2,400 miles in an $800 car: Introduction

Call me an idealist — someone perhaps shut off to the world’s harshness as a result of some self-manufactured blinders I’ve affixed to my sights. I very well might be.

It took a while to come to that conclusion, but it’s well deserved. I am, after all, basing my life on a folktales course I took a year ago in college. Yeah, of anything I could use as motivation to guide me — from poems to great leaders throughout history — I’ve opted to seek refuge in the same lore that gave breadth stories like “The Sword and the Stone” and “Jack and the Beanstock.”

But in remembering whispering back and forth to a friend during class, I came to the conclusion that folktales may have mythical elements like dragons and wizardry, but they’re real. They happen all the time around us.

“Everyone needs to have an epic journey before they settle down,” I told my friend as we debated the feasibility of each exiting Pittsburgh to gain traction in different parts. I sincerely believed that, as those stories about a boy going out into the woods on a noble quest and coming back to his kingdom a man seemed as realistic to me as they seemed idealistic to my friend. At the time, I was not sure how they could ever happen, but I wanted such circumstances to become an interwoven piece of my life somehow.

Cue Disney’s anthropomorphic cricket singing about wishing upon a luminous sphere of gas some hundred million miles away.

Because dreams do come true sometimes. Mine just happens to be in Far Far Away itself — Los Angeles — 2,400 miles of far away, to be exact. If you check the “About” section of this blog, you’ll figure out what I’ll be doing there, too. That “About” has changed little since I started this page last July.

And to do it, in June, I will be taking what little I can shove into my 1995 Saturn SL2, a compact car by yesterday’s standards. In actuality, it has less usable space than most modern subcompacts. And over the planned 10-day epic, it won’t just be my storage, it will be my refuge, my companion, and my lifeline. It will be my noble, oil-burning, rusty old steed, much as it may look more like my very own Rocinante.

In pursuing my passion for my profession, my dream, I’ve come to realize that rarely do such things ever fall right where you’d imagine they would. Life isn’t without struggle and sacrifice; it never is. And sometimes it seems fickle to do something utterly insane like living in California when you’ve never yet been west of St. Louis or getting there in a car that has more issues than a babymomma on Maury.

But sometimes it becomes prudent to hone the moment — maybe the only moment you’ll ever have to do something truly special with it. Sometimes, it becomes important to worry about consequences later and live for the moment today. And sometimes, it becomes necessary to go out on a limb to do something you truly believe in, impractical as it may be.

Because living with real regrets is sometimes worse than death. And not growing into the person you set out to become is regretful unto itself. So here’s to the moment. Here’s the to epic journey that awaits.

Administrative work

By the way, I’m now twitting, tweeting — whatever it is — at TheJacobBrown on Twitter. I just started using it a few days ago. It should make following this blog that much easier.

I should be posting more on here following graduation in a few weeks. Thanks for your readership, and enjoy the show.

Review: The Ford Fiesta is a party worth joining

When I had finished testdriving the 2011 Ford Fiesta, the diminutive complement to the bigger Focus, I felt unsure of how to convey my feelings about it. Based on a European design that had been on the market overseas since 2008, the car reached our shores last year as a 2011 model. It was an older design than the new Focus that I had just driven, having to make do with 40 fewer horsepower and a definite economy car vibe about it, too, versus Focus’s  more upscale nature. But my heart kept coming back to the Fiesta. Whereas I was impressed with the sophistication of the Focus, I found the car lacking in soul — pizazz, if you will. On the other hand, I found the Fiesta to be an almost perfect small car companion; a car carrying more spunk than its 118-horsepower figure suggests it ought to have.

Smaller and lighter than the Focus, the Fiesta felt much more nimble by comparison. Its steering felt heavy enough to let you know that the front two wheels were, in fact, moving where you wanted with accuracy and aplomb. And while not as wide and coddling as the seats found in the Focus, the front buckets couldn’t be described as flat or unsupportive by any stretch. For anyone with limited need for a back seat — as this car’s is even more miserable than the Focus’s — it’s a right-sized in nearly every other meaningful measure. The on-road performance wasn’t bad, either, riding more smoothly over the road than even than some of Ford’s bigger, more expensive cars from my experience. All said, I came away awfully impressed with the Fiesta. In fact, I think it’s a better car than its big brother.

That said, the Fiesta has  definitely found its way onto my short list of new cars to consider once I have some semblance of post-college income.

But it’s not like this short drive drew me into a love at first sight. No, my torrid love affair with the Fiesta dates back to September 2009 when Ford brought three of its Fiestas in European specification to Pittsburgh for its “Fiesta Movement” cross-country PR tour to gauge interest for the vehicle on our shores. It was then that I became infatuated with the Fiesta, noting in my personal writings before I had started this blog that it felt like a better MINI Cooper for the money. It managed to hunker itself to the road without feeling harsh or cheap — like a real car in a class of Chevy Aveos and Toyota Yarises (Yarii?), and other tin boxes. When Ford brought over its North American version, it reportedly revised as much as 40 percent of the vehicle to conform to our tastes (cupholders) and government standards (heavier front bumpers). Unfortunately, the company cut its rather nifty-looking two-tone interior option for our market, but I can’t imagine there’d be too many people outside of myself in this country who’d think a red and black interior would go nicely with a lime green car. Oh well.

However, in its North American redux, Ford did give us a not-for-Europe sedan version and the same 6-speed DSG automatic transmission found in the Focus instead of the old school 4-speed auto in the Euro Fiesta model. Score two for the Red, White, and Blue — for once.

I guess those serve as a little bit of concession to be thankful for winning in the face of Ford Europe’s amazingly good lineup that’s finally diffusing into the American market after decades of failed attempts to ignite a truly global car brand (the flawed Contour, miss-marketed Merkur, and the original Fiesta come to mind). But receiving a Euro car, while no small victory, is still only half of the battle. No matter where the car comes from, it still has to be good — and the Fiesta is.

Initially, I worried that Ford might have watered down our car versus the overseas version in other areas, too, like dynamics. However, those fears were soon quelled upon takeoff. Sure, the Fiesta sedan looks a bit dorky with its tall, narrow styling and afterthought of a rear end on the sedan, but the car gave away little in its American translation. The interior materials were all top-notch. And with the exception of the push-button start that came in the in the Euro 5-speed car I had driven almost two years earlier, the car didn’t leave out any of the expected toys.

Those unexpected toys, however, are available on higher trim levels than the SE sedan I tested — including the aforementioned keyless start and the MyFord Touch interactive center console. But they come at a price.

The car I tested tallied up to $16,966. Keep going with the options and the car can easily wind up well into the mid-$20,000s — heavily-optioned Focus territory. Optioned as closely to the Euro car I drove as I could make it, a 5-door hatch with the 5-speed manual and illuminated interior package came to $19,300 — about $3,000 higher than Ford’s reps anticipated when I had inquired during the “Fiesta Movement” testdrive.

It’s not like the car’s overpriced. Because if you think of it as a cut-rate MINI Cooper, it’s an awfully good deal against other premium hatches that are either compromised in practicality by lacking a 5-door model or are just ridiculously expensive (*cough German cars cough*) for what you get.

But when you think about it a little longer, that argument starts falling apart. Because, it’s still a small Ford. And that carries a stigma of everything from the unfortunate — the Festiva — to the mundane — the Escort. And while Ford’s been on a roll lately, the company still has to deal with selling a premium small product in an environment with no cache, oftentimes an environment of people who probably think Ford’s NASCAR Fusion shares something with the production car besides the name and the fact that both have four wheels.

With the market Ford has been trying to target, it’s unlikely the Fiesta’s clientele are the type who’ve ever thought Sundays should be best served with oval-track racing or getting dressed up to make a trip into town to shop at Walmart. Ford introduced its small car as an urban runabout that could add a dash of excitement to city streets and make congestion not completely unbearable — which it is in every respect and more.

And in that promise, Ford has finally provided the American buying public a collection of small cars worth a damn. Now comes the tough part: making sure enough new car shoppers realize it.

Note: My U.S. tester had a coal-black interior, as do all of our Fiestas with the exception of stripes and whatnot on the seats or leather colors. The green Fiesta pictured above really had a red interior. I guess our tastes are just a bit different. Blue, black, and OMFG THAT’S REALLY RED! interiors are also available overseas.

Review: A Re-Focused Ford

It’s almost a shame Ford decided to keep the name “Focus” when it redesigned its new compact for the 2012 model year. Because this car is not the same as the one it’s supplanting — it’s something much, much better. The previous-generation car that Ford sold in the States since 2008, code named internally at Ford as the C170, rode on a platform dating back three generations without much internal reworking. Having been sold in the States since 1999, Ford hasn’t used that platform anywhere else in the world other than the U.S. and a few third world countries since 2004 when the rest of the world received a wholly new and class-leading car.

That’s not to say C170 Focuses were bad; they weren’t. Being honest, I loved driving the 2010 Focuses when I worked at a rental car agency — even as ugly and outdated at they were. In its first iteration, it was widely considered the best compact car in the world. Even ardent Europhiles agreed.

They still had tight, heavy steering, a nimble chassis willing to play, and a feeling of substantiality that was more Mark III VW Jetta than anything else an American manufacturer had ever made. And after some initial quality issues in Ford’s Mexican manufacturing facility, by the time they had gotten through 12 years of production, they became solidly reliable, well-built cars.

“[My family’s] has gone 40,000 miles, and all it’s needed was a turn signal lightbulb,” the salesman riding shotgun said. “It really is a great car.”

But it does have a good number of deficiencies — most of which have been alleviated with the complete product redesign onto the “C1” platform.

When approaching this new car — an SE trim-level sedan for my test drive — the first thing you notice is how it looks: contemporary, sleek — am I allowed to call a sub-$20,000 fuel-sipper “sexy”? Compared to everything else in its class, it is. It makes Chevrolet’s rather conservative Cruze and VW’s brand new Jetta look outdated despite only having been on sale here just under a year. Ford calls its global design language an evolution of its “Kinetic” philosophy. I call it perhaps the freshest-looking new mainstream car on the road.

The interior is the same story. The grab handles in the doors could use a little reinforcement as they felt a bit flimsy, but the rest of the interior is impressive with the quality Ford has brought to the class. I’m not usually one for dash-stroking, but the Focus is so far above everything else in the class, it’s not even a fair comparison.

The dash’s modern up-swept design puts all of the controls easily at-hand. And while it looks a bit foreign in its execution such the vestigial number pad to the right of the stereo controls left over from the phone integration Europeans use, everything felt intuitive. The HVAC controls are where you’d expect them to be without having to take your eyes off the road to turn them on. The cupholders are out of the way so that you don’t jam your elbow into your Big Gulp, but they’re right where they ought to be without having to reach back in an awkward motion. This car seems like it was designed to be as ergonomically-friendly as possible, catering to both style and substance.

In the driver’s seat, if you were to see nothing else of the car, the steering wheel would be a good indicator of just how far this car has come compared to last year’s car. The leather-wrapped wheel in the car fell into hand comfortably with grips on either side of it. Wider-rimmed and smaller in diameter than the previous generation’s, it reminded me vaguely of a last-generation BMW M3’s. Such is quite an improvement over the previous generation’s  that became slick all too easily, covered in either rubberized plastic on more basic models or cheap-feeling leather on upper-trim cars.

But transmitted through that wheel — and one thing I will certainly miss from the outgoing model — is the car’s steering feel, or lack thereof. Where the old car had a heavy, Germanic feel to it, I found the new car’s electric steering system lighter and easier to use, but lacking the same level of feedback. It’s lifeless compared to 2011 car’s. Unfortunately, since every other manufacturer is switching up to electric steering instead of hydraulic pumps to ease engine strain and boost MPGs, the switch had to happen. That said, it’s still more Civic than Corolla in terms of feel.

On the road, power came quickly and easily. The car’s 6-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission changed gears so smoothly that I couldn’t even feel the shifts. The combination seemed perfect for this car. Along with massive amounts sound deadening, I came away surprised by just how quiet, if not utterly refined, it was.

Unfortunately, that insulation couldn’t hide perhaps the cars biggest shortcoming: its ride. Pittsburgh’s post-winter roads might seem better-suited in a mortar-riddled warzone than the “Most Livable” city in the nation, but they’re a good indicator of a car’s dampening. If it can handle our deep potholes with ease, it can handle anything.

The Focus couldn’t. Ford’s engineers tuned this car’s suspension on the firmer, sportier side of the compact class, but it came off as coarse and choppy at times. Ford’s cheaper, smaller Fiesta, which I drove afterward, felt like a luxury car by comparison over the same roads. I hate to sound like more of a pragmatist than an enthusiast, but Ford would do well to make the standard suspension a little softer for 2013.

I could find other nits to pick like the lack of rear leg space, a bit dead space in the brake pedal, or the fact that Ford supplies its DSG-equipped cars without the option of steering wheel paddles or a a gate in the gear selector to shift manually, but don’t get me wrong. Ford hasn’t given us another half-hearted attempt in lieu of the world’s better alternatives.

No, what Ford has given us, for the first time since 2004, is the same car that everyone else in the world gets. It’s a car that feels like it should cost much more than its $19,415 asking price, inside and out. And it’s a car that after having driven Mazda3s, 2010 Jettas (VW substantially cheapened the car’s materials and build for the 2011 model year redesign), and many other cars in the compact class, while I don’t find it perfect, I have no problem saying is a better overall package than any of them.

Notes: Many thanks go out to and Sturman-Larkin Ford in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania for the test drive (the car had just 8 miles on the odometer when I took it out on the road) and Chris O’Neill for spotting the Bugatti Veyron afterwards. The Focus was a mid-level SE sedan with the optional convenience package.

A hipster drives what?

If I were to believe my brother, the Hipster Movement is already dead. It was supplanted by various offshoot movements some time ago that are less easy to track like the scenesters. My brother’s in the heart of what I believe to be Ground Zero for Hipster Country out east, so I guess I have no choice but to trust him. It may be alive and well in places like Seattle, but movements usually saturate from east to west, so maybe they just haven’t gotten the memo yet. I didn’t.

Regardless, I’ve seen the East Coast and lived to tell the tale, feeling every bit like Rudyard Kipling in the process. The hipster — which is what I’ll refer to it for simplicity’s sake from here on out — strove for irony, if nothing else. And it largely succeeded. But through further pondering while I was listening to Norwegian black metal and watching episodes of the Care Bears to prime my mind, it hit me no one has really formatively analyzed the process of  spotting a hipster car.

Hipsters don’t drive Toyota Celicas, much less anything particularly sporty or sporting. And one might think that as milquetoast as it may be, the hipster might even drive a Camry. It’s completely not cool enough that it might be socially acceptable in the hipster community. But oh no, the Camry is far too common a chariot. It’d be like drinking Bud Light in a college bar. Hipsters just don’t do that; they drink PBR.

No, a well-sorted hipster may come from the richest of families (remember: irony is key), but a circa 1990 Volvo, preferably a station wagon, fits the bill to the T of what a hipster might drive. A diesel Mercedes from the 1980s would also make due if a 240 or 740 GLT isn’t available.

Why? Because they’re reliable; they’re safe. They were the cars of conservative money back in the day or, perhaps, New England soccer moms. But now, they’re as common as an episode of Family Guy without some lame nonsequitur simile interrupting the plot (See what I did there?).

And they’re the most unstylish, boring-looking vehicles out there. Volvo must’ve intentionally made its cars so unattractive that the only people who would buy them new were either diehard Swede shoppers or people with no personalities whatsoever. Those people do exist; Consumer Reports exists.

Nevertheless, for the next five, 10, 15 years, or however much longer those faded-paint, clapped-out jalopies stay on the roads, hipster culture in its various incarnations will continue to drive them.

But what will they drive after such vehicles go to the Salvation Army in the sky to be recycled? It’s an interesting question.

Because, without a doubt, when Volvo switched up to a front-wheel-drive platform, it ditched the inexpensive upkeep that let those cars run for hundreds of thousands of miles with minimal cost. And in 1997 with the C70 coupe/convertible, Volvos started looking like the cars that came in the old Volvo boxes. Before then, a Volvo hadn’t been sexy since the P1800 of the 1960s.

And Mercedes-Benzes of the 1990s and 2000s are far more complicated than they ever were in the 1980s thanks to a stiff technological kick in the ass from BMW and Lexus. Competition breeds complexity. And complexity scares the hipster away.

Neither could do for a neo-contemporary hipster (if there isn’t irony enough in that phrasing). But even if they could, a general rule exists that if a rapper mentioned it in a song, it’s verboten — too cool, in fact. Everyone talks about Mercedes-Benzes in hip hop, but I’ve never Jay-Z rap about BlueEfficiency, much less a 190D, so diesels are still fair game.

As I further train myself to such a foreign thought process, throwing a scarf around my neck in this 60-degree weather and popping on some skinny jeans, I ask: What today is horribly unpopular with young people, reliable, unstylish, and makes a statement because it doesn’t make a statement? Further, it has to be cheap. Really cheap.

Initially, I’m forced to think of pre-1995 Subarus because no one knew what a Subaru was back then. Hell, some people still think they’re made in Australia.

With the exception of the early turbo models, they all rode as anonymously as they looked. Speaking that Toyota sold 10 times as many Corollas as Subaru sold Imprezas in 1993 when the car premiered, I’d say it’s a safe bet.

But they’re starting to get old, too. And too many people know what Subarus are now. New England has always loved them, and now the rest of America does, too. Phooey, it seems.

Moving into last decade, the most immediate cars that come to mind are the Ford Five Hundred and the Dodge Caliber. Neither are particularly bad cars given no other basis of comparison. But the Ford suffered from a completely anonymous design and lackluster power until its 2007 refresh when it was renamed “Taurus.” And then it was just anonymous.

The Dodge, however, was just ugly — no, more like deformed-looking. Running out of money in the 2000s, Chrysler must’ve ditched CAD and SolidWorks for DOS programs — there’s no other way to explain how atrocious Chrysler’s car designs became. The Sebring and Avenger were just as bad.

Any of them will likely be running for the next 200,000 miles, though. American cars run poorly longer than most cars run, period.

There are other cars in the hopefuls list that I think would make ideal hipster vehicles such as the Pontiac Aztek and other models from defunct brands, but most won’t be around by the time a hipster can put down $1,000 on a new car. Because where Chrysler cut design and material costs, GM skimped on mechanical components.

So what of the Aztek, seemingly a perfect hipster car? It won’t be around — manifold gasket issues. Ions? Not the ones with the craptastic continuously variable transmissions, at least, that would have put GM on defense under a class action lawsuit had the company not sent Saturn off to die with “old” GM in its bankruptcy. And what of Ford’s Mercury Grand Marquis? Yeah, if pimps and drug dealers donking them out to get to them first.

Unfortunately for the hipster, though, most cars aren’t too counterculture anymore. Cars have become more stylish and generally more mainstream than ever with fewer and fewer unrecognized brands in the marketplace. For the hipster to thrive in cars built beyond last decade, there will need to be a car that is so uncool that it’s cool; so ahead of it’s time that no one wants it when it’s a good idea to have; so unmistakably flawed — tragically flawed — in some way — whether price, performance, style, or anything else — that prevents it from becoming a mainstream success.

Maybe the hipster doesn’t know it yet, but if I had to start hedging now, I’d imagine that new hipster car just might be the Chevy Volt.

Respect the dog

I was very happy with the way The Pitt News edited this column. It can be seen in a print-ready version here. Enjoy the column.

It’s not unusual for me to use the half-page my editors grant me each week to rip Pittsburgh City Council’s half-baked plans and mediocre legislative abilities.

And I was about to do the same thing this week. In the midst of financial peril, struggles to keep jobs in the city and the city government’s constant inability to understand its young constituents, Council decided on Tuesday to officially recognize a dog — Xante, the golden retriever.

In discovering this, it became my hope that Xante would perhaps be nominated to replace Council President Darlene Harris. That would be progress at least.

But unfortunately, we would have no such luck. However, the canine compatriot still deserves plenty of recognition, perhaps even a good ear scratching.

Why? Because he’s going to work, no longer going to welfare dog living off the kibble and belly rubs of society.

Raised by Joan Ardisson the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s assistant to editor-in-chief John Robinson Block, Xante has served as the paper’s spokesdog for almost a year, integral in the paper’s “Puppy Cam” video blog series. In that time, he has garnered a following with Post-Gazette readers and more than 1,300 friends on Facebook. However, Ardisson’s primary purpose in adopting the lab holds much more significance.

Xante was bred to be a Seeing Eye dog for the blind, and in what will surely be a bittersweet moment, he’ll be shipping out to Morristown, N.J. to start training for the next phase of his life in helping lend a pair of eyes to those in need pretty soon.

I support this wagging creature’s endeavors. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a dog person.

And while more of these columns have been written with a cat on my lap, rubbing itself into my face until I sneeze uncontrollably during the times when I’ve gone to visit my family than having the same occur with my late dog, it should be noted that my dog was the size of a small house. Also — and not coincidentally — Nestle, the makers of Purina dog food, took a tumble on the stock market shortly after she passed away early last year.

Having her sit on my lap would have been next to impossible.

But that’s beside the point. Dogs really are man’s best friend.

They wag their tails senselessly, annoy the heck out of you when you’re upset until you can’t help but feel better and will even try their best to do simple chores around the house like fetching a beer out of the fridge.

Apparently, this wasn’t always the case, though. Last week, archaeologists in Jordan discovered the remains of foxes buried with humans from 16,500 years ago, suggesting they used to be the pet of choice. The next-oldest remains of dogs buried with human counterparts were found to be from 4,000 years later.

Fortunately, evolution of man growing from a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer with his faithful hunting companion has continued long beyond the point of necessity, benefitting both the humans and animals. I’m just waiting for a letter from Westboro Baptist Church disputing that.

Evolution has made sure we now have helpers like Xante to assist those will likely never read this since I don’t believe The Pitt News publishes an edition for the blind. Unfortunately, no Seeing Eye dog I know of is fluent in speaking English to its owner yet, but after seeing the movie “Up,” I’m not so sure that the concept is too far from reality.

Nonetheless and perhaps most significantly illustrated by the Post-Gazette’s chronicling of Xante’s story is just how much a dog can benefit society. It’s not just with handicapped people, either.

Because admit it, after the Super Bowl last weekend, you tuned into the Puppy Bowl you saved on Tivo to make yourself feel a little better. Either that or you viewed clips from it after you got tired of watching the commercial with Darth Vader’s Mini Me starting a Volkswagen with The Force.

After checking it out, I can confidently report that the first half of the Puppy Bowl was far more entertaining than that of the Steelers-Packers game. And Puppy Bowl MVP Big Red played a better game than Big Ben — not a tough task to accomplish.

More than 8.6 million people tuned into the contest of canines last year, according to CNN, with numbers increasing every year. That’s almost twice as many as the Nielsen’s figure from the 2011 State of the Union address.

What does all of this mean? It means that there’s an appeal for the altruistic nature of dogs.

It means that Xante should be praised for being the caliber of dog that will likely commit the rest of his life to serving others. It means Ardisson should also receive commendation for her work with helping the dog adjust to life around humans.

And, lastly, it means that, yes, City Council deserves at least some recognition for once for praising this very special creature. As the saying goes, the sun will shine on a dog’s rear end every once in awhile. Even Council’s.

Answer of the day

For those of you who actually read my column in the paper, I promised that I’d reveal why my family is mostly rooting for the Packers this weekend: They’re from Ohio. They’d rather stick skewers up their noses to grill shish kabobs over an open flame on them than root for the Steelers. They’ll perpetually root for the Browns on some misbegotten sense of loyalty just because they can. The Browns weren’t terrible this year — unlike the Cavs — but they were nothing to write home about, either. Oh well, their losses…

But them’s the facts.

I, on the other hand, live in the ‘Burgh, and I’m sticking with the home team.

Thanks for checking out my blog. Leave some feedback, even if it’s just philosophical ranting. Go ahead, make my February.

Obscenities without citation now possible in Pa.

Disclaimer: This version of a column that ran in The Pitt News on Jan. 13, 2011 has all of the fun language put back into it. If you’re not a fan of that, read the print edition here.

It all began in 1988. That’s the year when rap supergroup N.W.A. released the song “Fuck tha Police,” an anthem a lot of us likely mentally tune in to when we’re pulled over for speeding tickets, handed citations after a weekend of misfortune or happen to be on the wrong side of domestic abuse arrests and allegations as some former Pitt football players and employees happen to be.

While it serves as a great coping mechanism, using the phrase aloud in a cop’s presence has traditionally become a good way to get a few scowls, an increased fine or even a beating if your name just happened to be Rodney King in 1992.

But a lot has happened since the track’s release. Former Vice President Dan Quayle has stopped publicly decrying the moral decay of America.

And former N.W.A. rapper Ice Cube moved from Compton to Hollywood, forgoing gangsta life in favor of starring in family movies like “Are we there yet?”

Most importantly, however, is that, unlike last century, it’s finally legal to utter “Fuck the police” or any other vulgarity one can string together without repercussion. As of Jan. 4, State Police can no longer cite anyone for the use of profanity.

Because of the case against Commissioner Frank Pawlowski and the Pennsylvania State Police, Luzerne County resident Lona Scarpa got her $300 back that she had paid after reporting to a police officer about a motorcyclist who swerved at her. During the investigation, it became known that she called the driver the colloquial term for a donkey’s rear end.

Also, her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union won $17,500 for the prosecution in the name of free speech. It turns out her case wasn’t an isolated occurrence.

Over the past year, Pennsylvania police has issued more than 700 disorderly conduct citations for swearing, according to the Associated Press. Similarly, the ACLU found that Pittsburgh had written up 188 similar tickets over the past 32 months.

In some cases, people were arrested and thrown in jail for disorderly conduct charges or failure to pay the fines for what they may have deemed ludicrous.

Circumstances for the citations ranged from the aforementioned road rage to more mundane events like when a woman swore at her overflowing toilet. The state awarded her $19,000 for unjustly ticketing her potty mouth.

The biggest award recently comes by way of Pittsburgh’s City Council approving a $50,000 settlement loss in Nov. 2009 after a motorist let his middle finger do the talking. In retrospect, doing something like that during the G-20 would have helped a good deal with paying my tuition. Oh well.

Nevertheless, all of this signals a strong shift towards promoting the First Amendment. While detractors may see it as a free pass for rudeness, it isn’t.

A policeman doesn’t have to give a break to a speeder who claims to have not seen any “fucking” speed limit. And according to ACLU lawyer Mary Catherine Roper, who worked on the case, the ruling shouldn’t promote aggression, either.

“If somebody’s making a threat, or pushing and shoving and fighting, that’s a different thing,” she said. “But if people are cursing each other, you can’t issue a criminal citation and subject them to hundreds of dollars in fees for bad manners.”

Roper also said it will help ensure greater efficiency in policing.

“Besides being a waste of police resources, these types of citations are often used by police to ‘punish’ people who argue with them,” she said in an ACLU press release.

I hesitate to side with an obnoxious motorist who may be badmouthing a police officer simply doing his or her job, but I do think it’s necessary to demonstrate a proper respect for the law from all parties. And as far I know, cussing has never been illegal.

Police forces statewide will address the settlement through revising training programs and further refining the definition of “obscene.” They’ll include information about how to handle offensive gestures and language that doesn’t warrant further action.

In defense of those who may have been fined before this ruling, in the heat of a moment, verbal control isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind. People have a tendency to say things that they ordinarily wouldn’t say in front of their mothers during dinner.

Their cases will be subjected to review and possibly refunded. This case goes a long way towards rectifying what has occurred all too often — a violation of basic civil liberties.

While it may seem trivial, it’s not. While it may weaken police power a little, it goes a long way towards revitalizing the power of our rights.

To quote Founding Father Ben Franklin, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Perhaps because no officers have O.C. gassed me or shot rubber bullets in my general direction for some time now, I have no inclination to voice my dissent, but it’s nice to know I could do so now without reprimand. That’s how it should be.

How are Pittsburgh’s problems like a snowball?

This is the unedited version of my column featured in the Jan. 6, 2011 Pitt News. Click here for the school newspaper version.

Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Even the Snowlocaust. Who would have thought such strong identifiers would have come as a result of some nimbostratus clouds producing a little precipitation?

Okay, perhaps a lot of precipitation.

Over the holidays, New York City found itself shrouded under 29 inches of accumulation, practically halting parts of the city that never sleeps. The series of events that ensued from accusing the mayor of preferential treatment of various boroughs to special committees formed to investigate the city’s failings brought back some fond memories of the extended break that we had here last February.

It got me thinking: In recent years when Frosty the Vengeful Snowman has decided to take his rage out on some unassuming city, why has there been such a cataclysmic breakdown regarding fixing the problem appropriately?

Blame it on the budget. Following the 24 inches of snow we had over a two-day span last February, former columnist Giles Howard reported that Pittsburgh’s road salt budget for 2010 totaled $559,640 — a figure Pittsburgh City Council approved that cut salt expenditures by about $400,000 from 2009’s figure.

Additionally, Pittsburgh City Council 2011 budget projects show that expenditures will increase about $4 million. But chances are that figure doesn’t account for recuperating for any of the prior year’s lost winter maintenance budget.

But why would it?

Pittsburgh’s legislators have had to devote all of their resources to solving a $1 billion pension crisis, lest the city find itself under state control. A piddly slush fund for snow plows and salt almost seems trivial by comparison.

Struck with an unexpected cost burden last winter, Pittsburgh didn’t allow enough of its budget keeping the roads drivable. Not to say I didn’t enjoy my Winter Break Part II, but there were times when I wondered if the city would ever dig out Oakland.

To compensate for the extra costs associated with plowing and salting the city then, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl petitioned the state via FEMA — the wonderful organization that so promptly cleaned New Orleans in the wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina — for emergency funds. Fast-forward to May, and City Council was still grilling civil servants on what they could have done better to prevent the city’s snow blunders.

It was a noble afterthought to make the city’s politicians look as they cared. Good for them. What they should have done, however, was give the whole matter a little more foresight. Fortunately this year, at least Pittsburgh has issued mailings with emergency snow weather plans in them to apartments and homes around the city.

But much like Ravenstahl last year, New York’s Michael Bloomberg committed many of the same sorts of blunders in December — a late response, not bringing on any privately owned plows to expedite the cleanup effort, poor planning and no strong leadership from any city officials. It didn’t help that, like Ravenstahl, Bloomberg was also nowhere to be found when emergency struck.

Regarding our handy-dandy mayor’s situation specifically, it turned out that he found himself stranded at the Laurel Highlands — a ski resort — during the snowfall and his 30th birthday. Interestingly enough, the mayor has had plenty of all-weather transportation at his disposal in the past, such as the GMC Yukon SUV paid for by the Department of Homeland Security that he used to go to a Toby Keith concert back in 2007.

It would have been nice if Ravenstahl found the same sort of ride back to Pittsburgh when it counted.

With the recent weather and the city’s priorities, it brings up a valid question as to what will happen this year if another incident were to happen. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 16 years had passed between Snowpocalypse and the city’s last great snowfall on Jan. 4, 1994.

If we were to ignore the early onset of northeastern snow storms, a yinzer might tell you that 16 years seems like a good span of time to plan before the city sees another large-scale storm. Why plan ahead?

It’s that same mentality that has gotten Pittsburgh where it is today in many other respects, now finally purged of its stall tactics to put up more debt to keep old pension debt afloat — a practice that dates back to 1998 when the city retired $66 million of debt just to simultaneously issue five new municipal bonds totaling $403.8 million, according to the Tribune-Review.

This city prides itself with living on half-cocked plans, its officials looking the part in suits and ties but really never grasping the true meaning of the tasks at hand, much less a semblance of planning in advance. It’s not so much of a personnel issue as it is a mentality issue, as the several of the faces have changed over the years, but mindsets haven’t.

During the last hours of 2010, Council passed a resolution that would reallocate $736 million in parking taxes to the pension fund over the next 31 years — another stopgap rather than a fix. For the plan to work, Ravenstahl and Council must also cut $13 million in spending — something they’ve never been good at doing.

With recent infighting between this city’s politicians, it ought to be interesting to see how they handle the city’s funding together. Whether something as seemingly simple as snow or as complex as ensuring financial stability for future leaders of this city, they’ve demonstrated little in the way of real skill at knowing what’s best for Pittsburgh.

Yet, as the years change, our snow disaster becoming a memory left behind in 2010, unless a state-run shakeup provides a swift kick in the posteriors of our officials, I predict the forecast to remain the same: showers of heavy snow at times surrounded by consistent storms of legislative incompetence.

What can you do with an English degree?

Whilst sitting with my peers at the end of last semester as I turned in my 43 pages of final project agony (which dragged me into a flu-like  illness after a few all-nighters), I realized that the 18 of us would soon find ourselves graduated and out in the real world with English degrees — more specifically, non-fiction creative writing English degrees.

At that point, it came to me: What in the hell can one do with something like that? The University of Pittsburgh has the distinction of having the oldest English writing program in the nation, and, to be honest, not as much clout as one would think to go along with it. It doesn’t have the prestige of a Harvard bachelor’s degree in the field of novel-style writing. We don’t have transcendentalists in the 412 so much as we have pseudo-intellectual hipsters hanging out at Caribou Coffee shops, so that heightened level of morality or self-discovery through the craft isn’t quite present, either.

And we’re not Northwestern — or even Kent or OU (two institutions that have fantastic journalism programs, but I’d rather pull out my teeth with a pair of pliers and without sedatives than seek an undergraduate education at either of them) — when it comes to journalism. In fact, Pitt just consolidated its journalism program into its non-fiction program, further promulgating the notion I brought forward in my Pitt News column that traditional journalism is, in fact, dead.

So where does that bring the Pitt student, much less anyone with a writing degree? No, further expanding this concept, where does bring the English major in general? Let’s face it, lit majors are more useless than writing majors despite being the more popular major of the two.

Kent and OU place their journalism programs within their MassComm departments of their respective institution, but for the sake of argument, I will also lump comm majors with English majors because their degrees are as equally useless. Come on, when you think comm majors, you generally think about the star basketball players who are enrolled in the program because basket weaving just isn’t offered too much anymore.

And that leaves all of us out of luck, doesn’t it? Unless one of us makes it as a breakthrough author, we’re all destitute to a life of $12 an hour as baristas, or insurance salespeople, or something wholly underpaid and underappreciated. We’re like marketing majors (Disclaimer: I am a marketing major in addition to English) only with less usable skills.

Or are we? Are English majors really that screwed? I don’t think so. But first, I’d like to point a finger or two directly at the institutions that provide us our educations and say that they’re doing all of us a great disservice. No, worse, they’re punishing English majors by feeding us into our own myopic interpretations of grandeur while not fully instilling the cornerstones that we need to succeed.

Most English writing majors want to go into professional novel writing or education. To fuel our ideas in the fictional world, we have heroes like Johnny Depp’s Hunter S. Thompson, who is constantly in a drug-induced haze, and David Duchovny’s sex-addicted Hank Moody, who, while he is one of my favorite characters of all time, is completely unrealistic for most of us. And he’s also a tortured soul that while we’d all like to be like in some ways, is not really as much of a person to look up to so much as a cautionary example of what not to be.

With the exception of an internship for credit class I took this past semester (finding it by accident, no less), I went five years in the English department without having any formal education on how to prepare a resume properly. I took a mandatory in the school of business that largely taught the same curriculum, but English majors generally don’t get that. And I have also taught myself how to do such things to a professional skill level. But that took a while — a long while, a tedious while.

So most are fraught with a degree they half-know how to use and no idea how to contact potential agents/employers. Awesome. And that’s where English majors get the bad rap.

It’s not necessary, though. I just completed an internship working corporate communications at an international company. No one had a master’s degree. Everyone either had a degree in communications or journalism, and being honest, I felt humbled in their presence, learning the skills needed to succeed in such a high-level position. Yeah, that’s right, the people running the communications department were basically English people who excelled in their field. Those people provide the voice of the entire company to the outside world.

There are also technical writing roles, such as the one that a professor of mine — a poetry major — said she got into because her craft just didn’t pay the bills. She now teaches the craft to engineering students at Carnegie-Mellon.

There are also publications management roles and various other leadership positions that we’re never told about. We have panels of people with very similar journalistic jobs come in and tell us we’re not screwed, yet none of them ever provide roles for students to follow outside of the dying print media industry — not even blogging. That could stem from the fact that 40- and 50-somethings lecturing us simply have no idea how to make a living with the internet.

To get a job in doing one’s first love, free-form writing, it probably means initially going into a miserable job, and then struggling with a burgeoning writing career as it takes off alongside some burdensome day job. It’ll mean packing up in a minute’s notice for an interview in New York when the opportunity calls and going in to an interview in wrinkled street clothes — because real artists don’t interview in suits.

What I mean to say in all of this is that there are many ways to peel a grape, and English majors are generally trained to be existential, artsy-fartsy people with all of the talent in the world but absolutely no direction. We’re not taught how to market ourselves, and I think it’s a shame. But between my own aspirations of writing and my Baby Boomer mother’s who is working on finally cresting in her career, I’ve seen firsthand that writing professionally needs a bit more oomph than, say, an engineering job where employers are practically begging you for your services.

The world doesn’t know it, but we need more great writers, captivating storytellers. Unfortunately, it’s a lot tougher to enlighten the world to that fact, especially when everyone in the media is up in arms about catching up to Chinese proficiencies in math and science. But without the ability to convey messages, to broaden thought and provoke action, all of the math in the world wouldn’t be worth a darn. So no, English isn’t useless; as a society, let’s stop pretending it is.

“Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.”

~John Heywood, sixteenth century author