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August 07, 2003
The autonomous lives of bugs...
I had to take our Beetle in for service today. I don’t think anything is serioulsy wrong with it, but, yesterday, Julianna noticed that the Air Bag Warning Light wasn’t turning off.
The Volkswagen dealership is an amazing place (actually, it’s a BMW/Mini/VW dealership). When you take your car in for service, they will give you the exact kind of car as a loaner so that you don’t have to sit around and wait for them to work on your own car (in fact, the car we own is a former “loaner” from this same dealership). Wait, did I say that they give you the same exact car as a loaner? Well, not exactly: the gray Beetle above is our car (subtle, stylish — very cool!); the bright green car you see there to the lower-right is the loaner (I know there are plenty of people who think this is a cool color, but I’m not one of ‘em).
Anyway, the point of this post isn’t the color of my loaner Beetle, or even taking our car in for service — if there is a point to it at all. While I was driving back home, though, I thought of all of the other cars driving around and how we drivers (with our automobiles as our shells), are basically the same as a million tiny ants scurrying around in an ant farm or a swarm of Lady Bugs crawling on a tomato plant. As looked on from above, cars are speedily swerving this way and that, along asphault pathways, seemingly at random. They stop here and there to evacuate waste (as the drivers and passengers leave their cars, sometimes even removing items from the trunk), and then later they consume food (as the drivers and passengers return to their seats) and resume their journey through the laberynth.
Now, I know that plently of other people have analogized our automated world this way before, but as I was driving my bright green Beetle home, it stuck me as rather humorous that not only was I in a car, but in a Beetle. And Beetles, generally much more than other vehicle models, are so variously colored and curiously shaped. If filmed on time-lapse film, I’m sure that a whole city, filled entirely with Beetles, would look a lot like little Mikey’s fourth grade science project.
So, keep driving. Do your part to maintain our automotive microcosm. If any inquisitive eyes are peering down on us from outer space, they’re most likely baffled by our world’s multitude of structures and systems. Maybe we’re all just a fourth grade science project for little Quorgdxxerk on his home planet.
Posted at 11:35 am
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