Okay…I have to say something because I can’t take it anymore and something needs to be said about these massive fucking pickup trucks, and, regrettably, the people who, for the most part, it seems, drive them.

You, my fellow denizens of the asphalt jungle, have no doubt seen the grotesquely engorged pick-up trucks that lumber through our streets like some hypertrophic nightmare, their dimensions ballooning into a preposterous caricature of utility! In the span of a scant few years, these vehicular behemoths have metastasized to such an absurd scale that the humble California garage—once a sanctuary of suburban pragmatism—now stands impotent, its confines laughably inadequate to cradle these monstrous steel leviathans. And lo, the consequence: every driveway from San Diego to Sacramento is now a grotesque tableau, dominated by at least one oversized truck, its hulking mass obliterating any vestige of street-side charm, a garish monument to excess that screams louder than a foghorn in a library.  And fuck it…it’s a free country and you can buy whatever kind of vehicle you want.  And it’s your house…if you want to totally eclipse the view of that pile of stucco you paid $750K for, cool.  Most of my neighbors at the Safe House have fallen into this truck trap.  If you are a big-league contractor, or you find yourself hauling semi-trailers or towing busted bulldozers or some such, cool…you need all the truck you can get.  But they two or three guys I know with things clearly do not need this much truck.  One dude’s an attorney who works for Anhedonia County.  Why does he need a two-ton truck as a daily driver?  It’s the digital age…not like he has to haul entire file cabinets of briefs to and fro.  All he has to take with him to work is his phone, and maybe a small briefcase.  And his office is maybe a mile from here…not like he needs to go offroad and ford a river or anything.  And the other dude is retired.  He only uses his truck to get to the local Indian casino.  I see him out my window every evening as he prepares to go gamble this month’s pension money…he can barely climb into that big bastard that’s parked in his driveway.  But whatever…they can do whatever they want.  Hell, I don’t need a tank, but if I had Fuck-You money, I wouldn’t put it past myself to arrive home one day in a shiny new Abrams whip, and I wouldn’t want any guff about it (though I really doubt anybody would give me any guff at all if I was sitting in the cockpit of an actual Abrams tank).  But if you’re going to go through all the attendant hassle of having one of these big-ass trucks, I would think your driving would reflect your vehicular choice.  If you’re going to shell out…how much are these things?  Jesus!  A Ford F-150 Raptor (which is what one of the aforementioned neighbors is sporting this year) is over $100K.  If one is will to shell out over $100K for one of these Mega Trucks, would one not want to drive it like a Boss?

Yet, oh the irony!  The swaggering titans who pilot these colossi reveal themselves as quivering milquetoasts the moment the road demands a modicum of mettle!  Observe them, these self-anointed lords of the highway, as they approach a speedbump with the tremulous hesitance of a dowager clutching her pearls, their behemoths inching forward with a delicacy that would shame a geriatric snail.  Each crest is navigated with a painstaking crawl, a ritual of cowardice that belies the brash bravado their tonnage implies – truly, a spectacle of spinelessness wrapped in chrome.  It just happened again to yrs. truly…I’m in a relatively miniscule car, with itty bitty shitty tires, trying to get across a grocery store parking lot to park.  There are some old school speedbumps in said parking lot, not the newer, kissy-face “undulations,” but the more brutal speedbumps.  And this guy in a massive, black Chevy Silverado, is actually slowing to a vaginal crawl whenever he gets to one of the things.  Huge off-road tires…I think this thing is even lifted.  He could take speedbumps twice this size at speed and not feel a thing.  It’s inexplicable.

And then…oh, shit, dear reader, and then, the piece de resistance of this absurdity: the seemingly ritualistic backing into parking spaces, a maneuver executed with the precision of a paranoid squirrel hoarding nuts.  Why, one might ask (I sure as hell do), this fetishistic reverse choreography?  Is it some primal urge to assert dominance, to ensure their retreat is as ostentatious as their arrival?  Or perhaps a tacit admission that these unwieldly beasts are better suited to flee than to face the world head-on?  Whatever the rationale, it’s a dance of dithering insecurity, a final flourish of folly atop their already towering pike of automotive hubris.  And it pisses me off to no end.

N.P.: “Poverty Blues” – Appalachian White Lightning