One for all you SUV-haters out there

<a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.mencimer.html>Bumper mentality</a> Before reading that article, I used to think guiltily that if I had ridiculous amounts of money, I would be seriously tempted to buy an SUV and damn the environment, simply because driving in Turkey is similar to a demolition Derby. Now we find that SUVs are actually more dangerous than ordinary cars. Mind you, I suppose I should be grateful to my aging VW Scirroco. Although I hate cars in general, and drive as little as I can, it has served us faithfully, emerging from fender benders with hardly a scratch while expensive new cars needed their stylish laminated fenders replaced, lost headlights and in one case even needed panel-beating. And when we had to get over the Taurus mountains in a snowstorm (pushing the car most of the way up and sliding most of the way down) we passed several SUVs buried in snowdrifts, as their owners got the real meaning of "going off-road".

To-do lists

I frequently make mental to-do lists. Occasionally, when I'm feeling unusually organised, I even write them down. They fall into two categories: things I'd like to do to develop my potential (improve my Perl, Lojban, martial arts skills etc.) and things I need to do otherwise I'm in trouble (grade papers, get my tax number, clean the house etc.). However, I think it's time I had a frivolous to-do list. As Horace said: "Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment." So here's my frivolous to-do list:

• Learn the chorus of the Ketchup song
• Do a handspring
• Learn the samba
• Make flapjacks
• Play Alice
• Write more silly LJ entries

The handspring part might be tricky, though.