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ANSWERS TO YOUR BASIC QUESTIONS

Q:  Why did you design this web site?

A:  Because a few inbred redneck hee-haw stumpfuck hillscoggins managed to stumble their way into one of my long ago forgotten private opinions.  This particular opinion was buried deep on my site and would have taken some dedicated searching to find (even I had forgotten it was there, it had literally become buried on my site with no direct links to it).  Following the discovery of the web rant, these hillscoggins got their feelings hurt (those that could read I guess read aloud to the slower scoggins in the group) that someone would make fun of their American made motorcycles and they had to go running and crying back to their little private forums.  Taking the web rant verbatim, the idiots then began to sound an alarm that someone in the world didn't like Harley Davidson motorcycles.  There was grave danger to the safety of the flock mentality because someone was doing some original thinking and the magic spells that Milwaukee had been casting for 30 years were apparently having no effect on one particular individual.

After that, the link to that html file was shared and plastered over many, many web forums, both pro and con and became somewhat of a legend in a rather short time.   The first time I realized the rant had been seized from the depths of my opinion page (where it had been buried and forgotten since late '95) was when I received a few hateful pro-Harley emails from some real inbred three tooth hillscoggins.  Opening the emails and going "WTF are these retards talking about?" I quickly realized what had happened.

In the years that have followed, the web rant just kind of worked its way around the world, either pissing people off or gaining disciples behind it.  Judging by the email, about 8 in 10 people who do send me email about the web rant firmly believe as I do.   After a while, after the web rant had gained enough momentum on its own (sometimes the html page was being hit over 2500 times a day, just that one page) I decided to bring it up to the surface of my domain and make it more accessible to other people who might not find it or who might never go to the depths required to discover it. 

My sites are pretty layered.

If something I produce has momentum, I'll give it a dedicated site of its own.   The Anti-Harley web rant gained that notoriety about a year ago, hence it is time to build upon the web rant.  Since the ignorant HD riders won't leave it alone or let it die, I decided to escalate it to a higher level and just have a lot of fun with it, kick it up a notch or two and do it right.  If I can change some people's minds about HD then that is icing on the cake.

Q:  Do you troll Harley Davidson motorcycle forums and flame HD owners?

A:  No, I do not.  But I do know several who do troll MY forums.  It's a clear cut case of HD owners accusing me of doing the very thing that they are themselves doing.  It's just another view into their ridiculous lifestyle and how it has double standards (one set of standards for those who ride Harley Davidsons and one set for those who ride anything else).

Honestly, I have never been to any type of HD forum, I couldn't even tell you where one was if I tried and I don't care to go if someone sends me the link.  If you ever see anyone posting as me on a HD forum, you can believe that it isn't me and is some stupid troll using my name to spread their own agenda.  I don't invade other people's domains and forums to cause trouble, I could care less about a bunch of ignorant HD owners and their duh-pinions of me and I don't have the time to try to educate a bunch of flag slathered shit-tards.  I have other forums to go to when I'm online and since I don't own a HD, and I don't see the need to troll other people's forums, I really have no reason to ever go to a HD based area.

I don't respect trolls, I've seen too much of that on the forums I frequent to ever consider doing it myself.  I think it would be a waste of my time to go make trouble on a HD board, it would be more trouble than it was worth and would result in a large scale slide into chaos.  Most HD owners are clearly set in their ways and are oblivious to the obvious truth, so why bother...  The old saying of "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." applies to most HD owners.   They don't want to see the truth, so why whack them over the head with it, that would only wear me out and make them mad which serves no purpose either way.

I can honestly say that I, personally, have never visited any HD related forum or chat room and have never posted the link to my web rant or any portion of it on any other site other than my own.  It is my opinion, I keep it here on this domain, you can come here and read it if you like, you can comment if you want, but you won't find me trolling and posting my opinion on any HD sites.  That just isn't my style.   There are too many other people who are more than willing to do that for me, apparently, so what the hell...  The web rant stands as something that generates a lot of email and makes new friends around the world, both HD owners and non-HD owners.  Some of the email can be downright funny, as you will see!

Q:  Do you hide behind your web site and insult people, feeling safe behind your computer?

A:   I don't need my computer to feel safe which is just another of the 'sour grapes' excuses I see HD owners making about my web rant.  The truth is, I get way too many HD owning retards who walk up to me when I'm riding and start in on some useless drivel about how I'm unpatriotic or I'm helping other countries economies by purchasing an import bike, and I need to get a REAL motorcycle, etc.  These are the same Harley riding retards who drive BMWs and Lexus products when they're not riding their Harleys yet they don't understand that they were supporting other countries economies when they bought their cars and SUVs.  Anyone with half the brain of a retarded hamster would see through that line of tired old bullshit, but I know that Milwaukee's livelihood depends on people believing it, and the fetid old inbred rednecks in Milwaukee are apparently doing pretty well by it right now.  Last time I heard, every board member of HD had upgraded to a double wide, indoor plumbing, and satellite reception which was a huge step up from what they previously had.

The way I get the same tired old canned arguments in my email, I'm starting to think that the typical Harley rider is a programmed automaton similar to the Stepford Wives, that when you buy a Harley that the dealership erases your brain and reprograms you to be an a complete slobbering Harley supporting idiot.

I didn't start this web rant, it was originally started by ignorant HD owners in real life making tired old statements, based on emotion and not logic or intelligence, about my friend's and I and our choice of motorcycles.  We were happy to ride with the HD crowd and enjoyed motorcycling and city to city touring but then it became exclusive to the HD owners and the rice burner comments started to wear our patience thin so we stopped riding with the HD posers.   A few emails were exchanged when we stopped showing up for rides, and the comments generally were "Missed you at the ride, guess your rice burners weren't running."  I created the web rant to bash these ass clowns that we used to ride with.  People who rode imports locally loved the web rant and asked for copies, the Harley guys just got hotter and hotter.   The emails got more vulgar, and dumber on their part.  We took them apart via email and in real life arguments when we met on the street.  It lasted about six months and then we forgot about it, telling the HD guys to kiss our rice burning asses, we would ride without them and their snobby attitudes and their ignorant remarks. 

What this web site consists of is the reverse swing of the blade.  Harley owners by and large can dish out their ignorant hatred for other models and brands, but if you ever say anything bad about HD, look out!  That's un-American!  The flag slathered idiots will get their tender little feelings hurt in a big way and then they will lash out at you with threats of violence and streams of obscenities, all the while claiming to be more mature and open minded and to be 'real' bikers and that 'you just don't understand.'

It's laughable, it really is.

Do I insult people?  Yeah, absolutely, without a doubt.  I insult stupid people because stupid people need to be insulted, no coddled, not told that their stupidity is all right, not rewarded.  They need to be ridiculed.  I call it like I see it, no holds barred and no punches pulled.   I didn't ask for my web rant to be linked to and dragged all over the internet and displayed on every useless HD site out there, but that is what has happened and once again, the HD owners have started the flames cooking because someone has a difference of opinion and the fashion lemmings can't stand that.  I don't think of my site and my computer so much as a 'hideout', as much as I think of it as a "fort," with myself and a large number of like-minded individuals holed up inside staring out at a whole bunch of ignorant HD owning injuns on the outside riding their tired old iron horses, whooping and hollering, and laying siege to the fort in an effort to wipe out any difference to what they stand for.

I don't ask people to come here, I don't advertise the site, I don't charge membership fees, I don't require you to register an account and use a logon name / password, and I don't troll HD boards, yet I'm constantly getting hate mail from extremely narrow minded people, and if I do get inquisitive and follow a given link or a network server packet back, it generally leads to some 'members only' forum where you have to be invited to be a member.  I call these areas on the Internet 'pastures', they're usually full of ass grazing conformist sheep.  It is often said that I "hide behind my computer" and insult people, when in fact there's more HD owners flaming me and this site on their own little private secure chat rooms and message boards than I could ever dream of doing on this site, yet I'm a bad person because I "insult HD owners and hide behind my computer."

Right.

I see how that logic works.  It's just the pot calling the kettle black.  In an age of information at your fingetips, no one can hide on the Internet.  Maybe you could ten years ago when people were stupid and tracking tools weren't so readily available, but not today.  I laugh when some hillbilly sends me a listing of my home address and phone number with the implication that because the HD owners now know where I live and how to call me, I better take down my website or they'll let everyone know.  Here you go, you hillscoggins.  Here is my contact information.

Christopher T. Shields
1117 National Guard Road
Columbia, MS 39429

United States of America

601.736.8401

Q:  Do you insult every person who sends you Email?

A:  No.  In order to get publicly ridiculed on this site, you have to be a brainless HD mantra chanting pre-programmed flag slathered imbecile who does something stupid with your email to me.  Really stupid.  I have a list of some of the things that will get your email posted here and you personally ridiculed and displayed for all the world to see what a total brain dead ass clown you truly are.  I reserve my wrath for about 1 out of every 10 or so pro-Harley emails, and those are the truly special and ignorant cases.  The rest of the emails I generally ignore since most of it is tired old 'you don't understand' type whining or the 'can't we all just get along' type whining.

"Can't we all just get along?"  No, we can't.  I've tried twice now, once in real life and once on the net.  The old saying "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me." applies here.  I've learned my lesson; you just can't get along with knuckle dragging inbred rednecks.

I don't have time to let things on the internet upset me or affect how I react to the real world, especially from narrow minded flag-wrapped bigots who build tiny little fences around their mentality and dare someone to challenge their superiority.  This site is but one small part of my vast domain, and although it generates an appreciable percentage of the total email, it is still no where near the email that I normally get for the other parts of my domain.  Some say this is a crusade, I think it's evolved into a hobby, personally.  I've gotten really good at it and as the years go by, it seems that my foes only get dumber.  Maybe it's like Muhammad Ali, I truly believe that if you ride a paint shaker welded to a bicycle frame that over the many years you can literally become punch-drunk and suffer permanent brain damage from having your melon repeatedly vibrated up and down in your skull.  That's the most obvious answer as to why HD owners are so dumb.  Inbreeding and low quality blood lines selected from poor white trash also seems to explain a good part of this collective ignorance as well.  When it comes to reproducing, Milwaukee's production quality seems to imitate its customer reproduction values; garbage in, garbage out.

Q:  Do any HD owners agree with your views?

A:  Actually, a surprisingly large number of HD owners agree with my reasoning and logic and support me with email.  I share with them the stupid emails I get and we all have a big laugh over the simps who think they are defending the last bastion of white Anglo-Saxon American freedom but who are really just wiping their ass with the American flag.  If Harley Davidson sold to a more select clientele, and if the owners of HD would police their own, I doubt this site would exist in the first place.   However, HD sells to anyone, HD owners do not police their own, and this site is a testament to that fact.  Traditional HD owners are opposed to the RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers) who have been the core reason why the Motor Company has sold its soul over the past few decades and abandoned totally what it once stood for.  I've come up with two new terms for the genetic misfires that I meet through email; UMPs.  UMPs are Uneducated Mental Pygmies, a term which seems to describe most of HD's market niche.

Q:  Why do you hate Harley Davidsons riders so much?

A:  I don't hate real Harley Davidson (HD) riders.  I hate the so called "REAL(tm)" HD riders who are nothing but a very large group of raisin brained panty wastes (yes, I know how to spell "pantywaist" but that is not the word that I am using so stop emailing me telling me that I misspelled it, ditto for "poseur") who think that a HD is the end all of motorcycles and who look down on other riders for choosing something different or having a different opinion.  These are the people who will quote every tired old cliché from the HD line while prancing around in their full officially licensed and endorsed product gear yet won't be able to tell you where the oil goes in their bike or how much it holds.  They are Americans(tm), and Individuals(tm), and they have the sales receipts to prove it.  I look down on and ridicule the posers on the HD bikes, and apparently so do a lot of real HD owners.  However, the real HD owners just aren't as vocal about it since apparently one HD owner bashing another HD owner is considered something of a cardinal sin and is punishable by banishment from the flock.   I think this is pretty much a death sentence to most wannabe HD retards since they will have no one to interact with anymore or peacock and strut their brand new apparel and gear around to and import owners certainly aren't going to put up with their crap for long.

Since HD has started marketing to trend humping fashion lemmings (they had to in order to survive as a company since their technology base ran out sometime about the last part of the 1950's...), they've pissed in their own market pool and now they're having to drink it.  It used to be where a Harley Davidson was a bike owned by an knowledgeable individual.  You had to have a pretty thorough knowledge of motorcycle mechanics to own, work on, maintain, modify, and even just ride a Harley Davidson.  There weren't a lot of dealerships, no parts lines, no customer service numbers to call in the middle of the night for a tow to a repair center.  There were no Harley Davidson Boutiques, no Harley Davidson restaurants, none of the pop culture sugar topping that we see today.  Your bike was like a horse was to the cowboys, you took care of it and if it broke down, chances were that the closest knowledgeable person who could fix it was you.  Harleys were enthusiast bikes, owned by a very select few, the last of the true bikers. 

Not any more.

Now all you need to own a Harley is a credit card or cash money in hand, no brains required, in fact, the fewer brain cells you have, the more Harley looks to you as a valued customer.  The days of having to actually ride your Harley in order to be considered a biker are long gone, now all you have to do is own a Harley and you're considered a real biker.  It's really a slap in the face to the original founders of Harley Davidson and for all of those who spent the first fifty years of HD's history building up the company only to have the last fifty years turn the company from a motorcycle manufacturer into a fashion empire.  Harley Davidson died the great death, they became exactly what they once stood against.  Harley Davidson was assimilated by the very type of culture abhorred.  Where Harley Davidson used to be all about counter-culture, it has now become pop culture.  The very types of people who used to look down on bikers on Harley Davidsons are now the very same people who are putting their names on waiting lists and standing in line to buy one of Milwaukee's products.

The days of Harley being a 'real' motorcycle company are long gone.  The old, traditional Harley Davidson motorcycle company and all it stood for is dead, it died when Harley had to merge with AMF.  It died when the British and Japanese imports came to America and instead of fighting them with better technology, Harley Davidson turned tail and ran into a long downward spiral into mediocrity and eventually a brain dead coma from which they have never come out of.  Oh, there's signs of life all right, but it's a body with no soul.  The contemporary Harley Davidson motorcycle company is more like Amway and is content to prostitute their sacred emblem on total shit ranging from flashlights to Barbie dolls, and they wonder why educated and informed people make fun of them.  It is probably because smart people 'just don't understand'... and because the Motor Company has geared its marketing to the lowest common denominator in society.

Harley likes to sell its products under the "Ride to live, live to ride" motto.  However, a more correct motto would be "Ride to pretend, pretend to ride."

Q: Have you ever owned a Harley Davidson?

A:  No, thank God, I haven't.  My parents taught me the value of a hard earned dollar and I don't see the need to throw good money away on total junk.  I never fell into the trap of wanting to be just like everyone else.   After I looked at different motorcycles and compared what Milwaukee offered to what the rest of the world offered, I realized I would have to be nucking futs to pay twice as much for half the return on my hard earned dollar.  Nostalgia my ass, that's a weak ass excuse to explain away stagnation.  You don't see Ford motor company producing $40,000 exact replicas of the Model-T Ford and selling it off as 'nostalgia', now do you?

Nostalgia = lame ass excuse to cover up basic product stagnation.

I guess I'm just different than other people, I like to make my money stretch as far as it goes since I work my ass off for it.  I wanted to believe in Harley Davidson, I really did, but when you compare numbers, hard numbers, between imports and domestic, Harley loses big time, every time.  Oh, and I've never bought any of their 'officially licensed and endorsed' products either.   I don't even have a Harley T-shirt which for some HD fans, is the closest they'll ever come to owning anything that is 'officially licensed and produced' by those shit-tards in Milwaukee.

Q:  If you were to get a FREE Harley Davidson motorcycle, say by winning a contest, would you keep it and ride it?

A:  That question has been asked many times and the answer is; no.   That reply really shocks a lot of people, it really does, who think that one of life's ultimate rites of passage, that one of life's ultimate rewards, is to own a HD motorcycle at some time or the other.  I mean, some people seriously think that if they miss this opportunity, it is like failing puberty and having to take a correspondence course to catch up.  There are people out there who go to bed at night praying to God to let them be able to buy a Harley.  That's as pathetic as it is sad.  If I won a free Harley, I would either offer the 'motorcycle' back to the sponsoring dealer for say $0.80 on the dollar, or since it was free, I'd take it and offer it for sale for what ever the going price was and unload it for a tidy profit to some ignorant hill billy who just couldn't live without owning a genuine HD.

I wouldn't even ride a HD if it was given to me free, and that pretty much gets rid of the "you don't like Harley Davidson because you don't own one" and the "you hate Harley because you can't afford one" type arguments.  I can afford a Harley, I can afford two or more Harleys.  I'm just not stupid with my money.  Go ahead, give me a Harley Davidson.  I'll turn around and sell it so quick your head will spin and I'll take the money that I got from some ignorant UMP and laugh all the way to the bank with it (while riding my sport bike). 

As I like to say, "I wouldn't walk across the street for a free HD."

Q:  Have you ever ridden a Harley Davidson before?

A:  Yes, several.  None were what I would call more than lackluster pieces of slapped together shit, even the brand new Sportster and the equally pathetic Buel Thunderbolt.  The Sportster is a joke, there is no 'sport' in a 'Sportster' to be sure.  Overweight examples of hyper-market driven pieces of junk.   I've seen too many brand new Harleys have to be serviced by the dealership for problems that should never have made it past quality control in the first place.   Leaking engines, slipping transmissions, shoddy paint jobs that flake off, and other simple mechanical problems that you would not expect of a company selling 'the greatest motorcycle in the world'.  Slapped together refurbished shit is closer to the truth.

The stuff coming out of Milwaukee truly is overpriced junk.  You can get better performance, better quality, and far better workmanship at about half the price if you buy import, which is a testament to the failure of Milwaukee and the ignorance of its customer base.  After riding several different HD products, I completely fail to see the mystique involved in owning anything made in Milwaukee.  Putting the 'made in America' stamp on anything produced by HD should be a serious treasonous crime in and of itself.   The HD line just isn't that great, and truth be known, you can buy far better for far cheaper, but you can't tell people that.  They want a nostalgic product, they get product stagnation, they want a powerful image, they get image without performance, they want a bad reputation but they don't want to earn it.  They want to get it by paying cash or credit.

With Harley Davidson today, anyone can come in and be part of the experience, regardless of intelligence or social background, as long as you bring your money with you because money is all that Milwaukee is interested in these days.

Q:  People pay high prices for HDs because they value nostalgia.

A:  That is such laughable BS that it is utterly ridiculous.  Nostalgia, like I have said before, is a politically correct term used to describe the ugly word "stagnation."  People pay high prices for HDs because they want to be considered to be part of the flock, they want to be considered to be a rugged individual and a bad ass and they are willing to buy their way into the flock.  Harley hasn't had an innovative thought in decades, therefore, since they can't come up with anything new or exciting, they market tired old designs under the marketing flag of 'nostalgia' because if they followed truth in advertising, they wouldn't sell many bikes under the marketing ploy of 'stagnation'. 

HD owners want to have the 'rough' mystique that goes with owning a HD, but that image is long since tarnished and pissed upon by the rich yuppies and the stupid rednecks who jumped in the HD pool when they saw that a HD could be a good investment, especially when you could make money off of stupid people.  Today, if you ride a HD, you're pretty much a posing fashion lemming with far more money than common sense.  There is an old saying; "A fool and his money are soon parted."  I see a lot of fools on Harleys.  Milwaukee's income depends on stupid people and apparently, it works.  They've gotten rich off of market niche full of the independently wealthy mentally  retarded.

Q:  Harley owners don't buy their bikes to go fast, they buy their bikes to enjoy them.

A:  Yeah, I've heard that tired old cliche before which is Milwaukee's standard lame ass excuse given to its customers when they ask "Why do we get our 1300cc asses blown into the weeds by little 600cc Hondas?  I thought a Harley was supposed to be bad!"  The answer, of course, is stagnation in design and technology.  However, HD circumvents the truth with little white lies cloaked under the guise of "nostalgia."  There is so much you can do with a Harley other than go fast.  You can deck it out in thousands of dollars worth of officially licensed and endorsed accessories from several catalogs. Of course, all of this makes it slower...  

Face it, folks.  It's a motorcycle, not a RV!  It is supposed to be fast and powerful, it is supposed to run circles around that plebian form of transport that we call the family automobile.  You are supposed to get away on a motorcycle, not take it all with you!   There are some four cylinder cars out there that are faster in the quarter mile, stock, than the big Harleys.  How impressive is that?  You can't be bad when you can't even outrun mass produced domestic econoboxes.

If Harley owners buy their bikes to enjoy them, then they must enjoy riding slow ass pieces of junk.  And I constantly get email about how some HD rider's this that or the other bike with this that or the other modification will whip my pathetic little rice burner and I just laugh.   When a stock Harley breaks into the low 10's and high 9's from the factory, I'll rethink my stance on so called "Harley performance."  Until then, Harley performance is about as laughable as some of the ass clowns who ride these bikes.

Q:  Speaking of "Harley performance," what do you think of the new HD V-Rod?

A:  The V-Rod?  Seen it before, twenty years ago.  Liked it better when it was called the Yamaha V-Max.  The hillscoggins always raise a bunch of sand about how Japan is copying Harley but the truth is that Harley doesn't know how to make a world class engine, nor can it compete technologically with the rest of the world.  It's designs are outdated and obsolete and it has put more money into marketing than it ever has into research and design.  The V-Rod is a joke, often called "the water hog" by Harley owners, it is perhaps the clearest indicator that not only is Japan not copying Harley but that Harley is copying Japan.

What do I think of the V-Rod?  I think it is a start in the right direction, but I doubt it catches on with the trend lemmings.  The V-rod is too 'sporty' and 'powerful' to be a 'real' Harley, it violates a lot of tradition, the first and foremost of which is 'nostalgia', i.e. it isn't a stagnant design, but something fresh and new and when it comes to the typical HD owner, fresh and new ideas are never welcome.  The fact that the V-Rod is a Porsche designed engine, with French heads, slammed into an American built frame sets it up for some truly bizarre physics, the American frame is not used to the kind of power and torque that the import engine produces, which is a problem when you have an engine from one school of thought and a frame from another.  The V-Rod does not really impress me for two major reasons.  First, it is simply a copy of the concept of the Yamaha V-Max.  Second, in order to get this kind of performance, Milwaukee had to go to a foreign country for the technology base.  If the V-Rod had a genuine, designed and made in America engine, and if the V-Rod engine was a sign of things to come from Milwaukee, I would be giving them some respect.

But it isn't and it won't be.

The V-Rod is an interesting exercise that will probably last a few years and then fade into collector status.  It's an overpriced, overweight, underpowered toy, much like the rest of Harley's product line so in that capacity, I guess it toes the traditional Harley line pretty closely.

Harleys are all show, no go, and the V-Rod is all business in a lean, mean bruiser way which is kind of impressive, considering that Milwaukee is still two decades behind the rest of the world even with the introduction of this model.  It's a wonderfully fresh model that is thirty years too late in the evolution of the American motorcycle.  Now if Eric Buel does something exotic with it and gives it a decent suspensions and works on the appearance some, I might stand in line for this model.

A V-Rod is getting close to what I expect performance-wise from a modern Harley Davidson, or from an "American" motorcycle and it most closely lives up to Harley's claim at being 'bad', at least more so than anything else they hammer out from all of their parts bins.  This, of course, means that it is totally wrong for the average Harley owner (who remember, doesn't buy their bike for speed, but rather to enjoy it) and therefore probably won't exist as a viable model for long.  Get them while you can, if you want one, but you would be better off buying a crotch rocket if you want speed and pocketing the extra nine grand for something else.  A 'fast' Harley is something of a oxymoron.

The other thing I have against the V-Rod is that despite the fact that it is the fastest Harley available, it is still a fat heifer that will get its ass handed to it by much smaller, lighter, and less expensive import machines.  The V-Rod uses a fat motor to make somewhat appreciable power that far smaller import motors are making with twice the cylinders, twice the valves, half the cubic inches and half the effort.  The frame isn't light either, adding to the overall weight of the bike.  If this is supposed to impress knowledgeable people when compared to what the rest of the world is offering, it doesn't.  HD still doesn't understand how to make power or they would be making it using far smaller and lighter power plants.  This is the kind of power that the Sportster needs to be making.

HD understands how to make noise, they're quite good at that, but they simply do not understand how to make power.  I've been told that the design of their motor dates back to technology originally designed for farm equipment, though I haven't been able to verify that.  If the V-twin is a descendent (mostly unchanged) from some piece of turn of the century farm equipment, I may just give up all together on HD.

There is a big difference in being fast and powerful, and just being loud and annoying.  What do I think of the V-Rod?  It's impressive, for a Harley.   Now refine the hell out of it, put it on a deep diet, give it decent handling and cut the price in half.  Then I'll really be impressed.  Otherwise it's just a strange anomaly in the world of domestic iron.  I'm sure that a lot of doctors and lawyers will buy one.  That way, they'll be faster than the other Harley owners, but they'll still have to be respected because the V-Rod is an official Harley hot rod.  Kind of like the Buel riders.

Q:  What was the "Milwaukee Burger" joke and how did it get stared?

A:  The "Milwaukee Burger" joke was a parable on Harley Davidson, on how they could be compared to a fast food restaurant.  It started several years ago as a single post of mine on a motorcycle newsgroup and I've had it sent to me via email a few times so I know it's traveled.  I've reproduced it here for you from the original text file I drew it up in.  I updated it for this site.  You can find the "Milwaukee Burger" rant under the "Humor" section.

Q:  Are you pro-sport bike and anti-cruiser or what exactly are your views?

A:  I am pro-import.  I'm also an American, red blooded, born here, my family has been here for generations (I had family who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and they came from stock that was here long before the Civil War ever started).  I'm pro-American and anti-stupidity.  I'm not some exchange student from a wealthy family who is just here visiting.  I ride motorcycles, I'm proud of my country, but I'm ashamed of the motorcycles that my country produces.   My country is more interested in making cheap ass accessories for the so-called national motorcycle, than in actually making the motorcycle.  Again, it is image without substance, a false facade.  So, until my country makes a real motorcycle, with some guts to it,  I'll buy my real motorcycles from other countries.  I like sport bikes because I like technology and I like the safety of having plenty of power, braking and handling at my beck and call.  In a world full of soccermoms and cellphone users who are oblivious to everything else in traffic around them, you can't have too much power, handling or braking.   I like the compact, lightweight frames, the cutting edge engines, the aerodynamics and the inherent benefits of power, handling, and braking that comes with cutting edge technology.  Harley owners brag about the "Harley sound" but you can get that by taking a five pound sledge hammer and knocking the muffler off of a Ford Pinto.  The sound I enjoy is the whine of a close tolerance engine.  If I ride a motorcycle, it's going to sound like an industrial rip saw tearing through a sheet of steel, not something that sounds like "potato-potato-potato."  I guess that's a good sound for your motorcycle to make, if you're a redneck.

While a cruiser or a standard really aren't my type of bikes, and I don't understand the concept of a big touring bike like a Honda Gold Wing (which is like a car cut in two down the middle), I don't hold those riders to the same degree that I do Harley owners.   That is, when I pass one of these riders, I usually get a wave back, and if I pull up next to them at the gas station, conversation will invariably follow on a mature level with discussion of a variety of topics related to both types of bikes.  Import cruiser and non-sport bike riders shouldn't feel that somehow I'm directing my energy against them and their style of bikes.  I'm solely against the idiots who ride Harley Davidsons, and to some degree the Harley Davidson bike itself because that is who I have the most trouble with and who I have a bone to pick with.  I'm not against the style of bike, I'm against stupid people on all styles of bikes, regardless.

If you bought a more dependable, just as good looking, better performing, better built  import bike for thousands of dollars less, my hat is off to you.  That's just good common sense as well as financial sense.  If you own a Valkyrie, or a Intruder, or any other form of so called 'Jap copy of a Harley', this web site is not mocking you.  Form follows function, a cruiser will look like a cruiser, regardless of manufacturer.  A Russian MiG looks similar to an American F-16, there are noticeable physical differences, but both are delta shaped wedges with an engine in the back, wings to the side, a pointed nose forward, a pilot placed on top and forward, and both follow the same basic roles.  A bomber would be designed different than a fighter, it wouldn't handle like a fighter, it would be larger, slower, etc.  Form follows function, just as image must follow substance.

Harley thinks that Japan is copying them.   I laugh at this logic.  Japan has been ahead of Milwaukee for decades now, and the only original new design out of Milwaukee took the infusion of German blood to bring it forth, i.e. IMPORTED thinking and IMPORTED technical expertise.  As an American, that upsets me.  We can figure out how to go to the moon, but we can't reverse engineer double overhead cams and liquid cooling for small displacement engines.

Form follows function, Milwaukee.  A bike designed for the role of a cruiser is going to look pretty much the same, regardless of manufacturer or country of origin, that is because it is the best shape to accomplish its intended role.  sport bikes all look alike, basically, but from one to the other the differences can be huge, and often not apparently visible on the surface.  The same logic applies between an American cruiser and a Japanese or a German or a Italian cruiser.  Same basic form, same basic mission, but the proof is in the details, or as the saying goes, "Beauty is more than skin deep."

Harley, apparently, follows a similar tried and true saying, and that is "ugly goes all the way down to the bone."

Q:  Don't you think that your web site is hurting motorcyclists everywhere by generating negative feelings toward the group of riding enthusiasts as a whole?

A:  No.  Sorry, that is an illogical argument and one of the more desperate cries from the HD owners that I have heard.   I'm telling it like it is.  My sport bike insurance is sky high not because I ride like an idiot, but because OTHER people ride like idiots, and get hurt, and the insurance companies have to pay for the injuries, so they pass that cost on to the consumer.  It is idiots on all types of bikes that hurt us all.  The posers, the SQUIDS, the clowns, the RUBs, the UMPs, it is up to the motorcycle community to police its own and take out the trash, but I don't see a lot of that happening.  Instead, we have a bunch of new-age middle of the fence walking snit twats who are more worried about hurting someone's feelings rather than correcting and stamping out idiocy when they see it.  It is better to let someone ride like an idiot than it is to call them on the carpet and make them feel bad for doing something stupid.  That is our society today but it is not how I live my life.   I have no problem in doing that.  If I had as much material on SQUIDS and sport bike riders as I do on idiot HD owners, I would probably have an 'angst' site directed toward them.

Making fun of artificial riders with catalog bought egos I don't think does anything other than point out the very real need for Harley Davidson to tone down their outlandish claims, to stop shoveling patriotism down people's throats, and to spend less time on merchandising and more time on development.  If someone thinks that somehow some politician is going to read the contents of this site and start to pass laws against bikers, I find that logic ludicrous.  This site is meant to entertain and point out a simple truth; there are two kinds of Harley Davidson riders, traditional and store bought.  I'm against the poser riders and as the Motor Company now caters exclusively to them, I'm also against the Motor Company.

Q:  You comment on the noise level of a Harley, saying that "there is a difference between being considered  'fast and powerful' and just 'loud and annoying'."  Do you not believe that loud pipes truly save lives?

A:  Loud pipes don't save lives.   Loud pipes annoy the ever living dog snot out of other people in traffic.  It's like giving a monkey a compressed air horn and letting him run loose in the college library during finals week.  Loud pipes don't save lives, rider education saves lives.  Rider experience saves lives.  Paying attention saves lives.  Face it, all riders are on inherently small vehicles, with small profiles and little or no protection at best.  The average American chimpanzee behind the wheel of the average speeding mini-van isn't paying a whole hell of a lot of attention to anything other than all the little PC soccer players in the back seat.  Just ask Stephen King about that.   The ability to out-think and out-ride danger is the first advantage of a motorcycle, and I personally think you lose some of that when you are sitting in a comfortable, relaxing position oblivious to the real world around you.  Loud pipes don't save lives, IMHO, too many people today have vehicular stereos which will drown out a good set of pipes until the pipes are right up on them and by then it is far too late.   As a police officer, one of the first things you are taught in pursuit driving is that, at speed, your lights and sirens are useless beyond a few hundred feet.  Don't depend on them to clear your way, instead, use caution and common sense, and good driving techniques.  While the flashing blue lights are pretty and the sirens can be deafening if you are standing right next to the car, five or six hundred feet away, they can be pretty much useless, especially to another driver closed up in a car with the air conditioning going wide open, the stereo turned up loud, and a bunch of screaming children or an important cell phone conversation.  You learn not to let your lights and sirens offer a false sense of protection, you don't blaze down roads at double the speed limit with lights and sirens going and when a citizen pulls out in front of you and you TA (traffic accident), you don't go "Hey!  Didn't you see my lights and hear my siren?!"  Chances are, no they didn't, because they weren't paying attention at all to anything other than their own little world.  I've seen it too many times, both on duty and off, from behind the wheel of a Police Interceptor and from behind the wheel of my own personal vehicle.  I've seen my fellow officers have to slam on brakes and dodge idiots who just stared at them approaching the intersection at speed with lights and siren going and then just pulled out in front of them and stopped like "Duh! Huh!?   Oh, it's a cop!  I better stop right here so he can go on!"  That would be nice, moron, but you pulled out into the intersection and now you're blocking ALL traffic, emergency and non-emergency.

Loud pipes offer a false sense of security, IMHO.  Riders who rely more on loud pipes and less on personal riding skill or forward and circumferential preventive thinking are heading for the hurt locker.  I choose to ride quite and powerful motorcycles, I try to put forth the smallest acoustic footprint that I can, especially when riding at night through neighborhoods.  With over 100 horsepower on tap at the twist of a throttle, I don't have to be loud to be powerful.  I rather glide through the night and through the daytime with a soft whine of double overhead cams and sixteen valves rather than the "potato-potato" sound of a constipated farm tractor motor trying to jack itself off to death.

Q:  How do you feel about helmet laws?

A:  I have mixed feelings about helmet laws.  I once marketed and sold a T-shirt with the slogan "Only ugly people should have to wear helmets."  My true feelings are you shouldn't be forced to wear a helmet.  This country has way too many protection laws right now for the simple reason that people are sheep.  No one has an original thought anymore or thinks for their own self.  We, as the general population goes, depend on others to pass laws to protect us.  The helmet laws are just examples of the government trying to protect Joe Average citizen by preventing the law of natural selection, that is, the dumb and the weak will die and the strong and the smart will survive.  Should you be required by law to wear a helmet?

No.

However, if you do decide NOT to wear a helmet, you should be forced to sign a organ donor card, and you should be informed that in the event of any injury in which your skull or brain is hurt, that insurance will not be used to cover those injuries, and also that the taxpayer isn't going to be forced to keep your vegetable ass alive on life support because you thought  a American flag bandanna and a pair of Oakleystm was a direct substitute for a SNELL / DOT approved helmet.  I have no pity for idiots who get thrown off of their motorcycles and disfigure themselves or wind up paralyzed, etc. because they were too cool to wear a helmet that would mess up their hair or prevent them from looking good while riding their bikes.

You are basically a human being, unrestrained, on a vehicle that is capable of truly scary speeds.  Physics work against you, as do other factors such as the simple law of gravity and G-forces.  If your bike comes to a sudden stop from 50mph to 0mph, don't think you are going to grab the handlebars and just hold on.  You are going to go flying through the air like the human projectile that you are, and things in front of you are not going to move out of the way just to be courteous.  These things often include light poles, pine trees, the windshield of the car you just went head on into, and other unpleasant things.   Common sense says that you should be prepared for this.  However, if you choose to look good and not wear safety equipment, that should be your choice, bottom line.  However, paying for your retarded ass with MY insurance rates going up because of YOUR stupidity should never eve come to question.

I think this country has too many protection rights and laws that prevent idiots from voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool.   Don't want to wear a helmet?  NO problem.  But don't make those of us who have a brain and more than a lick of common sense to pay for and suffer for YOUR stupid mistake.  Do I wear a helmet?  God, yes!  A full face version that is both SNELL and DOT approved.

My brain is one of my most prized possessions.  I'm not going to trust it's sole protection to an American flag doo-rag and a pair of Oakleys...

Q:  If you could describe Harley Davidson in just two words, what would those two words be?

A:  "American rice."   That's not a slam on so called 'rice burners' or import cars and bikes, for which I have the highest respect.   There is a big difference between an import and a "rice burner" or a "ricer."  I call cars from Japan "Imports," not "rice burners" which is a derogatory insult thought up by the ignorant hillbillies.  Calling HD "American Rice" is a slam on HD by comparing them to the current mindset of import owners who think 'let's put Kanji and neon and a six inch exhaust tip on our stock Honda Civics, drop some "NOSS" down the intake and then claim that we can beat a Chevy Corvette.' crowd.  Harley has become an American version of the types of cars you saw in "The Fast and the Furious," only Harley is more like "The Slow and the Seriously Ludicrous."

Harley has become "American Rice," all show, no go, with lots and lots of add on ginger bread.  I'm surprised HD owners aren't dying their hair chrome to match their bikes.  All of this useless crap is laughable to anyone outside the flock but thought of as priceless performance accessories to those who graze in the mundane pasture blooming with abundant image without real substance.

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