So I'm cranky and over-worked and under-slept and not at all ready to be amused by life, and I've been that way for a good long time now. Life, apparently, realizes this and has decided to take some of the subtlety out of its approach.

It's late -- again -- and I'm driving home after an exhausting day of not getting my project done -- again -- when one of those sleek new electric cars zooms by. It's a cool ice-blue and shaped like a torpedo and just about screams, "Out of my way, you fossil-fuel burning weenie; I'm on my way to the future!" The sunset-and-palmtree California license plate reads SMOG LES.

And it's strapped to the back of a ancient, smoke-belching flatbed truck, apparently on its way to wherever you can get those sleek new electric cars fixed.