And Now It's Time for an Unoriginal Anti-Hummer Rant

I hate Hummers. Actually, all SUVs. As a small car driver, they frequently block the view ahead of me, which is annoying and dangerous. And then of course there's the gas-guzzlingness. It's beyond me why people spend so much money on a car only to then pay even more money on gas. I guess it's the conspicuous consumption stuff that Veblen talked about (in a nutshell, consuming a lot of expensive stuff in a public manner so people know you're rich, and therefore awesome). I think anyone who knows me would know that I think that conspicuous consumption is totally ridiculous (the concept makes total sense; the people who do it are the ridiculous ones).*

Comedian Patton Oswalt has a little Hummer rant in one of his bits. He makes a good suggestion though: You can have a Hummer, you're just responsible for going to the Middle East yourself and getting your own oil.

And now to segue to my new favorite band, The Thermals. They were semi-recently offered $50,000 by Hummer to use one of their songs in a commercial. They turned them down, even though they're a little band that could probably use (or at least enjoy) the cash. They're from Portland, which kind of makes me wonder what Hummer was thinking in the first place. I've never been to Portland, but I've heard some nice things about it. Like how it's very green (both senses of the word) and designed to maximize the use of public transportation and walking. I imagine if you grow up in a place like that, Hummers seem pretty evil. Most of my friends in Spain (where there are narrow streets and lots of walking) view SUVs as unnecessary and just another example of American over-the-topness. I'm getting back into my anti-SUV rant, so let me just say, "Yay!" to the Thermals and "Boo!" and "Duh!?!" to Hummer.

I saw the Thermals the other night thanks to a recommendation and it was great! awesome! stupendous! My friend likened them to early Green Day, which I think is a pretty good comparison sound-wise, though they're a fraction slower and their lyrics are far more intelligent. The singer reminds me of my high school friends and he does these little David Byrne-esque dance-move-things that make it entertaining to watch them. They sounded excellent and had a lot of energy and instead of me telling you about them, you should just go see them whenever they come to your town. Or check out their MySpace for some songs and video clips (I have surmised from this that they have good senses of humor).

Here's a little bit of them on YouTube. I couldn't find anything that demonstrated what a good show they are that had good sound. So this clip is them in their home town, with the crowd appropriately rocking and here's a link to a clip where you can hear them a bit better, but they're in a little record store.

*I realized while writing this that I perhaps conspicuously consume my computer. I mean, it's definitely fancier than what I need, but I love it and it's not bad for the environment (not worse than other computers anyway). Plus, I'm hardly ever out in public with it.