I have acquired a blog

Let's get this out of the way: you won't find this blog as entertaining as I do. Not because my writing tends to the baroque, nor because my life is boring. (Though neither of these will help.)

Here is the source of your discontent:

• The phrase "hydropneumatic spheres" make you think of Pamela Anderson
• You are not sure why a Honda Civic is like a Hobbit.
• You probably never even wasted brain cycles pondering what a Honda Civic "is like"

My brain, on the other hand, is overflowing with this stuff. Some people--I admit they may have been humoring me--have commented that this overflow can be interesting, occasionally even amusing.

So, even though I will not entertain you as much as I entertain myself, I hope that you, dear readers, find some amusement in what is essentially a pressure-release valve for my strongest and least explicable obsession.

My purpose is to write about cars. But where to begin? Cadillacs? Citroens? The aforementioned Civic? Perhaps I should address a socially-pressing issue, like the evils of SUVs.

Civics. Definitely Civics.

There are some people who are obsessed with certain cars. You have surely met men or boys for whom Corvettes are meaningful and beautiful objects. Some people's hearts flutter at the sight of a more obscure vehicle, such as the Isetta. (That's the motorized hard-boiled egg once driven by Mr. Urkel.) There are even polytheists who worship the many-faced "Ford," while cursing the devil "Chevy."

There are others who find that the Honda Civic speaks to them. Not in the Fast-and-Furious-slam-it-low-pump-it-up-fly-through-the-tire-spikes-and-crash-in-a-blaze-of-glory sense. No, for them, even the mild-tempered, fuel-efficient, socially-responsible dark-green Civic tells a story worth hearing....

Everyone knows that the Honda Civic is one of the most boring cars ever built. It's slow, physically forgettable, and technologically bland.

But it is also a righteous warrior.

Every Civic that you see screams "I AM THE GREATEST FIGHTER IN THE WORLD! I HAVE CONQUERED EMPIRES! EVERLASTING GLORY UNTO ME!"

Once upon a time, in the dark days before the Civic, Americans could only buy three kinds of cars: Big cars, bigger cars, and VW Beetles. Did you want one that was cheap, efficient, and pleasant? Tough shit for you, because you're a fucking Communist, and General Motors doesn't build cars for Communists.

I believe it was the early 1960's when a GM executive said, "An American who wants cheap transportation should buy a good used car." These were the days when GM execs' pontification actually mattered. GM was the biggest company in the world. People aspired to work for GM, and those who didn't, aspired to run their companies like GM.

But a very small company, one whose primary business wasn't even cars, did not aspire to produce products like GM. They thought that their success in making cheap, efficient, and pleasant motorcycles might apply to cars, too.

So the first Honda Civic came to America in 1972. It left the verdant hills and scenic shores of its native Japan, where all things were small and pleasant and friendly. It came to fight a battle in a land of giants, where other vehicles weighed literally twice or thrice its size. And the makers of those vehicles were so many times larger than Honda that a Hobbit doesn't have enough fingers and toes to count so high.

This unassuming car was even slower, uglier, and more boring than today's Civic. But it was cheap to buy, cheap to run, and the inside was not at all like Nazi prison cell.

Over the next 30 years, the Civic slew dragon after dragon. It brought immense riches and glory to its homeland. It was still small and boring. If one passed you by, you might not even notice it. But its enemies certainly did. They tried to defend themselves by building strong and thick walls of import tariffs. But the virtue and purity of the little Civic continued to win hearts.

And now.... look outside your window, up and down your street. If you can see any cars at all, I'll wager one of them is a Honda Civic. You probably can't even see a Chevy Cavalier.

So this is what you can expect from my blog. I'll try to share with you the thrill of exotic cars: those powerful enough to yank Texas from its moorings, or those bedecked in gewgaws conceived by teams of feverish German engineers. Or perhaps French vehicles so alien that we must assume they were designed by non-carbon-based life forms. But I also want to share the wonder of the mundane cars. Every single car has a story. Some of the most boring cars have the best stories. So even if you and I have different ideas about hydropneumatic spheres, I hope you'll still enjoy the stories--and rants, there will definitely be rants--I post here.