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.

Vehicles like this are a great argument for $3/gallon gas. If only my income taxes weren't subsidizing your cheap fuel...

Powerpoint - The final victory of style over substance, of the medium over the message. The world managed to ignore this bloated multimedia piece of shit until it was "integrated" into Microsoft Office at which point every presentation given by every PHB in the country had to have 27 colors, 14 typefaces, and 7 different animations to distract you from the fact that it had absolutely nothing to say. People used to say that the Macintosh gave ordinary people the ability to make every document look like a ransom note. Powerpoint gives marketeers the ability to make every presentation look like an infomercial. Thanks, Microsoft, for yet another innovation! (Of course MS didn't actually write Powerpoint, they just made it impossible to ignore)

True story: I once called a secretary at a big computer company (no longer in business) to ask for directions to one of their facilities. "No problem" she said "I'll email them to you." 5 minutes later a 400KB document showed up in my inbox in a format that my version of Powerpoint couldn't open at all. (don't even get me started on how big a dipshit you have to be to invent a file format that's not at least partially backward-compatible). After a few nips and tucks with Unix tools I was horrified to find out that the actual text of the directions was fewer than 400 characters! Thanks to our friends at the software monopoly we all have to suffer a 1000-to-1 inefficency.

Scott Mcnealy had it right: powerpoint should be banned in all rational companies. The problem is that he can't even make it happen within Sun. The last time I went to the valley to see a bunch of presentations at Sun they were delivered in, you guessed it, powerpoint. Game over.

Got anything smaller?

Another variation on this is "got 4 cents?", but either way it really bugs me. I'm caught in the crossfire between lazy banks whose ATM's only dispense $20's and lazy merchants who don't want to make change. Yes, I do feel like a loser buying a cup of coffee with a $20 but what am I supposed to do? I'd like to reply:

Yes I do have a variety of smaller bills, but I'd like to use a $20 for this purchase if it's not too much trouble. Gee, I'm really sorry that I can't buy something from you in a way that's convenient for you.

...but usually I just mumble "sorry".

Paying for air - In about the past 9 months or so it has become increasingly difficult to find a gas station (note that I did not say "service station") that has a working air pump that you can use for free. The station where I buy most of my gas (and have most of my service done) just replaced their old-fashioned air hose with a spiffy new machine that charges you fifty cents to put air in your tires. Most of the other stations just let their compressor break and never fix it.

I'm not arguing for a return to the days when 5 gas jockeys in uniforms with neckties would pump your gas, check your oil, and wash your windows (although it would be nice) but I find it hard to get past the idea that a gas station should provide a minimum level of service, including bathrooms and (free) air for your tires.

(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.

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.

-- TobyCabot - 02 Jan 2001 - 24 Dec 2001