The Quantum Mechanics of Dr. Prof. Ferdinand Porsche’s Wunderauto, as intersectionally convergent with Grocery Outlet on a fine Autumn day? NOT!

As I was walking ‘She Who Must Sniff and Squirt’ early this AM, I walked by my friend Liam’s house, only a few blocks removed from us.

Fall is finally here, where there are typically only two annual seasons worth mentioning: Brutally hot Summer and cold-ass Winter (visualize, if you can, a change from 110 degrees F. to less than 40, overnight, in Suckatomato, the arm-pit capital of Californica), so it was wonderful to mentally deposit summer unceremoniously in the dust bin and embrace the cool but welcome promise of Fall in the brisk air of early Autumn.

Life is a pile of canine excrement

All of my life I’ve been an autumn person, a state of preferred presence that most others only develop an awareness of later in their lives. For me, Autumn, with its subtle but colorful display of nature’s floral subsidence and decay, syncs perfectly with my essential core-affect, a characteristic I share (apparently) with one of my favorite historical characters, French writer and social eccentric Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches…better known to history and literature as Louis Ferdinand Celine.

Celine was a brutally pessimistic yet brilliant individual possessed of a synergistic admixture of equal parts misanthrope, anticolonialist, pacifist and anarchistic elements, all tossed into a crucible of turgid literary plasma that alternately marked him out as a man of unique character but also someone whom it was too easy to hate. He was, coincidentally, a doctor of medicine among many other things and today is unfairly singled out most often for his sympathy with German National Socialism during der Zweite Welt Krieg (that’s WW2 to you Anglophilic Churchillians).

When Celine is remembered in today’s Western World, it is therefore all too often due to his reputation as an anti-Zionist, acerbic anti-Jewish social critic, but in our modern age the half-baked, intellectually immature younger members of our American society have a disturbing tendency to characterize ANYONE who disagrees with their Neo-Marcusian/Marxist fantasies as a “Nazi” anyway, so that that appellation of Celine’s should be seasoned with the gram of Sodium Chloride to be properly be placed into relevant context.

I am of the opinion that, Celine’s bitter regard for the masses of common humanity aside, his literary brilliance is best taken as a measure of his stunning (but laudable) failure to see any compelling need to optimistically gild the leaden dross of Homo sapiens with an undeserved sheen of Auric yellow-gold.

Whereas everything legendary King Midas touched turned to gold, everything Celine touched somehow ended up turning into sh*t. In that context, he would find himself in the company of a great many other students of human society that include such greats as Hemingway, Schopenhauer and myriad others throughout modern history.

It is common, I submit to you, for human beings to find a convergent harmonic in the Autumnal essence that the Fall shift of weather patterns encapsulates; just as it is, I feel, also easy for those in the upper age brackets to find Autumn more resonant with their own increasing but subtle physical and mental atrophy than less seasonal natural aesthetic states. In the Fall, the natural order of life concerns assume a sense of fateful finity, inalterable decay, terminal deterioration and final subsidence. It is therefore far too easy to find that resonance both somewhat comforting and also, like it or not, appropriate to the end of life moment each of us must face alone, unsupported by others or their hollow encouragements. That moment when life as we experience it ends, terminally.

I like to think of this end-point in terms of a small paraphrase of the title of one of Celine’s most famous books: Journey to the End of Night. In this context, the tile best becomes ‘Journey to the End of Night…but Towards the Dawn of Unknown and Unguessed Illuminations Beyond our Ken’, but that’s just a fleeting thought in passing, here. Much like a small, stray and inadvertant burst of GI Methane and Hydrogen in the midst of polite company.

Spotting Liam in his front yard, I stopped for a few moments to chat with him and he mentioned that he needed to drop by the nearby Grocery Outlet, that iconic nutritional shrine that always fascinates me, owing to its intriguing mix of odd end-lot products nearing end-of-expiry date.

As someone who spent most of my life in medical affairs to varying degrees, I am ever mindful of the fact that the so-called FDA mandated ‘Expiration Date’ on consumable comestibles is an arbitrary construct that that isn’t so much intended to protect us human imbibers of consumable goods (i.e. food stuffs and pharmaceuticals) from possible harm as it is to shield corporate business from annoying and possibly costly lawsuits. [Big mistake, that…giving corporations the same legal rights as private individuals, IMO.]

On expiry dates and common sense

The fact is, plain and simple, that a ‘Best used before:’ date on something is such an extremely conservative criterion that products so labeled (especially foods but also pharma products) may safely be used FAR beyond the dates printed on their packages with perfect impunity. This is yet another dirty little secret of today’s corporate business world that the public is typically none-the-wiser of. But of course, “awareness” predicates having a brain…something so many people seem to lack (like Harris/Walz cat ladies and MAGA survivalists).

After a few moments of conversation, while the pup impatiently signaled she wanted to resume the sniff & squirt outing, Liam and I agreed to get in my car, an hour or so after the dog walk, and drive to that metabolic Holy Place (Grocery Outlet) and spend the usual moments grazing somewhat soporifically among the stupefying variety of often odd but nearly always tasty and useful food lots that Grocery Outlet fills its shelves with.

Now, Liam is tall, like me. I’d love to introduce him to my little yellow Porsche (since he is worlds away from any vestige of what I call the German sportscar awareness) but the cockpit is fairly small and cramped, so I asked him how tall he was. He told me “6-feet exactly.” I myself am 6-feet tall, yet when we’re standing next to each other, he always appears to me to be just slightly taller than I am, strangely.

My Porsche is a 1974 914-4, 2-liter, by the way, not a 911 (which is what most often comes to mind first in any casual layman’s discussion of Porsche cars) and with its mid-engine abutting the rear of the cockpit seating, beyond a few inches of adjustment fore-and-aft there’s little space for extra roominess in it. Accordingly, the 914 driver assumes what we Porsche people whimsically term the “German Driving Position”…that is, legs out front and arms extended somewhat forward to grasp the steering wheel (contrast this to the so-called “Italian Driving Position”, with legs doubled and arms out front, which is likely the genetic result of too much spaghetti eating). [I formerly had Fiats, worked with them and know things…]

It’s acceptable for someone accustomed to driving a Porsche (all of which are low to the ground) to reflect on such matters as cockpit dimensions, but guests used to the spacious First Class accommodations of American automotive ‘Land Yachts’ often find it takes a bit of practice.

Keep in mind here, that my Porsche is a mid-70s model, made back when German sportscars were more often than not rather Spartan in terms of their appointments and ergonometric accommodations. Not at all like today’s most recent iterations of late model Por$che cars, which are festooned and crusted with the latest cushy appointments and ergonometrics.

At any rate, suffice it to say Porsche 914s are NOT made to easily fit 6-footers. They DO fit smaller Asian bodies quite admirably, however, as my Chinese wife will testify.

Yesterday, as I was checking my email spam, trash and the precious few important communications from associates & friends that occasionally pop up, I came across a weekly newsletter from RENNLIST.COM, a Porsche enthusiast’s on-line website that carries the latest news about the current buzz among Porscheophiles. In it were two articles by one Joe Kucinski. The first was concerned with the rising costs associated with acquiring the latest Porsche models. The second one dealt with an opinion that the (overdeveloped) archetypal Porsche 911 in its most recent form has gotten so big that calling it a ‘sportscar’ stretches the limits of credibility more than a little (an opinion I happen to most readily agree with). In fact when one comes to the recent 4-door Macan Porsche model, clearly the car is not a sportscar in the traditional sense at all, but a sop to those who want a large car in the American style with 4-doors but festooned with a Porsche nameplate on it.

Germany plots its revenge for losing the war

Back in the immediate post-war period (1945 onwards) when Herr Doktor Porsche first introduced his creations to the post-war crop of gearheads, sportscars were very basic. Never more than two-seats (with the exception of some cars like the Morgan Plus-4), they typically had no roll-up windows, featured a soft (convertible) top that provided only minimal weather protection, and were characteristically quite Spartan in layout. An engine, 4-wheels, a transmission, possibly a rude, folding soft-top, and that was about it. The object was to provide fast, sporty driving with a minimum of luxurious touches and stoic car purists loved them!

Over time and thanks in no part to the American marketing ‘ethic’ of ‘bigger is better’, traditional sportscars grew both in size and appointments to the point we are at today…wherein the typical sportscar has more in common with a land-bound F-16 fighterjet than an automobile. And the cost has risen exponentially, as well, with the very latest ‘base’ Porsches selling for more than $100K, at that with no extras.

Porsche GMbH Stuttgart quickly realized a potential geldkuh (that’s ‘cash cow’ in Deutschsprache) when they saw it and immediately sought the jugular vein of wealthier Americans so as to cash in on its status appeal, by loading the cars up with every possible extra, option and feature. This opportunistic marketing philosophy continued over subsequent decades to the point where top-of-the-line, “fully loaded” Porsches now verge on the several hundred thousands mark! [QED: the dragon green 918 Spyder, shown at the outset of this story, which went for a cool $3 Mil.]

Obviously, no ordinary mensch can realistically afford to plunk down hard, cold cash for these ‘wunderautos’, but no problem, since banks and lending agencies will happily help you take on debt beyond your wildest imaginings…unless you’re one of those super-wealthy people whose annual income exceeds most people’s imaginative abilities! [That’s why we see drug lord scumbags and neighborhood pimps driving around in them, occasionally, in case you were wondering (that’s a practical example of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in active principle, by the way).]

Now by my reckoning, prices like that are just plain OBSCENE. Today, the old sportscar enthusiasts of yore have pretty much died out and the typical late model Porsche owner is a younger, white collar professional (doctors, lawyers, hedge-fun managers, stockbrokers, et al) who has ‘made it’ in America and buys an expensive Porsches merely to advertise that fact. In other words, what was formerly merely a reasonably affordable  enthusiast sportscar is now a wealthy person’s high-status toy. Or at worst a sign that someone’s good sense has absolutely vanished and been permanently subsumed into the cesspit of sublimity.

The very first generations of Porsche sportscars, back in that immediate post-war period, were all reasonably priced. To be sure, they were slightly more expensive than the average American Furd or Chabby, but still not unreasonably so. In the 15-20 years from about 1945 to 1965, prices rose (of course) but it wasn’t till about 2000 or thereafter that Porsche prices went seriously stratospheric.

There are ‘dangles’ and there are ‘dangles’

Today, one has a choice of either dangling a $200,000 set of Porsche keys at a party (to announce one’s having ‘made it’ economically (and self-identifying thereby as a somewhat superficial car enthusiasts who simply has scads of money to burn through), or acquiring one of the few much older (classic) Porsches that investors and “car-flippers” have not yet bought up, and adopting a sort of Neo-Luddite attitude towards ownership of any car with the Porsche marque on it. Speaking of those despicable culprits (the investors and ‘car-flippers’) the primary effect of their greedy obsession with profit has become a major dynamic in the matter of exponentially rising older Porsche prices.

For my money, as an ‘old guy’, I’m definitely old school through and through, and although the fairly recent (2009-onwards) Porsche Cayman (the ‘hard-top’ Boxster GT variant) has strong appeal, due to its being a sort of modern development that harkens back to earlier 356 days in spirit, but Porsches from the early 70s are where it’s really at, as far as I am concerned. I’m perfectly fine with a 50-year-old Porsche that I can actually work on. But then, I also appreciate history, one of the most critically important liberal arts that schools now utterly fail to take seriously in their curriculums.

Despite the fact that specialty service costs and peripheral Porsche maintenance prices have continued to soar (California shop-rates for labor are now a uniform $150/hour), making even the cost of servicing humble 914s God-awfully expensive, that still beats the pants off the cost of maintaining a mini-Star Wars spacecraft on 4-wheels that was made in Deutschland.

Now at some point in the immediate future, I am firmly convinced that we’re all way overdue for a ‘Come-to-Jebus’ reckoning with our obsessive/compulsive automobile fetishes…especially with regard to the latest Porsche products (such as the Porsche 993 iteration, et al). I mean when a car can now set you back the price of what was just a few years ago the cost of a new home, some sort of economic remedial overhaul is long overdue!

Given all of the above, therefore, I very much agree with RENNLINE.COM author Joe Kuczinski on both counts in his recent expostulations, and far too many Porscheophiles seem to now have the previously referred-to excremential “Celine touch”…

Were such esoteric concerns extant back when Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches Celine was immersed deep within his personal analysis of contemporary social disimpropriations, I am sure he would at least seriously consider paying a housecall on my virtual mentor E.F Schumacher to quaff a few sympathetic glasses of Absinthe over the idiocies of modern-day slavish addiction by so many Americans to overpriced, overdeveloped and obscenely overpowered modern Porsche “sportscars”.

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POSTSCRIPT, 27 Oct 24:

It''s the 27th of October, the day after I wrote the above. As is my usual habit, I take my Porsche 914 ("Jezibel", otherwise known as "She who must be driven") out for her weekly 10-mile run-up drive. This typically occurs Sunday AM, early, since I take her out onto the adjacent Interstate (I-5) for a distance of about 75-80 milesor so at speed and there''re mercifully few if any of the monster semi-truck & trailor rigs on the road at that time of the day.

You know the type I refer to? The ones that seem like they are 100 or more feet long and 20 feet tall? The kind that, when one drives in the lane between two such monsters, it''s more like running a steel canyon gauntlet than sharing the road with reasonably-sized ICE commercial transport vehicles. With a 914 looming a mere 48 inches above the roadway, it''s also easy for one''s imagination to run away with thoughts of instant doom at such times, too!

Anyway, I''d just pulled onto the highway and was picking up moderate speed when a bright red, 2025 Porsche Cayman zoomed by me like a rocket in hyperdrive. No friendly wave. No comraderly acknowledgement that the other driver was passing a kindred ''veteran Porsche'' that was about 50+ years older than his own Porsche...just a zoom-by at full speed in a display of what  unmistakably communicated the unspoken message "Get that cheap pile of junk out of my way! I''m driving the latest Porsche marvel and in my book such crap-heaps as yours don''t even rate!"

Sic gloria mundi finit!

Clearly, the young, well-off (or heavily indebted) person behind the wheel of that Cayman not only had no awareness of the rich, storied past history of earlier Porsche cars, he/she also felt that his particular pile of canine excrement (Celine''s phrase was ''fragrant''), alluring and praiseworthy, and mine was not.

How utterly sad this is, in my opinion. I am old enough to still remember the days when true sportscar enthusiasts never failed to either wave, ''beep-beep'' or just nod at each other whenever each encountered the other on a road or street.

By contrast, today the self-absorbed, narcissistic consumers of modern Porsche wunderwappen as is the (admittedly beautiful) Cayman are merely flashing their perverse "I made it" credentials in a world made grossly Philistine by our slavish pursuit of unending materialistic possessions, social class and peer status.

Put somewhat differently, "You can take the high school kid out of high school but you can''t take the high-school mentality out of the (grown-up) arrested adolescent."

As I said yesterday, the new Porsche Cayman is an unquestionably beautiful design excercise in both styling and performance and if I could reasonably afford one, I wouldn''t reject considering having one. But I am mindful of my modest personal assets limitations and am also perfectly content with what I already have at this stage of my life. Further, as a historian, my half-century old 914 means far more to me in its greater (historical) context than some gosh-wow late-model assemblage of expensive German steel, fresh off the production line.

Keep that in mind next time you zoom by an older VW-Porsche in your US$200K Carrera debt-machine, without so much as a snarky back-glance, eh!

And just to be crystal clear (as Kamelot Harris very recently) put it (perhaps apochryphally): "Sh*t may be green or sh*t may be brown, but sh*t is still sh*t."