Monday, March 31, 2008

What The Traffic Will Bear

Sometimes my temperament turns positively ELFin, and now is one of those times.

I was listening to the radio--NPR's national evening show--when I heard the story of a couple in Colorado Springs who were trying to buy a Ford "Alternative" vehicle, an SUV which boasted of being 'green, and of beeing capable of achieving upwards of 35 mpg, on certain occasions, under certain circumstances. (Your mileage may vary...)

They'd gone to a dealership (is there more than one FORD store in the Springs?), and of course there were none of the SUVs on the lot. They'd have to order one. So they sat with the sales-creep (they're ALL creeps, believe me; I know) and worked ot the details of the vehicle they wanted to order. The lackey sales-creep went away to consult with the Uber-Sales-Creep, and when he returned, the buyers were confronted with a non-negotiable, non-reducible, non-transferrable, AUTO-fucking-MATIC $5000 surcharge added by the dealer.

They, understandably, said "Pound sand, Cheese-dick," or something similar and went away without placing their order. They were pissed and disappointed. I shared their ire, which was not in the least assuaged when, in the next sound-byte, the spokes-cheesedick for the Automobile Dealers' Association announced that car dealerships were NOT non-profit agencies.

And, not for the first time, I thought: "Well, if they're not, it's not because the international association of cheese-dicks hasn't invited such treatment."

And, I thought, if I happened to see a couple of shadowy figures skulking around the Cheese-dick's Ford lot in Colorado Springs, I wouldn't say a fuking word. Let the motherfucker burn to the fucking ground.

It's for reasons like these that "Murkin Bidness" wallows in the ethical shadows with Catholic priests and meth-dabbing evangelical pastors.

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