Objects in the rear view mirror

I love long drives.

Alone.

Just me and my thoughts and (cliché time) the open road. Thoughts like “Is it paint “your own pottery” studio? Or is it paint your own “pottery studio””. And thoughts like, “The new Pepsi slogan “Brown and Bubbly”, Dumb or Really Fucking Dumb?” (I’m not kidding here. That is their new slogan. “Brown and bubbly.”… That’s just too easy. I’ll leave it alone.)

Back to the subject at hand. Or in my case, at keyboard.


I like the long drives. The four hour ones, when I’m driving to State College, or DC, or back. And I like the middle parts of the drive the most. When I know I have miles to go (…Before I sleep. Because falling asleep at the wheel is a bad, bad idea. I know from painful experience. I’d use a smiley here, but I refuse to use emoticons in posts, and so imagine if you will a wry grin here.) and the end is far, far away.

I dislike the last bit of the drive, because it’s the last bit of the drive. It brings with it a mild sense of disappointment. That four hour block where nothing else existed apart from me and the music from the radio is ending. I need to enter society again and interact with (shudder) people! I can’t make faces at myself in the rear view mirror, or talk back to the radio.

I love talking back to the radio, because of all the stupidity that it spouts out between songs. The DJ’s who think they’re being funny. The smarmy voices trying to sell me stuff. The warm voices convincing me that this product is better than others or that I should enter this contest because I can win junk. Yelling at them, loudly declaiming their stupidity is immensely gratifying.

I love making faces at myself in the rear view mirror. Because…well everybody likes that. You see a mirror and nobody else is around, you stick your tongue out at it, or do your best Darth Vader impression. (I glare magnificently at my reflection and say “Impressive” in my best Darth Vader voice.)

No I’m not strange.

Really.

Okay, maybe just a little.

I’m flipping through radio stations, looking for classic rock. The Beatles always put me in a good mood. And so do the Stones. But flipping through the channels is fraught with danger or at the very least fraught with the possibility of crappiness. You may take your hands off the dial, perhaps to avoid that tractor-trailer that you were about to so blithely rear end…and before you know it your ears are being molested by a boy band, or a gangsta’ or a girl band (and since this is the radio, the girl band does not come with the compensation of semi-nudity. (By semi I mean almost total. By nudity I mean gratuitous nakedness.)).

But once in a great while a paragon of crappiness comes through, something so crappy that you need to hear it again and again. Have it roam wild and free through your head as you are in a meeting or doing your groceries. One such pearl is the Black Eyed Peas’ lyrical masterpiece, My Humps.

…what you gonna do with all that junk
all that junk inside that trunk?

The guy’s singing that bit and clearly he is referring to the fact that she has a ton of stuff in the trunk of her car. I don’t see why that is relevant to him but I let that pass.

And then the chick,(Who is mind bogglingly hot. I saw her on Conan!) goes…

...Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump,
My hump,
My hump,
My hump,

My hump,
My hump,
My hump,
My hump,

This clears things up. Apparently the song is from a Disney movie, and this “ballad” is being sung between two camels (And both of them are dromedary because only a single hump was mentioned (eight times!). Or maybe we can choose to be broadminded and choose to believe that the male is a Bactrian, unnatural though that may seem.). Or maybe it is an artist’s impression of what the dialog might be between post pubescent camel couples during the camel mating season. This should be on Animal Planet!

But now the first part of the song makes no sense. Because camels do not drive cars!

…My lovely lady lumps,..
See. Lyrical Masterpiece! The camel has goiter? I only ask this because this is an awfully graceless way of referring to a camel’s hump.

...Assorted atrocious lyrics and worse music...

…I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff,
Milky, milky cocoa,
Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight…

Now the dude seems to be getting more than a little excited at what seems to be a Kellogg’s product placement in the camels’ love ballad. Or maybe the singer really, really likes milk with his cocoa puffs and his passionate love for them is coming through in the song. But his passion is a bit unseemly, and because of him I now feel a little bit dirty when I have my breakfast cereal.

There’s probably more to that song, but at that point I decided that I needed silence, to decide whether it is “Paint “your own pottery” studio or whether it is “Paint your own “pottery studio””.

So, yeah, Long drives are good.