Rants

Enough already. Yeah what happened was terrible, but more than 17,000 people died in car wrecks involving alcohol last year. Forget terrorists, I’m worried about drunk drivers! More interesting stats here: MADD’s General Statistics.

Got home yesterday from work and the “line” was blinking meaning I was disconnected from the net. Happens. I rebooted and it was still blinking. Checked the phone and there was no dial tone. I walked across the street to use a neighbor’s phone to call it in. (I know I am the last man in America without a cell phone.) the woman informs me that the service techs only work from 8 AM until 6 PM (it is 6:30.) I guess the phone isn’t considered essential anymore (cell phones?) My mother-in-law lets in the tech today and he spends an hour and a half solving the problem and as he leaves he says, “The charges will be on your next bill.” Does he tell her what he did? Nope. Does he leave a copy of the work order? Nope. I tried to call the help line again this evening and got tired of waiting. I never signed anything agreeing to any work being performed, neither did she. I may just refuse to pay anything.

Back from vacation and went to listen to my favorite Celtic tunes on The Thistle & Shamrock on Georgia Public Radio and it wasn’t there. Every Saturday for the past couple of years I’ve been listening in at 8:00 PM for music from the Emerald Isle and its neighbors. The folks at GPR have replaced the show with something called “Green Island Radio Show.” It’s still celtic music, but it is hosted by some guy. I’m really going to miss Fiona’s lovely voice….Hey, wait a minute this really should be a rave. I just remembered that I could always listen to the same show again on Sundays at 6:00 PM over on the South Carolina Educational Radio Network and they are still going to be broadcasting T & S! Now I get 2 shows of Celtic music. Just going to have to make an effort to catch the Sunday show. Before if I missed the Saturday show I knew I could catch it Sunday, but now the pressure will be on.

Picking a Rant subject about politics & current events is easy, just watch the news or read the paper. I usually do neither, so my rants usually come from other aspects of my pitiful life. Today while traveling in the car I finished my last trashy mystery novel and with nothing else to read I glanced at the Roanoke Times we had. There was this story about 4 terrorists who were living in Detroit, MI. Holy Crap! Something needs to be done about this. Michigan is harboring terrorists. Does George Bush & company know of this? He wants to invade Iraq for similar reasons, maybe we should practice first on someplace a little closer, let’s bomb Detroit. I’m sure Illinois, Indiana or Ohio would give us permission to fly over them on the way….

Time to pick on the rent-a-car. All of these items are minor gripes and I’m sure if you actually owned a Taurus, you could get used to them. The radio volume knob is too close the shift lever. At least ten times in the past 6 days I have inadvertently turned the radio volume down when shifting into Drive from Park. (I will give Ford points for actually having a round knob for volume instead of the usual up or down buttons.) The car had an in-dash CD player which was nice and about 2 days into the trip I noticed a button for selecting a disc number. Ooh, maybe this car has one of those multi-disc players that is right in the dash. Nope, would take the second CD I tried to feed it. Why, if you don’t have that option, is there a button for it? There is a big hesitation when the transmission shifts from first to second that is disconcerting. Kinda like riding in a manual transmission car with an inept driver. The power window lock out switch is in the wrong spot or it is sitting too high. It is right below the four window switches and it is easily turned off or on when used the other switches. How come the driver and passenger floor wells are not flat all over? This is a front wheel drive car right? The back quarter of each foot well is raised an inch or so near the transmission tunnel. Feels kinda funny when using the cruise control and you put your feet flat on the floor, one is higher than the other.

Caught the latest No Doubt Video on VH1 this morning. Didn’t catch the title, but it was kind of a catchy tune. I was having a hard time following along with the song though, too many quick-cut, in-your-face close ups of the top half of Gwen Stefani in tight T-shirts or cleavage baring tops or her jumping up and down, backlit, on a bed in a semi-transparent skirt. I’m sure the 12 year-old boys love it, but it made me long for the simple blue dress with white polka dots of the “Don’t Speak” video.