Commentary
Gutless Cutlass a scary ride
A friend’s recent apartment hunt
has clued me in to the iact that I
have been suffering a silent dis
crimination, a prejudice against
junky cars.
My friend, who shall remain
nameless so that she may find an
apartment, informed me that several
apartment complexes around
Lincoln will not rent to you if you
drive an old junky car.
Thankfully, my apartment
complex has yet to have such a
thought or I’d be living on the street.
You see, I drive the equivalent of
rust on wheels. There, I’ve admitted
it. After several 12-step programs,
I’m able to admit my problem, my
secret. I drive a 1982 Oldsmobile
Cutlass, a.k.a. the “Gutless Cutlass.”
You may have seen me, or rather,
heard me, driving down the street.
The loud noise coming from the
hole in the exhaust should clue you
in that it’s me. The various lesions
of rust and scratches that cover the
Gutless’ flat, painted exterior are
other hints to get out of the way.
But you will never really appreci
ate junk until you have to drive it.
Driving a liability on wheels brings
about deep spirituality.
When you’re driving along and
suddenly lose your brakes (as I
recently did) and then are lucky
enough to coast to a stop, you really
learn the value of life.
Or when you’re turning a comer
and your car’s tie rod breaks,
leaving you with no steering, but
you are able to avoid hitting
anything—you know there is a
God.
Or when you’re driving your car
down the highway and it suddenly
begins smoking and showing signs
of spontaneous combustion, but you
get out before a fire erupts—you
begin to believe in angels.
Or when you get carsick just
Heather Lampe
driving to the grocery store, because
the car hasn’t had new shocks in
five years—you learn the cleansing
power of prayer.
Laugh as you may, but all of
these things have happened to me in
my five years of driving the Gutless.
I have learned more about the
internal design of a car than I care to
know. When a different piece begins
to fall off or break every week and
when every fluid in the car begins
leaking, you must become knowl
edgeable.
Many people wonder why I don’t
just buy a new car or fix the Gutless.
Other than the fact that 1 have no
money, my father and his obsession
with becoming the Jiffy Lube/
Midas/Phillips 66/House of Muf
flers and Brakes man has hindered
me (Mi the road toward a new car.
My father doesn’t believe in
mechanics or car specialists of any
sort. He is convinced he can fix
anything, and he is willing to risk
my life to prove it. After my brush
with death by loss of brakes, I began
to wonder if my father was trying to
off me.
This column is actually a plea to
my dad to let me live. Please dad,
buy me something different. I don’t
need a brand-new car. I’d settle for
something that wasn’t built when
Olivia Newton-John was still
popular.
This column is also a plea to the
masses. Don’t judge a book by its
cover or a people by the number of
dents in their cars. Until you’ve
walked a mile in my shoes or driven
a mile in my car, you will never
knew my pain. You will never know
what it’s like to sit at a stoplight
when your car is vibrating and
shaking. You will never know the
shame of driving over railroad
tracks and hearing your muffler fall
off.
People who drive junky cars risk
their lives every day and have
enough to deal with without being
discriminated against when looking
for housing. I beg of you! Let them
live!! Let them live in your apart
ments!
Excuse me for foaming at the
mouth, but I think I’m fated and
doomed to always drive the Gutless.
The electric seats have been broken
for three years, and only someone
exactly my height and build could
ever drive my car. If nothing else, I
am safe from short, fat caijackers.
And if someday I am lucky
enough to bid a fond farewell to the
rust baby, I want to send her out
with style. I want to take her
somewhere that is cultured and
refined. I want to take her to a place
where the beer nuts and tobacco spit
flow freely, a place where if your
car bursts into flames or your tire
flies off, you receive applause —a
place where driving backwards is an
art.
I want to take her to the demoli
tion derby.
It will be a last hurrah for the
Gutless, a chance for her to shine, a
chance for her smoky exhaust to rise
above the rest.
Now, if I could only get her into
reverse.
Lampe Is juior news-editorial and En
glish major and a Dally Nebraskan colnm
nlst
Hide the trash this Earth day
I am personally responsible for
no less than three major ecological
disasters.
Their names are Justin, Anna and
Joseph.
Yep, my children are walking,
talking, over-consuming Environ
mental Protection Agency
Superfund sites-—typical middle
class American kids.
Not only do they use up much
more than their fair share of the
Earth’s resources—we have
enough plastic McDonald’s Happy
Meal figurines to start our own Toys
‘R’ Us store—but at least one of
them is extremely environmentally
incorrect.
My oldest son, Justin, will spend
tomorrow—the 25th Anniversary
of Earth Day—in Memorial
Stadium watching a football game.
He thinks nature stinks. The kid
never met a tree he liked. Of course,
in his defense, Mother Nature has
never been particularly kind to him.
When we take him on nature
hikes, he runs into nettles. On
prairie walks, he is accosted by
bees. And standing too close to oak
trees gives him hives.
To add insult to injury, his
attitude toward the breathtaking
wonders of this planet we call home
„ is sadly lacking.
The sandhill cranes were boring;
the Grand Canyon monotonous. (I
knew we should have hit Arizona
BEFORE we went to Disneyland.)
The majestic Rockies made his ears
pop. And when we make our annual
pilgrimage to the Black Hills, what
does he want to do? Climb Harney
Peak? Explore the woods? No,
Justin would rather hide behind the
boulders next to the mountain road
in front of our cabin and yell at
passing cars: “Do you have any
Grey Poupon?”
It’s not my fault. I have done my
damdest to teach my offspring about
ecosystems and sustainability,
recycling and reusing, food chains
Cindy Lange-Kubick
and endangered species. We’ve
planted trees and gardens, taken -■
moonlit wildlife walks and observed
solstice celebrations.
I’ve done everything but strip
naked and romp through the
backyard compost pile to demon
strate my love for the earth.
OK. Sure. I’ll admit it, I’m not a
purist. I have committed sins against
the planet.
Once my daughter ran upstairs to
tell me about a family she had just
seen on television. Seems these
people were so frugal, conserving
and prudent that they only created
enough waste to fill a single garbage
can in a year. (I bet it was a big ol’
dumpster.)
In a year? Doesn’t Pizza Hut ever
deliver to these people? What do
they do with their old copies of
National Geographic? And what
about the plastic liners from cereal
boxes? Surely those went into the
trash can?
Nope, Anna said. These people
really knew how to step lightly on
the earth.
I wanted to go hide in my own
50-gallon Rubbermaid trash can out
of shame. Unfortunately, it was full.
We have eaten more than our fair
share of take-out pizza, the kind that
comes in big honkin’ cardboard
boxes that you can’t recycle because
they’re covered with grease and
cheese.
Ditto on McDonald’s-to-go. I
personally quit eating there years
ago, but it seems to be a childhood
rite I can’t deny my kids.
Sometimes when the grocery
store clerk asks, “Plastic or paper?”
I go for plastic so I’ll have some
thing to wrap the dog doo-doo in
when I take Higgins for a walk.
And occasionally I’ll throw out a
glass jar, but only if it has been
sitting in the fridge for too long and
has something particularly moldy
and disgusting growing in it.
And the car. Oh, my goodness.
It’s not that I don’t encourage my
children to walk, bike or ride the
bus. In fact, last summer I at
tempted to convince them of the
virtues of mass transit. Unfortu
nately, on this particular August
day the Arapahoe bus was on its
last legs. And the driver kept
crying and saying, “I think I’m
going to pass out.” I rode the
whole wav downtown with my
hand on the emergency exit cord.
Somehow the system seems
biased against us. On any given day
a StarTran driver (or any of us) can
have a minor crisis, but when die
bus only comes once an hour and
blocks from home, it seems so
effortless to just get out the car keys.
It’s so easy to order cardboard
covered pizzas, crank up the air
conditioning and keep right on
consuming.
Personally, I’m heading for the
park tomorrow. And I have hope for
my son, I truly do. Somewhere in
the comers of his mind are memo
ries of his mother rinsing out used
plastic bags, lecturing about waste
and digging ih the earth to plant
perennials and peas.
Someday he’s going to outgrow >
that allergy to oak trees. The
pilgrimage of the sandhill cranes
will give him hope and the Grand
Canyon will make him cry with its
beauty.
Just give him some time.
Lange-Knblckls a aealor news-editorial
and sociology major and a Dally Nebraskan
columnist
Public are guppies
businesses reel in
I received some interesting
junk mail the other day. It didn’t
tell me that I could be a million
aire soon, or that I could buy 12
compact discs for a penny, but it
was interesting nonetheless.
It was a magazine from some
sort of entrepreneurial group that
apparently wanted to make me
filthy rich and successful beyond
my wildest dreams. Also, these
people wanted me to subscribe to
their magazine.
The complimentary issue of
this magazine that I’ll call “Get
Fat Monthly,” tells the rags-to
riches stories of many former do
nothings and go-nowheres just
like myself who, with the help of
“Get Fat,” have become, well, fat.
Many were ordinary jerks just
like me. Some, according to the
magazine, were seemingly
dimmer than most small kitchen
appliance light bulbs. But they
made it. They made it big (or fat)
because of three important things.
First of all, according to “Get
Fat Monthly,” this is America, the
land of the free, home of the
brave and world leader of phone
sex hot lines. So anything is
possible, even for dimwits like
me.
Second, ordinary jerks just like
me occasionally have ideas that
can be turned into barrels and
barrels of cash.
Third, and most important,
these new safari leaders in the
capitalistic jungle alt have their
very own subscriptions to “Get
Fat Monthly,” from which they
draw daily inspiration.
I have to say that although I
appreciate the nice offer from the
people at “GF,” I really don’t
need their magazine to get
inspiration for wonderful money
making ideas.
My inspiration comes from the
obvious gullibility of the Ameri
can spending public. It seems that
we, as blue-blooded American
shoppers, will buy almost
anything.
I really believe that if Kmart
has a blue-light special on bags of
cat innards and it’s a special that
will last for a limited time only,
people will be driving home with
bags of cat innards right next to
their toaster strudels.
One famous American, who
knew this sickness and also drew
inspiration from it as I have, was
the creator of the Slinky. I am not
sure what the guy’s name was (I
was told it was Alberto
Slinkenstein), but I’d take a wild
guess that the first time he saw
the scrap-metal spring laying on
the factory floor, he thought two
things.
“Hey,” he thought to himself, ,
“this scrap-metal spring I found
on the factory floor appears as
' Todd Elwood
though it would walk downstairs,
alone or in pairs, and gosh, it
makes a slinkety sound.”
And then, “And people will
actually pay for this crap. I just
hope I can come up with a catchy
jingle for it...”
Our history is full of entrepre
neurs who knew of the shopping
sickness. Look at Silly Putty. I
mean, really, what the hell is that?
And why did I buy more than one
plastic egg full of it?
And do we need a machine
that rewinds video tapes? No, it’s
not the VCR, it’s a machine
whose only function is to rewind
tapes. Is there a need in this
country for electronic letter
openers?
The list goes on and on.
I know the sickness of the
American shopper, and I will be
fat. This I vow.
My first idea is not actually a
lame new product, or even a bag
of cat innards, but a new business
idea.
How many times have you
been reluctant to buy that blow
up sex doll you’ve always wanted
because it’s too expensive?
Plenty, I’m betting. Or how about
that special vibrating plastic toy?
Just a bit out of budget?
Fear not, Americans: Todd’s
Used Sexual Device Emporium is
here. All of the intimate toys
you’ve always wanted to play
with will be here, and they are all
“previously owned” for that great
price reduction.
I hear the moans of disgust
already. I may have pushed the
envelope of the free-market
system with that business idea,
I’ll admit, but it may work in die
right location.
If a used sexual-device store
wouldn’t make me big and fat, I
still have the option of inventing a
completely worthless product.
Tne Slinky has already been
invented. Silly Putty is out, as is
the Ghia Pet and slime.
How much would you pay for
a gallon of “Wipe 4 Fun?”, an all
new liquid that cleans, disinfects
and deodorizes sexual devices.
I’ll even come up with a catchy
jingle.
Ehvood is a senior English and soci
ology major and a Daily Nebraskan col
umnist.
