h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

bicycling to work this morning, all those cars in my way got me to thinking. there i was braving subzero temperatures, exhaust fumes and the risk of being horribly mangled, all for a shining principle, the devout belief that what's really wrong with this planet is cars.

why was i doing this? why wasn't i snug abed? dear readers, i'll tell you why... i was off to make cars.

not with my bare hands mind you. i'm what is called, according to the corporate culture, a production planner, logistics technician, Handlungsbevollmächtiger, technicien de gestion de production... in short, a wizard.

you see, despite the mountains of procedures, standards, protocols and whatnot in the ISOjugend world of the automobile industry, it's bedlam. once you're inside you wonder by what miracle any cars are produced at all!

that's where i come in. a well-mixed potion here, a flick of the wand there, and the cars come out by thousands.

i could make "mistakes"... in one day i could prevent thousands of those shiny monsters from seeing the light of day! the temptation is great...

but they'd fire me... and my kids have to eat... and if i didn't do it someone else would... and if there were fewer of one make, the consumer would just buy something else. so i just bike to work, and hope that's enough for a conscience that gets less and less demanding with the passing years.

Wise words... maybe the way to go is to get people to use cars more ethically?

I've got mine, but I don't use it for going to work and try not to go anywhere in it unless I've got a passenger to make it worthwhile.

I feel like that about cars as well. And I have a visceral hatred of urban 4x4s.

I lived without a car for a long time, but then started to want to get out and explore the countryside, and the train only gets you so far...

I guess it's not so much the car that's the problem, it's the way they are used, as six said.

sprout