Miss Piggy Lunchbox

This story is slightly outdated now that Toyota has announced (with very few details) their plans to repair (not replace) their crappy accelerators causing deaths nationwide and now that the probe expands, deepens, and finally it seems like somebody is paying attention to the baby killing machines that Toyota produces.  This aspect of it is still relevant, though, and angers me to no end.

Toyota is sending new gas pedal systems to its factories rather than its dealership service departments, The Associated Press learned Friday. The move angered some dealers who say they should get the parts to take care of the millions of car owners whose accelerators may stick.

Dealers?  Good god, what about the customers?  The fact that Toyota sent this to their factories, so they could sell new cars, before fixing all the death traps they’ve got on the road is one of the most unforgivable things I can imagine.  They’ve got “precision cut steel reinforcement bars” on the way to dealers now, but I don’t find that phrase, nor its other name, “shim”, nor the fact that it will take a significant amount of time to train their servicepeople to do the repair, comforting at all.  This is almost certainly the last Toyota I’ll ever buy.

Can somebody please string these assholes up by their sphincters?  Are we really going to let them hide behind their lawyers as their dawdling costs lives, money, and lost productivity as many parents are now, quite reasonably, not putting their kids in these car-to-coffin transformers?

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.

Seattle has proposed charging a fee of 20 cents per grocery bag. A City Council panel held a public hearing on it earlier this week, where they got very positive reviews.

[N]early all of the dozens of Seattleites who spoke during the lively hearing supported the proposal. Representatives of the grocery industry were less sanguine, with most arguing for a flat fee rather than a per-bag charge.

…

Since its unveiling, the proposal has been received alternatively as a bold step toward a sustainable Seattle or an attack on Seattle’s poor and middle-class residents.

…

Tuesday’s event got off to a silly start, with a short statement by a Shoreline city councilwoman accompanied by a woman wrapped in 400-plus plastic bags. Her presentation was followed nearly two hours later by an appearance from the “Plastic Menace” — one Jake Harris of Wallingford, wrapped in plastic bags.

Members of the activist organization Raging Grannies belted out a slightly revised version of the Woody Guthrie standard “This Land Is Your Land” that urged conservation.

Silly is right. If you have the time to show up at a City Council to talk about a twenty-cent fee on grocery bags, much less wrapped in plastic bags or singing songs about bags, your opinion should be discounted out of hand.

If you want to get the other side of the story, hold your silly panel meeting at a bus stop in Central District, where you can talk to a mom taking her three kids to day care on the bus. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you how she feels about expanding the ridiculous regressiveness of taxation in the state of Washington.

I hate that I have to write this post, but when lyrics so perfect come up on my DMP, well, I’m controlled by the power….

Remember that thing Hillary did where she asked for everybody’s help picking her campaign song?

Yeah, good times. Anyhoo, I’ve got a suggestion that I don’t think she considered. How about Green Day’s ”Nice Guys Finish Last”?

Nice guys finish last
You’re running out of gas
Your sympathy will get you left behind
Sometimes you’re at your best
When you look the worst
Do you feel washed up
Like piss going down the drain?

Pressure cooker pick my brain
And tell me I’m insane
I’m so fucking happy I could cry
Every joke can have its truth
And now the joke’s on you
I never knew you were such a funny guy

Oh nice guys finish last
When you are the outcast
Don’t pat yourself on the back
You might break your spine

Living on command
You’re shaking lots of hands
Kissing up and bleeding all your trust
Taking what you need
Bite the hand that feeds
You kill your memory

Sounds just about perfect there, Hillary. What do you think?

You see, the math is now such that there are really only two ways Clinton can win the Democratic nomination, despite what our ignorant media, who wants to have something to write about, is leading you to believe. Those two possible routes are either (i) Obama is found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. In this case some of those “pledged” delegates already awarded in the early rounds of caucuses would switch to Clinton in those states’ later rounds and Clinton would clean up in the states still to come. Or (ii) a coup by super delegates, where the super delegates override the will of the Democratic party electorate and choose Clinton over Obama.

The Democratic party electorate has spoken, and they want Obama to be their nominee. Despite her slim wins in Texas (Obama actually ended up with more delegates there) and Ohio, Obama wiped those out in Iowa’s second-round caucus (where he picked up all of Edwards’ delegates and one of Clinton’s), Mississippi, and Wyoming. So now there are about 30% fewer delegates to be awarded and Clinton has the same margin of deficit (or more) she had prior to the Ohio/Texas “wins” on March 4th. She. Cannot. Make. That. Up. And so the only way she can win is to get the superdelegates to act as the “leaders” she claims they are and put their superior intelligence and judgment to work for her. And if you think the people who came out and participated in the process are going to be happy about being overridden, you’ve got another thing coming.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still vote for Clinton in November if she gets our nomination because I care about this country and I know she would be a far superior president than McCain. However, I won’t be happy about how you hijacked the party, against its clearly stated wishes.

And honestly, the best thing that might happen to the party in that scenario is that McCain beats Clinton and we rid the party of this centrist/DLC/triple-bank-shot/Mark Penn/race-baiting bulls**t we’ve had to deal with since 1994.

It didn’t have to be this way. I didn’t make up my mind until a couple of days before our caucus, and even then I didn’t feel that strongly one way or the other. But watching Clinton’s campaign the last several weeks has literally made me nauseous, and I’m tired of feeling like that.

Sorry, Hillary. You think it’s your turn, but that’s up to us, not you. You should have ran four years ago, but you miscalculated (again…just like you did on the AUF vote), and now there’s somebody better in the field…somebody who is growing the party with new excitement like nobody before him. You f**ked up, and now you can either be a magnanimous loser who does what’s best for the party, its future growth, and the country, or poison the well in your only path to the top, trying to win both the nomination and the general by only the slimmest of margins.

If you choose the latter, don’t pat yourself on the back. You just might break your spine.

I didn’t realize this was making national news, but here’s an AP report on an item I saw in the Seattle Times on Sunday and found interesting.

Washington lawmakers have approved a pilot program that will allow beer and wine tasting in 30 grocery stores statewide in an effort to market local products.

…

The one-year program, strongly supported by the state’s microbrewery and wine industries, allows shoppers to sample as much as 4 ounces of beer or wine.

I guess I didn’t realize it was national news because I assumed other states had similar measures, but apparently this would be unique. That uniqueness surprises me because Washington has, without question, the most puritanical, ancient, backward approach to alcohol of any place I’ve ever lived. (The least restrictive? Missouri, where you could get Everclear at the grocery store. Of course, 40s were also illegal in St. Louis County, but that’s blatant racism as opposed to weird alcohol intolerance.)

In my time here, I’ve seen families forced to move from the bar section of a restaurant because their infants were not allowed there. I’ve been moved to other sections of the bar/restaurant when a friend has forgotten her ID, and I’m 33 with friends in the same, rough age group. Just two weeks ago, I was refused service because I forgot my ID despite being with an entire table of people born in the mid-70’s and trying to order an expensive bottle of wine at an expensive restaurant in West Seattle, which is not where kids aiming to get an illegal drink are going to end up.

But don’t take my word for it about Washington’s hateful attitude toward alcohol consumption. Here’s an example from the article.

But opponents contend the program sets a bad example by exposing children to alcohol consumption.

Yeah, maybe they’re right. After all, I was exposed to all kinds of alcohol consumption by responsible (and some irresponsible) adults when I was growing up, and look how I turned out. S**t, it’s going to be an entire state of bloggers. Oh, man, that does sound like hell.

This is also reminiscent of the concern displayed by a fitness club employee last weekend when My Baby took her 8-year-old Little Sister into the women’s locker room instead of the family locker room. “She might see naked women in the women’s locker room,” the employee said with a look of distress on her face. Yeah, that would probably scar her for life. And she might see naked men or boys in the family locker room. What is it about kids that makes adults so f’ing stupid?