A note to the reader:
Little Blobby is no longer whinnying with us. He has informed us of his intent to dissolve his relationship with our organization and take up meditation, as he puts it, “with real intent this time.”
While we wish him all the luck, and believe he has every chance of success, we will unfortunately be foundering in some small ways as we deal with trying out new writers. Please bear with us in this difficult time.
Today’s post is being written by a committee consisting of the editor, his pal William Forsyth, and Forsyth’s aging mother, Dagmar, who tells us she has never driven in a car in her life.
Dagmar is 94 years old.
For this post, we took the GO train to Oshawa and bicycled three kilometres each way to visit GM headquarters, where they put on something brazenly called the “Auto Fest–Hi!”
Brazen, we say, because it is clear the subliminal message GM wishes to impart with their title is the transfigured message contained therein: not “Auto Fest–Hi!” but “Auto Fetish.”
What is meant by this not-so-subtle play on words? The auto as fetish item hardly needs elucidation, but perhaps it is worth examining nonetheless. Poor Dagmar, there in the corner, still wheezing from the day’s smog ingestion, has a full understanding of the automobile as consumer fetish item. Her dearly departed husband Forsyth Senior, after all, was an instructor at Northern Technical for forty years, and in that time lectured every year on the subject. He tested all his lectures on his wife and son.
So, what did we see? To quote Dagmar again, “a whole lotta nothin’.”
Fact is, the AutoFest auto be called the “WankFest,” according to Dagmar.
What we ought to have explained is that Dagmar thought we were going to Oshawa to pick late-harvest strawberries at a field she used to go to as a teenager.
What we ought to have explained to Dagmar is the field she remembers is today buried under a hundred tons of suburbia.
What we ought to explain to you, dear reader, is the AutoFest at GM headquarters in Oshawa is a celebration of antique and classic cars, and as such we thought dear old Dagmar would help us focus on the problem.
“Where’s my strawberries? You said we were coming all this way to pick strawberries! This isn’t the field I remember! This is a parking lot!”
Indeed. Dagmar really brought the problem into focus for us.
Because with cars, you can dress them up, but you can’t take them out. A parking lot full of old cars is still a parking lot.
And with Dagmar, we observe that asphalt strawberries are of no use at all.