If you want to read an exercise in bullshit read the police report written by the cop who arrest Professor Gates the other day. His justification for the arrest is nonsense. The officer says that Gates ignored his warning to stop yelling and "...drew the attention of the police officers and citizens, who appeared to be surprised and alarmed..." So that's his rationale. Gates was alarming the neighbors by yelling at the cop. My hurt feeling theory seems even more likely to me. Gates was wrong here, but the officer was wronger. And speaking of wronger, if you believe that now is a good time to buy a car, you are wronger than wrong. It is the same old crappy time it always is. Car dealers and their sales people are skunks and the recession has not made them smell any less skunky. Keith the car guy left me a message to call him. When I finally reached him this morning, he told me that the used low-mileage Honda Accord that we have been pursuing has not materialized. But it still might. I mentioned to Keith that Honda is having some dealer incentives currently and that I would like him to get me a quote on an new Honda. Dealer incentives are when the manufacturer gives the dealer some extra money to help clear out the inventory. Keith sort of ridiculed my suggestion of dealer incentives with the statement, "There are always incentives, this is the car business." I interpret that to mean, "Don't expect a deal from me", but then I tend to be a bit cynical. I also checked out an online site carsdirect.com. for their best price on a new Honda. It was better than anything I've seen, so I fired off an email to them. A guy called me back right away. He said he could get me a new Honda for the price they advertised and said he would find a local dealer to deliver it. Then he dropped the "but". "But", he tells me, "the dealers often put tinting or pin striping on the cars when they get them and you will have to pay for that." Around here they also slap on $50 worth of sealant and call it the "Desert Protection Package", which they try to get the unsuspecting to pay $1000 for. It is just bullshit dealer profit. If you saw Fargo, you might remember the scene where William Macy is being yelled at by a guy who is being snookered into buying something called Truecoat for his new car. Same deal. I told the CarsDirect guy that it was a deal breaker for me and that if he couldn't deliver at the price he quoted, all bets were off. So, the whole deal is hanging by a thread as far as I'm concerned. I hate this stuff and the Junkster looks better with each passing hour. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky