Another Shining Moment For Montgomery County!

It's been a frustrating couple of days for commuters in Montgomery County. The 30-year-old computer that controlled more than 750 traffic lights in the county crashed the other night, leaving the lights with no way of adjusting their timing to account for rush hours. The lights still operated, but in many cases, their timing patterns made no sense, and thousands of commuters were left sitting through series of frustrating short-cycles.

This really falls into the unfortunate category of "sh** happens". No one likes it, but really - what are you going to do, other than frown and bear it until the problem is fixed? Well, here in the peoples' republic of Montgomery County, our leaders are loathe to sit on their hands and do nothing. Better to provide some kind of "fix", even if it does nothing and costs the county a lot of money!

The county, in all its wisdom, is providing its Ride-On commuter bus service for free today. Is this really supposed to provide some sort of relief? How many cars is this going to take off the roads? Are people who normally drive going to abandon their cars in favor of riding on unfamiliar buses? Will this get them to work any faster?

The answers are no, none, no and no. Regular Ride-On riders are getting treated to freebies today, and county managers are getting the opportunity to show they are doing "something" to address the traffic issues. I don't know what an average day's revenue is on Ride-On, but it has to run in the 10's of thousands of dollars. But now, we've given up that money, all to allow some bureaucrats to demonstrate they are "on the case".

Hey, Montgomery County! Sometimes NO solution is a better solution!

Totally Tatted-up Barbie!

Have you seen the latest version of the Barbie doll? This is in no way a parody - it is 100% true and now available in stores... "Totally Stylin Tattoos Barbie"!

According to this press account, the "Totally tatted up" Barbie comes with a set of tattoo stickers, so little girls can post tramp stamps all over their dolls. And it also comes with a toy tattoo gun so the girls can tat themselves up as well!


I have nothing against tattoos, per se. (OK, I do - but I do recognize it is a personal decision, and I would never begrudge an adult's right to have one or twenty of them). But this is an ADULT decision... and the girls who play with Barbies are far from being adults.

I have friends on Facebook who have tattoos, and I just read a discussion between two of them yesterday, discussing what a big mistake they made in getting tattoos, and how much they regret it now.

I suppose tats have become such a big part of the culture, that little girls just want to follow in Mom's footsteps and dream of the day when they can have their own permanent artwork splayed across the small of their backs. But all it takes is one afternoon of sitting on the boardwalk in Ocean City and watching the girls walk by to realize what a lame cliche tattoos have become.

I get the feeling this may all backfire on the maker of Barbie, Mattel. Barbie is turning 50 this week, and Mattel has all kinds of publicity planned to unveil all kinds of new Barbie stuff. But I wonder if that's not going to all get buried by this tattoo story. I went on to the Barbie media site, and looked for more info on the tattoo Barbie doll, and there was not a single mention to be found.

Why isn't Mattel pushing it's new tattoo doll? Maybe because the toymaker realizes it's a little embarrassing, and they are covering it up - just like so many grownup men and women who are carrying around tattoos the wish they didn't have.