Saturday, November 20, 2004

A quiz

Okay, guess which organization's mission statement the following quote is excerpted from:
encourage land use consistent with the guidelines set forth by the Tread Lightly! organization; ... and primarily be a social and educational entity, encouraging its members to be active in land use advocacy and community service.
Sierra Club? Nope. Conservation International? Nope.

Give up?

The Hummer club. I know...that was going to be your next guess wasn't it?

Well, treading lightly on the earth is not the only lofty goal these folks aspire to. They have partnered with the Red Cross in their new HOPE program--HUMMER Owners Prepared for Emergencies. GM is giving the Red Cross $4 million in support of the program. Mike Morris, HOPE's founder explains, "The HUMMER Club has a lot of people who care about helping others and are willing to give up their personal time because it's the right thing to do," You can't make this shit up, I tell you. It's amazing The Onion still finds anything to create parody from.



These are not the people I want rescuing me.

7 comments:

Gordon said...

I see this kind of shit all the time up here in the NorCal backwoods & snow country. People think that by buying one of these monsters, or any large SUV*, that they become instant off-road expert drivers. It just cost the guy in the picture some money and self-esteem (popped his ego bubble) to find out he's not. He's probably trying to figure out if he can sue GM for making himself look like an idiot.

For fun, us locals like to go and watch the city-slickers try to drive their once-a-year-when-they-go-skiing 4X4's in the snow. Hilarious.

*Shiny Unused Vehicle

Travis (♀) said...

As befits my stereotype I suppose, I have an aversion to SUVs in general, but Hummers I find the most loathsome of the bunch. While I'm aware of how most of the offroading suburbanites can destroy ecosystems without even realizing it, I actually find them more tolerable off the road. It's the ones cruising the suburb of LA that kill me.

Gordon said...

It's the ones cruising the suburb of LA that kill me.Not a prophecy, I hope!:) They make no sense at all in the city. A friend of mine in Santa Monica calls them "Urban Assault Vehicles".

Travis (♀) said...

Well, I have been hit twice as a pedestrian, but by nothing larger than a pick-up truck, and those were my younger more resiliant years. Have you seen this. It's an oldie but goodie.

Travis (♀) said...

Resilient, that is.

Fixer said...

On the avenue where I work, there's parking on either side of the street. It's the greatest entertainment waching this little (5'1") woman who lives on the next block, trying to navigate her new Hummer down the street. It takes her 10 minutes to negotiate a hundred yards, having to stop each time a car comes up in the opposite direction. She has no idea of where the bloody thing starts and stops and she's scared to death of it. Now in my book, driving should be as enjoyable as possible. This woman must be a wreck by the time she gets to work.

Gordon said...

Travis - Thanks for the link, but I think I'll back off tagging vehicles for a while. I think I pushed my luck putting all those "Drunk Drivers For Bush" stickers on rigs a little while back.