I’ve been receiving solicitations, by landline robocall and by regular mail, for extended car warranties. Some of them are for an 11-year-old car I own, and others are for a 2015 Jeep I have never have owned. With any luck it’s just a database error.
It doesn’t seem all that long ago when I read the average age of cars in America was six years. It’s now double that, which explains all the advertising for extended warranties.
Follow-up: tastewar has provided further insight in the form of this helpful graph.
In a way this is good, because cars overall are a lot more reliable than they were in the post-war decades of planned obsolescence, when odometers had only five digits. Reaching 100,000 miles was considered both a miracle and a death sentence, and American cars driven on snowy roads treated with salt started to rust-out after only a few years. There was the Rusty Jones rustproofing service that was pushed by car dealerships. It required drilling holes into the body panels, and because it was often improperly applied, along with poor body work on the holes, the expensive treatment actually accelerated rust development!
CarShield advertises heavily on broadcast television. I am extremely dubious of extended warranty plans, and have no intention of ever buying one.
Another mass shooting and there is nothing I can do about it, except to say I favor repealing the Second Amendment. That won’t happen in my lifetime, so I am putting on headphones and listening to music.
Tonight’s season finale of The Simpsons featured an ambitious musical number, led by Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman. With special guest star, liberal economist Robert Reich.
I was surprised when Barney sang, “Even dumb slobs made excellent wages,” and Homer lamented, “I’m not smart, I’m not a go-getter… what job could I possibly do?” Not stated, but implied is, a union job.
Route 66!
Worth noting is the dark, rap-adapted musical theme from the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.
In 1988, “Massachusetts Miracle” governor Michael Dukakis ran for President against incumbent VP George Bush. This very dated SNL parody of Playboy After Dark reminds me I have more of A&E’s Secrets of Playboy series to watch.
One of my business trips in 1988 took me to British Columbia, south of Calgary, to install a hospital computer system. The first thing that always needed to be done was inspecting the computer room and checking the hardware. Every installation had potential technical problems, and some of them were acceptable, at least temporarily, but others were show-stoppers.
The tape drive installed for the minicomputer wasn’t the expected model. The customer said he’d switched to a less expensive unit that had become available. Which would have been fine, if he’d told me that before the customized operating system software had been compiled and written to tape.
I explained to the customer that the system media was useless. The tape drive required a different data density and blocking factor. It was getting late back in Boston, and I immediately got on the phone to update my boss and to ask a colleague to generate a new system tape with the correct parameters. While he did that, a search was made to find the quickest way of getting the tape to me. (Six months later, I had to make similar arrangements when I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but that’s another story.)
Arrangements were made for overnight delivery to the FedEx office at the Spokane, Washington airport. Once I knew Spokane was my destination, I called the in-house travel agent. I needed a room for that night in Spokane, with guaranteed late arrival. The hotel in Canada was informed I would be checking in a day late, but keeping the reservation and extending it through the end of the week.
In those pre-GPS times, every year I bought the latest Rand McNally road atlas for America and Canada. After getting the hotel information from the travel office, I consulted the atlas, figured out my route, and off I went in an Oldsmobile I’d rented at the airport, with a big engine and the sloppy steering that was typical of Olds.
The drive took me into some mountainous terrain, so I was glad to have that big engine. After crossing the Canada/US border, I passed through Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The place looked interesting, and I thought about stopping there the next day on the way back.
Arriving late that night in downtown Spokane, I was able to get something to eat before collapsing at the hotel. In the middle of the night I was awoken by the sound of motorcycles, breaking glass, and yelling. A fight was in progress on the street below, outside of a biker bar. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief and try to get back to sleep.
In the morning I got cleaned up, checked out of the hotel, filled the gas tank, and headed over to the airport. I announced myself at the FedEx office and waited for the package to arrive on a plane from Boston. Once I had it in hand I checked the atlas and started off again, driving back north into Idaho.
As you can see from the picture of the banner, I stopped in Bonners Ferry. Entering the drug store there, it felt like stepping back in time. Everything looked and smelled as though I were in the drug store where I bought a lot of my comic books as a kid. At that moment I had an appreciation, bordering on an epiphany, of how much everything had changed over the previous 20 years.
As I said, there were some very steep hills and mountains along the way. There were escape ramps for runaway lumber trucks with failing brakes. After leaving Bonners Ferry, I passed someone who was going up an extremely steep hill. On foot. It was a skinny, scruffy guy with a beard, wearing some beat-up old clothes. He had a huge wooden cross slung over his shoulder, and on the bottom there was something Jesus didn’t have while carrying his cross — a small wheel.
I had met and spoken with Michael Dukakis several times during my stint as a radio news reporter. In person he was very impressive, being a master of detail who knew how to work a room with great efficiency and effectiveness. So the SNL parody got it right. At that moment of culture shock in Idaho, witnessing the fanaticism of the guy with his cross and its little wheel, I had another epiphany. There was no way Mike Dukakis would win in November.
This past Sunday’s New York Times had a story, dateline Bonners Ferry, about Republican party in-fighting in Idaho. Today, almost 35 years later, a guy who limits his expression of faith to lugging a cross with a wheel up the side of a mountain would probably be considered a liberal.
“They clapped as one candidate advocated “machine guns for everyone” and another called for the state to take control of federal lands.”
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” — Wayne Lapierre, CEO of the NRA
There was a good guy with a gun at the Tops Friendly supermarket. Security guard Aaron Salter, who is now dead, was a former Buffalo police lieutenant.
Don’t know yet how the alleged shooter came to have the weapon in question. What is known is that a year ago there was an indication of future trouble.
In June 2021, police in Broome County were called by officials of a local high school who told them Gendron had threatened violence in comments made to fellow students.
“A school official reported that this very troubled young man had made statements indicating that he wanted to do a shooting, either at a graduation ceremony, or sometime after,” the same government official familiar with the case told The News.
State Police were sent to investigate and Gendron, under a section of state mental health laws, was referred for a mental health evaluation and counseling, the official said.
10 dead, suspect arrested in mass shooting at supermarket
The gunman was identified as Payton Gendron of Conklin, a community about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Buffalo in New York state, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Payton Gendron, age 11, attending a 2015 Vet School open house at Cornell University It’s been reported the alleged shooter wrote online of his belief in extreme right wing ideas, like white replacement. Who or what could have influenced him so profoundly as an adolescent?
He was 11 years old when Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 Presidential election. Could there be a connection? I’m just asking a question, like Tucker Carlson would do.
