So I had to fork out the six hundred clams for a new rag top. My friends and family have all recommended that I trade the car for something a little more secure, but I can't. They don't know the feeling of hammering down the highway, wind whipping through your hair, the smell of the road, and the sound of your own screeching brakes as you hit gridlock because of road construction every fifteen feet.

In the United States, hundreds of miles of highway are being renovated this summer due to decay in the infrastructure because of our outdated policy of giving government contracts to the lowest bidder. This policy is similar to the recent practice of giving supermarket bagging gigs to the retarded; the job gets done on the cheap, but your eggs always wind up at the bottom of the bag, underneath the case of beer.

Here in the U.S., we award government contracts to whoever asks for the least money. The purpose is to guarantee that taxpayers aren't fleeced by contractors charging for such frivolous extras such as quality materials and expert skills. It also allows perpetual financial security for organizations that can consistently deliver cheap labor and inexpensive materials, like the Mafia.

I can understand how the low bidder system has led to a nation of bridges that, due to the passage of time, shudder and drop concrete slabs every time something larger than a Yugo or Ted Kennedy's liver passes over them. A bridge has thousands of beams, welds and parts that are not necessarily best assembled by sweaty guys named Louie.

State employees at work.

But these are roads. A road is tar mashed flat into dirt. It has one part that doesn't even move. In contrast, my body has like a million moving parts, and it still works, even after twenty-eight years of pouring various recreational metabolic poisons into it on a daily basis. Actually, its more like hourly.

Research has shown that the massive road wear is the fault of sport utility vehicles drivers. By research, I mean that I have given it some thought and have decided that I hate them. Whenever I get stuck in construction traffic, I always seem to wind up behind some gas-guzzling penis-compensating bastard in a sport Range Rover so high off the ground I have no hope of ever seeing how much further the traffic goes unless I learn mental telepathy.

Think about it: we have millions of people sitting in traffic in vehicles designed to allow them to drive off congested roads. I am surrounded by these people, who are presumably allowed to vote and breed, and yet I have to wait five days to buy a handgun. Figure that one out.

Some pundits are predicting that the massive road construction this summer will lead to a small baby boom; if people can't drive anywhere to go on vacation, they'll just use it as an excuse to stay home and have a bunch of sex.

Great. Another generation of bastard lawless rat children to fuck with my car.