You cannot make this stuff up.

[Adam]

Back in about 2005, I took a tour group to Hawaii for a week. On Maui, I needed to have a car to get around and do stuff, so I rented a tin can at the airport and got it upgraded to a convertible (hey, if I'm gonna be herding 122 drunken general contractors around, I'm going to at least enjoy the ride). Amusingly, in all of the boilerplate paperwork, I had to agree to the "geographic restrictions" clause, which is pretty standard with any rental car contract. Typically in Europe, you can't take your rental car into an area known for a lot of car theft (Romania in particular) or to places where the fuel is of significantly bad quality (less an issue nowadays, but when the Iron Curtain first came down, there were lots of issues with the fuel quality in the East). In the U.S. there are generalized restrictions about taking a car into Canada (can't leave it there because of GST issues, for example), driving on non-approved roads, and a lot of times there are specific restrictions about driving in New York. Virtually all rental car contracts specify that the car may not be driven into Mexico, and a lot of places have separate, specific notices that someone has to sign to that effect, as was the case with Alamo at the Kahului airport on Maui. Obviously they're just going through their check-list that the lawyers in corporate are telling them to do, but the fact that I was standing in the middle of a Hawaiian island and had to sign a specific piece of paper promising not to take their Chrysler to Mexico just left me giggling.



And then there's this:

[Gingersnap]

Not as bad as Sheila Jackson Lee's idea that our Constitution is 400 years old. In her case, I think she sincerely believes this assertion. She's one of the most poorly educated college grads in the country and that's saying something.