Occasionally, something that works well

Amid the clangor (one of my favorite words) and discord, tumult and shouting (big shout out to Ruddy Kipling and his blog at
www.ominousforeshadowing.com), and general can-o-whup-ass-opening (note that the more commonly heard term, "open up a can of whoop-ass," is absolutely incorrect and semantically ridiculous, as William Safire recently noted in his NYT column, "Who the f**k cares what William Safire thinks, anyway?"), it's nice to reflect on the one or two things that actually seem to be working.

No, that wouldn't be the various bail-out packages; nor any of the proposed paths to peace in the middle east, mid-west, or Midlothian, for that matter; nor the efforts by the government of North Korea to stay in the top six of America's worries (not kidding -- that is apparently a recognized goal of NK, never to be the number one on our hit parade, but to be four or five down on the list of things we have to concern ourselves with. I've worked for companies with that kind of strategy.) No, I'm thinking at the moment, anyway, of my recently-acquired Garmin GPS, with which I'm well pleased. I used to have a Garmin Quest, which was adequate, but had a user interface designed by a commitee of macaques, drunk on palm toddy. When it just quit working, I replaced it with a Garmin Nuvi 250. This little thing fixes all the complaints I had about the Quest, runs faster, and doesn't require downloading maps for different parts of the country.

Why do I need a GPS, you ask? Well, I find myself driving around the countryside in strange cities more than I used to, by myself, and it's useful not to have to fumble with maps while trying to not hit more than my limit of pedestrians and/or moose.