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| Since every other vanity website has a page full of self-indulgent rants, here are a few of mine: The Ford Excursion - This is quite simply the most disgusting vehicle available today. It's vanity, insecurity, gluttony, and lust wrapped in a shiny body and pushed around by a V8 engine. This, folks, is the vehicle that Caligula would drive if he were alive today. It's a truck which had no other purpose than to be bigger than the Chevy Suburban. It's basically a great example of what's wrong with America today: "It's incredibly wasteful, but I can afford it, so why not? It's unsafe for me, but much more unsafe for the poor sap in the VW. I don't need anything nearly this big but my neighbor has a Suburban." The irony here is that many people consider Corvettes vulgar but they cost less to build, buy, run, and dispose of; they burn less gas and pollute less per gallon of fuel burned; and they're much less dangerous to the other drivers on the road. | ||||||||
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| (ACK) - You must have seen them - those little white ovals with three block letters written in them. They're based on the "country of origin" stickers used in Europe to indicate where a car is from, but now they're used for damn near anything and everything. The initial premise was arrogant and snotty ("gee buffy, the great unwashed will see our 'ACK' sticker and they won't know that it's the airport code for Nantucket airport, it will be our little joke, aren't we just the bee's knees!"), but at least it was limited to one little sandbar off the Massachusetts coast so it was relatively easy to ignore. Somehow, then, the fad spiraled out of control. Now every second-rate town and crappy top-40 radio station is printing the damn things, and people are just stupid enough to plaster them everywhere. | ||||||||
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| < < | Here's a clever enhancement to the original (ACK) sticker: take a Sharpie and add a "t" at the front and a "y" at the back and with any luck the nouveau-riche social-climbing asshole will drive his Excursion (see above) around with people laughing at him for 6 months before he figures out what you've done. | |||||||
| > > | Here's a clever enhancement to the original (ACK) sticker: take a Sharpie and add a "t" at the front and a "y" at the back and with any luck the pretentious nouveau-riche social-climbing asshole will drive his Range Rover or Excursion (see above) around with people laughing at him for 6 months before he figures out what you've done. | |||||||
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| < < | Software Pretense - I was ticked off by a letter to the RISKS digest this morning and I thought that ranting about it here would be less counter-productive than flaming the guy who wrote the letter. Here it is: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.06.html#subj5. I have to say I haven't read quite such an obnoxious, elitist, arrogant screed in a long time. Why is it that every time an idea comes along that opens something up to a broad audience it's reflexively trashed by the few who had access to it before? This guy seems to indicate that it's a bad thing that Unix (a very elegant and powerful computer operating system) is now available for use by "diletantes". This makes me sick. The GNU/Linux people look down on Windows people. The BSD people look down on the GNU/Linux people. The Plan9 people look down on the BSD people. Folks, just because something's popular doesn't make it bad! Of course in the case of Windows it happens to be both bad and popular, but the first didn't follow from the second. | |||||||
| > > | Software Pretense - I was ticked off by a letter to the RISKS digest this morning and I thought that ranting about it here would be less counter-productive than flaming the guy who wrote the letter. Here it is: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.06.html#subj5. I have to say I haven't read quite such an obnoxious, elitist, arrogant screed in a long time. Why is it that every time an idea comes along that opens something up to a broad audience it's reflexively trashed by the few who had access to it before? This guy seems to indicate that it's a bad thing that Unix (a very elegant and powerful computer operating system) is now available for use by "diletantes". This makes me sick. The GNU/Linux people look down on Windows people. The BSD people look down on the GNU/Linux people. The Plan9 people look down on the BSD people. The eros people look down on the Plan9 people. Folks, just because something's popular doesn't make it bad! Of course in the case of Windows it happens to be both bad and popular, but the first didn't follow from the second. | |||||||
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| < < | -- TobyCabot - 02 Jan 2001 - 09 May 2002 | |||||||
| > > | Lack of respect for Old Glory - This one will probably get me flamed but here goes: It's been more than a year since 9/11 so it's time to take the faded, tattered, beaten and abused American flag off of the radio antenna of your Hyundai Excel rolling box of foreign-manufactured shit NOW! You are not showing respect for the flag by abusing it. The flag should be flown with respect and reverence, not laziness and lack of care. Sure, it takes time and effort to raise and lower the flag and you're a busy guy and there's lots of internet pr0n that you haven't seen yet but it's time to take that flag down and dispose of it properly. Here's a hint: if you're too lazy or stupid your local VFW or Boy Scout troop will probably do it for you.
-- TobyCabot - 02 Jan 2001 - 13 Oct 2002 | |||||||