News that the Tesla truck may be phasing out of production soon is oddly pleasing to me. If there were a better symbol of the Musk-ian era we’re going through it would be hard to find one. The overall look of it is of a vehicle that was built to smash things, the automotive equivalent of a club or sledgehammer.
“The people drawn to [the Cybertruck] don’t have quality of construction or safety at the top of mind,” Ivan Drury, director of insights at the automotive inventory company Edmunds, told Wired. “That this could be a dangerous vehicle to drive is key to its appeal.” Cybertruck buyers are people “who think ‘I don’t care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,’” he added.
… It’s not surprising, then, that the Cybertruck has been recalled at an average of once every two months. “Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares — they don’t care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years,” Drury told Wired. “They’re buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future.”
… “A standard auto customer wants to know if a car will last 10 years or will be ongoing good value for money,” he added. “A Cybertruck customer doesn’t care about any of that. Owning a Cybertruck isn’t practical; it’s a boast. A boast that ‘I have so much discretionary income I can afford to waste it on an impractical car.’”
Anyway, I will bid adios to these ugly trucks without a twinge. Without any new ones being built, and their history of regularly committing vehicular seppuku, it is likely that they will soon be gone from the nation’s highways altogether.
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Last weekend there was a group of grizzled and grayed veterans manning a table outside the City Market. They were asking for donations to support veterans and their families and giving a small manufactured likeness of a poppy in return.
Now, being a gray and grizzled veteran myself, I put a few dollars in the glass jar on the table, and threaded the poppy’s wire through a buttonhole to wear it as I shopped.
(This is the place where I state that my only sacrifice during my own national service was that of two years’ time and the occasional frustration with military life. The only gunfire I ever heard was from the shotguns fired during pheasant-hunting season in Nebraska. The only tents I saw were those in family campgrounds in the States. There is no comparison between what I experienced and the sacrifices of those who endured combat.)
Robin noticed my adornment as soon as I returned home and commented that her father, a Navy veteran, used to help with such fund drives during his later years. I wondered out loud where and when this tradition had originated, and asked my buddy Chad GPT about it.
As I suspected, these fund drives began after World War I, and the image of the poppy was taken from the famous poem “In Flanders Fields.” There is an excellent Wikipedia entry on the origins of the tradition and its adoption in many countries around the world.
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In Flanders Fields
BY JOHN MCCRAE
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
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We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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On a happier note, the notorious fumbler-filmed-in-the-dark-in-Denver, Lauren Boebert, was defeated in the past election by … are you ready for this … a retired admiral for whom we should immediately be grateful because she seems to actually have a skillset that is appropriate to the job. Smart, well-spoken, administratively talented, and with a husband who has never been accused of indecent exposure. What’s not to love?
Before being elected the first time, Boebert operated a small diner in Rifle, Colorado, which is now closed. That establishment was more famous for the fact that the waitresses wore sidearms than the tastiness of its food. Perhaps she could find work in that area once again. With her heroes being closer to Davy Crockett than Betty Crocker … we shall see … .
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Robin and I are presently watching the limited series East of Eden, taken from the John Steinbeck novel of the same name. We are now at Episode Four of seven. All I can say is woof. Florence Pugh positively burns, creating one of the most memorable of dramatic villains.
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