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Sport Utility Vehicles
As regular viewers know, I'm no fan of sport utility vehicles. They're not sporty, they're not utilitarian, they're too heavy, they use too much fuel. They're so big the rest of us can't see where we're going on the highway. They tip over too easily and the people that drive them - well, they get this false sense of security and they drive these things around as if they had brakes. But the worst thing is this image that these things attempt to portray for their owners.
I mean, you never see them out here in the countryside. They're only seen in shopping malls and downtown and taking the kids to school. I mean, you need a 4x4 truck to do this? But the worst thing - have you seen this most recent TV ad? I won't tell you the name of the car company because I have to deal with these people, but it shows a dad taking his family out for a drive in the woods. He's outside the vehicle; he's got a machete and he's chopping down the trees and the branches. His wife asks him, "Darling, what are you doing?" He says, "I don't want to scratch the paint." "I don't want to scratch the paint"? This is a real macho tough off-road-and-frontier kind of guy: he doesn't want to scratch the paint.
But wait. It gets worse. Have you seen the brush guard some of these people put on these things? Huge tubular contraptions? What's that about? So they don't scratch their chrome bumpers. Come on, people. Now, in Australia, they call those things roo-bars. Exactly how many kangaroos do we have in Canada that that's a problem? You're more likely to impale some pedestrian on that thing. Maybe that's the point. You get the pedestrian home in better shape so you can mount him on your rec room wall as a trophy.
Now, if you want to have even more fun with the lemmings who drive sport utility vehicles, there's a website you should check out - after the show. It's poseur.4x4.org. That's no www, just P-O-S-E-U-R.4-X-4.O-R-G. You'll love it. And when you're done with that, go buy a car.
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