Post-Christmas Post

I had a good Christmas. You? Good to hear. I got some killer DVDs and books. That's what I dig, so that's cool.

Didn't do nearly as well as the boy, though; he made out like a bandit. After he got a stack of gifts at our house, when we went to my sister's there was a whole 'nother stack of presents for him. The funniest, though, was when he opened the metal Buick Grand National model Nate gave him, that goes with the metal Ford Thunderbird and Jeepster models Nate gave him before. After I got it extricated from the packaging and handed it to him, he said in a low, reverant tone, "I'm going to go crash this into my Thunderbird."

Ya know, I'm actually kind of done with Christmas now, so I'm going to talk about other stuff.

Charley already posted about the Nissan Urge concept car, so I'm not going to say anything directly about that, but I am going to rant about concept cars in general. I often wonder why the major car companies bother? They put these things out as a promotion, to get people interested in their cars and where they claim to be going, and then they just turn out the same old crap. It's a colossal waste of money, and I'm sure contributes to the collapse of the worse-off companies. The few of us who actually get excited about concept cars are car freaks anyway, and the general buying public doesn't give a shit. The general public cares about what they can buy now, the rest of us get mad because we can't buy the cool product you put out as a promotional "concept".

Sure, a few actually get made, but they tend to be the most ridiculous high-priced high-performance models. And the good ones never come about. Where's my Buick Bengal? Over four years ago they said it was going into production. Or how about the Chrysler Jet Car? That was a great idea 40 years ago, and would have changed how cars were made - it was quieter than cylinder driven engines, had reduced friction and easier maintenance, and could run on just about any fuel, without conversion.

So I say to the major car manufacturers: forget the concept cars. Work on the technology, make it happen, quit spending money to build these things up for your little roadshows filled with pipedreams. I'm not going to buy the crud you're making now just because you flash in front of me the thing I want but you'll never make.

Ok. Rant over. Now how about some news?

There's still a convicted Nazi war criminal in the U.S., and he's fighting deportation to the Ukraine. We've been trying to get rid of him since '77. He's 85 now. My theory is, give him the choice...deport to Ukraine, go to the slammer here for war crimes. The fact that he has been roaming free in this country for 30 years after being found out amazes me. Still, our hunting of the Nazis is different and unprecedented in terms of war criminals. Usually, governments only prosecute the big guys, but the Nazis, we've hunted down every camp guard we could find. Not that I'm against that, mind you, but those buggers are getting old and soon there will be none left to hound. What do we do then?

Ouch! Man dies in chipper-shredder. I think Margie from the movie Fargo said it best: "...I guess that was your accomplice in the woodchipper, eh?"

Here, the other day, I was saying I was questioning my belief in capital punishment. But that questioning becomes harder to do when I read that some fundie muslim in Pakistan killed his four daughters because one of them had an affair, and he wanted to preserve his family's honor.

Enough for now. Mattbear out.