Midnight Maunderings of an Incorrigible Smart Ass on the Road to Babble-On (and On)
Stopping at the Woodlawn exit on a snowy evening, having more miles to go than I had in the gas tank, I pulled into a Pilot Mart. I’d waited almost too long to stop; when I broke the seal on the gas tank it opened with a sucking whoosh, the kind of reverse fart only achieved by a perilously empty gas tank. I filled the tank until it wouldn’t hold any more, half expecting a burp or some other rude noise indicative of satiety, then went inside to pay and get a drink. I noticed the right rear tire looking a tad flaccid and so went back inside to get change for the air machine, came back out, pulled to the side where the air was hidden in the most threatening, dimly lit corner of the parking lot, uncapped the valve stem and, after checking the air pressure, fed my quarters into the bent, rusty slot and sent the hissing stream of air to do its work.
The oil looked okay, so I headed back to I-75. The radio was disconnected; a CD installation halted untimely by the bad weather and necessities of driving across the mountain to locate last minute pre-trial information in a remote courthouse before the promised snowstorm made that trip improbable. The steady whrrrm of the tires on the slushy freeway and the starry snowflakes the size of cat eyes whirling into the windshield induced a semi-catatonic state of driving consciousness: I am the car . . . the car is the road . . . the road is the snow . . . the snow is the universe . . . the universe is me . . . all is Now . . .
I always love driving in that world. The road is mostly clear of other traffic and my mind is mostly clear of extraneous stimuli. It’s very conducive to epiphany.
My first epiphany of the night was the realization that I now live in a world where I just paid for air and water. A dollar forty-nine cents plus tax (eight point seven-five percent) for a bottle of water and fifty cents for a minute and a half of air. Water and air. We can all stop worrying about getting in on the mythical free lunch; we’re paying for air and water.
I read an editorial column earlier that day, during lunch. It was a striking contrast to the edgier stuff on the page, made more so since the columnist usually tackled headier subjects. Today, he wrote about Life on Mars. The burning Question of the Modern Age. Is there, was there, Life On Mars? Judging from the surrounding articles and op ed pieces speculating and pontificating once again (they do it every time we carry our guns and planes to a foreign nation) as to whether this latest police action - take your pick, there are several ongoing conflicts at any given time - is America’s New Viet Nam, or if we’re all going to Hell if we don’t Vote Republican, and if the Fires of Hell are fueled by OPEC oil or Alaska Pipeline oil desecrating the tundra, maybe the Real Question of the Modern Age isn’t about finding life on Mars, or anywhere in outer space, but instead, Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?
Then there’s the state legislature. In a desperate and delusional fishing expedition for funds, a group of elected morons propose a “confidential” tax on illegal drugs. If the dealer voluntarily pays the tax, the source will be “confidential.” Right. Problem is, most of the really stupid drug dealers are already dead or in prison. Seriously, somebody - a majority of somebodies, actually - votes for these intellectual paragons. And they will be reelected, term after interminable term.
Do you realize, even if we used the same spoken and written language, we’d still be utterly unable to communicate?
Have you ever noticed how the depth of media coverage on any national tragedy or holocaust is directly related to the amount of pigment in the victims’ skin? We heard more details and tsk-tsking about the Right Reverend Jim Jones’ little high tea than we ever did about the genocidal orgy of the Hutus and Tsutses. Why do you think that is?
Will we ever achieve faster than light space travel? Can we overcome our dependence on fossil fuels? Might the ultimate answer to the Greenhouse Effect, Air Pollution, Foreign Oil and God and the Meaning of Life be found if we can discover the legendary Improbability Drive? We’d have an inexhaustible supply of fuel.
