The Dumber And Dumberering of America: The National Pastime of Assuming We’re Getting (even) Stupider.

How interesting it is that when scholastic indicators (in the form of college grades) go up, it’s taken as an indication that we’re all becoming stupider. And when they go down (in the form of SAT scores)…we conclude the same thing.

It’s actually worse (or better) than the article suggests, when you consider how much more of the population (per capita) goes to college now than in 1940. If you’re of the “grades as an absolute” persuasion, you’d expect grade *deflation,*  as we’ve seen with SAT scores (and which has happened solely for that reason, not because Americans are getting dumber as certain Conservatives have suggested…which shows if nothing else, that they majored in Calumniation instead of Statistics).

Even if grading on a curve, the median, of course, ought not to’ve changed. At least not if the average performance actually stayed the same.

More interesting (to me, anyway) is that that the net inflation over 70 years is just about 20%  overall, but while it’s 17.5% for public institutions, it’s a whopping 27%  (!) among private schools.

This in turn suggests that since the main reason for the existence of private colleges is provide a mantle of superiority for the children of the privileged classes, that their grade inflation as a function of actual  student accomplishment (prime example, our former president) is far higher.

But since the graph didn’t track grade performance on a per capita basis, we may never know. And of course, since the curricula are so different now than 70 years ago, it’s all pretty much meaningless anyway.

My personal theory is that the introduction of women and minorities to the cathedrals of the rich simply means that college students are now 17% smarter (if not more so ) overall than they were in 1940, and that the change in grades is not evidence of inflation at all.  A rising tide, after all, lifts all boats.

The actual study report– as opposed to the media interpretation at top– is available here. You’ll notice its interpretations are far different than the version previous. Or my own.

The only thing that’s actually getting stupider is the media-consuming public. (However it’s clear I’m not qualified to comment, since I’m just a hick from Toad Suck, Arkansas and I got Cs and Ds in math all through high school and skipped to subject entirely in college.)

Repacking The Suitcase of Courage: Newing & Improving the Best Part of the Tour de France

People seem to have it all wrong about commentator Phil Liggett.

Judging from the general amount of whining heard on cycling newsgroups during the Le Tour, some people seem to think the man’s  job is to describe what’s happening in the race to the tactically astute minority who stay up late each night parsing every possible scenario of that day’s stage like a gaggle of Russian chess afficionadi deconstructing a Grandmaster’s final tournament.

Well, those people would be, um– what’s the word here?–oh, yes: Wrong.

While there is something to be said for a tactical discussion of cycling (personally, I watch each stage’s video feed  on the internet, while following @CharlesPelkey ‘s astute commentary on VeloNews and reading actual bike racers smack-talk about the whole thing in real-time on Twitter, but that’s just me) that’s simply not the product Versus is bringing to its 20 million viewers .

Point is, subtract out the approximately half-million Americans who actually know dookey about bike racing and we’re left with nineteen and a half million Versus viewers (that’s 99.5%) trying to figure out how Lance can be winning this silly race thing when he’s not even at the front of it.

Phil– and Paul and Bobke’s– job is to give these clueless-but-well-meaning folk some sort of glimpse as to what’s going on in the insane, arcane world of professional road cycling while keeping the spoke-sniffers (you know who you are) mollified enough they can preserve some shred of credibility. And do it all while casting each stage as a revival of Hamlet…replete with all the tension, drama, and larger-than-life characters pertaining thereunto.

So the commentary on Versus is about 95% entertainment sprinkled with just enough  factual accuracy to give it a veneer of credibility…sort of like professional wrestling. I mean, do we really care who owns every one of the approximately 15,000 châteaux between Monaco and Paris?

Of course not. Cycling on television is entertainment, folks, and that’s what Versus is there to deliver. And that is exactly what I love about Phil Liggett. Say what you will about the man, he’s always entertaining, and he’s right way more often than he’s wrong, and that’s exactly what he’s being paid for.

But  the poor man has been dumbing-down bike racing for the masses for a couple of decades now, and let’s face it, it’s taken a toll. If nothing else, it’s got to be getting just a little bit tiresome. For him, I mean.

So as a lifelong Phil Liggett supporter, I’d like to respectfully suggest some additions to a repertoire that includes such gems as dancing on the pedals and (my personal favorite) unpacking the suitcase of courage.

But it turns out the trouble with writing parodies of Phil Liggetisms is, they sound so much like the real thing they’re hard to tell apart. That’s because, like a Zen koan, the closer you look at them, the less sense they make.Which, in both cases, amy not be entirely unintentional.

So here forthwith (maybe even fifthwith) and for the greater good of the sport, are fourteen proposed poppin’-fresh new Liggsttisms …plus one classic from the Gloried Days of Yesterphil. First person to corrfectly identify the actual Phil Liggett quote amidst the steaming bolus of neolophilogisms and email your answer to me wins an evening out in downtown Toad Suck (or Fort Smith), with dinner and drinks on me. Only catch is, of course, you have to be willing to come to Toad Suck to collect.

Fine Print: No fair text-searching the correct answer out of Todd Carrier’s excellent Phil Liggett Fan Page, either, although I’ll put Todd’s link at the end so after you’ve taken the quiz, you can see the Master at work for your ownself.

So now that you’ve found the needle in the stack of horse-processed hay, here’s the link to the Offical Gideon Bible of Phil Liggetisms. Good on ya, Mr. Ligget, and may your Suitcase of Courage never get Lost in Transit.

This Just In: for an alternate take on the Phil Liggett Issue, see this excellent post from The Bleacher Report.

Further to Urban Squirrel-Hunting: an update from the Department of I Told You So

Ha! I knew it! Further to my earlier blog post, we now have Exhibit A: one Mister Brendan Kiley, writing in Seattle’s The Stranger weekly, talking about his experiences hunting rabbits, pigeons, rats, and, yes, squirrels (not to mention such less-savory beasties as slugs and rats) in the wilds of various Seattle parks. The article is a good read, too- insightful, amusing, and highly recommended.

Excisely as predictificated, Seattleites are beginning to embrace the notion of urban small-game hunting in much the same way that they’ve evolved the keeping of chickens in one’s backyard from a sure sign of lunacy into a de rigueur mark of cosmopolitan sophistication…or at least sophisticated cosmopolitanism.

In fact I’m going to print out the whole darned thing and mail it to the folks back home, the Interwebs not having much presence in Toad Suck, where Rural Free Delivery is still something of a novelty. They will, as we say, bust a seam and tump themselves right over laughing at it, too. The notion that there’s lots of public space here in Seattle not just stocked with, but literally overpopulated with wild game, and that the local cityfolk (led by the perspicacious Mr. Kiley, of course) are finally waking up the the all-too-obvious fact that those critters are made out of exactly the same tasty, nutritious meat that those selfsame urbanites cheerfully plunk down $30 an entrée for in trendy downtown eateries (under the guise of “adventurous cuisine”)…well, that one’ll be a real knee-slapper back home.

 

But Wait- There’s More!

There’s another side to this story, too, and one which both Seattleites and Toad Suck denizens will doubtlessly miss completely. Fact is, you can poach all the rabbits and geese and squirrels you want to in town and call yourself an Urban Survivalist, but you’re ignoring the pure-dee fact that the Puget Sound area is and remains one of the richest inshore fisheries on the planet. You don’t need to plink away at rabbits with your BB gun when you can lay in a day’s rations with just a couple hours loafing at the local pier any day of the week.

If anything, catching world-class seafood in Puget Sound makes stringing trot lines for catfish and napping on the bank of the Arkansas river  look entirely too much like Honest Work. A huge basket of crab for supper here involves a leisurely walk down the dock with a trap and some line in one hand and  a can of cat food in the other. The limit is six per day; bring a friend and that’s an even dozen—more fresh crab than any two normal  people can comfortably eat at a sitting.

Salmon? If you’re really hungry, you can literally scoop full-sized kelt (post-spawn salmon) out of inland streams with your hands a good chunk of the year. Or you can go out in a boat and wet a line for a few minutes to get the really good stuff.

The freshwater lakes are full of crayfish (known as “mud bugs” in Arkansas, and yes, we were suckin’ the heads long before ally’all learned about ami ebi, too), of which an enterprising toddler can catch dozens in a few hours with a piece of string and some chicken guts. And with a bucket, a shovel, and a spare afternoon on the mud flats you can easily end up with more clams than you and your family can consume, including the famous geoduck, the only clam big enough to carve actual steaks from. With fresh oysters for starters, too.

All of which is to say that poaching your own game in the wilds of Seattle may seem hopelessly daring and cutting-edge. But if it’s true survival you’re after, there are much easier ways to go about it. Like walking downhill in pretty much any direction until you’re waist-deep in the world’s biggest fish market.

 

Addendum: But That’s Not All!

Fashion Accessory: squirrel-feet earrings, courtesey of uphaa.com. The site doesn’t list a city of origin, but I’d like to think they’re from Seattle.

Ah, Spring. When A Young Man’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Bitch-Slappin’ Beat-Downs.

I love Bremerton. Really. It’s a small, working-class naval yard town that’s scrambling to transform itself into a sort of Yuppie Disneyland for Seattleites too snooty for Mercer Island, but who can’t yet afford to live on Vashon or Bainbridge.

Unfortunately, between the eco-nomic downturn and some complicated jiggery-pokery with WSDOT (wherein  the same high-speed passenger-only ferries that would place Bremerton within easy commute distance of Seattle—thereby turning the former into a Bedroom Community for the latter—were developed and put into commission in 1998, then mothballed until 2008, then put back into service, only to be decommissioned and sold to San Francisco at a dime on the dollar less than a year later, much to the chagrin of both the Bremerton Port Authority and all the developers who had hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into barely completed waterfront condos and are now facing an occupancy rate approaching that of Downtown Chernobyl. I’ve seen ping-pong matches with less back-and-forth action.),  Bremerton is looking more working class by the day.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the First Day Of Spring.

Never mind what the calendar says, today was the first day of Spring here in Puget Sound, with sunny skies, snow still capping the Olympics, and Mt Rainier lording itself over everything way off to the southeast.

Me, I went for a bike ride along the east side of the Port Washington Narrows to Tracyton, a little town set back about five miles into the piney woods and out along the water that most folks don’t even know is there, accessible by just one road in and out (OK, two, if you’re willing to go up over the hill, which I wasn’t) and inhabited by some 3,300 locals who like it that way just fine, please and thank you very much.

As I said, it was the first day of spring and I was out on my bike, enjoying the sunshine and 70° weather. It was, to state the obvious,  a beautiful day. There were sailboats out in the breeze and families having cookouts in the many small parks that line the water. Traffic was as uniformly courteous as it nearly always is here, despite the narrow streets. Two teenage girls in a minivan, students at the nearby School For The Blind, apparently, even honked and whistled at me. It was just that kind of a day.

So imagine my surprise when I rolled pleasantly over the Warren Avenue Bridge and stopped with the rest of traffic at the light there and I see two guys in full gangsta regalia pile out of a blue Toyota, pull a third guy out of the back seat, and commence to administering a full-on, bitch-slapping, foot-stomping beat-down on what they would doubtlessly have referred to as his sorry ass.

I mean, how dumb is that? This ain’t some back alley at midnight, guys. It’s 4:00 on a sunny Sunday afternoon in front of dozens of witnesses on a stretch of wide-open asphalt in the middle of a busy intersection.

Everyone else is in their cars, ogling this spectacle like maybe it’s happening on Reality TV. And to be fair, it’s not the kind of thing you expect to come across in this part Bremerton-or, as far as I’ve seen, any other part-even after midnight.

So what the hell. I sigh, pull the phone out of my jersey pocket, and dial 911. And of course the larger of the two guys picks that very minute to look up from the figure on the ground he’s kicking and see me. The only person in sight not safely inside a lockable automobile.

“What you lookin’ at, mothafuck? Who that you callin’?” he yells at me. “You put that phone away now, or yo’ next.” And he starts towards me, pulling his buddy with him. They’re both bigger than me, maybe 6’3″ or 6’4″. Their attire is a mixture of LA Crips and Seattle Grunge, minus the plaid.  

Here I am, a fiftysomething hayseed from Toad Suck, Arkansas straddling a bicycle, wearing girlie-man lycra and rigid-soled cycling shoes (with big, awkward plastic Look cleats that make walking—let alone fighting or even running—nigh-on impossible), contemplating the wrong end of a two-on-one street brawl with a couple of guys thirty years younger than himself. At least I was wearing a helmet.

The lead guy was close enough that I could see he had Afro- Sheened his dreads, making him look like a cross between Bob Marley and Billy Dee Williams. What a doofus, I realized. And suddenly I was very calm.

For once I even did something smart. I held out the phone toward him and said in a very loud voice, “Speak up, asshole. The 911 operator’s recording every word you say.”

(Truth is, the 911 operator hadn’t picked up on the first several rings and I’d already cancelled the call when I saw the beatee get up from the asphalt and walk unconcernedly off down the street, not even limping. So the phone I was holding out didn’t even have a dial tone, much less a connection.)

Meanwhile the leader pointed pointedly (I mean, is there any other way?) at me and said something so stupid it actually made me laugh: “We be back for you.” This kid had obviously been watching way too much television. And they left.

The whole thing happened so fast and was ultimately so dumb I don’t even remember getting an adrenaline rush from it. But in retrospect it must have looked pretty cool, even kind of heroic, especially to the people in cars who couldn’t hear the inane audio track: here’s middle-aged white guy (yes, I am of the white persuasion, even more blindingly so in lycra shorts on the first day of spring) coolly staring down and then literally laughing in the face of a couple of menacing gangbangers. Lose fifty pounds and the cornpone accent and I could even pass for courageous.

I wish there was a better punchline to all this, but there isn’t. The guys climbed back in their Toyota and left;  I clipped into my pedals and rode off into the sunset, give or take a few hours. The guy on the ground got up and walked away without any obvious damage; I couldn’t even see him by the time I looked around. In fact, to be perfectly honest about the whole thing, it wasn’t even much of a beat-down.  

But if any Hollywood producers are reading this and would like to option the rights to my hardboiled one-act thriller, they can reach me at author@datelinetoadsuck.com.

Simile Roulette: Metaphors by Mixmaster, Clichés by DiCarlode

A bunch of us had installed ourselves at the back table of the highly recommended Naked City Tap House in Seattle’s  Greenwood district a couple of weeks ago, pass-sampling schooners of brewing arcana with names like Ninkasi Tricerahops Double IPA and Silver City Oak-Aged Fat Woody Scotch Ale, when Jamie, who is an electrician, noted there were two oversize electrical panels on the wall behind him.

 Wondering why a medium pub  needed not one but two electrical panels, let alone oversized ones*– and, of course, being Jamie — he went back to investigate.

 The barmaid, an intelligent, articulate and not unpersonable young woman whose knowledge of obscure Pacific Northwest micro brews would be insulted to be called encyclopaedic, was consulting with me as to which of the several varieties of porter on offer I should get to accompany my German Sausage (kraut on the side) sandwich.

 ”Hey you!” she snapped, stopping Jamie dead in his tracks with a voice suddenly redolent of Toad Suck, “Don’t you ever go sticking your hand into a girl’s Junction Box without at least offering dinner and a movie…”  and then, turning back to me without missing a beat, “Now, Sir, back to your Sausage…”

 Damn. That’s the kind of girl worth getting to know better, were I unmarried and/or twentyyears younger. OK, thirty, and that’s my final offer.

 But what is significant about now-famous Naked City Junction Box Incident was that it got me thinking about me thinking about what I like to call Simile Roulette.

 The principle is simple: in this age of the Innertubes, new figures of speech spread more or less instantaneously. And grow tiresome just about as fast. But by taking two or more clichés and combining them in random or manipulated order, interesting effects may be obtained much surpassing either both the originals, much as in Five-Card Nancy, as discussed previously.

Before we go any farther, I should note for the grammarians among us (you know who you are, Shelly), that while not all of the figures below started out as similes, they have become so by virtue of the fact that they manage to compare unlike images for effect.

 Herewith, a few examples:

•  Not the spiciest knife in the harbor
•  Not the sharpest bulb on the plate
•  A few bricks shy of a Happy Meal
•  The taco that broke the camel’s back
•  The lights are on, but the elevator’s not running.
•  …all over him like rice on a duck.
•  That ol’ gal’s got more curves on her than a sack of hammers.
•  That one’s seen more stiff pricks than you have barrels of monkeys.

 And then there are the ones that almost make sense:

• If she were the town pump, I’d rather die of thirst.
• I wouldn’t cut off his head if his neck were on fire.
• Well, sniff my taco and call me Condoleezza
• His work’s poor, but at least he’s slow.
• Dealing from the bottom of the duck.

But Wait, There’s More!

I even considered building a little HTML set of drop-down boxes for this post so you could mix and match your own version of Simile Roulette. Except for two things:

First, getting WordPress to accept that kind of code is like trying to force grease through a camel.

Second, and is far more often the case, because someone smarter and more creative with me (which, on a purely statistical basis anyway, could be just about anyone) got there first.

I refer you instead to Mister Charlie Hatton of Watertown MA, and his very excellent Cliché-O-Matic.

I’d write more about all this, but suddenly I was run over by a feather.
 

 * The answer,  turned out, was that  they need the oversize  breakers for when  they finish installing the tanks and other equipment to do their brewing in-house.

A Cause We Can All Feel Good About Drinking To

If we had any presses, I’d be screaming for their stoppage. Hold the music! Cancel my Rumba lesson!

After years of solicitations from all kinds of doubtlessly worthy causes ranging from freshly clubbed baby seals (given the photos, it’s never quite clear whether they’re for or against); the Blind Children’s Drive (not thanks, my wife told them when they called. We don’t think blind children should be driving in the first place); or even Habitat for Humanity (their pitch is both simple and ingenious: as (presumably) Rich Folks, you should give them money with which to build homes for Poor Folks…far away from yours), I’ve finally come across a cause that I can support wholeheartedly and openhandedly.

I’m talking about doing my part to help build temples for Buddhist monks in Thailand.

Really.

The Thai, as you may know, have a civilization that’s over 10,000 years old; one that’s been around not quite forty-three times as long as the United States, or roughly five times as long as Christendom.

At some time during the past 2,500 of those years, many Thai families converted to the Theravadan school of Buddhism (the oldest of the three main Buddhist schools and, at the time, anyway, pretty much the only one available). To this day it is traditional among devout Thai families that every male child spend a year or more in a Buddhist monastery, sort of an alternative to the military draft, only with far better consequences for all concerned.

That’s a lot of monks.

And of course all those monks need a place to work and study and meditate, which leads to the constant need (what with a growing population and all) for more temples.  So you can see how this would be an ongoing problem in a relatively poor country (according to Wikipedia, a quarter of the population lives on less than one US dollar per day).

But recently I was pleased and astonished to learn that a group of enterprising Thai monks have just finished building a temple—complete with crematorium, prayer rooms, a hall, water tower, tourist bathrooms and several small bungalows raised off the ground which serve as monks quarters—out of beer bottles.

You heard right. Beer bottles. Just about one and a half million of the little guys. (True to their ecumenical nature, the Thai holy men do not discriminate between green and brown, although they do segregate them into separate buildings.)

But still, beer bottles. Beer. Formerly in Bottles. Beer bottles. 1.5 million. To build a temple.

That’s a lot of beer. In a lot of bottles. And I, for one, want to do my part.

As a cause, it’s constructive, non-polluting, and may  even do something about all the negative karma I’ve accumulated by eating cheeseburgers all these years. How can it miss?

Problem is, I just don’t drink enough beer to make a noticeable dent in the problem my ownself. And believe me, I’ve done the math.

At my piddling  six-pack-per-week consumption rate, it’ll take another 4,794 years before I have enough bottles left over for the monks to build another temple. And I don’t care how patient those Buddhists are supposed to be, I’m  not willing to wait that long. I mean, 480 centuries may be nowhere near as long as a Buddhist kalpa (estimated by people who claim to know at 4.32 billion years), but it’s still just too darned long for me.

I’m happy to do my part and double my beer consumption. (It’s for a good cause, after all.) Or even triple it. But that still puts the start date for the temple in the year 3606.

And that’s why I need your help.  If I can get sixteen hundred people to join me in this cause, the monks can start a brand new temple in just a year.

Now, I ask you: who among you is willing to drink to a cause like that?

Department of Bwahaha, Part The First

Seattle is a town fueled by caffeine. At least that’s the stereotype.  

And like a lot of stereotypes, this one has its basis in fact. But, also like a lot of stereotypes, the real truth is far more bizarre than the cliché.

In this case the truth in question is both metaphorical and transcendent. Because it’s useful—if not especially literal—to think of Seattle as not just as a separate city, but an entirely separate planet, like Superman’s Bizzaro World; only in this case, a round world that revolves around a lower-wattage star and therefore forces its

 

 inhabitants to suck up inordinate amounts of coffee in order to become fully operative, like the young Peter Parker, slowly discovering the full extent of his Spider Powers.

Or as my buddy David—my high school debate partner and the only citizen of Toad Suck to ever become a Doctor of Jurisprudence at Stanford Law School—puts it:

 

 

 

 

(For the rest of us dullards who didn’t attend Stanford Law, that means The Uncaffeinated Life is Not Worth Living.)

Everything becomes clear once you accept this basic fact. Seattle is a beautiful city blessed with some of the crappiest weather this side of Tierra del Fuego. And that, as we used to say in Toad Suck, takes some gettin’ used to.

The citizenry deal with this grim meteorological truth in a very practical way: unless you want to sit around the house all day (watching it rain), you’re compelled to go someplace else (to watch it rain). And since, it’s raining all the goddamned time, that means you’re either going to be very Wet, or else very Indoors. Hopefully in the company of neighbors, family, friends, and/or at least moderately convivial strangers.

Which gives rise to the fact that Seattle is, perforce, a world-class town for Coffee Shops, Ales Houses, Trattorias, Bistros, Brasseries and Bodegas of every sizes, kind, shape, manner, and form.

The true Seattle Coffee House (as well as ale houses &c., but this post is specifically about coffee houses) is a thing of transcendent beauty. Despite the fact that they’re all serving essentially the same pretty-good product, every one of them is a different, unique, and qualitatively individual experience.

In Seattle, a newly moved-in resident of a neighborhood appraises and selects his or her coffee house with the same thought and care that an English Gentleman would bring to his choice of Club, a Californian to his/her Gym, a Bedouin to the selection of a string of camels, a Japanese Shogun to a virgin concubine, or an Arkansan to the thorny question of which Hooters to frequent. Except that in the case of coffee houses, the relationship is generally, deeper, long-lasting, and more satisfactory in the long run. Plus there’s far less chance of STDs.

And of course like English Clubs, Californian Gyms, Bedouin Camel Markets, or even softcore Titty Bars, every niche in the human experience has its own Ray Kroc: some cynical shifty-eyed punk whose idea of a Good Time is to take a fundamentally unique and wonderful experience and turn it into a homogenized, plasticized bastardized simulacrum of its own self. And get richer than Croesus in the doing of it.

In addition to Mr. Kroc, who fashioned something as simple and wholesome as cheeseburgers and milkshakes into an instrument of world domination, there’s Walt Disney vivisecting Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps into a cartoon about dinosaurs; Abraham Levitt, singlehandedly inventing suburban sprawl;  the entire worldwide Bottled Water Industry; and certain religious

 extremists,  turning the great spiritual works of human history into a nonstop glurgefest of  televangelism, holy wars, ritual clitoridectomies, and bombed family planning clinics.

 

Did I mention, after more than six hundred words, that this post is all about Starbucks?

A Digression Within A Digression– and all in Less Than a Hundred Words.

I wish it would Snow. Or not.

Either would be fine with me. 

But the stuff coming out of the sky right now– I just went out to fetch the last of the laundry in from the machines in the basement, so I know this for what we called back in Toad Suck an actual fact, as opposed to some other kind, I suppose–   is like when someone takes a strawful of  Slurpee, puts a finger over the end, and then drips it slowly down the back of your neck.

Underheard: Things You Hear on the Bus

We don’t have busses in Toad Suck. Instead we have pickup trucks, and usually someone in one will spot you walking down the road and offer you a ride. On the other hand, there’s no place much to go in Toad Suck, so a fleet of busses like Seattle has wouldn’t make much sense its ownself.

But Seattle is a big place. And color me naive (color it, heck, I can’t even spell it), but I’m still impressed that you can go anywhere you want in this big ol’ city for $1.75 (well, $2.00, since they just raised the fare this week). And back, if you use your transfer soon enough.

One of the joys of riding busses, whether in Seattle or anyplace else, is the cross-section of people you encounter.  Once on the dreaded #68 between San Jose and Gilroy, an audibly flatulent man in a wheelchair threatened me with a bowie knife– the thing must’ve been a foot long– when I didn’t want any of his tequila blanco in a brown paper bag. Really. The driver never even turned around. But since I was three seats away and he was strapped into  one of those lash-the-chair-to-the-bus-frame webbing devices, I didn’t feel particularly threatened.  

Besides, things are just done like that in San Jose. Expected, almost.

In Seattle it’s a whole different story. Tonight on the #358 Downtown, there was a young woman clearly all dressed up to go clubbing (on a Thursday night too, no less). She explained there was a big party at some bar downtown, but she wasn’t sure of the location or even the name, just that it had “Whiskey” in it. Several young men were chatting her up under the guise of helping her find a bar called either The Whiskey Something, or The Something Whiskey. They took turns trying to impress her, until one fellow topped them all with this line:

I’d buy you a drink, but I don’t got no offical State ID, just the one from the Methadone clinic, and the bars in this town won’t take it. Fuckers.  

The woman got off shortly thereafter for some reason, on Third Avenue near Pike St too, arguably  one of the cheesier parts of downtown inasmuch as the indigent come from all over the city to sleep on the sidewalk there or else just hang out all night in small groups so they can be first in line come morning at the welfare offices that line the block.  But it turned out, serendipitously enough, that  she was just a few blocks from The WhiskyBar, something I didn’t realize until I got home and Googled it.

I don’t know if she ever made it, but I’d like to think so.

So in that intrepid spirit (the young woman’s, not the ID guy’s), here’s a sampling of other things I’ve  overheard in Seattle busses in the past six months, at least the ones I remembered to write down:

 
On the #358 dowtown (in fact it was the Metahadone ID guy again, talking to a  street person who had climbed aboard after the club woman got off):  

Methadone Guy: You know what I hate? Runnin’ for the fuckin’ bus in the rain, man. I might slip. And Fall. And kill myself.

Wino: Yeah, man.  I’ve done that.
 

On the #16 Northgate (I ride the #16 a lot):

Passenger #1 (in the far back on the bench seat):  You gonna eat that?

Passenger #2 (also onthe bench seat): It’s not mine. It was just sitting here when I got on.

Passenger #1: Yeah, but you gonna eat it?

(I never did find out what “it” was. Probably just as well.)

 

Passenger: How much further to my stop?

Driver: Which stop is that, ma’am?

Passenger: I’m not sure of the name, but I’ll know it when I see it.

 

Passenger (from the sidewalk, through the open door of the stopped bus): Does this bus stop here?

 

On the #5 Greenwood (the week before the fare hike to $2 during peak hours):

Passenger: I don’t have any change, just two dollar bills. Can I get a (25¢) credit for my next trip?

Driver: No, but you can take this trip twice if you want. 

 

I’ve got a million of ‘em, I tell ya.  Or at least I will if I keep riding the busses here long enough.

 

 

Hummers vs Assault Rifles (adv: gun industry)

You don’t see a lot of Hummers in Seattle. And if you get places as I do—by foot, bike, or public transit—that’s probably a Good Thing. Hummer drivers always seem like such jerks.

But recently there’s been an assertion of absolute, scientific proof that Hummer drivers really are the jerks so many people seem to think they are.

Seems there’s a study (there’s always a study.) To quote from it, Quality Planning, the ISO company that validates policyholder information for auto insurers, has released proprietary findings that confirm a strong correlation between what people drive and how they drive.

So far, so good. The study (and if you clicked the link above to see the actual document, you may have to poke around a little bit to find it) contains a lot of interesting stuff, most significant of which is the following statistic: drivers in Hummers get ticketed 4.63 times as often as the rest of us. Nearly five times, on average, as often as us regular folks. Who wouldn’t own a Hummer on a bet.

The question, as always, is why.

One answer, which may be popular over at The Hummer Club, is that these otherwise innocent and generally decent folk are somehow targeted, beset, persecuted, and/or prosecuted by evil Law Enforcement minions posessed by something that might best be labeled as Hummer Envy.

Right.

<digression>
(I should mention at this point that the Club’s mission, or at least the first of the floridly worded seven parts thereof, is to promote the safe use and enjoyment of HUMMER vehicles in a family oriented atmosphere. Most folks may find it easier to envision Club members as a bunch of middle-aged guys with comb-overs and serious anxieties about the adequacy of their courting tackle sitting around a fireplace smoking cigars, guzzling 12-year-old bourbon, and bragging about how they just ran over and crushed a Prius, complete with passengers. There is, needless to say, zero evidence to suggest this is actually the case. But still, it’s a lot of fun to think of it that way.)
</digression>

Another answer, favored by my co-bloggers, seems to be, naw, they’re just a bunch of assholes.

To quote from the study again: Mark S. Foster, author of A Nation on Wheels: The Automobile Culture in America Since 1945, offered his assessment on the statistics: “Hummer drivers feel like kings of the road because of their elevated driving position. As these statistics show, they are leading the pack when it comes to violating the law, which may reflect their driving attitude.”

“The sense of power that Hummer drivers derive from their vehicle may be directly correlated with the number of violations they incur,” said Dr. Raj Bhat, president of Quality Planning. “Or perhaps Hummer drivers, by virtue of their driving position, are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians, and other drivers.”

Hmm. If that last bit’s true, wouldn’t it stand to reason that other SUV drivers, who sit up just as high, would have comparable issues?

Nope. Here’s the actual chart:

As you can see, the Hummer is the only SUV in the Top 10. In fact, three land yachts-Chevy’s Suburban and Tahoe, and Buick’s Rainier-made the Top 10 list in the study for least ticketed drivers. Even more damning, if you drive a Hummer, your citation rate is almost thirty times higher than a typical ‘Burban driver’s, a vehicle of commensurate size (approximately that of a studio apartment. With bathroom.)

So it ain’t the car. It’s gotta be the driver. Which brings us to the real question: are Hummer drivers already a bunch of jerks from the get-go, or are they somehow transmogrified once they climb behind the collective wheels of their butt-ugly, gas-guzzling, pedestrian-terrorizing ticket-getting behemoths?

Well, let’s take a look at Hummer’s own advertising and see what kind of drivers they’re recruiting, shall we?  The answer seems obvious, even at a glance:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rest my case.

Now all that’s left is to wonder aloud whether the General Motors Corporation is doing us all a favor by putting these social reprobates in vehicles that are so easy to spot (and therefore avoid), or if it isn’t culpable in the same way that a demented gun store owner might be for deliberately marketing specially developed, high-power and, needless to say, fully loaded assault weapons to a bunch of known psychos.

Of course, there’s an important difference between a Hummer and an Assault Rifle: on an Assault Rifle, the safety features protect those on the receiving end. One is left wishing that GM had the same ethical sense.

However, if  Hummers are the giant brightly colored turd in the punchbowl that is the American Driving Experience, at least this particular turd has a silver lining. Hummer sales have tanked, so to speak, and GM is trying desperately to sell the brand to whatever despotic third-world dictatorship is willing to have it. It’s the perfect car, they reason, for that kind of place.

Perhaps plummeting Hummer sales are due to fluctuating gas prices, or changing fashion, or for some other reason entirely. But I’d prefer to think it’s the simple fact that there really just aren’t all that many real assholes in the world. (The usual number, I’m told, is one per customer. But, as with supernumary nipples, some folks just seem to be blessed with extras.)

Fortunately for me, so few of them live in Seattle. And now we have Scientific Proof of it.

 

But Wait-There’s More!

Even if GM manages to sell off the brand, there’s still a little ray of sunshine for wanabee Hummer owners. A vehicle with even more size, mass, and penile-anxiety relieving power. Just don’t bring it to Seattle, OK? Or Toad Suck, either, for that matter. Click here to see it your ownself.