Meditations on internal combustion

...from Mike "Leatherballs" Hendrix.

And see, that’s where the biker angle comes in amidst all this cage-talk. Anybody out there heard any of these do-gooder busybodies talking about electric motorcycles yet? Anybody want to ride one if they do finally get around to throwing us that small bone and allowing us that piddling bit of freedom? 

Hell, no. An electric motorcycle is what your parents get you for Christmas on your eighth birthday, if they can afford such a thing. You’re happy enough about it at the time, and you piddle around on it and have a ball until you’re big enough to handle a real honest-to-God dirt bike, and then the old one gets handed down to your little sister or your goofy cousin, and you never think about it again until your significant other drags out those embarrassing little-kid photos for all your friends to have a good time pointing and laughing at your geeked-out ass. It’s great when it’s all you have, but the whole time you know in the secret recesses of your brain that you’re just marking time until the real thing comes along. 

And an electric car is the same sort of thing, in its weak-ass, pathetic way. It’s a means of reducing all of us to the child-like status the eggheads believe we merit; we can only go so far, so fast, under certain conditions, and then we have to stop before we go too far for our own good. The more intelligent and independent-minded among us who dare question their almighty wisdom will be fed a bunch of bushwa about peak oil, and global warming or cooling or whatever the fuck it is this week, and the dire necessity of conserving scarce natural resources so China can go right on befouling the planet as they struggle halfway to where we were fifty years ago. If you’re good, and you toe the proper line, maybe you’ll get in with the right people and they’ll let you wash their stretch limos (which they’ll be keeping, thanks) every once in a while. But until you prove yourself worthy, you can make do with a glorified Big Wheel. And you’ll like it, damn you.

There are layers to the current rush towards statism that merit closer examination.  Ruminate.