The other day, as I pulled into a tech company parking lot, I saw one of those Hummers that the ostentatious are buying as status symbols these days. It looked ridiculous. A few weeks ago I saw one at a stoplight. It looked ridiculous too.

The Hummers like these that one sees around town have a taller profile than the cool looking ones driven by people who really need them. The unadorned boxy design, when bloated to that scale, gives the impression of one of those huge Motorola cellular phones that the big shot executives used to lug around before everybody had one. Driving a Hummer around town will get you noticed, but I have to think that a lot of the people who notice you will be laughing at the person who thinks it makes them look good. I can't help but wonder whether Motorola might bring the old brick phones back to market to Hummer drivers. For someone who doesn't need a Hummer for what it was built for, they are and absurd waste of money, and an offensive waste of gasoline in a time when prices are already high enough.

If urban Hummer owners don't feel the same, well, okay. We all have our own tastes. But if they thought that buying a Hummer would also purchase my respect or envy, then I'm afraid the dealer took them to the cleaner.