The Square Peg's Guide to Vehicular Hazards

We at The Square Peg are committed to keeping our readers as safe as they are informed. Which is our motivation for compiling the following guide to vehicular hazards.

Through careful observation and rigorous analysis, we have identified the three most dangerous types of vehicles and have provided handy personality profiles of the people who drive them.

While admittedly guilty of painting with a broad brush, The Square Peg stands behind its findings and maintains that a majority of the following vehicles are piloted by drivers injurious to your continued well-being.

Jumping right in, first place goes to the Jeep Wrangler.

When they aren't rock-climbing, fire-walking or bungee jumping over a pit of starving salt-water crocs, the hyperactive twenty-somethings who gravitate to Jeep Wranglers can be found attempting to replicate these sensations en route to their part-time jobs at REI.

It is usually while blasting Slayer and chugging espresso that the similarities between their favorite driving-based computer game and actual roadways becomes apparent. Competing against a timer only they can see, they zig-zag through traffic in a furious quest to record their best score ever.

Road signs, pavement markings and traffic signals don't apply to them because, like, the Wrangler can go off-road, you know? Seriously. Besides, even if they crash, it's just a matter of pushing the reset button. 

No worries, dude.

It should be noted the Wranger's high ground clearance and short wheelbase makes them prone to rollovers.

We can only hope.

Just half a notch below Wrangler wranglers are the drivers of pick-up trucks. In fact, they are so closely related you could think of pick-up truck drivers as former Wrangler owners who have impregnated someone (often female and human) and no longer live with mom and dad.

(In-laws are another story.)

They have likely shaved their head and now sport a goatee. They enjoy accessorizing with baseball caps which sport the NRA logo. My next paycheck says they can quote dialogue from Duck Dynasty—verbatim.

With the twin burdens of child support and housing, pick-up truck drivers must now confine their thrill-seeking and angst-letting to the commute to and from their job at Al's Stone & Gravel.

They carry a vague and ill-defined sense of unease which they aren't hesitant to share, using their imposing vehicles to harass, intimidate and bully. Pick-up truck owners don't operate their vehicles insomuch as they are armed by them.

Many enjoy hanging testicles from the trailer hitch of their vehicles, which only serves as proof that away from their trucks, most pick-up drivers don't have any.

Finally, third-place goes to the drivers of German luxury sedans: Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.

Their expression of angst takes a different tact. Rather than intimidate you the way the driver of a black Ford F-150 might, drivers of German luxury sedans use the imperiousness of their automobiles to speak for them as they pass you and your pedestrian conveyance in a noiseless, Teutonic rush.

You're not even worth getting angry over. You are merely a speed bump on the road to wealth creation and are easily disposed of by pressing the long, rectangular pedal underneath the expensive tasseled loafer adorning their right foot.

I'm sorry—were you saying something?

Charleston

While many are already mourning the apparent tragedy in South Carolina, I am buying party favors and inflating balloons.

This isn't the senseless massacre of innocent people convention would have us believe. No, this is a party. A shindig. A soiree. 

It is a Second Amendment celebration. Woo-hoo!

That portion of our citizenry who have dedicated themselves to the creation of a robust gun culture have succeeded, and succeeded wildly. Brilliantly. And awesomely.

We now enjoy a nation awash in guns. A nation conditioned to believe that guns are the great equalizer. That guns are our great protector. That we can cure all that is wrong with a gun.

So yes, I raise a glass and toast yesterday's Second Amendment celebration in South Carolina. And to the thousands of other Second Amendment celebrations that have taken place in this great and wonderful country of ours. 

Let us weep with joy. Let us rejoice in the triumph of easy violence over hard peace. Of wild-eyed, craven fear and rage over clear-eyed thought and consideration. Of inhumanity over humanity. 

Give people guns and they'll use them. Who knew? 

Let us never, ever forget that by virtue of our silence, and in the absence of strident and unswerving opposition, this is what we get. 

Is it really what we want? 

Dammed If You Do

Economists are alarmed. Americans aren't spending. And since their spending drives two-thirds of the economy, economists warn of dire consequences should this trend become permanent.

(Of course, they have warned of the dire consequences of not saving as well. Hence the title of this post.)

I would love the opportunity to ask these economists (many of whom, it must be remembered, are policymakers) why they suppose Americans aren't spending.

Could it be that with memories of the Great Recession fresh in our minds, and of the vicious and wholesale job-shedding that followed, private-sector Americans have realized exactly how tenuous their livelihoods are?

Is it possible we have finally come to understand that most of us are merely expenses to our employers? Expenses to be winnowed down and/or eliminated lest shareholders become upset at not being made exponentially wealthier than they were last month?

Or that, with the inevitable passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership looming, we will become more vulnerable still?

Why, exactly, should we spend? I mean, who does it benefit?

China? Bangladesh? Mexico? Some tax-dodging executive shoveling cash at Republican misanthropes? Perhaps e-Bay is the biggest beneficiary—at least when we desire to rid ourselves of the junk we've accumulated.

I was once an enthusiastic consumer, and for that I have been rewarded with a lifetime supply of underemployment after committing the unforgivable sin of being unemployed when the Great Recession hit. 

(I was preparing for a cross-country move, if you must know.)

It is sobering to realize the economy you once so obediently served now wants nothing to do with you. To think nothing of the money spent on entities which now refuse to even consider hiring you.

It is also a powerful incentive to save.

Our captains of industry have been repeating a thinly-disguised threat for years, that the American worker needs to remain competitive in the global market place or face extinction. And the American worker responded. American workers are among the most productive in the world, even as the buying power of our wages remains flat or even falls.

But—big surprise—it isn't enough.

Without the one-hundred percent profit margin, business is just having a really tough time making this thing work. How are they to pay living wages and buy our elected representation?

However easy their virtue, you should know Congressmen don't come cheap.

Businesses solution is to outsource jobs and re-locate corporate headquarters to foreign tax havens as their increasingly contracted and part-time work force requires government assistance and health care.

It is the most indefensible kind of cost-shifting.

In the end, what is really curious is that even as the American worker becomes ever more marginalized, the American consumer is apparently still very much in demand.

Does anyone—anyone at all—see the disparity?

Role Models

I feel awful for Walgreen's executive James Skinner.

I mean, imagine being a high-ranking corporate executive with a seven or eight-figure income and getting caught trying to defraud the country which has been so very, very good to you and your employer.

Pretty embarrassing, no?

Not if you're a member of the business class.

You see, the business class enjoys unmitigated wealth, unbounded prosperity, unceasing riches and absolute impunity because we (with the considerable help of our elected representation) have ceded control of the country to it in exchange for campaign financing.

America has become the employee who asks “How high?” after the boss has requested that we jump.

The business class are our gods.

So you can imagine the vein-popping rage Mr. Skinner must've felt when he and his employer were called out by the President of the United States of America. You can imagine the ignominy of being a wealthy white man who is called a thief by a black one.

It's a wonder apoplexy didn't send our poor Mr. Skinner to the emergency room.

In response, Mr. Skinner addressed a meeting of shareholders and blamed the president for calling attention to Walgreen's attempts to fuck the country out of its rightful tax on Walgreen's earnings, saying that Barack Obama had used Walgreen's as “whipping boys” merely to further a presidential agenda.

The shame-resistant Mr. Skinner went on to add that Walgreen's didn't actually intend to send its corporate headquarters abroad to dodge U.S. taxes, but at the same time never explained why it had devoted so much time and so many resources researching the move.

Getting theoretical for a moment, how do you suppose Mr. Skinner would've reacted to an employee embezzling from Walgreen's? I'm guessing Mr. Skinner would fire the employee even faster than he had his inflated sense of entitlement bruised, which is certainly interesting.

Stealing for Walgreen's is okay. Stealing from Walgreen's is not. (Sorry—just making sure I understand corporate morality.)

So in conclusion, we are to pity not only Mr. Skinner, but Walgreen's, for President Obama's outrageous and unjustified attack on one of America's leading corporations.

I am sure I speak for Mr. Skinner when I say that only an atheist like President Obama could so completely ignore commandment number-one (Thou shalt have no other gods before me) and place America before James Skinner and Walgreen's.

Heresy, isn't it? 

Telephone Mosquitos

Few things in life are able to penetrate the hardened shell of my cynicism. Robocalls are one. I mean, they are a technological wonder. What do you suppose Alexander Graham Bell would have made of them?

Imagine being able to place a call from anywhere in the world and mask your phone number with any sequence of ten digits you can imagine. And of making untold numbers of unseen telephones ring, announcing your pointless and invasive message.

Perhaps these people are amused by the imagined efforts their targets make at getting to their phones before they stop ringing.

We were in middle school once too, weren't we?

My favorites are the calls which offer me the opportunity to lower my credit card interest rate. A very animated female voice urgently informs me of the glorious life that awaits if I will just push the button marked 'one' on my keypad now.

The fact that the call has been answered by my antiquated answering machine is lost on the originators of these calls and their number-masking wizardry.

In a gesture meant to burnish the entire affair with the sheen of legitimacy, the target is advised he or she can push the button marked 'three' if he or she no longer wishes to receive these calls in the future.

Of course, this is like assuming that because you vote, you will have elected representation. One does not necessarily follow the other.

In moments of unfettered pique, I have actually answered these calls.

On one occasion, I asked to be placed on their do not call list. I was informed by a smug, vaguely Asian-sounding female voice that it didn't have a do not call list.

In other, more lighthearted moments, I have pretended to be interested. I ask you: does wasting a telemarketer's time not seem entirely fair? 

I inquired how my interest rate could be lowered beyond zero, since I (fortunately) do not carry any credit card debt.

The operator asked for my credit card number. I told her I was in the middle of making love to my wife, and being naked, didn't have it handy just then. Couldn't she just give me a brief rundown of the program?

This was followed by a dial tone. I smiled at the irony of having a telemarketer hang-up on me.

It was clear that despite her mastery of telephony, she had no sense of humor. Or any appreciation of my ardent desire to lower my credit card interest rate.

But in all honesty, the worst part of these calls is the reckless and wanton use of psychological warfare. They use the most-savage psychological weapon in the human arsenal to break-down their targets—hope.

Yes, it is critical that you understand these calls end with the following words: This is your final notice.

If only.

Something Different on Memorial Day

In 1991 I went to Memphis. It was a stop on a larger trip whose eventual destination was Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In the city famed for Elvis and barbeque, I was struck by a high-contrast example of the disparity between black and white in the United States of America.

On one side of town, there was no detail of Elvis Presley's life too trivial to memorialize. I could have bought a laminated reproduction of his driver's license from one of the half-dozen gift shops across the street from Graceland.

On another side of town, the spot where Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and Eddie Floyd had recorded some of the most resonant and indelible soul music ever conceived was an overgrown vacant lot, with only a U.S. historical marker near the curb.

The converted movie theater that had served as the recording studio for Stax Records was long gone; the undeniable truth being it had been torn down to make way for a vacant lot. There were no opportunities to purchase a reproduction of Otis Redding's driver's license, much less see the building where he and the M.G.s had recorded Otis Blue.

It hit me. Hard.

Let me be clear: the intent isn't to slam Memphis. My mate and I enjoyed an otherwise wonderful visit, topped-off by the elderly gentleman who escorted us from a McLemore Avenue convenience store to the nearby Interstate entrance I had somehow been unable to locate.

But with the exception of Detroit and its Motown museum, this is a story repeated in any city that once served as mecca for black music. My hometown of Chicago has its own woeful record of neglect.

To wit, 2120 S. Michigan Ave. is a parking lot. Record Row, the home to Vee-Jay and Brunswick Records (among others) was reduced by the mid-nineties to a handful of faded, hand-painted company logos in second story windows.

With the wholesale gentrification of the South Loop, I doubt even those exist today.

These locales were the purveyors of what was essentially under the counter music for an under the counter culture. If the pop music consumed by white teenagers was considered disposable, you can imagine the status accorded the latest J.B. Lenoir forty-five.

It is ironic then, that this music could end up aiding and abetting the entity known as the City of Chicago.

As it seeks desperately to avoid being flushed down the toilet with the remainder of Illinois, Chicago is in dire need of revenue. And what better way to lure tourists from points all over the globe than by recognizing its musical heritage?

Sam Cooke, Benny Goodman and Herbie Hancock are just three of the luminous talents birthed by the city. Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley recorded the music that set an entire generation of English youth aflame here.

And yet their connections to Chicago are virtually invisible.

Cities as far-flung as Vienna, Austria and Kansas City, Missouri have acknowledged their musical heritage and acted not only to preserve it, but use it as a lure which simultaneously educates and creates revenue streams.

Even beyond these practical applications, this serves—in many cases—to pay homage to the profound contribution African-American culture has made to the broader culture of the United States, and on a good day might even encourage a rethink of our racial stereotypes.

Given the junk status of its bonds and the tautness of its racial tensions, it is high time Chicago did the same.

Tribute to a King

It started with a $2.99 LP from the Columbia Record Club. It wasn't very good. It was called Bobby Bland and B.B. King Together Again...Live, and I'm sure the pairing looked great on paper.

But the famed blues vocalist had become a bit lazy by this time, and too often resorted to phlegm-y exclamations as a substitute for actual singing. And half of B.B. King's appeal lay in his voice, and reduced to the role of back-up singer, his guitar playing seemed to suffer as well.

I put the LP away and didn't reach for it again until one of my periodic vinyl purges. But B.B. King's name continued to pop up in the rock star interviews I spent way too much of my adolescence perusing.

In a survey of the all-time great live albums, I found the B.B. King album I was looking for: a live LP recorded in my hometown of Chicago featuring perhaps the most scalding performances this side of James Brown's Live at the Apollo.

Live at the Regal had entered my life.

The stinging guitar, roaring vocals and an audience for whom 'engaged' seems woefully inadequate made my first listen one of those indelible events that shape our youth. Live at the Regal swung, swaggered and forcibly insinuated itself into my existence.

Was the band sharp? Let me put it this way: you could shave with some of the performances he put down on that Saturday night in November of 1964.

B.B. King went on to enjoy a long career and a longer life. He was loved. He was admired. He succeeded without the semi-literate menace and unvarnished veneer of his peers. King regularly appeared onstage in tuxes and suits, yet was rarely accused of selling-out or compromising his music for the sake of a larger audience.

With an openness that mirrored his personality, King played and recorded with just about everyone. Fellow blues stalwarts, rock stars, jazz bands—King was always eager to explore, recombine and experiment.

Forty-six years after the fact, it's hard to appreciate just how radical it was to feature strings on a blues song, but that's just what King did on “The Thrill Is Gone”. Naturally, it became his signature song.

B.B. King amassed over ten-thousand gigs before falling ill at one last autumn in the same city that birthed his landmark album. He outlived all of his contemporaries, becoming—fittingly enough—the last of the first-generation of amplified bluesmen left standing.

It's not an overstatement to say that King's death is more than the passing of a single man—it's practically the expiration of a genre. A genre that electrified not only the blues, but so many of us.

In the deaths of those who informed our lives, our own mortality is made painfully clear. With another leaf fallen from the tree of my musical loves, the barren branches of winter move one step nearer.

Bless you, B.B. And thank you.