B'ings: Car Commercials

 

            Hey, all, welcome (back if you truly like my pointless drivel) to From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin! As oft is the case, you are reading a piece by myself, Tim Cubbin.

            First off, let’s talk about why I’m here typing for hours trying to come up with cohesion which you will be done reading in two minutes (if you actually stay for the whole piece, I know I’m boring, but if you actually make it to the last three words in this post, you are THE BEST!). I actually happen to be qualified as a journalist. I went to college, majored in English, minored in journalism. I’m totally certified. So why am I doing this blog instead of writing for a newspaper or reading the teleprompter in a cable news studio? I’m actually legally disabled, seizures and brain damage. Finding a job in my condition is very difficult, but I want to write and have people read what I write, so I do this blog semiprofessionally. I don’t actually get paid, but I spend my time doing regular thirty-some-odd day-to-day activities and am writing a young adult novel series, and when I’m not doing that, I’m working on this blog out of the goodness of my heart for absolutely no money payment. I’m nice like that.

            If you’ve ever been here before, I’ve promised frequent posts, but it’s been a while since I posted. I do have a good explanation for that. I injured my hand really badly, so badly I don’t think you want to know. Because of this, I couldn’t type, and I didn’t want to have anyone else type for me, so I took a hiatus. But now I’m back! You might have noticed I’ve done two other posts frequently (actually on the same day I started this post), and a few other reviews when my hand allowed it, but nothing in the way of B’ings.

            If you haven’t been to a B’ing before, you probably don’t know what the heck a B’ing is. Well, it’s a dirty word minus four letters, which is a slang synonym for complaining. I honestly hope you now know what I mean, but if you don’t, I can’t help you there.

            You may have noticed I’m a little snarky when I write. It’s just my personality, me being me, but actually a lot nicer than I often am. I keep my jokes genial, just for fun without being seriously insulting. If you know me personally (as some of you readers might, and you are reading this out of a sense of obligation because we’re friends or family), you know how I am. I try to add a piece of myself in all my writing, fiction or nonfiction.

This is what I consider an editorial. You may want to classify this as an essay, but this is what I’m calling it, so there it is. I also write essays, being an English major and spending ten years in college. But I don’t personally think of B’ings as essays.

I also say that everything on my blog is my own personal, Tim Cubbin opinion. I’m not expecting you to read this and say “gee, Tim Cubbin makes a good point, I agree with him!” I’m actually expecting for you to feel otherwise. I just tell you like I feel since this is From MY mind. If you don’t agree with what I type, I leave that up to you, but I hope you still want to read past this point.

Anyhoo, I’ve given a super-long introduction and you probably want to get to the good stuff, why we’re actually here. Yes, I lured you here with the promise of me complaining about car commercials. (If you’re actually still here with me reading this, you are THE BEST!) So what could I possibly mean? I actually have two points to make. The first is car safety features. The second is what cars are doing in the commercials.

Let’s start with car safety features. I’ll pick a few for example, explain why I’m complaining, then I’ll move on to my second pointless point.

How about self-parking? Being disabled, I can’t drive, but I pay lots of attention to commercials and have opinions on just about every one I see. So, have you seen commercials that show cars parking themselves? I wouldn’t want to trust that. Having seen people parallel-park and having difficulty, how accurate do you think a machine can be? You need to take several things into consideration when you park.

One: The size of your car. Two: The size of the cars surrounding where you want to park. And three: The amount of room you have for the parking space. I don’t feel like a car would be able to account for these three considerations on its own. So much with that can go wrong. So I feel it’s dangerous, not just for your car, but the cars surrounding your car. It doesn’t seem to me like the entire precision can be executed perfectly.

Next, how about automatic braking? You have cars that if it detects danger in front of the car and automatically stops the car to avoid forward collision. But what about backward collision? Sure, YOUR car stops to protect it from what’s in front of it, but if your car automatically stops and you have cars BEHIND you. Their car might not have automatic braking. Which means… CRASH! You’re rear-ended! In THEORY it seems safe, but in actual EXECUTION, there does seem to me that you might just have a wee bit of a problem.

Or, let’s think about lane control? Your car may be drifting off to the side, and it might compute that you’re driving over the lane and automatically turn to fit the lane. But what if you need to pass someone? Your car might compute that you’re out of your lane and drive you right into the car you’re trying to pass.

And, let’s think about self-driving cars? Would you trust your car to drive itself? There are so many factors that go into driving, like other cars, traffic lights, stops, yields, traffic circles, speed limits, crossings, detours, so much that can go wrong. A car is a machine that can’t properly think for itself. Would you trust that? I certainly don’t! UNLESS! EVERY car on the road was self-driving. Hey, maybe that would somewhat prevent accidents? But for some people, they love driving. I’ve been in cars with plenty of people who drive for a living and love their job. (I’m on Medicaid that covers my car trips to my doctor’s appointments, so I know firsthand how the drivers working for the companies they work for.) Some people feel like driving is fun. And yes, you have people who race professionally (and not like the maniacs on my street at night who cause at least one accident a year). Do you honestly want to have a joy or a passion stripped away from you? I sure wouldn’t. So not only would a person have a dangerous travel if cars drove themselves, the fun aspect just wouldn’t be there.

Next, we’re going to discuss content shown in car commercials. Some commercials actually show cars speeding. You might see a car in a commercial flying by at 100 MPH! YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THAT! I see no reason for a car to drive over 80 MPH (in my opinion even over 75 MPH is too fast at times). I mean, sure, you have a speed gauge, but it should not be going as fast as it is in some car commercials.

Another pointless feeling is also showing cars doing things they shouldn’t be doing. The commercials show that you CAN ride off-road, after crazy obstacles, and stunts; but that truly does not mean that you SHOULD. Sure you CAN decide to stick your tongue onto a flagpole in winter just to prove it won’t freeze your tongue to it, but SHOULD you do it. There would be germs all over it, you could get sick, and it is actually possibly for your tongue to stick, “A Christmas Story” does not lie on that (I’ve never tried it, but I have a friend I PERSONALLY have do it because he COULD do it, and he totally regretted that choice). I have plenty of other anecdotes, but some would be either too graphic that this blog site would not allow it, or else this post would get even more boring than it already is (I’m even bored writing this, but unfortunately I got this far so that not finishing this post is not an option). Doing these could actually be really dangerous. You could be doing these activities and might not be able to regret doing them if they go wrong.

My point is, some of the things you see in car commercials that seem useful, fun, cool, what-have-you, but the content in car commercials just don’t seem practical to me. But again, because of my disability, I can’t drive, I haven’t seen through a driver’s position (well, actually I did once park my dad’s car in his garage and I was so nervous because I knew if I even scratched the car, I’d be paying for it for the rest of my life and managed to park perfectly, but driving felt like so much pressure to me), so all of this is just my passenger-seat view, and you honestly don’t have to listen or agree with me on anything I’ve typed, and I welcome your disagreement and feedback.

So now, we’re wrapping this horrible editorial up, but first, I have a few things to say (at the top of the list is that if you’re still reading this up to this point, you are THE BEST!). This blog, as I said, contains book reviews, essays, editorials, original short nonfiction and short fiction, original poetry, all kinds of other content, so if you liked this post (and honestly, I’m surprised if you did because even I didn’t like typing this post after breaching 1,000 words, but I just couldn’t leave this post behind me) feel free to check out some of my other work. I keep busy and try to post frequently so you readers have something to read as I’m sure some of you are quite demanding and want more From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin, so I hope you keep reading, I’d love to hear from you, feel free to comment, like, share, retweet, whatever you can do on the platform you found this post on, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!