Check Out That Ass

Before I took my "Ohmygodi'munemplyedandfeelguiltyaboutblogging hiatus, I had a reasonably good handle on who read my blog.

It took just six weeks away to make me not so sure anymore. I know people are still reading but, now that I'm no longer part of http://www.20sb.net/ anymore (forgot my login skeez and everything-- which proves that I'm no longer 20something) and now that commentatortots are few and far between, it's harder for me to pinpoint specific, trusty readers with their geolocations on my blog tracker.

I'm willing to bet that most of you are still women. You always were, you know, which is hot. A veritable cadre of freckle-shouldered, spaghetti-strapped (just let me have this, please) women, with billowing tresses falling in front of glimmering eyes scanning the words of an underweight Jewish married guy entering his thirties-- it's, well, it's my version of buying a Miata or something.

Not that I would ever buy a Miata. Stupid jellybean lookin' ass motherfucker.

Which brings me, quite neatly, actually, to the subject of this blog. See, it's a post about cars. I know, I know-- I just wrote something a few days ago about the Mercury Grand Marquis, and I can almost smell you freckle-shouldered lasses rolling your glimmering eyes.

"Oh my God-- another car post? This guy needs to get laid."

Well, we are practicing the art of babymaking, thank you very much. And it requires a fair amount of practice, thank you very much. And my old Etch-a-Sketch helped me figure out a few things, too.

Thank you. Very. Much.

Anyway, I hope that you ladyfolk will bear with me while I get this particular post out of my system (you may have noticed it's gotten off to a bit of a rocky start thusfar) but it's something that's been on my mind for a long time. At the risk of sounding like my father, the American car market is full of dunskies and moronblows. Fortunately, we're wising up a little bit. I mean, Fiat is going to be putting out some awesomeballs new cutietoots in showrooms in the next year or so, which is pretty fucking cool, but we still have a long way to go in t.d.c. (This Dumb Country.)

I can remember a time, maybe three years or so ago, my wife and I were driving up to one of her childhood homes-- the rather inglorious Plattsburgh, NY. As we headed up north and the air got thinner, and as we got closer to Canada, we saw an absolutely adorable 5-door hatchback that neither of us had ever seen before.

"Oooooh! Speed up so we can see more!" Mrs. Apron squealed, jumping up and down in her seat, "That is CUUUUUTE!"

We didn't get close enough to see the model name, but it was a Toyota, and it looked like this:

CUTE, no?

Don't you just want to smear peanut butter on that shit and eat it whilst snuggled up underneath a warm afghan? Mmmmmm!

My wife later went to a Toyota dealership near our house and described this adorable auto to a salesman who told her she must have seen something else-- that Toyota wasn't building anything like that. She was pissed. She has the car gene, she knew what she saw. The next year, though, Toyota released the Yaris in this country. In a pretty cute 3-door configuration, and, eventually, the five-door that was a huge hit in Canada and abroad.

But, they also released this... thing:

Kinda ugly, huh? Kinda boring, yeah? Kinda nondescript, unforgettable, and sort of an abomination before the Lord, mm-hmm?

Right. That's what I thought, too. It looks like a 5-door Yaris that got kicked up the backside. A shame, really.

And they did it with the Nissan Versa, too. The 5-door hatch? Cutetastic! Wanna take it home and play with it (and not in that way) for long time sucky sucky (oh, wait...):


Check out that ass, right? That's one bangin' rear.

The sedan? Ugh, Jesus...


Why?

I don't get it. In Europe and Asia, the "sedan version" of these so-called hot-hatches don't exist. Because they're boring, annoying, stupid looking, and inefficient. Yet, Americans still insist on having "the sedan alternative." We are still so reluctant to just give in to the sensibility of the hatchback. Why, though? I don't understand. What is it that we're so diametrically opposed to?

Increased cargo space?

Increased visibility?

Our cars having nicer asses?

One thing's for sure-- my wife's Honda Fit has a great ass. And my next car is going to have a nice ass, too.

-------------------------------------

Sorry, uh, about the car post. I may be the gayest straight guy you know, but I still love cars.

Small Cars, Big Death

Well, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has once again pooped on the parade.

Thanks, guys.

The New York Times has just reported that the IIHS has just released unfortunate news surrounding the safety of current model-year small cars.

Summary: yergonnadie.

Now, we all know that modern cars are equipped with antilock brakes and enough airbags to cushion everything from your neck to your jaun, but that doesn't seem to matter much when a modern microcar is paired against a midsize vehicle, like a Toyota Camry. The fact is, everybody pretty much understands that, if you're teetalooting around in a Smart ForTwo and you slam into a Hummer, you're basically going to crumple up like a boil-in-a-bag dinner thrown against the kitchen wall, but the recent crashtest videos showing Honda Fits and Toyota Yarii flying up in the air and cushmoigiing up like they're made of tin-foil weren't exactly predictable.

My wife and sister-in-law both are currently lusting after Honda Fits, and I have stood by them. I would now prefer, instead, to drive behind them. In a Chevy Impala.

Because the Editorial/Opinion section of the NYT is an apparently inadequate vehicle for handling reader opinions, it has added a comment page to its storylines. As usual, the commentatortots are at it again in full force. When I last checked, this particular news story rang in at 107 comments. Here's a small sampling from the numbnuts gallery. Please keep in mind that these are New York Times readers who are allegedly of superior intelligence, grammatical fortitude, and possess an unchallenged capacity for rational thought, expertise in logical argumentation, and eloquence of expression:

"THIS IS GROSSLY irresponsible. You have these small cars crashing into medium sized cars.
WHAT you need to test is small cars crashing into small cars - which is what would happeen if everyone tried to save the planet and drove small cars"

"Your adversising in favor of big, voracious cars will certainly not help fighting global warming and saving oil reserves !"

"how ’bout pitting a Harley Road King against the Smart? Surely a lot of these gas-hog owners are out there on the weekend posing as HOGs on their vintage bikes! And are they ALL knuckleheads?!"

"Oh my gosh! This is so surprising! I can’t believe that when something tiny hits something bigger the tiny object sustains more damage! My feeble hippie mind apparently cannot comprehend freshman high school level physics!"

That one, by the way, is my favorite. I'll spare you the tedium of reading any more of this palblum. Suffice it to say, the vast majority of these responses dealt with mention of high school physics, which I took for two days before dropping out in favor of the less mind-expanding world of geology and astronomy. Funny, in spite of my dearth of formal physics training, I still had a reasonably good idea that a freight train hitting a gerbil was not going to bode well for the gerbil.

It would be great if we lived in a society where there were no "big gas hogs" (by the way, they hit these microcars with Honda Accords & Toyota Camrys-- hardly "gas hogs" by any stretch of the imagination, but anyway, dickheads...) but, unfortunately, this country has a long, storied history of building things larger than necessary: take a gander at the skyline of any major American city, or the office of any CEO of repute or the guest bathroom in the average American McMansion if you think I'm full of shit. The plump, commodious living room on wheels was invented here, and I'm pretty sure the fucking motorhome was, too, so don't think, my little greenies, that you can just wave your non-CO2 emitting wands around and all the Ford Crown Vics will just disappear off the face of the earth. See-- we have a little thing in this society called "freedom" and if people want to buy six-seater cars, and they have the available funds, they can. Hell, they can buy them even if they don't have the available funds. That's the other thing we invented in this country: credit.

D'oh!

The onus, friends, is not on the mid-sized & large cars which have existed in this country since the dawn of time to simply go away and never be heard from again-- the onus is on the designers and manufacturers who are busily trying to make a quick buck by churning out small cars that are ill-equipped to face the challenges of co-existing in a society where there are cars of varying sizes. If a car put puts around in Bali or Tokyo with no problem, that's great, but if there's a problem when it comes to America, well, then maybe it doesn't belong here-- or maybe the design needs to be retooled. That's the reality of the situation.

And for all of you patchouli-loving dred-asses (by the way, where's my fucking G.P.S.?) who want to bitch and cry about all the big cars speeding around on the road today: why don't you just go walk in front of one?