. And when you resurface after about 10 months straight you won't care that a couple of fictional people got it on cause you'll love the game. You'll have played out all your frustrations and realized how wonderful it is. Oh and there's 5 more of them. I'm pretty sure Rockstar can produce this outstanding material faster than you can consume it. Remember, Vice City Stories is coming...

• Techdirt: Can we force Senators to play grand theft auto in its entirety before the introduce stupid laws about video games?

Send Grandma Up The River.

That means 'to jail', right? The new anti-gambling frenzy the US has taken lately is fairly bizarre. They're taking to jailing anyone even associated with online gambling. Well watch out cause they've got one high profile bar matron in custody for running a $50 superbowl pool. Yeah that's right, a 73 year old great-grandmother could face a year in the slammer for something that pretty much everyone in your office did. We've got to make an example out of her though, otherwise people might start thinking that gambling is reasonable.

• TechDirt: Operator Of World's Smallest Gambling Ring Faces Jailtime

I Bet Crude Oil Tastes Great!

Ethanol gets me so riled up. I mean, sure its a great way to stop using foreign oil and prop up the sagging farm industry. You know, aside from its general inefficiency, its failure to address the Neanderthalic burning-stuff-for-power lack of innovation, and the destruction of a perfectly useful commodity. People have been taking it up lately because that's a great way to impress the middle of the country. You know that same, unimproved commodity you're been growing all your life? Well turns out that it just got 7 times more expensive! Bullshit.

You want to grow power? Plant a field full of photo voltaic cells that do a much better job of harnessing sunlight and turning it into usable fuel. And I won't need to subsidize you cause it won't be ridiculously expensive to turn a mild profit.

Sorry I finally got around to watching "Who Killed the Electric Car" so I'm very angry about inferior alternatives being pushed out because they may benefit a small subset of people for a short time. These hydrogen and ethanol technologies that are the "salvation of the energy dependence" completely fail to address the issue of environmental efficacy. Electric cars have been around since the beginning of cars, but we've been distracted all this time by a better advertised, but less effective, alternative. Don't get suckered in again. Don't buy an "efficient" 42mpg hybrid, don't wait around 5 years for a "where the hell will the fuel come from, oh its expensive and inefficient to create" hydrogen drive vehicle. There are gigawatts of electricity out there in wind, sunlight, and waves just waiting to be harvested. And electric cars the possess durability and performance to make use of that free power NOW, without the need to throw billions into "future research".

So next time you feel pressured to use one of these "new innovations" in fuel, reply that you're more temped to crack open a can of 10W-30 instead of Gatorade at the gym.

• Ethanol in America: "Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country." (TreeHugger)
• Checkbiotech.org: Ethanol's corn-fed boom holds hidden costs: higher food prices

TV Is Going To End Up A Prescription Drug In America.

A doctor's note is required before engaging in reading this post.  Alright, by now you've heard that the mechanic-on-mechanic snickers action has been pulled from the lineup.  Yeah, I didn't need to see that anyway, it gave me the jibbles. (here they come again)  But now an anti-suicide group is going after that commercial where the unemployed robot jumps off a bridge (even though it turns out it was only a dream).  Yeah, it makes fun of depressed people and falsely gives them hope that jumping off a bridge is the solution.  I mean, do you know how many people survive jumping off bridges?  Buildings are where its at.  And that commercial wasn't even original; it was just a larger scale ripoff of an Ikea commercial where the family gets a new lamp and the old one sits dejected on the curb.  I'm so tired of people being personally offended and making it a public issue.  Maybe you need to man up.  What's next, keep them from showing "Its a Wonderful Life" at Christmas?  Give me a break.

• Autoblog: Suicide Prevention Group Gets Panties in Twist

Mooninites Invade Boston!

Uh, you probably think that's funny if you've seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force before. If not you may be calling some kind of bomb squad. Well, let me dissuade you. Its a stupid cartoon, not an IDE. Trust me. Apparently the Adult Swim guys thought it'd be cool to promote the Aqua Teens by placing lighted signs around Boston and other cities. And the freaks around Boston think they're so important that anything out of the ordinary must be an act of violence. Now, I haven't been able to find a picture of one of these signs but I can't imagine thinking one of them is a bomb. The bomb squads said that they "contained an electronic circuit board with some components that were 'consistent with an improvised explosive device,' but they said it had no explosives." So they blew them up. Uhhh... isn't an IED pretty much any kind of circuitry with explosives? You know, cell phones, clocks, sensors. WITH explosives. Yeah, that's great. "We don't know what this is. Well explode it before it explodes us." I hate being associated to this fearful and prejudicial social climate.
Update
Here's a couple links to Flickr galleries with the "devices"

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/xjohnpaulx/360279201/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/358742603/

Yeah, those are not bombs.

• Tech Dirt: Marketing Shuts Down Boston

Tag.

You ever played a game of tag and intentionally got 'it', just so you could walk away with 'it' refusing to tag anyone and the game would stop? I have, but maybe I'm just mean. Well I kinda wish I could do that here.

I was reading the old ZNF and ran across something called blog-tag. Now you know I hate the 'b' word as much as anyone who actually maintains a blog, but this concept may be even more irritating.

Some one gets "tagged" and they're sposed to name five things that not too many people know and then name five people to go next.

Odd. But ok. I guess that's a 'fun' way for all these annoying little bloggers to get to know one another- wait a minute. Its not just the "this is how I feel today" or "my hampster is the best" blogs. Well known blogs; blogs I use for news are falling prey to this noise.

Lookit, I may appreciate reading some things you write, or I may value you as a reliable source of information. But I don't need tidbits of you as a person filtering through my RSS stream. I've already evaluated your credentials, that's how you made the list in the first place. I don't care about you as a person, and I 'm a man so I use the Internet for information, not relationships. My only feed that this may be acceptable in is Steve's The Sneeze. And that whole site is just about Steve's life and amusing anecdotes, not news or technology.

In the course of my investigation I came across Mark Cuban's response to the phenomenon. Now this is one insightful motherfucker. He thinks its stupid and a waste of peoples' time. If its good enough for Mark Cuban to hate, don't you spose its good enough for you too?

It has the same intellectual resonance as doing The Wave at an event. You are embarrased if you do it sober, beligerant to non wavers if you do it drunk.

You know that? I already hate this. So before you accuse me of just being bitter about not getting invited to the party, think about this. This is the same as those emails that your friends fill out about what colors they like and what movies they've seen and if you don't send it back to them you aren't really friends. If you're my friend and actually expect me to fire that back at you, you're insane.

Also, this looks to expand geometrically like a pyramid scheme. 1...5...25...125...625 But its a pyramid scheme of idiocy, increasingly blocking the flow of valuable information until the Internet pipes are choked with with favorite burrito toppings and water parks and turn-ons and car colors and sneaker sizes and mustache lengths and abnormal toe numbers and cornbread recipes.

Whatever you say. Its not a big deal. I should calm down. Doesn't mean I'm not right.

Jury To Whiners: Suck It.

A Texas jury sided with a multi-million dollar out of state corporation over the complaints of local residents. Damn straight, I'm not usually for big companies rolling over the opinions of citizens, but screw these guys. The difference is in the details. This company runs the largest wind farm in the world and these plaintiffs are alleging that the turbines are a public nuisance. They say that the sounds created by clean, efficient energy are too much to bare. (well, they say that now that a judge told them they can't make a case against the look of the turbines) An impartial sound engineer took readings and found that the highest reading was 44 decibels. That's smack in between a residential area at night and a quiet restaurant. Or how about the wind blowing at 10 mph? Imagine that, a wind farm makes as much noise as the wind. How dare they?

This wind farm has 421 turbines on 47,000 acres maxing out at 735 MegaWatts. Awesome. I would love to see some big-ass turbines outside my window.

• Wind energy scores major legal victory in U.S. | Inside Greentech