(in a Sea of Mediocrity) by Maurice Fitznuggly
We could define "quality" in many ways. In the consumer culture let’s just say that quality in a product means you get more than you expect. The "more" can vary: more reliability, more features, more performance. Problems arise immediately, because something that seems like "quality" to you may be only a big headache for me. BMW is an outstanding example. Every car magazine in the world agrees that BMW makes cars that are great driving machines. (One of the challenges of being a car writer for the last decade has been to find new ways to praise BMW in the annual "10 best" list.) But: "great driving machine" does not, in the case of BMW, mean great reliability. Au contraire. BMW’s are in fact notorious for their unreliability. They break a lot. It gets worse: when they break they’re also notoriously expensive to fix. You, with your fixation on driving at triple-digit speeds and your sextuple income, love your BMW7, no matter how often it breaks, how much time it spends in the shop, or how much repairs cost. While I, with my fixation on reliability, love my ho-hum, built-like-a-refrigerator (and also sort of drives like one) Camry, which just keeps on running, long after the Energizer Bunny is kaput. So, keeping in mind that even quality is subjective, we offer two lists for your consideration. One is the good stuff, where quality matters. The other is the sad stuff, where quality used to matter... or In Our
Glass-bottom Boat
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128 pages of the best satire
from 6 years of Magellan's Log. Well beyond chortles, Is It
Empire Yet? verges on the downright hilarious. "Swiftian," says
one reader. "Rib-splitting," says another. "Brilliantly, uproariously
offensive to all right-thinking Republicans," says yet another. 128 pp. Paperback.
8.5" x 11". ISBN 0-9767821-3-8. $21.95:
