Driving me insane

Over the last few months, I have taken to observing the ever-more apparent (and annoying) inverse relationship between the cost of a person's car and their ability to drive it. Simply put, the more money someone's car costs, the less able they are to operate it in a manner that illustrates basic human intelligence. Conversely, people who drive shit boxes seem to have no trouble handling seemingly simple things like turning lanes, stop signs and the flow of traffic.

Working in Vaughan, an area of Ontario with a higher-than-normal concentration of wealthy couples, I get the opportunity to see a lot of expensive cars when driving to the grocery store for lunch. Most of these cars are operated by uppity rich stay-at-home wives, ostensibly under-educated and over appreciated. It is through my daily interaction with these special treasures that I have drawn the following conclusion.

It seems there is a tangible hierarchy in the make and model of a car that can be used to gauge poor driving skills and social status. My findings are as follows:

Nouveau Rich:

Defined as: Young-ish junior executive wives new to a combined 6-figure salary and all the joys therein. Identifiable by new houses and important-sounding cellphone calls about what just happened on the 4 o'clock soap and how Nancy's husband Jim is most likely cheating on her with his secretary (who could blame him).

Physical Hallmarks: White ski-jackets with faux fur trim and those ugly tight jeans with matching fur-lined boots. Often sighted alongside these chicks are Louis Vuitton Baby carriages with screaming, unattended and under-appreciated children.

Car choice: E-class or M-class Mercedes; 3-series or X3 BMW; Audi A3; Infiniti G35 or FX

Driving Style: Typically apologetic when made aware of their ineptitude, these women are easily distracted by navigation systems, cell phones and airborne baby toys. They are either over cautious or over zealous and, depending on their current mental state, they either sit at stop signs waiting for them to turn green or fly around left-hand turns on a red light waiving their "Baby on Board" sign like it's a permit to break the law.

Established, under 40 MILF wannabes:

Defined as: Wives who's husbands have entered the fabled mid-life crisis stage and bring in high 6 to 7-figure salaries on their own. To compensate for their unloving marriages, these ladies ruthlessly stalk 20-something pool boys and produce clerks to fulfill their insatiable desire for the kind of sex they've been reading about in their trashy romance novels.

Physical Hallmarks: Authentic fur coats, gaudy jewelry and stupid-large Gucci sunglasses worn both indoors and out in a vain attempt to hide unsightly crows feet.

Car choice: lower echelon S-Class Mercedes; M3, 5-Series or X5 BMW; Audi A6; Infiniti M-series

Driving style: Flippant and full of themselves, these classed-up broads can't grasp the idea that the same rules apply to them as everyone else. Ignoring center lanes, right-of-way and yield signs, you'd swear they learned to drive from cabbies and adolescent boys. Oh, and don't expect turning signals, they most likely use that knob to the left to hold hold bracelets and strings of pearls.

Old Money nut jobs:

Defined as: Dusty old coots with the house on the hill. These ladies are retired on hubby money and locked into the lavish lifestyle. Sex is no longer an issue for these dried up prunes and instead they derive enjoyment from making the less wealthy as miserable as possible.

Physical Hallmarks: Picture Cruella De Vil, still animated, but transplanted into real life.

Car choice: Mercedes S500 (no less); M5 or 7-Series BMW; Audi A8 or S8; Infinti Q45

Driving style: While you'd think they'd calm down with age, these bats are really just MILF wannabes with poorer eyesight, slower reactions and little fear of dying. Best bet: get the fuck out of their way.

When wind attacks!

Extreme wind chill shuts down Manitoba schools
- CBC News

Without sounding too much like a doddering old fart, I feel compelled to point out that in MY day, school was never closed due to wind, no matter how cold it was. I'm adding this new trend to my long list of things modern kids enjoy that I never had. I'll put it right between Jeep Hurricane Power Wheels and remote control helicopters.

The last time I checked, and I could very well be wrong on this, Canadian schools (even in backwards Manitoba) had windows and walls to keep wind out. Hell, they may even have some form of fire-based heat generation that kids can huddle around while they learn to sew mukluks and take down a polar bear with protractor and an elastic band.

And what is news like this doing to Manitoba's already-floundering tourism industry? Their slogan may be "Unforgettable Manitoba," but you don't want the unforgettable part to be that time when Uncle Bill's big toe froze off and the family had to eat it for sustenance. What's worse is that you can't find one page on Manitoba's tourism website that doesn't feature a picture of a fully grown polar bear. They even look hungry.

I also love how they quote a local meteorologist and then make him sound like rain man. I mean who quotes a guy twice in two sequential paragraphs saying the exact same thing? Was there a minimum word count or something? Check it:

"[It's] the coldest we've had all winter, and in fact, today is colder than any temperature we recorded all of last winter," Paula said.

"This is the coldest temperature at the [Winnipeg] airport since January 2005. So, it's been a couple of years since we've seen temperatures this cold."

So next time you feel a slight draft on your walk to the subway this winter, consider this: Somewhere in Manitoba a kid is sitting at home with his pet husky enjoying a day off. Unfortunately, he lacks the vocabulary to express his joy and a sufficient grasp of simple arithmetic to realize minimum wage at the fur trading post ain't gonna buy enough furs and coonskin hats to keep him from freezing to death 5 years down the road.

iPhoned this one in

In Cingular-Apple Deal, Only Phone Was Missing
- NY Times

My fear of Apple's clout in today's tech market is eclipsed only by their power to stimulate in me an uncontrollable urge to buy their products. The iPhone, and I'm not talking about the Linksys model that was released in 1997, is the latest in a line of sleek, sexy and addictive tech products I will be mercilessly coerced into buying. Which is why I'm now joining the ranks of countless others furiously hammering at their keyboards to bolster the hype for a product still more than 6 months away from the Canadian market.

If you asked me why I needed an iPod back in 2004, I would most likely have whipped out my boxy yellow Sony Discman with the broken door hinge and thrown it right in your face. Personal mp3 players were a logical step in the evolution of portable music and, as a post-grad student without a car, an iPod was the only thing keeping me from having to acknowledge the rantings of degenerates on Toronto's transit system. Sure, there were other brands of mp3 players out there, but none of them came with a guaranteed elevation in perceived popularity or an instinctual tensing of the sphincter whenever I caught a random brigand staring at my white headphones.

Likewise, when the newest model of the MacBook Pro was released last year, I suddenly realized my 4-yr old PC tower was no more than a glorified abacus with built-in solitaire. I had no real need for a mobile computing platform and my knowledge of Apple's newest OS was relegated to an afternoon trying to find a widget that gave up-to-date Leaf news. But it took all of 5 seconds to engineer a compelling argument for why I needed one and another 5 months to secure enough capital to buy it.

So when King Jobs announced the iPhone yesterday at MacWorld, I hightailed it to the website to check it out. I have to admit, I'm kicking myself now for not realizing how much life sucked using my crappy Razr to make regular phone calls to my plebeian friends or listen to lackluster songs on my monochrome 4G iPod. How could I have possibly lasted this long?

So now, like some jackass with pocket aces at the Thursday-night poker game, Apple has laid down their cards early showing their supreme confidence that the smart phone market is safely in the bag. And, try as I might, I'm having a hard time finding fault with that assumption. The linked Times article (and many others) make some compelling arguments against the iPhone, but in reality there's no detractor that can't be toppled by Apple's advertising regime, no matter how logical their complaints are.

Apple has been selling dreams since 1984 and this is undoubtedly their best one yet. They have 6 months to create and apply a promotional campaign that will make this product synonymous with teen sex, mobile business, best friends and life-long happiness; and with the variety of big-name media vehicles they have on hand, I don't doubt for a second they can do it. I'm giving it 3 weeks until we see an iPhone subway car, a hot young girl's silhouette texting on a billboard and that wiry little Apple kid beating that poor fat man over the head with it. Maybe Pixar will even join in the fun and release an animated movie about it. By the time June rolls around, people will be so psyched to buy this thing the Apple store won't have stock till 2008. By that time, God willing, the iPhone will actually deliver on half of what it promises.