Driving Complexity

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It should be a pretty straightforward thing, buying a car.  Unless you live in a city like New York you need one, so the process should be simple since it affects many.  But no.  Nothing is simple any more.  We had a two-decades old car that had quite a few health issues in its long life.  Besides, we wanted a hybrid to help with the environment and to cut down on gas costs.  A Toyota Prius seems a good choice so we tried to buy one in February.  We had to wait, however, since dealers can’t keep them in stock.  Initially they estimated three or four months, which turned into eight.  When it arrived unexpectedly we had to drop everything to go get it because they don’t want them sitting around on the lot.  Fortunately the day was Saturday, when schedules are a bit more flexible.

Unlike other stores, where you walk in, hand over your money, and walk out, the car dealership involves immense complications, too great to comprehend.  Insurance is a big part of that.  It turns out that now they want you to go with their insurance.  And since car insurance is bundled with homeowners’ insurance you have to answer questions about when your house was last roofed when you buy a car.  Facts and figures that I don’t keep at my fingertips were necessary.  And you have to download apps because they want you to do everything by phone.  If you’re buying a Prius they want to tether your phone to the car, like a Navi to its beast, and you have to let it monitor where you are at all times and how you’re driving, otherwise your rates will go up.  Driving a Prius is like steering a computer on wheels.

You see, I get overwhelmed.  My mind evolved for a simpler world.  Finally arriving home after several hours in a bustling showroom, I had a dozen emails about this and that related to changing insurance and registering for new systems so the car can take to me, and all I want to do is run to the store to pick up some groceries.  There are no entanglements there.  Pay for your goods and walk out of the store.  No insurance, no requirements to change anything.  Not to mention that Saturday’s the day for mowing the lawn and the hundreds of other chores you can’t get done during the work week.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy my new wheeled computer.  It is much better for the environment.  It may take a few years, however, before I find the time to learn how to drive it.  And to disentangle myself from all the other complications involved.  Pardon me, but I’ve got more car-related emails to read.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Heaven Forbid

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Cars can be a nuisance—they consume resources, pollute the environment, and have a habit of being very expensive to repair. We’ve been pretty good about taking our car in for its regularly scheduled Toyota check-up. Since the garage is several miles away and my wife and I both work, it is often a matter of the one who can most easily work from home the day of the car doctor appointment taking it in. Our Toyota dealer has in-store wifi for those who can’t live without the internet. For some of us, work is almost exclusively internet. So it was that I drew the short straw and dutifully drove out to the dealership. I was pleased that my VPN connected so easily; this was going to be a snap. I was working happily away when I had to find somebody on a university website. I googled the name and clicked. I received a forbidden website message (copied below) explaining tersely: “Block reason: Forbidden Category ‘Religion’.” I tried again on the Society of Biblical Literature website—same message.

ForbiddenReligion copy

Now I can understand workplaces blocking pornography sites, and even Facebook (I found the latter to be blocked at Toyota some time ago, but I’ve never tried the former), but religion? I am a religion editor. How am I to work when I can’t access websites that contain the word “religion”? The more I pondered this—I could still check my email, and do VPN-type work with files from the office—the more it bothered me. On the television in the background inane daytime talkshow hosts were interviewing someone who’d written a book about God. How many more businesses out there are biased against internet religion? That means my blog is blacklisted along with the scantily clad and overly chatty. I fully support the disestablishment clause, but I also subscribe to the freedom of religion. Smirks aside, there is a serious undertone to all of this.

I have no desire to be proselytized at work. I also agree that it is the right of others to expect the same. Sometimes, however, a little religion might help work go down like a poppinian spoonful of sugar. One time when I worked for Ritz Camera in Brookline, Massachusetts (I seem to have a knack for working for businesses that are on the way out), I had a tough day. Some of our customers could be quite abrasive, and since the customer is always right, we had to take personal insults with a smile. One lunch-hour I told my manager that I needed to recoup my moxy (I didn’t use those words). I ducked out the door and stomped to the first church I could find and asked if I could just sit in the pew for a few minutes. The church secretary, a complete stranger to me, said “of course.” Ten minutes later I returned to work collected and able to face more unreasonable customers for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe it wasn’t religion, maybe it was only the calm of sitting in what some believed to be a sacred space, but my capitalist company got better performance out of me that day because of it. Ironically, at Toyota, my religion editing is cast in with the tax collectors and prostitutes. Only the tax collectors, I’m pretty certain, are always permitted to work.

Gas Bubbles

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Human brains display a strong preference for patterns. Looking out my office window at the repeating series of windows that make up much of Manhattan, there is a pleasing sense of symmetry. We seek meaning in patterns—this is likely what gave rise to the idea of prophecy; a pattern repeated in nature seems to bear divine significance. Now, I don’t claim to be the best analyst of patterns, but like all humans I look for them and try to make sense of them. With headlines declaring that gasoline prices are on the rise again, set to hit record highs in April, I think, like an elephant that doesn’t forget, over the past several election years and wonder if anyone else has noticed a pattern. When a GOP incumbent is in office, gas prices seem to go down in an election year. When a Democrat is in office, they tend to skyrocket in election years. This is not based on market analysis, but by the sharp pain in my backside that is caused by a starving wallet combined with repeated kicks by the petroleum industry.

Even as far back as high school I remember that alternative-energy cars were being designed. Keep in mind that this was over thirty years ago. When we asked why people couldn’t buy them, our teacher informed us that oil companies buy up patents for competing technologies. Television told us that such energy efficient cars were the stuff of science fiction. With Toyota often leading the way, we have seen, however, that electric-powered cars can perform on the highways as well as city streets. They don’t line the pockets so thickly for the big oil barons, so we’re lead to believe they’re wimpy and underperforming—not manly vehicles at all. To me it sounds like a lot of gas.

I’m not sure how America came to be under the ponderous thumb of the oil industry, but the finger-pointing and downright criminal activity of such companies as Enron and BP should be telling us something. It may be mere coincidence, but the past several Republican presidents have been very friendly with big oil. I remember when Clinton ran against Bush Senior that prices of gas dropped so low that a ten could fill the tank on our little Toyota. Here we are with a Dem in the House and prices are set to soar. Perhaps my cynicism is misplaced, but I don’t recall seeing many oil barons standing in the breadlines—not even after Enron imploded. No doubt we will be told it’s just the ebb and flow of the market, nothing more. No matter what the excuse may be, I have an idea which way the flow is going, and it has a pipeline from Americans’ bank accounts right into that internal combustion engine that is fueled by creatures long dead. Death and oil, by whatever means, go together.

Take me home, country roads