The Hightower Report

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GOING FROM HUMMER TO HUMONGOUS

The Hummer – it's not just for driving anymore.

Indeed, you can now splash the essence of Hummer all over your body! General Motors, the maker of this massive symbol of automotive machismo, has now licensed a new Hummer cologne, calling it "The Essence of Adventure" and pricing it as high as $52 for a Hummer-shaped bottle of the stuff. The scent is advertised as being "masculine with rugged and adventurous attributes." They go further, promising that this new fragrance "embodies all that Hummer is."

Hmmm. The Hummer is an absurdly expensive, gas-guzzling, low-performance, high-polluting, gussied-up chunk of automotive junk. What would that smell like? Besides, these days I see many more women driving these behemoths than men. Forget the masculinity pitch; this thing has turned into a girlie car! I suggest they'd do better with a perfume than a cologne – preferably one with the alluring scent of money.

If it's a real man's car you're after, you want the International CXT pickup truck. Weighing 14,500 pounds, reaching 9 feet tall, and stretching 21 and a half feet long, you could put a Hummer in the pickup bed of this honker! In fact, this beast will tow 20 tons and has to have air brakes to make it stop.

Yet, it has the luxuries you need, too – leather seats, wood-grain trim, a drop-down DVD player, and whatnot. Speaking of luxury, it gets only seven miles per gallon, requiring about $130 each time you fill up its 70-gallon diesel tank. Then there's the price tag – up to $115,000 with all the options.

That's pricey, but think of all the Hummer men you can intimidate. That's priceless. As CXT's marketing director says, "This is not a soccer mom's vehicle. I can't see the wife picking up groceries with it."

In a CXT, you can look down on a Hummer and truthfully say, "Mine's bigger than yours."

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A NATION OF CATTLE?

Have you been chipped, yet?

You could be soon, for the Food & Drug Administration has now cleared the way for a Florida corporation, Applied Digital Solutions, to market a tiny electronic device called VeriChip that is surgically implanted under the skin of your arm or hand.

Don't worry, says the corporation soothingly, being chipped doesn't hurt you, and it's really for your own good. For example, they say, if you have an accident, your implanted chip could contain vital medical information that could be accessed by an ambulance crew (assuming the crew has bought a hand-held, chip-reading scanner, which Applied Digital also happens to sell).

Besides, coo the corporate hawkers, being chipped is a matter of great personal convenience for you. No longer would you have to carry cumbersome ID cards to get into your workplace – you could have all the required ID stored on your chip, right inside your body. And think of the convenience of not having to fumble with credit cards! Instead, your credit numbers literally are implanted in you, so rather than running your cards through a scanner, a retailer can simply scan you. Talk about consumer progress, VeriChip turns your own body – your very own self – into a bar-coded payment system.

After all, says Applied Digital, our country has been implanting such devices in millions of cattle and pets, and it has worked beautifully, so why not humans? For you fussy libertarians who see Big Brother looming behind every scientific breakthrough like VeriChip, the company says that being implanted is voluntary, so where's the worry?

The worry, of course, is that being chipped will not stay voluntary. Corporations and government will soon insist that their employees, frequent travelers, protesters, and others be tagged for security reasons. To rebel against this effort to turn us into a nation of cattle, call the Electronic Privacy Information Center: 202/483-1140.