Speed-Racers versus the speed-Nazis (and other interesting observed phenomena, as the pandemic continues)

It’s now been well over a month and a half since the general alarm went out about observing SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 precautions, with ‘official’ public health promulgations varying from the sublime to the starkly ridiculous. Is it little wonder, therefore, that the average public person witnessing all the public health kerfuffle unfold in front of his eyes is more than a bit confused as to exactly what to believe? Or that all the attendant folderol more resembles a Chinese fire-drill (look that one up in the slanguage dictionary, kiddies) than a coherent, organised and structured public health policy?

As a resident of the little hincty cow-town called Suckatomato (also coincidentally the capitol of one of the most economically powerful states in the Federal Union), we have witnessed a mayor, who is a progressively Democratic, camp-following, sycophantic professional (and politically ‘experienced’) bootlicker of the first water, vacillate back and forth on what to do, with a backbone only slightly more substantive than that of a Marine Staurozoa. We have also witnessed a former mayor, (who now just happens to be the state’s governor) of the campy ‘lil Homeless Republic of San Francisco bring his Teflon smooth (and gravelly-voiced) wimpy leadership style to bear on the public COVID-19 policies with as much staunch determination and resolve as a piece of wilted Romaine lettuce (make that week-old wilted Romaine lettuce). And that’s just here, in Californica.

Things are far worse on a national basis at the highest levels (e.g. his excellency, ‘The Donald’), although the various other governors throughout the states are also getting a great chance to spread their unstudied words of questionable wisdom over the media airways with equal mediocrity (hello Gov. Cuomo of NY! Hello BS!).

It’s quite apparent that on Trump’s watch things have progressively gone from uncertain to worse, as any alert, astute international (foreign) observer of American culture would have to surmise. Espousing a personal health outlook that verges on voodoo magic and encourages taking totally unproven quack cures to forestall the pandemic virus (e.g. the anti-Malarial drug, Chloroquinine Dyphosphate in combination with Hydrochloroquine), despite the fact that ALL the health authorities reaffirm a total lack of supporting evidence of its efficaciousness in that specific application, any qualified medical person witnessing this is probably having major reservations about the mental state of our Chief Executive, right about now. Especially given his ‘do as I say, don’t do as I do’ habit of eschewing the use of protective face-masks and not practicing his own ‘social distancing’ formula!

As I’ve said many times, to the everlasting enmity of many of my right-of-center, ex-military buddies, Trump may be a moderately successful biz-bullshitter (oh yes, and economic powerhouse) but he’s quite apparently about as competent to head and lead a complex international nation like the US of A as Sponge Bob! I shudder to face my European friends and colleagues who marvel at the evident ineptness demonstrated by ‘The Chump’ (as a certain good left-wing friend labels him), since they expect me not only interpret his bewildering actions for them but to explain the sagacity (or not) and reasoning behind them, as well! Good luck with that, I say!

So here we are, only several weeks into what promises to be the most catastrophically portentous disaster to hit America’s soft underbelly since the 9/11 terrorist attack, with absolute idiots at the ship-of-state’s helm, who have been playing the political game so long now that whatever firm (and resolute) backbone they ever had is now about as stiff as a bowl of Jell-O.

Probably worse yet, since everyone has been ‘encouraged’ to stay home, not work and practice ‘social distancing’, our entire nation has more or less been reduced to that of a massively passive commercial media audience, with more endless hours of TV watching per capita being engaged in than ever before in the history of television broadcasting.

Great, you say! Now we can do all that TV ‘binge-watching’ that the networks are encouraging everyone so strongly to edngage in [‘If yah stay at home, yah might as well turn on the Chube and leave it on all day’ (so say the networks, at any rate)], since what else is there realistically speaking to do? After all, you can only walk the dog so many times, chuckle at the non-stop COVID-19 jokey email FWDs and practice your applied coital expertise so many times a day before that all wears tenuously thin.

Not so fast, say I, in opposition to this devastatingly awful advice! Effectively speaking, given that the ‘average’ family is now being totally mesmerised by whatever happens to be flickering in HD resolution on their 60-inch, wide-screen 4G HD digital television, there is another ill-apparent effect that few have considered, let alone identified and/or become alarmed about. I refer to a highly concentrated form of ‘universal dumbing-down’ social conditioning that is gathering momentum all across our nation.

It’s bad enough that most Americans are no longer socialized by whatever sparse personal interactions they may have (or had) with other ‘real, live’ human beings (thanks to puerile ‘social media’ connections), but now 100% of the impressions Americans are receiving from TV’s complexly structured ‘pseudo-reality’ fantasies about erstwhile ‘real life’ are being driven home and reinforced with the relentless efficiency that some of the most complex commercial advertising and marketing corporations on the planet can only bring to bear and grin ferociously over.

Consider, first of all, that the intellectual quality of American commercial television has become progressively lower and lower over the past 50 years. That’s a well-documented given. But now that practically all one can do while ‘self-quarantining’ is watch television, the parade of endless television commercials is starting to take a horrific (if psychologically subtle) toll on the average person’s perception of what is actually ‘daily life’. ‘Real life’ has now become ‘reel life’ as the vapid TV commercials (such as the absolutely ludicrous ‘Progressive Insurance’ and ‘Charmin Toilet Tissue’ advertisements, for example) saturate an already brain-softened viewing audience still further that ever before. Little colored animated bears (that, as we all know, shit in the woods) going on about the ‘wonderful softness’ of toilet tissue that (we assume) won’t abrade their sensitive little anal sphincters. Or deliberately and highly contrived, annoying actors prancing around on skates while harping on the joys of buying a certain type of insurance? You really have to pause and ask yourself: Do ‘real people’ live out this sort of fantastically choreographed representation of American life? Do they? According to advertising studios they do.

OK, my point here is clear enough I think, without any further beating of a dead horse. It may seem just so much harmless, chuckle-chuckle amusement, but underneath, in the deeply channeled groves of the average public person’s teeny, tiny brain these endless little scenarios, sublimated or not, are taking a toll on the already thread-bare mentality of TV viewers.

The actual and not-widely-perceived consequence is that the mass of our population are undergoing a relentless, ongoing steamroller process whose ultimate effect is to ‘dumb-down’ the already dumbed-down collective mentality of an America (that one would think was already about as low as it could ever get) even further! But no! Recall, if you will, those immortal words of 50s folksinger Malvina Reynolds in her famous song about South San Francisco’s thousands of identical little residential ‘boxes’ (in Daly City’ suburban tracts), titled ‘Little Boxes’ (“…made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same”). Pete Seeger also performed the song and it gained widespread and well-deserved notoriety in the 50s and 60s. Her famous ‘bottom line’ lyrical observation was that “…no matter how LOW you go, there’s always another low BELOW!” How true!

Now that we live in a social culture that conducts most of its interactions remotely, via electronic means such as smartphones, PCs and what-have-you, almost our entire concept of reality comes to us as carefully pre-packaged media representations whose sole intent is to coax more dollars out of our pockets, for whatever purpose. That is, after all, the rock-hard bottom line in our soulless capitalistic materialist nation, isn’t it? Profit uber alles! Advertisements are merely a highly refined and psychologically attuned tool to achieve coerce us into living a fantasy reality in which we spend our money with as much glib enthusiasm as a trained circus seal honks his bulb horn.

Consider if you will, the fact that so many modern contemporary television advertisements consist of short video segments startg and end with beaming ‘consumers’ enthusiastically staring into their smartphones as they grin like Cheshire Cats. The message is clear enough to take shape in even the most dulled-down, three-brain-cell awareness: that all truly good and meaningful things come to us via magical smartphone apps. Is it any wonder that fully half the people out there on the streets are staring absently into these devices as they stumble down the path (or out into the street without looking for traffic)? Aside from the even more primal ‘BUY THIS’ massage, this is the social reality that bis being driven relentlessly home. Is it therefore any wonder that the average national IQ is probably now on a par with that of a one-celled amoeba? Even the COVID-19 virus is smarter than that!

At home, via TV screens, given the fact that pseudo reality is far easier to be conveyed in some elaborate complexity to vacant minds via a 2D video vignette lasting a minute or so, the process is even more relentless. MY absolute favorite example of this is the lie handed out to national news program viewers each evening that “There’s MUCH more news still ahead” (i.e. don’t go away during the following commercial advertisement, because you may miss something!). All of the network news programs pimp us with that colossal bullshit hook, although NBC’s Lester Holt really does it best. The joke (and it’s a huge one) is that there’s really very little REAL news ahead, since it’s all rather trivial stuff, actually, and you would miss absolutely nothing, were you to go take a one-minute break to whiz in the bathroom.

And then there’s the nightly major network program close with some ‘good news’ story to add human interest (i.e. a puppy rescued from a drain pipe by ‘heroic’ firemen, et al. Bleaaaaagh!) to the day’s barrage of stupid people tricks and general dumb-shittery.

Believe me when I repeat that America’s pop culture media environment is becoming one of the most perniciously insidious threats to our ability to think intelligently and reflect cogently on anything requiring more intellectual acuity than trying to decide whether to take a whiz or wait until the next TV commercial break!

Another absolutely abhorrent characteristic of our rigidly enforced commercial TV culture conditioning is the enthusiastic co-option of a range of popular slang clichés and/or words/phrases into common argot. Several of these presently contending for the top prize on a list of many such examples are the following: ‘Flatten the curve’. Another is ‘America strong’ (substitute subject of choice) and still another execrably over-used cliché is ‘hero’. The last example has become so tritely overused that we now have a parent picking-up a fallen ice-cream cone for a youngster characterised as a ‘hero’ for doing so.

The pantheon of stock American ‘heroes’ is now so replete that the word itself has lost all real meaning whatsoever. All soldiers are now automatically referred to as heroes, as are ‘firefighters’, ‘nurses’, ‘doctors’, ‘teachers’, and probably even a few 8th-grade-educated dog-catchers and garbage truck workers as well, just to leaven out the mix. You really can’t watch any current news program, whether local or national, without the poor old, worn-out ‘hero’ term being tossed around like beads at a Mardi-Gras Parade. Consequently (do I really have to spell it out here?), the word HERO means absolutely nothing now; it’s merely another bullshit term used for whatever self-serving purpose the speaker choses to give it. [‘Awesome’ is another word that has now entirely lost its former integrity and it’s sad beyond belief, when referring to truly heroic actions of a WW2 veteran with the word ‘Hero’, that ‘Hero’ is now as meaningless as the former word.] This decline in the quality of our spoken and written language is a direct result of the substitution of contemporary ‘pop-culture’ vapidity for true cultural erudition.

It’s like the display of US flags being flown on local flag poles these days. Back in the day, an American flag was only lowered to half-staff when a prominent national leader (such as the President) died and a state of official mourning was proclaimed. Nowadays, the flags are lowered for every Tom, Dick & Harry you can think of who has stubbed his toe, with the rather amusing effect that most flags are now displayed automatically at half-staff, each day, from dawn to dusk. Really! [I’m not sure about other states, but Californica is REALLY notorious for this sentimentally maudlin sort of bastardised dipshittery.]

What I’m saying here is that things are already bad enough in America, a nation which celebrates the lowest common denominator dynamic is just about every aspect of its culture. But now that we’re all even more at the mercy of the bogus, commercially fantasised socialization process that corporate American saturates us with daily (via concentrated TV-watching, during COVID-19 quarantining), things are taking a decided turn for the worst.

Many years ago, Californica took the lead in this dumbing-down process by electing Hollywood celebrities to the highest state and national offices (QED: Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwartzeneger, etc., et al). The message was loud and clear enough to anyone giving any thought to the underlying dynamic behind all this: that representative democracy in America had been effectively reduced to the point where mere ‘name recognition’ had become the magic standard by which public office was invariably won. And natch, since so many common people watch movies, it’s a cinch that they’d vote for a matinee idol who had a screen rep for being a ferocious fighter. I’m sure that had John Wayne, the ubiquitous American paragon of Hollywood heroism who never served as a soldier in his life (despite his universal acclaim as a truly ‘American hero’) would have been elected President of the country, had he wished to run for that office. As it was, we had to settle for Ronnie-baby and ‘Mr. Aisle B. Baque, baby!’ John Wayne was at least smart enough to keep his stage prop six-shooters well-oiled for cowboy films.

God help us, but pop-culture has taken so much basic awareness away from people that if Kim Kardashian or Kanye West ran for Prez, they’d likely make it on name recognition alone! You have to lament a nation that has sunk to this truly abysmal level of social function, in my opinion. And that’s not even considering then fact that the cost of running for any office has become so excessive now that you have to be a billionaire to begin with, regardless of any name notoriety one may already have!

Doesn’t it seem just the tiniest, teensiest bit perverse that in a nation that was founded upon, and has traditionally prided itself on, its spirit of ‘participatory townhall democracy’ has been reduced to electing celebrity billionaires to head up our collected ‘United’ States? I think so.

There is much discussion these days about ‘the joys of’ diversity and the politically correct celebration of the myriad cultural heritages that infuse America in 2020. In our well-intended daily efforts to restore pride and dignity to the historically disenfranchised minorities among us, we have practically wetted ourselves with eagerness, collectively speaking, in our haste to make all cultures…any culture…feel equally legitimized. As a result, the very worst aspects of many of the so-called ‘minority’ cultures (i.e. gang violence, substance abuse, the drug culture, crime & gratuitous violence, just to name some prominent ones) have been not only absorbed to the point of adulated worship by too many soft-brained individuals, but become almost a commonised facet of what I term ‘pop-culture miasma’.

In this wholesale rush to emulate, glorify, mythologise, embrace and extract exploitative profit from heretofore nuances of ‘minority culture’, it has become almost censurable to either be a white person or to be someone whose ethnic origins are of White European ancestry. It is this feeling of being intangibly, amorphously threatened that so many extreme right-wingers react these days with either threatened violence or actual acts of individual craziness involving mass shootings, etc. Clearly (and tragically), too many people of limited intellectual capability seem to totally lack the ability to NOT become adversely reactive under such circumstances, and that is a major misfortune. The fact that anyone who stands up proudly for their white Northern European heritage is soundly set-upon by overzealous left-wing progressives is equally bad, of course, but these days it is common practice to trash-mouth whites for simply being white. Where’s the rational justification for that? It’s as bad as disparaging blacks for simply being black!

In my own case, as a lilly-white honkey dude of mixed German/French/Irish ancestry, I find it increasingly more difficult to connect with others like myself in our dumbed-down, pop-culture that is populist America. I am quite fond of, for example, classical music, a traditional musical form of expression that stems largely from Germany. I’m also quite fond of Ireland’s musical and literary heritage, but who on earth shares those endangered interests, these days? Who among our youth today recognise and value the brilliant Northern European classical musical heritage handed down to our civilization by the masters? Precious few, if any (aside from a small group of aspiring Asian-American kids who have been told to study violin and piano OR ELSE!).

As a part-German, I inherited a strong code of familial social etiquette that includes respect for polite proprieties, both individual and communal. I could no more walk though a public park and strew discarded trash absently about, or leave my dog’s shit lying on the lawn (where sure enough some kid playing on the grass will step in it!) than I could rob an elderly lady of her purse. Although I had a number of very bad experiences being bullied by poor little black schoolmates as a youth, I regard all blacks I encounter with unhesitating equanimity and dignity…not condescendingly, but as legitimate social peers (unless demonstrated otherwise, since an asshole is an asshole, regardless of color, ethnicity, heritage or background). And yet, I see daily blanket deferment by far too many intelligent people (who should have a better, more adequately shaped sense of social rectitude) to far too many ignorant ‘people of color’ who seem to think that having a darker skin than mine somehow makes THEM superior to others in our PC-riddled society.

This showcases a common misconception by so many ‘uncomplicated’ people: having a loan company willing to let you lease a fancy Porsche, BMW or Mercedes or purchase a gold Rolex watch doesn’t instantly confer social class equity on you. Someone who is a graduate of Harvard Law (even if unemployed at the moment) will always be a ‘higher quality’ person than a ghetto pimp who shows up at side-shows regularly with his new fire-breathing four-wheeled charger. A person with a well-honed sense of social responsibility and civic duty will always out-weigh some ignorant ex-gangbanger who is still inactively associated with his cohorts in crime. The point here is that true ‘equality’ in terms of social standing equity is not automatically conferred by mere possession of material luxuries. Social worthiness (or peer regard) is painstakingly acquired, earned or paid for, one way or another. And ultimately, with elevated education above all other considerations of any relevance.

As the COVID-19 quarantine restrictions unwillingly (but necessarily) stagger on, with most of us genuinely concerned about the possible adverse consequences of mixing with others who may or may not have been ‘infected’ by the virus, there is a rising wave of populist resistance to being told what to do by authorities, whether reputable health organisation affiliated or purely political in origin and content. We are seeing this on the wretchedly over-hyped and excessively emotional local and national news programs that saturate the television media airwaves each day. Protestors at various state capitols hold up placards that scream out ‘No infringement of 1st Amendment rights; NO Quarantine!’, etc., etc. and the media cluster like flies all about them, dancing excitedly and capturing it all on videocams. Despite the conceptual misapprehensions about what constitutes constitutional freedoms, their point is nevertheless loudly proclaimed.

What we are seeing here is a prime example of how sadly America has become dumbed-down even further beyond the limits of reason. Yes, of course people need to make a living and continue getting a wage, but they also have a responsibility to keep themselves and others around them safe from viral infection. Violating social distancing and quarantine to party down and/or cluster together socially is anything BUT socially responsible and it is also an excellent example of how self-serving and intellectually dim the common ‘herd’ has become today.

Also, when one analyses the reason why so many ‘ordinary people’ are so anxious to get to work, it doesn’t take a CalTech degree in psychology to discover that the lower-middle and lower classes have been predated upon so long by corporate America (via all the myriad commercial schemes that allow economically disadvantaged people to borrow, so as to live well beyond their realistic means), that hardly any of them have any savings whatsoever to fall back upon in times of economic hardship. The ‘buy-now, pay-later’ nature of their lives means that whenever an unforeseen crisis (like the present pandemic) hits, these ‘entitlement generation’ people are hard hit and up against the financial wall.

No arguments there, but that shouldn’t divert us from recognizing that we have the rapacious, money-sucking commercial corporate mentality (and their marketing/advertising cohorts) to thank for their predicament. That, and the fact that the average, overweight, self-centered, intellectually myopic, lazy, obscenely tattooed, body-pierced and materially spoiled younger (a category I qualify as consisting of anyone younger that 50) ‘average American’ isn’t really as bright as one would hope for! One of the reasons for this cultural myopia is, naturally, that today’s Americans are the product of post-WW2 material affluence that is unprecedented in modern history. By contrast, no one who lived through times of genuinely substantive economic and social turmoil (such as the depression-era generation and most other nations of the world OUTSIDE the USA, during WW2) would allow themselves to become so susceptible to unplanned-for disaster as we have allowed ourselves to be. Again, look no further than the commercial corporate business internationals that rake in untold billions of profit each year by sucking the brains (and money) out of marginally bright consumers.

In my opinion, the utter ineptitude of the Trump Administration’s response to and consequent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic aside, our nation is clearly reaping the expected harvest of public ignorance and selfishness that are both hallmarks of today’s insular, ‘entitled’ population, who have absolutely no sense of collective welfare. A state of affairs that has been greatly co-facilitated by a commercial corporate consumer culture that has been deliberately engineered to turn us all into suggestively susceptible pawns in the capitalist scheme of things, programmed to respond to whatever stimulus has been spoon-fed to us via media and reinforced by the worst expressions of popular culture in America today.

In a greater, far more nebulous sense, as we see so many of our nation’s citizens actively and vehemently protesting ‘being told what to do by our government’ (vis-à-vis public health COVID-19 precautions, such as social distancing, staying home, using protective masks and not congregating in groups, etc...I call it the 'You ain't the boss of me' syndrome) as a violation of their basic constitutional freedoms, I myself view this as a much more simple process than others might. To me, this is merely Nature’s way of culling the herd of those who aren’t quite smart enough to assume enough responsibility to keep themselves and their families safe from what is clearly and obviously a VERY serious threat to public health and common welfare: COVID-19 and the pandemic.

This is, as I see it, a fine example of Darwinian theory at work: survival of the fittest, strongest, healthiest, smartest and most able to survive. Those who do not fall into that category shall surely wither away, hopefully leaving those of us who DO survive a better, more collectively capable and wiser group of people.

However, given the lessons of history, our demonstrated collective human failure to regard those lessons and learn from them, and also the fact that every new generation tends to repeat the same mistakes each predecessor generation made, I would in no-way, no-how put any money down on the chances of the human race’s ultimate, long-term survival as a species on this poor, much abused planet we inhabit. For unless we as a species smarten up pretty damn fast and start heeding the obvious, we’re doomed. It might even require discarding our precious American democracy (since the rule of the herd majority is often catastrophic) and modify our way of life into some entirely new and as-yet not fully conceived order of national governance.

As far as I am concerned, I won’t have to suffer through more of these ‘stupid human tricks’ much longer as a geezer in my 7th decade of life, so it’s all academic! As Douglas Adams’ departing porpoises put it in his immortal satire, ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Universe’: “Thanks for all the fish!”

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PS: And the title of this piece? What means it? Let me explain. Several days ago, I was driving the pup to the local park for a long walk. We were on a long avenue that consists of a single lane (N & S) in both directions and I ended up behind a large silver SUV. The speed limit along this section of street meanders along at 30-mph, so I obligingly followed the chap about 50 feet behind him. However, he seemed intent on puttering along at speeds varying from about 21 to 27 mph, which is exactly the opposite of what most people do (pushing the speed limit typically by 5 or so mph).

The 30-mph limit is an arbitrary city limit intended to ‘calm traffic’, which I’m all in favor of, but 30 mph is needlessly slow on this street. 35 would be a far better choice for this largely deserted length of city roadway, so I reasonably bided my time patiently until we reached a brief section of the street that expanded into two lanes in both directions. He persisted in driving in the left lane, so I moved to the right and started to pass him, only to find to my surprise that he speeded up, apparently trying to prevent me from passing him by matching my speed. WTF?!

I couldn’t see much of him, ensconced as he was behind blackout side-window glazing, but what I could see of him revealed that he was neither a very young nor a very old person. Sitting upright in the driver’s seat, he had no tell-tale ball cap on (the sure sign of a crusty old geezer or a wacked-out juvenile), reversed or otherwise. Hmmm.

I accelerated even faster, trying to get by him, perplexed by his irrational behavior and finally reach 50 mph and started to pull ahead. At which point he laid-on with his horn and, although I didn’t look back at him, was undoubtedly screaming profanities at me and giving me profuse displays of his middle digit.

Eventually, the two lanes narrowed again into one, with me ahead and him behind. I slowed to about 35 mph, which is reasonable for this street, but he clearly resented something about me or my actions, but for whatever reason I profess utter ignorance. Finally, I reached the park entrance and turned off, leaving whomever that idiot was to stew in his own overheated juices.

Thinking it all over, I can only explain this extremely irrational display of bad road manners as a thankfully fairly mild example of road-rage, but it highlighted to me the fact that very possibly this was the product of a bottled-up sense of COVID-19 frustration on his part. Thus the ‘Speed-Nazi’ reference, which one usually encounters in regard to older citizens who are bloody sick of young whipper-snappers who habitually travel too fast on the city’s residential streets, totally oblivious of any speed limits applicable, and who therefore infuriatingly stay pegged at EXACTLY whatever the posted speed limit is. It’s a devious, if still obvious, geezer-way of sedately saying ‘fu*k you’ to those who want to blaze around him and go faster than the posted limit. I see this every day, all over the city. Elderly control freaks, as it were.

The ‘Speed Racer’ reference is to the dozens of young people who come out after dark to barrel along on the nearby Interstate (Highway I-5), recklessly reaching speeds my local CHP friend tells me sometimes surpass 115 mph or more. These are young guys, by and large, with cars-on-the brain whose only ‘recreational’ pastime seems to be working on their steroid-fueled muscle cars and driving them outrageously on roads that are now quite sparsely traveled, due to the COVID-19 ‘stay-at-home’ order. Needless to say, this goes on all night long and the infuriatingly excessive sound of car & motorcycle engines (with altered exhausts) being redlined penetrates the house’s walls and double-pane windows to hinder sleep. The police can’t even touch the motorcyclists involved, since their bikes can and do reach speeds of 130-160 mph and to even think of chasing them would be unacceptable from a sheer public safety standpoint.

These behaviors exhibited by the two types of drivers, while not attributable solely as a direct result of pent-up quarantine restrictions, certainly are exaggerated by the pandemic frustrations we are all feeling. And because Americans are notoriously unskilled at inhibiting excessive behavioral outbursts due to personal frustrations, we have them to contend with now.

As for the ‘Speed-Nazi’ mentioned above, when we finally got by the creep, my female proto-wolf (a rather large Siberian Husky), poked her head up from the pad where she had been reposing in back of my wagon and turned her Cerulean gaze on me in the rear-view mirror, as if to say “What was THAT all about, boss?” I wish I had had an answer for that one!

Actually, I wish I knew who our ‘Speed-Nazi’ was; it might be productive to deputise him as a CHP officer and sic him on the Speed-racer kids in their muscle cars out there on the interstate. The H.L. Mencken appreciator in me would LOVE to see that battle royale!