Future Clunkers
I'm thinking about cars this morning. Everyone else in Minnesota is thinking about Brett Favre and the Vikings. Personally, I think this Favre business is great news, as the Vikings already play under the big top.
Now that they've signed the Emmett Kelly of the NFL they just need to put a few more gaily colored pennants up on the roof, add a half-time animal-taming act, and then Zygi Wilf's Flying Circus will be complete.
(For what it's worth, I think the most interesting quote of the day yesterday came from a veteran Packers tackle. Asked what he thought of the prospect of playing against his former quarterback in this coming October's Monday Night game, he said, "It'll be just like training camp.
("'Cept he won't be wearing no red shirt this time.")
But all that is yesterday's news. Today, this morning, I'm thinking about cars. Specifically, I'm thinking about the business section news that, thanks to the success of the Clash for Clunkers program, GM is adding shifts and ramping up production to manufacture new cars.
Or as I prefer to think of them, Future Clunkers. For you see, I've owned new GM products before, and given a choice in the matter...
Never mind that. Despite the temptation, I will not write this morning about The Much-Hated Lumina, or the Pontiac Panzerwagen, or the Green Hornet, or the Bluesmobile, or the legendary AquaBeetle (yes, the old air-cooled Volkswagens really did float!), or my beloved and much-missed Cortina, or even the succession of Triumphs I've owned over the years. (As those who've owned them know, the full name of the car company was, "The Triumph of Hope Over Experience.") Instead, I want to talk about Future Clunkers, and specifically this question:
How come, in the sci-fi future, no one ever drives a rusty old P.O.S.? (Naturally excluding "Mad Max"-type post-apocalyptic futures in which everyone drives a pieced-together improvised piece o' junk, of course.)Okay, I'll concede that unreliable P.O.S. flying cars would quickly become a self-correcting problem. But where are the rest of them?
That, I think, was one of George Lucas's crowning moments of brilliance in the original series, which he failed to remember to use in the second series. Yeah, Luke Skywalker drives a jet-powered hovercraft landspeeder—but it's one with missing body panels and big splotches of bondo. Even in the ancient future, poor back-country farm boys will still drive rusty, dusty, heaps of junk. Cool!
How about you? What's your pick for the coolest personal vehicle you ever ran across in sci-fi? Or alternately, what was the most laughably stupid one you ever saw?
Let the arguments begin.
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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