Miss Piggy Lunchbox

So Toyota sold me a death trap.  Thank god they talked me out of that Kia with the whole resale value argument because I bet these death traps are really going to hold their value.  If they were a house, I think you could talk about my loan/mortgage as being underwater right now.

Not that resale value’s that big a deal for us…we were planning to drive this into the ground.  Looks like we’ll be driving it into a wall instead.

The best part may be their response.  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

If I am an owner of one of the affected vehicles, what action do I need to take?
Toyota is working quickly to prepare a correction remedy and will issue owner notifications in the future.  No action is required at this time unless you feel you are experiencing this condition.  If you are experiencing this condition, immediately contact your nearest Toyota Dealer for assistance.

Maybe they’re right.  After all, how bad could the problem be if they’ve STOPPED SELLING SEVEN FUCKING MODELS, including their flagships the Camry and Corolla.  O. M. F’ing. G.

I have to take it in to the dealership for an oil change this week (we got a few free).  I’m pretty sure I’m going to walk in with a t-shirt that reads “Ask Me About My Death Trap” and start loudly asking questions about whether I can get my money back on my death trap.

Toyota. Death trap. Toyota.

It’s a hobby of mine to note incompetence when I see it.  In economic times like these, I take it a step further and mentally put together an ordered list of who should be laid off first.

Here’s somebody for said list: whoever came up with this tagline.

Like somebody’s got fun times and just can’t figure out what product or service will make them great.

Gee, what should I write about today? Maybe the at-least-five inches of never-snow I shoveled off the walk after Thursday’s nearly-all-day dumping? Yeah, I think that’s it.

It might have been blind squirrels finding nuts, but I guess those patients who cancelled Friday’s appointments on Tuesday may have been prescient after all.

I didn’t have to go anywhere Thursday or Friday, thank God, so let’s just walk through an AP article from earlier this week on Seattle and its abusive relationship with never-snow.

Schools throughout greater Seattle closed Wednesday at the mere threat of snow [sic –Ed.] late in the day, a symptom of the city’s deep phobia of the white stuff and near-complete inability to deal with any significant snowstorm [sic –Ed.].

Let me state here, again, unequivocally, that mocking Seattlites’ skittishness around never-snow storms is not something I’m involved in. Yes, they may over-react here and there, but I can’t say I blame them given the sad state of their infrastructure and the utter neglect they leave their roads in when it does never-snow. The only real problem I have with their reaction is their tendency to drive much slower on completely dry roads when there is never-snow on nearby, but separate, roads. It’s bizarre. Other than that, though, their reactions to the presence of never-snow are completely justified. What really drives me nuts, of course, is their denial of the never-snow’s existence and their stubborn refusal to invest in never-snow-removal equipment.

Even though Seattle is the nation’s northernmost major city, snow [Sic –Ed.]is a rarity here, and the city is ill-equipped to clear the streets of its hilly neighborhoods. Combine that with drivers unaccustomed to driving on slick roads, and snow [sic –Ed.]is a recipe for chaos.

Wrong, Donna Gordon Blankinship. Never-snow is not a rarity here and drivers are accustomed to driving on slick roads, which are caused annually by never-snow and semi-weekly by rain.

Four days after a relatively light snowfall [sic –Ed.], the city was still clearing icy roads in hilly neighborhoods on Wednesday.

If by “clearing icy roads” you mean insisting that it never-snows here and that it never-sticks around so that they don’t even have to try to clear it, then yeah, I guess they were doing that.

Snow [sic –Ed.]is relatively rare and inconsistent in Seattle. Since 1984, annual snowfall [sic –Ed.]at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ranged from a trace amount to 20 inches in a 24-hour period.

Read that again. “Annual never-snowfall has ranged from a trace to 20 inches in a 24-hour period.” Is there an editor on this piece? Are we talking about annual never-snowfall or the amount of never-snowfall in a 24-hour period? Second…WTF? It’s ranged from a trace to 20 inches in a day? 20 inches in a day is a lot of snow or never-snow. I can tell you that since 1984 the snowfall at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport has ranged from a trace to 28 inches in a 24-hour period. So you’re not really saying much about never-snow’s rarity here with that sentence.  Of course, what do I know, Ms. AP?  I’m just a blogger without the resources of a major news organization to check my work.

Elsewhere in the country’s northern regions, cities are often more blase about bad weather. … In Minneapolis, where snow is a way of life, the schools typically shrug off anything short of a blizzard.

Because they’re hyper-aggressive about cleaning the roads there. Because the state isn’t operating on a pauper’s budget because they have an income tax. Because they own up to the reality of the snow they get there.Because they like dry roads so they can go places.

But here’s my favorite part, what sums up the sheer lunacy of all of this denial. People annually abandon their cars at the side of the road in snowstorms…

Local insurance company PEMCO got into the act by sending out guide [sic –Ed.]on the best way to abandon your car in a snow [sic –Ed.]storm….

…only to deny it ever happens.

Seriously, that’s the epitome of the whole situation…the insurance company is prepared enough to tell you how best to abandon your car in a snow storm, but we aren’t prepared enough to actually get the damn stuff off the roads.

Here’s how I hope that pamphlet reads:

If it’s never-snowing and you think you might be tempted to abandon your car on the road, thereby making things worse for everybody else, think twice about even leaving the house.

I had this amusing post drafted for today wherein some considered inner reflection and spiritual intent guided my actions for the course of the day and then all went to hell as somebody did something stupid, resulting in a misanthropic rant made amusing by its juxtaposition with the aforementioned spiritual soul searching.

But there is a remote chance that the cause and target of my rage would get wind of the post and so I’d rather just let discretion be the better part of valor.  You can write your own post in your head based on the paragraph above, or if you really want to hear the story you can ask me sometime.

Honestly, I don’t want to talk about the Pacific Northwest’s climate this much, but events keep popping up that I am forced to address. Today’s post just wrote itself, and I’ll kind of be surprised if there’s power in the house when I want to post it.

First, there’s this headline in the Seattle PI: “Downpour tonight, summer scheduled for next week.”  Actually, the headline, and much of the article, now reads differently, as Seattle’s shadow government decided Seattle couldn’t handle the truth and executed this reporter.  However, here are some excerpts from that article as it read originally.

The National Weather Service calls the heavy rain, colder air and gusty winds dousing Western Washington and the Seattle area “a powerful storm more typical of autumn.”

[several paragraphs about how bad it will be]

Given the seeming space-time shift from hot August to wet November in the past few days, some wonder, Will we still have a summer left?

Remembering that the local summer and growing season was shortened by the coldest and gloomiest start to June since records have been kept, when snowplows were called out to open the mountain passes, the short answer to the question:

Yeah.

“We still have hopefully another month of summer with a little interruption for the next couple of days — it will get people ready for fall earlier,” said Art Gaebel, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Seattle’s Sand Point neighborhood.

…

“It is unusual,” Gaebel said of the autumn preview. “Summer will be back, hopefully by next week.”

[lots of disaster-preparedness stuff.]

That just speaks for itself.

Oh, and here’s the forecast for next week, you know, when summer will be back after only two or three days of unseasonably chilly rain:

And in case that’s not enough, here’s a picture from campus yesterday.

That’s right, on August 19th Canadian Geese on on the autumnal flight south.  Argue with that, Seattlusionals.  It’s undeniable: This is Year Without A Summer Part Two.  It’s actually probably part Seventy-Five, but I’ve only been around to document one personally and another from press reports from what is probably another dead reporter.

[Some of this sat around in draft form for a while, so things might get a bit temporally weird here and there, especially if you've seen me in the last two months. - Ed.]

It’s been over a week since I last shaved. That’s not really as extreme as it sounds, since I work from home and so only shave about 2.5 times a week, on average, to save my face from severe irritation. Still, I’m way past my normal length here, and it’s warm out, so it’s a bit uncomfortable. I haven’t been able to shave, though, because I don’t have any aftershave.

I’ve known I didn’t have any aftershave for a while. On June 18th, the day before we left for Norway, I put all of my existing after shave into a 3 oz. plastic container, at which point I realized I would need all of what I had just to shave the two times I would on the trip.

Timeout. I need to break from the ostensible rant of this post to go on a different rant, and I’ll actually combine several rants into one for that, so it’s just ranteriffic here today. I may set an MPL record.

Okay, so the tangential rants start with the ridiculousness of needing to put liquids in three ounce containers in a quart-sized plastic bag to fly. As somebody said better than me, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Homeland Security doesn’t seem so interested in what the terrorists might have, as they are in what they had the last time.” Somebody puts a bomb in their shoe? Now we all have to take off our shoes. Somebody tries to assemble a bomb with liquid? Now we can barely take liquid on a plane. Heaven help us when they try to sneak something on board in their ass. (Here ends tangential rant number one.)

Okay, regardless, we all deal, because, I don’t know, we like watching our government make life more miserable and less free for us all while gritting our teeth and not putting up a fight for fear of being labeled an enemy combatant. Or something. I’ll probably be shipped to Guantanamo for this post.  (This was tangential rant number two.)

So, in dealing, the market for travel size stuff at the pharmacy explodes literally overnight. Which is “good” for business because they can charge more per amount of product, and we get more packaging for less product and so we pollute more and the Bush administration is happy. (You’ll note we’re now on tangential rant number three.) And we all dutifully go to the pharmacy for our travel size containers that we store in our suitcases because we’re efficient. So all of a sudden, there are racks and racks of travel size cologne, hairspray, saline, pepto bismol…I’m surprised there aren’t three ounce bottles of Aquafina yet for 75 cents a pop.  (The Aquafina mention could spark a fourth tangential rant, but I don’t think its mere mention qualifies it for rant status.)

However, for some reason, nobody makes travel size aftershave. (Here we go, tangential rant number four.) I have spent hours looking through pharmacies, grocery stores, Targets, etc. looking for a three-ounce bottle of after shave. Old Spice makes a plastic, flip-top lid bottle of after shave, but (i) you can’t find it anywhere (I think I’ve managed to own it, like, three times in my life), and (ii) it’s 4.25 ounces, the same size it was when I was first learning how to shave. My Baby even spent hours looking all over Seattle for travel-sized after shave for me for Christmas last year, and she came up with nothing as well. I am astounded that P&G hasn’t jumped at this huge market opening. And that utter astonishment is even worse than not having travel-sized after shave.

Anyway, so I’m packing for Norway and dutifully transferring the aftershave to the plastic container we have, with a lid that leaks (honestly, folks, is it that hard?  are you going to make me goin on tangential rant number five?), and I realize I’m out. The next day, before we fly out, I head to Walgreen’s to pick up something I need for the trip, and look for after shave while I’m there. And while they have some rancid crap like Lectric Shave there, there’s no Old Spice after shave.

I give up, because I have to go to Norway, but when I come back, I can’t find Old Spice anywhere

I wonder why.  From the Old Spice FAQ at oldspice.com:

Why can’t I find Old Spice Cologne and After Shave?

Beats me. Try schmoozing somebody in your favorite store who can get the manager to order it. Or, if shopping online is more your style, check out www.drugstore.com or www.cvs.com.

Hm, not helpful, but it’s interesting that there’s something like that on an FAQ.

Take a deep breath, ‘cuz it’s full on rant time….

Here’s the deal, you f**kers, you know exactly what’s going on. You a-holes are clogging up drugstore shelves with 17 different kinds of body wash and body spray because 18-25 year-old males have disposable income that they spend on pollutants that smell bad but supposedly attract the opposite sex. And this is such a lucrative business model that you’re abandoning your flagship product, a product that has defined American men for generations.

Check it out. On the left, is the old product, which you can’t find anymore.

It’s in a nice, glass bottle with heft. It screams, “I am an American man. I ooze testosterone out of my face, but need to spread my seed to create new Americans, so I shave and put this on and women feel really comfortable around me because I smell like their dad.”  You see, you jerks, you can’t abandon this product, because it smells like women’s dads, which ensures the propogation of the American people.

But, no, because you can’t seem to get enough non-biodegradable plastic into the hands of 18-25 year-old males, while you’re starting to abandon us to the crappy realm of Lectric Shave, or whatever, you’re moving to a plastic bottle that is about 75% the size of the old one and now costs 25 cents more per ounce.

If I ever meet one person who was associated with any of the decisions that has led to the demise of this product, I will shove every single flavor of Old Spice body spray, deodorant, and body wash up their ass, all at the same time. And then I will turn them in as treasoners.

I’m gonna be the best old man.