Author: Kim du Toit

Quirky Racer

Drive Time

Back in Ye Olde Days in the Racist Republic, the top tax rate was 48%, and with a National Sales Tax of 14% (on everything including food), you didn’t get much of your paycheck left for any of the pleasures and indulgences of life.

So what employers did was offer most employees a company car — which wasn’t taxed — as part of their total compensation along with a “fleet” credit card to cover all fuel and maintenance costs, and let me tell you, it was brilliant.  (Do the math for yourselves, adding up the car payment, insurance, running costs and depreciation, and see what you end up with.  The number will stagger you.)

Now not everyone qualified for such largess, of course, but if your job involved activities like calling on clients, fetching office supplies each month or visiting field offices, you qualified.  Senior management, of course, also got cars because of the “prestige” of their jobs (even though they were the ones who could well afford not to have one, the bastards, but that’s corporate inequity for you).

Anyway, the company was usually very strict about who drove the cars — you couldn’t let your wife drive it to get groceries, for example — because in most cases the insurance only covered the actual employee.  So if the car was involved in a wreck and you weren’t the driver, say hello to massive damages and (probably) termination.

As for the cars themselves, the model you got was very dependent on your place in the hierarchy of the company, and most companies simply gave you the car that your predecessor had driven, or if it was too old (usually around 2 years or 50,000 miles or so), you could get a new one from an approved list.

Well, my company car was once in the shop for some rather major repairs that would take at least a week to be done, and so I approached my boss and asked what the company was going to do about it.  He called up the company accountant, and was told that one of the other guys at my level in the company would be away on leave for a couple of weeks, so I should just get the keys from him and use his car in his absence.

I must confess to feeling somewhat apprehensive about this, because said vacationer was a slob of the first order — his office looked like he hosted daily food fights and small animal sacrifices — so I got his keys and walked down to the underground parking garage, prepared to run screaming.

However, to my amazement, not only was Fred’s Saab clean, but it was spotless, looking brand new.  (I should have known;  included in approved “maintenance” was a six-monthly full detailing of the interior, and he must have just done it the day before he left.)

But that wasn’t all.  Among the VW Golfs, Passats and Mitsubishis in that group of approved cars, he’d somehow managed to wangle himself one of these:

Yup;  it was a Saab 900 Turbo, the one that came out with a “remodel” in 1984.

Bloody hell, the thing was a rocket (and especially so when compared to my staid Opel Kadett a.k.a. Chev Cavalier stationwagon, with its anemic 1500cc un-turbo’d engine).

The Saab was also a sharp-looking silver (as in the pic), whereas my Opel was… bamboo-yellow.  (Hey, it was the only one available at the time and remember, it was FREE.)

Anyway, I drove that Saab for nearly two weeks, and boy did I love it.  What amazed me was its roadholding, which was better than any car I had driven before, and only bettered by my next company car (promotion!), a BMW 325i.

I don’t know how well the 900 Turbo fared in the U.S., sales-wise, but I’m told that it didn’t do well.  A pity:  it should have blown all American cars of similar type off the roads.  The only problem, as I see it, was that we Murkins loves us our big-ass engines, and even with a turbo, the Saab’s little 2-liter fourbanger probably did not have the allure of the typical mega-liter V8s from Chrysler, Chevy or Ford.

Me, with my fondness for small, peppy engines?  I loved that Saab with a passion, and only getting the promotion to Beemer-level prevented me from nagging the boss for one.

I have since learned that while the Saab wasn’t that popular in the U.S. market as a whole, its actual user base was almost fanatical in their devotion to it.

Can’t say I blame ’em;  for two weeks I was one of them.  Hell, I’d take a new one now, if I could.

Peeve #564

Gratuitous Chick Pics, Two-Minute Hate

Among the several things about Modern Life that make me ultra-peevish is this thing about people walking around carrying drinks — water bottles, Yeti flasks, what have you — and I want to ask people (loudly) whether they think they’re going to die of thirst before they can get to the nearest tap or drinking fountain.  Mostly, this applies to women, the precious creatures, because Teh Experts tell us that We Must Remain Hydrated, Lest We Die.

Maybe when you’re crossing the fucking Mojave Desert, but not when you’re crossing the street in Dallas or Los Angeles.

However, let it not be said that I’m completely intolerant in this regard.  I am prepared, for instance, to make exceptions to my “Stop acting like a camel!”  gripe in circumstances such as these:

…although I should also point out that not all women seem to need that oh-so important drink in their hand every time they step outdoors:


…and of course, there are those poor things in obvious need of sustenance:

I mean, I wouldn’t want y’all to think I was that Krool & Hartless, after all.

But in all honesty, if you’re that thirsty, get off the street and find a place to assuage your thirst — and there are many of them, in cities all over the world.  Places like these:

It’s really not too much to ask.

Boo-Yah

Good Stuff, Military, Trumpism

Amidst all the excellent news items I’ve read (so far) this week — fedgov departments closed, useless people fired, lawbreakers under investigation etc. — I think this one gave me the greatest pleasure:

The U.S. Army recently announced it shattered previous recruiting records, with December 2024 being the most productive December in 15 years.

The branch reported it enlisted nearly 350 soldiers every day that month, Army officials announced Tuesday on social media.

In January 2025, the Army hit its best recruiting number in 15 YEARS.

Putting that into perspective:

During the last fiscal year (2024), the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty soldiers. That makes 25% of its target. This shortfall forced the Army to cut its planned active-duty end strength from 476,000 to 466,000. Army officials project that active end strength could shrink by as much as 20,000 soldiers by September, down to 445,000.

It just shows you that under the right leadership, Americans want to serve their country.

Re-Directing The Dollars

Foreign Affairs, Gummint

Something struck me when I was reading this fine report about the closure of the dreadful USAID department, and it relates to budget priorities.  Consider this little litany of silliness:

Now just in cash terms, those items alone account for about $7.5million, being sent to furriners.

The question:  Wouldn’t those dollars have been better spent by sending them to those folks in North Carolina blown out of their homes by tropical storm Helene? 

And the corollary question:  Wouldn’t those “hundreds of thousands of meals” been more appreciated by those same North Carolinians, many of whom, months after the storm, are still living in TENTS?

Let’s put all this into concrete terms that people can understand.

The problem with being such a wealthy country is that sometimes we’re blase about sums of money that seem trivial in the grand scheme of things;  $7.5million doesn’t seem like a lot of money compared to other budgetary expenditures, and indeed it isn’t at a macro level.

But let’s convert that “macro” to “micro”.  Giving $75,000 dollars each to a hundred families in desperate need of assistance — American families, let me remind you — has the potential to turn their lives around completely.  And that’s worth a lot more than a ticket to an LGBTOSTFU opera in Colombia.

Stop pissing money away on foreigners and start looking after American taxpayers.

Fun And Games, Africa Style

Africa

To the surprise of absolutely no African nor anyone who knows anything at all about the Dark Continent, this happened in the Congo — a.k.a. the Balkans of Africa:

Hundreds of women were raped and then burnt alive after Rwandan-backed rebels sparked chaos by storming into the Congolese city of Goma, it has emerged.

The atrocity took place during a mass jail break from the Munzenze jail last week, as M23 fighters clashed with the Congolese army during deadly gun battles. 

According to the UN, female inmates were butchered in their wing in the notoriously overcrowded prison after men forced their way in and went on a rampage. 

In this latest round of inter-tribal warfare, I understand that many UN peacekeeping troops were also killed.  Now as much as I detest the United Nations as an organization, it seems to me that the UN should, finally, admit defeat when it comes to les affaires d’Afrique, and get the hell out of the way so that these assholes can carry on slaughtering each other until the last one standing kills himself.

Letting Africa sink, to coin a phrase.

Needless to say, it’s absolutely no place for the U.S. to get involved, whether financially or (gawd forbid) militarily.