(no subject)

[proximoception]

I never thought of that, the contribution SUVs et al. must have made to so many roads and bridges getting torn up these last fifteen years.

Tom Tomorrow voice: Who could have imagined portable, armored living rooms might prove dangerous and unsustainable?

They weren't very big in Ohio when I left, though one did see them and mutter something about selfish white suburbanites, and I just sort of assumed they were what people drove in BC because it was BC--where surely everyone offroaded all the time (fact-based suspicion: nobody actually offroads). It was up there that I did notice the sports car niche was being refilled by huge shiny things, which struck me as the absolute worst trend possible, short of actually mounting cannons on hoods or spikes on wheels.

Down here they seem to take their place as the proper completion of something very, very stupid. And they will reliably tailgate you between seven feet and 0.1 cm.

And in general they ranked high on the list of things your voice and brain got hoarse complaining about c. 2004, didn't they? Liberal burnout is a phenomenon that needs some books about it.

The Canyonero was one of The Simpsons' final sublimities.

Comments

[all-unnecessary.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine made this SUV macro one afternoon:


Mormon in-jokes ftw!

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the endless hummer limo in that Lil Wayne video, full of coy and languid video versions of Las Vegas prostitutes, eerily harem-like. I guess Manson's musician friends proved cult leaders and male pop stars are after the same things, if we didn't know already?

[all-unnecessary.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes. And the armored aspect: the vanity of feelings of both persecution and adoration.

[parishat.livejournal.com]

here in cambridge, it's often hard to park SUVs, and they look really out of place on the narrow streets, which inspires a kind of shame--or so one hopes. _Smart_ cars trade on being seen parallel parked, hence inspiring envy among those who have bigger ones... hm, the eros of car size and the greening of our city streets? someone's gotta write this paper.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Yes! the cure's definitely going to be to get positive trend feedback in the direction of Smaller. Jeez, imagine how much better NYC would function (though an Italian traffic mortality rate might ensue).

Back when gas was $4/gal. here half the SUVs disappeared and were replaced by flattened looking silver, black and grey things. And then the gas price plummeted while everyone ran out of money--the rest can't be sold but can't quite be abandoned. It's fun that the owners are suffering, but it's not solving the problem.