Narcissus Goes to Yard Sales

Seemingly on a daily basis I come in contact with a certain kind of person that believes they are the only person on Earth, so therefore they can do whatever they want. Their actions have no effect on other people because they are alone on the planet.

I was at some yard sales this weekend and had another encounter with such a person. I don’t know this man’s name so I will refer to him as “Asshole” for the remainder of my tirade. My story begins now:

It was an ethereal morning. Sunlight beamed down like a stairway to Heaven, birds sang madrigals of love and prosperity. Lawns were verdant. Men stood hale and hearty alongside their women whose skin carried the ruby blush of health and vitality.

Having finished my perusing at one yard sale I was walking to another just up the street when the ground shook and the sky was choked with black smoke. I turned just as a goliath pick-up truck passed by. Each wheel taller than a man, made of rubber the color of night, the tread baring teeth covered in the flesh of its victims.

This truck was so large it blotted out the sun as it rumbled by. People in the neighborhood cried out believing the world was ending, the Apocalypse upon us. I glanced into the cab and saw a family of 6 living in the back seat. Grandmother was cooking breakfast for the children while mother did laundry and father mulched a grove of Larch trees planted in the truck bed.

The next yard sale was set up in the home’s driveway. It turned out that the Asshole driving the 2017 Ford Overcompensation was going to the same sale. His tiny penis pulled his behemoth over to the side of the road and instead of parking next to the house’s yard, Asshole parks directly in front of the driveway, thus cutting off access to the yard sale from anyone else. To get there myself I had to put on heavy boots, carve a walking staff and hike around Asshole’s truck. Thankfully I made it ok, but my Sherpa wasn’t so lucky.

I can’t stand this type of narcissism. There were dozens of people walking the neighborhood from sale to sale, enjoying a nice summer day, but only one magnificent Asshole driving his manhood and parking it front and center for all to see. He might as well have walked pants-less into the middle of the road and yelled “Hey everybody, look at my dick. Ain’t it purty?”

So be careful. These zombies of self-involvement are everywhere and as far as they’re concerned, everyone wants to see their junk.

Commercials are Making Us Dumber

There is a series of commercials I’ve seen a few times that are in my opinion trying to turn the movie Idiocracy into a documentary. They take a picture of a man and put him in front of a car and then in front of a truck. Then they ask supposed “real” people questions like which guy is sexier, what kind of pet you think the car guy and truck guy would have, how would the car and truck guy shake hands, etc.

I don’t know if the “real” people are actually dumb or have been scripted and edited to look stupid, but it’s THE SAME GUY. The pictured dude in front of the car and the truck is the same guy.

“Oh, the guy with the truck would have a three headed dog that belches fire and answers to the name Kraxenhammer. The car guy would have a grub worm or possibly a Chihuahua-pygmy Spaniel mix.”

IT’S THE SAME GUY!

“My, oh my, the truck man is hot, hot, hot. My pelvis is thrusting toward the picture so hard I think my hip just popped out of the socket. But the car man, he looks like a jobless drifter who would take my grandmother on a cruise, leave her on an island, then come home and move into her rent controlled townhouse.”

IT’S THE SAME GUY!

Is this really the best concept they could come up with for a commercial: Complete stupidity wrapped up in a moronic tortilla shell and covered in a sauce that kills your brain cells? I don’t even know what kind of truck they’re advertising. The asininity of the commercial makes me yell at the TV like I’m trying to answer a Wheel of Fortune puzzle before the contestant. Besides, if they aren’t advertising a book, music or pizza I’m not buying it anyway.

Another Truck Story

On the way to work on Friday I’m stopped at a traffic light behind a Ford pickup. The truck had been modified to rise high off the ground like the Tower of Babel. It could have just been the footpad commercial on the radio, but I thought I heard God smiting the driver for his hubris. The tires were so large that a family of Dominican immigrants was living in the wheel wells selling fruit to the drivers in the next lane. The side mirrors hung out so wide they clipped pedestrians in the back of the head as he drove down the road.

Everything was fine though, until the light turned green and the truck accelerated. At this point his two exhaust pipes, one on each side, belched out a cloud of smoke so black and so thick I saw demons in the center of it beckoning me with their blood-red claws. At that moment everything I had believed in was a lie and the music of Dan Fogelberg danced in my head like a malevolent, terpsichorean nymph. I wanted to race forward to clear my head of these awful illusions but I had to hesitate before accelerating because I literally could not see the road.

Following Old Pitch down the street was like being behind grandpa going through the buffet line. Every 20 or 30 yards the truck farted out a burst of black exhaust forcing me to drive through a toxic cloud of carbon monoxide mixed with gas particles where the laws of physics didn’t apply and the song of a gentle thrush was evil incarnate. For over a mile my poor, innocent vehicle was excreted on. I could hear it mewing softly as if asking what she had done wrong to be trapped behind this gassy behemoth. Flecks of paint peeled off striking the windshield in anger. The engine roared and the back end shimmied as my car demanded retribution. Finally, I turned right and the truck kept going straight. As we passed him, she spit a stream of wiper fluid at the truck and let loose with a string of anti-truck slurs.

I would like to speak to the driver for a moment. I don’t know your name but from the look of your truck I’m guessing Clem or Earl. I’ll go with Earl.

Earl, as a favor to mankind and Mother Earth, will you please stop spending your money on tires that belong on industrial rock quarry machinery and mirrors that can see back in time, and fix your exhaust problem instead. Your fellow travelers on the nation’s by-ways do not deserve to be regurgitated upon by your motorized dragon whose pilot light has gone out. Fix it, Earl. Do the right thing.

An Open Letter to the Truck in Front of Me Driving 10 Miles below the Speed Limit

Dear F-150 Truck Driver,

I don’t know what state you learned to drive in but here in Pennsylvania we have things called speed limit signs. These signs are conveniently located at the side of the road every few hundred yards and their purpose is to let you know the maximum speed but also the MINIMUM speed you should travel at to keep someone behind you in a Chevy Cavalier from trying to ram their grill through your tailpipe and questioning your parentage and whether monkeys were involved.

I can understand perhaps going a few mph slower than the posted limit, but 25 in a 35 zone? Really? Dude, I can skip faster than that and I’m not a skipper. It was 3 a.m., roads were empty, no ice or snow on the ground. So what was the problem?

I looked up the specs for your truck and it does come with a gas pedal as standard equipment. Maybe you modified your truck by removing the gas pedal and putting in a second brake. Did you somehow not know what that large “35” meant? Did you think it was an animal crossing so you drove real slowly so if one ran out in front of you, you could snap a picture of the elusive “35”?

When we came to the side-by-side straight lanes on Queen Street and I passed you, did you notice how I accelerated to 35? Ok, I accelerated to 45, but the point is I went AT LEAST 35. Hellfire and damnation did not rain down upon me, I didn’t burst into flames, and I wasn’t transformed into a poly-headed beast named Dan with sulfur-based body odor that is doomed to roam the Earth preaching the ills of driving at the posted speed limit.

It’s ok sir. Your truck has the equipment and I’m sure you have the right leg/ankle/foot combination necessary to depress the pedal. Take a deep breath and Go Speedracer! Go!