(And no, I am not unaware of the irony in this title given yesterday’s post. If it makes you uncomfortable, let’s call it:)

I Hate Cars.

Always have. Never learned to drive. Never felt driven (ha, ha) to learn.

Automobiles are a blight on the well being of any right thinking urban citizen. They bring out the anti-social tendencies in their inhabitants. They’re noisy. They emit noxious fumes. They demand unreasonable amounts of space that far exceed their actual dimensions. In short, cars suck.

Here’s my case in point.

There I was yesterday morning, ambling through the bustling downtown U of T campus with nothing more on my mind than whether to buy myself a pumpernickel rye or oat bran bagel for breakfast. A massive recycling truck pulls up to a stop in the road in front of me and begins to back up into the laneway to my left, stopping traffic both ways. I pop out in front of the truck in order to cross the street, assuming that the driver of the car zipping along in the opposite direction is going to stop because he has no where to go, what with this huge truck blocking the roadway.

Imagine my surprise and not a little fearful shock when I’m forced to pull up short as this fucking jag-off driver swerves up onto the sidewalk and continues on his merry way, clearing an even bigger path of pedestrians as he does before jumping back down onto the road once he passes the truck. No wave or little honk of contrition. He doesn’t even so much as look at me as he goes by. Thereby, I guess, rendering me non-existent in his mind.

Like I said, I’m not a driver but isn’t using the sidewalk in your car illegal? Aren’t there fines for that kind of infraction? Is my outrage unreasonable?

So to you driver of a magenta-ishish convertible PT Cruiser, may an errant piece of scrap metal fly off a poorly packed truck of junk and cut through the permeable material roof of your car and impale you between the eyes (give or take a few centimeters). It won’t kill you. That would be too easy and merciful. Instead, the object will rip into the language centre of your brain, rendering whatever tongue it is you speak in, useless to you. In its place, you will only be able to communicate in short, yappy yelps that one normally associates with a Pomeranian or Yorkshire Terrier. (I have seen stranger things on the Discovery Channel). So instead of roaming the city streets wild, terrorizing pedestrians, your life will be little more than that of a sideshow circus freak, great to have for short bouts of entertainment at drunken dinner parties but then locked away for most of the day up in the attic along with other socially embarrassing relatives.

See? This is what I’m talking about. Cars only serve to bring out the worst in us. The sooner they’re banished from our lives, the better we’ll all get along.

— indignantly submitted by Urban Sophisticat