Blogging Week - Tactless Tuesday
By Brent Diggs on Oct 23, 2007 in Humor, Satire
Today we continue the Blogging Week festivities with a meme I have dubbed Tactless Tuesday.
On this most glorious of days, I dispense with the small portion of charm and grace that usually infuses my writing, and strike the nail squarely on the non-pointy side of unsuspecting topics, caught by surprise at being so directly addressed.
And the topic are:
SUVs as status symbols. Unless you have a business or a family of mormon proportions, you probably don’t require four tons of automobile to get your groceries home from the store. Safety? Unless the manufacturer equipped airbags can actually float the vehicle across rivers of formerly solid arctic real estate, I don’t think you’re doing anyone any favors here.
Chrome badges declaring the size of your wheel rims posted on the sides of your vehicle. You are really not going to score any points with this little reminder of how you spent more money on your wheels than on your education. Life is depressing enough already.
Okay, status symbols altogether. If you really need to buy something to define who you are, then stuff is not your problem.
Mini Storage. If you have so much unused crap that it need its own house, then perhaps you have attachment issues. Do yourself a favor: drag your stuff to Goodwill and let it be redistributed to others people’s houses in the great currents of crap circulation. If you really miss it you can buy it again.
Plus a seasonal bonus:
The Constant-Inflation Halloween Yard Thingy. Anything this tacky should not require a constant supply of electricity. In an era of wireless networks and genetic engineering, a visual assault of this nature should be able to power the entire neighborhood under its own hideousness.
Okay, it’s not that hideous, it’s actually kind of cool. But it still offends me on general principle.
To further spread the infection, I am tagging:
Steve Pavlina to see if he can devise a Law of Non-Attraction to deflect this mighty meme.
Henry M. Paulson at the Department of the Treasury just because I want to make sure he doesn’t get lonely over there with all my money.
And Mattress Police because Diesel really gets a kick out of these things.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for What’s Up With Me Wednesday.
Thank you for flying Ominous Comma. Have a nice day.
—–
This blog is being excommunicated by the righteously indignant souls at humor-blogs.com
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//begin rant
RE: SUVs as status symbols…
The irony is that SUVs, as a whole, have less storage capacity than a common Mini-Van. Mini-vans also get better gas mileage, handle better, are more comfortable, and just all around make more sense. Hey, it works for me and my wife!
To the excuse of needing pulling power…
The torque output of most V6 powered Mini-Vans is more than sufficient to pull the average pleasure boat. If you need more toque, buy a full-size van with a V8. Those things can pull an 18 foot trailer.
To the excuse of needing 4WD…
All wheel drive is available on most vans. Subarus will go places most SUVs would get buried to their axles in. (I know, I’ve done it.). Construction crews? OK, I can see that. But nobody outside of the armed forces needs a Humer, especially not little Suzzie the soccer mom down the street!
To the excuse of Mini-Vans not being “manly” enough…
Sorry, but buying an SUV wont make THAT any bigger. Get over it. However, it will swell your monthly gas expenses.
SUVs as a whole are a perfectly good waste of a solid truck frame and sheet metal.
//End rant
:: huff, snort, growl, snarl, bark ::
I need to lay off the coffee.
I just love it when I stop at a red light and look in my rear- view mirror and staring back at me is a massive Ford Excursion, 19 feet long, with 8,000 pounds of metallic hypertrophy, chrome grillwork gleaming at me like the teeth of some primordial beast. And if that is not scary enough, the driver almost squishes my little rollie pollie of a car without ever even knowing it.
Speaking of lavish status symbols, George Vanderbilt (back in the day) built his wife and their daughter–a 172,000-square-foot mansion in Asheville, N.C., with 34 bedrooms and 43 baths.
I also read somewhere that the Roman emperor Nero decorated one of his palaces with a 120-foot-tall statue of himself and installed ivory-inlaid ceilings equipped with pipes to sprinkle perfume on dinner guests.
“What a lovely ceiling, is that–AHHHHHHH! CK1 in my eyes!! Check please.”
Debbie,
Read up on your history of Christian persecution…… that wasn’t perfume dripping from the ceiling.
Chris,
While your comment gives me pause, I do believe perfume was a status symbol in the Roman Era because it meant you smelled like the gods instead of your average Roman who smelled like 3 day old meat.
The persecution of Christians was a thought I was trying to avoid, but since you brought it up, I’m sure it did not happen in the Nero palace.
Hey Debbie,
Google it…. It is too yucky to talk about here. Or are you just joking?
“3 day old meat.”
All together now……eeeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!
Chris,
I definitely missed the Nero chapter… and he did it IN HIS OWN PALACE like they were trophies or something!
Pretty gruesome huh?
The lesson for the day is now complete. Be back tomorrow for our lesson on the persecution of mullet sporting insurance agents.
Thank you professor Chris non-C.
Yes, let us pray for all those hairs in the back that wanted to stay longer than the hairs in the front but they were persecuted…cut off with no warning…
What, that’s not how it happened? Ok, Ok, same time, same place, tomorrow for the lesson. I’ll be sure and bring a notebook.
Your comments are more prophetic than you realize.
Tomorrow you will see, oh tomorrow you will see.
Tactless Tuesday. Beautiful.
Built for speed, designed to endure.
But possibly waaaay too much? Oh, wait - that was the SUV comment.
I need my SUV for running cars off the road. I tried to do it with my mountain bike for years to no avail so then I bought a VW. German engineering my ass; it hardly withstood two rush hour Blitzkriegs.
Have you mounted a plow to the front of your vehicle? I have found that it really improves your victim per mile average…For other people…who do that sort of thing.
Not many people know that the Chevy Suburban was so named because it’s about the same size as the average 1950’s suburb. And Ford Expeditions are built such that their roofs can serve as mobile landing sites for small planes during a national emergency.
(I’ve got a whole bit I do about SUVs.)
That’s good Jami.
Quite good.
RE: Chrome status symbol badges
Excellent! Unfortunately, the people to whom this is directed would probably have trouble comprehending this post. In fact, they most likely have problems with the portions of the internet that extend beyond MySpace.
Alas, I fear we are preaching to the choir here. Maybe I could scroll these guys a message from a trunk-mounted reader-board: Depreciation.
Welcome to the new millennium, where the excess of the 80s is met with egocentric self-promotion and injected with an overdose of an overinflated sense of entitlement. Bling Bling!
But I drive a Hummer and how did you get that picture of my front yard? I love vehicles that get 4 miles to the gallon and when I’m not at the gas station filling up, I can spend my time blowing up inflatable seasonal decore.
Of course you do. No doubt you use for the same purpose that many other parents do: getting across the battlefield of abandoned toys in the driveway.
As for the inflatables, why not fill them with hummer exhaust? It would be scary for kids and adults.
You know, I used to drive smaller cars to conserve resources and keep the world a cleaner place. Then I realized that I’m not really all that fond of my fellow man and bought an SUV to hurry our eventual destruction along. I figure the animals will thank me for it when we’re gone.
I’m sure the cockroaches will. I’m sure if we all dropped dead today, they could live off our refuse for hundreds of years
Nice to let off a little steam, innit? But I’ve got to agree to disagree with you about the inflatable pumpkin… that thing ROCKS! I wish we celebrated Halloween here in New Zealand. What’s cooler than a macabre holiday of pagan origin where you take candy from strangers?
Well, I did pull that punch a little out of coolness sake.
OMG you did it again! First off, the picture of your mustache is awesome…what a sneer!
Secondly, this sentence made me laugh like crazy (and I haven’t done that ALL day today):
“Unless you have a business or a family of mormon proportions, you probably don’t require four tons of automobile to get your groceries home from the store.”
OMG you’re a hoot and I so enjoy your blog.
Thank you, thank you…
No, thank you. Making people snort diet drinks out their nostrils is one of the many production goals of the Comma.
Some people who don’t even drink diet beverages, keep some nearby as they read, just for spewing.
What about heated bathroom floors… all that extra power when the problem could be fixed with some shoes.
Pope T,
Tried it! How do I dry my wet shoes when I get out of the shower?
Why dry them at all? Just recycle the SUV tires into rubber shoes? Wear ‘em anywhere!
Actually my biggest pet peeve these days is all the disposable, battery powered household lights I find in stores these days. We’re not talking about flashlights for attics and stuff, but rather using thousands more batteries and their nasty landfill-leeching chemicals just to save people from running some wires.
they are not terrible of themselves, but put into the context our current world situation, it is incredible wasteful.
Rant concludes.
It is also reminds me of the billions of dollars the United States invested to develop a pen that writes in outer space when the Russians just went out and bought a pencil.