Metric Buttload

I read Mark Peters article in “the Writer” magazine today and had to take some time to comment. It’s not that I’m offended by the definition of this phrase:

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/metric_buttload/

I just think the definition is completely wrong. You see, I’m a child that is old enough to remember the 70s because I wasn’t old enough to actually live it at the time. I missed out on the summer of love and the “free love” craze, and haven’t quite gotten over missing out on a time when you could have all the sex you wanted without dying from it. Life just isn’t fair!

More importantly, I remember the gas rationing, gas lines on the news, and the governments ill-fated attempt to force the God-awful metric system down our throats. I believe it was during eighth grade math when they really started to shove that at us. Once the national test scores for math plummeted through the floor boards, they quickly re-adjusted the curriculum so we didn’t have to be bothered with such things again. It wasn’t that we couldn’t learn it, we just outright refused. Trying to force a bunch of farm kids who can tell you the acre size of a patch of ground by glancing at it to start talking in square kilometers was a bad idea from the beginning. We dealt with CCs and grams because we had to get through physical science, and, if the scale already had the notches cut in it, we simply didn’t care about the units. We had grown up all our lives knowing that a bushel of soybeans and a bushel of corn were different sizes. We had no trouble wrapping our minds around the fact 16 fluid ounces was only a pound when you were talking about water or something very close to it. If you wanted us to start weighing herbicide in grams and pesticides in CCs we could care less, just provide the correct scale and measuring cup and 24 will be 24 to us.

No, where the “gubmint” really screwed the pooch was making the auto industry start using metric. This was a classic government operation, meaning, it was a debacle from start to finish. A “ phased in” approach meant that we now had to have two sets of sockets and wrenches with us at all times. Yes, we probably each owned four sets, but they were scattered out across multiple tractors and trucks around the farm. On a good day you could find a complete set in the tool shed where they belonged, but we didn’t have that many good days. Even today, more than 20 years later, you still have to have two complete sets of tools to work on a %*&%(*ing car, on top of the specialty tools!

Ah, but the “gubmint”, in its infinite wisdom, was thinking about all of the European tourist dollars they could get if the speedometers all had kilometers on them. They were also thinking about how wonderful it would be to export American cars to European markets. Obviously they weren’t forward thinking enough to simply mandate every vehicle sold abroad come with a complete set of SAE wrenches and sockets. I mean, at the time, $40 would get you a pretty nice set in a carrying case. Today, roughly $20 will get you a Walmart special set of knuckle skinners. I’m sure if Ace Hardware had suddenly started moving 70,000 sets per year of its Ace brand wrench and socket sets via Detroit that the prices would have come down even sooner.

No, the “gubmint” didn’t think this whole “metric conversion” thing through. Randomly changing nuts and bolts on the vehicles we had to fix pissed us off, but putting Kilometers Per Hour on the speedometer along with MPH told us just how screwed we where. You see, we had just had the gas rationing, endured the Chevy Citation, and watched the incendiary Ford Pinto on numerous news reels. Our “ gubmint” had just told us we couldn’t have a Chrysler 300 with a massive V8 engine which came stock with factory installed dual quad carbs. We had just been told we could no longer have a car, under factory warranty, which would seat six comfortably and do close to 180MPH. That was simply un-American. Now they were trying to play the numbers game with us and change the units at the same time. They wanted us to only have the capability to go 160, but they always ran out of air when they said the units…trying to get us to agree that trimming the limit 20 wouldn’t be so bad. All we had to do was get behind the wheel to know we would never have a fast car again. There before us in blue and white on black was living proof that 160 was only about 120 MPH, and that was considered a ho-hum family sedan, not a fast car, let alone a muscle car.

Shortly after that, they tried to make every car ride like a rail. Detroit kept cutting corners and using more “European Engineering” to lighten the load rather than make a more efficient engine. First came the coil springs, then the struts. Kids these days have probably never ridden in a car that rides like a real car. No matter how much money you throw at it, coil springs and struts do not give you the ride of four leaf springs and a shock. I still have a full sized Jeep Grand Wagoneer with an AMC 360 V8. I can fire that thing up and take it, unfeeling, down roads which throw drivers of modern vehicles through the windshield. Even my 2006 Buick Rendezvous rides like sh*t compared to that thing and a Buick is supposed to have the “boatiest” old-man ride on the planet.

No, I think you need to update the definition of “metric buttload” to what it really is. Something trying to sound like a whole lot more than what it is. Distance runners love the metric system! It’s a lot easier to run 8K than it is 8 miles. HR people love talking about salaries in terms of K meaning a thousand when those of us in the computer field know that K = 1024 and we know they stiffed us on our paycheck because we only made 80,000 instead of the 80K we were promised.

Perhaps we could call “Metric Buttload” a Maadoff Performance Measurement?