Brendan Gates

Toyota has had a rough year. Weird floormat recalls, crazy accelerator issues, lots of bad press, and now a recall of both the Sienna minivan and the Lexus GX 460 SUV. They need some help, and I think I know the solution. Bring back the Previa!

That’s right, the Toyota Previa. Has there ever been a sharper looking people mover? I don’t think so. Can the G-Wagen comfortably wrap 7 passengers in Japanese luxury, all while maintaining 18 mpg? No. And the Escalade’s great, if you want to spend $35k. You can pick up a ’95 Previa for a cool $5k. Talk about value.

Think about it. Toyota can kill two birds with one stone. Sienna owners come in for the recall, and you give them a Previa instead. That takes care of your Sienna problem, and you get more Previas on the road – which reminds the world of how beautiful a Toyota can be. It’s a win-win.

(Kid Cudi’s head is courtesy of Jaime Rivera, and the original can be found here. The original is licensed with a CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license, and my new creation is licensed the same.)

According to the Columbia Tribune, two Columbia city employees are possibly facing criminal charges because they absconded with 50 of the 1500 cases of beer dumped by a local distributor at the city landfill. The beer was past the sell by date, hence the distributor could no longer stock it. One of the employees has already resigned.

The City of Columbia Solid Waste Utility actually has a twitter page, and one January tweet said the following:

Did you know that aluminum cans take 80-100 years to decompose in the landfill? Toss them in the recycle bin, not the trash can.

So weren’t the city employees just recycling? I think they were just taking the department’s advice to heart, and doing what they could to keep those cans out of the landfill.

Were I still a college student at Mizzou when this story broke, you better believe I’d be sizing up the landfill security in preparation for a mission impossible style heist to “reuse” the remaining cases of beer. It would have been my duty not just as a patriot, but also as a responsible steward of the earth.

Yesterday was day 17 of P90X, so last night should have been Shoulders, Arms, and Abs. I opted for the alternate workout of driving to Albertsons and buying Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies. Probably not a good sign.