Build Date: Thu Dec 5 22:50:10 2024 UTC
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
-- Johnnie Royale
The Toyota MR2 is Decadent and Depraved
2001-12-21 04:29:40
It's ugly and weird and I won't ever set foot in one again.
I drove a Toyota MR2 today. '86 or thereabouts, one of those real creepy looking old ones that look like a doorstopper. What a weirdo sled. First off, it's about three inches off the ground, and I kept hitting the rearview mirror with my head when I got into it. Then, it's got this big rectangular boxlike thing that goes front to back down the middle of the car (it's a mid-engined car, so everything is in the wrong place, and the boxlike thing is actually the gas tank and you get to sit right next to it as you drive around. Wheee!) And the shifter is like up around chest level when you're sitting behind the wheel, and it's sort of angled so you can shift it from the awkward position you're grabbing it at. And sitting there, three inches off the ground, reaching up to shift, resting your arm on a giant gasoline bomb, it feels more like you're driving a TIE Fighter from the Star Track than a real car.
And also it's hard as fuck to steer an MR2, not just because it's rear-wheel driven, but also because Toyota just wanted to piss people off. And it also stalls all the time and you have to mash on the gas pedal just to get it out of idle when you get off the clutch.
Another terrible problem with this car is that it seems like it should go real fast, since it's pointy and reasonably sleek-looking (and has all sorts of Special Buttons and Levers on the inside,) but with its puny, completely inadequate 118-HP engine, it plods around like an overweight Chevette. People in inappropriately large Dodge Ram trucks swerved around me and honked their horns in derision as I desperately tried to muscle the car out of yet another stall. Soccer moms lined up in an angry queue of minivans behind me, and I'm pretty sure a three-year-old child flipped me off one time.
I only drove it for half an hour before I decided I would never even get in the car again. It's just basically Wrong, and I can't support this sort of thing. I understand the newer models, the MR2 Spyders in particular, are quite nice. But avoid the ones from the 80s at all costs, unless you're crazy and just want to drive an Unnatural Vehicle.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)
You need to make a fruity tropical drink and you have no recipe? Here's a mix recently tested by Pigdog's crack bevertology team that's made with ingredients available from most any grocery store. It tastes sweet, fruity, and is perfect for guzzling on the last hot days of summer. (More...)
