Too Much

How is it that everybody in this country owns a car? I want to know. Where do people get the credit for these massive steel contraptions? Who are these people? These people sitting in their cars at intersections, driving the streets and freeways, pulling in and out of parking lots and filling stations.

Even Joe Schmo owns a car. I'm lower than Joe Schmo. On my truly pathetic budget, I can't even imagine buying and paying off a vehicle. Maybe a beaten up Mazda recovered from the bottom of a lake. But a proper used car? No. So instead I bum rides and use the sidewalk network, sharing it with the homeless and the immigrants and the bicyclists and the people walking to their cars.

These single-family homes. How does everybody afford to take out a massive mortgage and maintain a lawn? Why do people even seek out the burden? It just seems so excessive. I almost want America to revert to a Stalinist situation where the population lives in functional, barren apartment blocks clustered around factories and serviced by 19th-century streetcars. Such an arrangement would be far cheaper and more comprehensible to me.

I hate hip-hop/rap. It's defining our culture. The songs are always blaring at intersections. The lyrics put enormous pressure on people to commodify themselves and live only for money and sex. Listeners are berated for being broke or lacking the high life. I feel guilty for not owning a camera phone. Hip-hop is altering people like a new genetic code. The mindless style and lingo have permeated almost everyone. The same goes for hipster culture, which is a dead-end.

This society is nuts. It's excessive. There are too many cars, too many single-family homes, and too many camera phones. Or maybe I'm missing something.