Habemus Papum

I've been bothered by this whenever I see a car commercial on TV. That little legal tag, while sometimes relevant, just bugs the shit out of me: Professional Driver on Closed Course. Do Not Attempt.

It's one thing to remind people not to drive like assholes, but they stick it on every car commercial. My guess is ninety percent of the manuevers shown should be able to be done by anyone, and actually demonstrate why you'd want a car in the first place. Yes, sometimes it's someone doing some fancy stunt driving, but it looks to me mostly like speeded up camera work (20fps?).

If I were interested in an off road 4X4 pickup I think I'd want it to splash through a stream. I would not want it to fail at that simple task, nor would I be happy spending all the extra money just to drive it on the road. Also, I think it would be beneficial for any car I owned to, say, turn both left and right, especially considering these cars look so good on mountain roads.

What are they telling me? That I shouldn't drive the damn thing? I could understand it if the commercials showed people dodging through traffic or pulling those speedy backups I see in action movies, but most of the driving done in commercials looks like something I'd expect of a car.

Speaking of white smoke, I call "enhancement." Although it isn't stated here, in what looks pretty official to me, this guy claims water is added to the paper ballots to achieve the black smoke. I saw both some black and white smoke, and it sure looked to me as if more smoke was coming out of that chimney than would be expected from 115 paper ballots.

Maybe they're really big ballots, like for the Iraqui election, and not the tiny slips of paper I expected.