A small rant

Oh boy, these rant blogs are rare, but they do happen.. So what has sparked my ire today? What made this otherwise calm guy go "argh this annoys me SO much"..? Well.. It's calling things the wrong thing.. Case in point: There was an article on a website today that read "Muscle car impounded". Now, seeing that these types of cars are rare here, I was interested. And also because I love cars.. Anyway..

They recently passed a new law here, that deals with drivers and the reckless driving that some, note: SOME, drivers do. The law states the following: "Reckless driving will result in impounding of the car". Let's say a person drives his/her car in a manner that can cause serious harm and/or death, or if the car is speeding above 100% of the posted speed limit, the car gets impounded. No exceptions. That includes street racing, DUIs and driving at speeds of 200 kmh or over. I hope that makes sense. Anyway!

There was a street race, where a muscle car was involved. Well, according to the media, the car was a muscle car.. Side note: I propose a new rule: Before someone posts an article, they should get the facts right. Anyway, back to the topic of the rant..

The car in question was a Ford Mustang GT. The driver was doing 123 kmh in a 60 kmh zone. In USA numbers, that's 76 mph in a 37 mph zone. As the driver crossed the speed limit by 100%, the car was impounded. The law is a good one, and one that's needed. It's not what this blog is about. Neither is it the street race, since I have attended a few of those in my time..

No, it's the fact that they call a Ford Mustang GT a muscle car.. It's NOT A MUSCLE CAR! It's a pony car. Big difference! The term pony car is used to refer to sporty compact cars that are usually fitted with a small-block V8 engine or sometimes even a V6 engine. Muscle cars, on the other hand, are more muscular and bigger than pony cars. They usually have a big-block V8 under their hood. Why did the media label the Mustang GT as a muscle car? Well, it's because it was a V8 with 300 horsepower. That's definitely not muscle car territory. It can become a muscle car, if it's fitted with suitable high performance parts.

It might be a small thing to complain about, but it REALLY grinds my gears when people mislabel stuff or get stuff wrong. Well, depending on how wrong the thing is. If someone says I'm a handsome devil, I let it slide because I know they're wrong. But when people WRONGFULLY claim that vikings had horned helmets, the Danish in me goes "Now just hang on a minute, mister! You're wrong! Vikings never had horned helmets, despite what other people are telling you". The only reason vikings wears helmets on some tv shows and in some media, is because costume designer Carl Emil Doepler included horned helmets in his costume designs for the 1876 performance of Wagner's classic Norse saga, Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Again: VIKINGS. DID. NOT. WEAR. HORNED. HELMETS, and I would appreciate it if people got that into their heads..

Rant over.. Now back to watching olympics hightlights!