Abishai100
VIP Member
- Sep 22, 2013
- 4,957
- 250
This 'eco-humility' tale was inspired by the traffic-goosebumps film The Hitcher.
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Lance looked at his watch. He was driving down a sunny dry stretch of road in Arizona on a hot summer day in 2015. Lance took a much-needed vacation from his 'sociology of computers' course at MIT; he had been teaching the course for the last 5 terms at MIT while working on a paper assessing the social symbolism of the solar-powered calculator in American society. Lance was a solar-powered calculator 'nut' and had studied its use (sociologically) for the last 10 years of his scholarly career. He was about to encounter an 'apparition,' which would change the way he looked at eco-hypocrisy.
As his Ford Escape rolled along the road, Lance marveled at the engineering success of the eco-hybrid vehicle. He felt giddy about balancing cosmopolitan life with ecological maturity. His Escape was his baby, his treasure, and he was using it to temporarily escape the daily grind of his solar-powered calculator studies. As he made his way around a curvy road on a desert stretch, he saw what seemed to be the silhouette of a rather large man in the distance swinging something large (something like a sword) around his body by the side of the road and under the gleam of the sun.
As Lance's Escape moved closer and closer to this strange 'highwayman,' Lance gave a gasp of shock when he realized the stranger was wearing a black suit-and-tie and what appeared to be a mask made out of human skin! The sword-like object Lance spotted from a distance in the stranger's hands was in fact a chainsaw! Lance realized this 'highway man' was some kind of chainsaw-wielding super-psycho (and possibly a cannibal!). Lance put his foot on the gas and did everything possible to have his Escape zoom past this dangerous road-element.
Lance drove right past the 'highway man,' and when he pulled into the next town, he drove straight to the police station and reported his 'sighting.' The cops gave a good laugh and told Lance he must have heard the 'folk tale' in the region by word-of-mouth and then 'hallucinated' the 'highway man' while driving down a hot road on a sun-beaming hot day in Arizona. The cops explained that local legend tells of drivers spotting a strange chainsaw-wielding human-skin-mask wearing stranger dancing on the side of the road, allowing drivers to see him if they had performed some act of ecological responsibility.
Lance ran out of the police station and headed home. He realized he had spotted the 'highway man,' since he was working on a sociological study of solar-powered calculator use. He realized his study about the worldly eco-symbolic solar-powered calculator made him a 'human of eco-intelligence' and that that's why he spotted the 'highway man.' Lance wondered if he should take the sighting as a sign of continued motivation for his studies or if the 'highway man' served as some kind of unspoken 'dark cynicism' omen about the futility of eco-responsibility in the post-Industrialization era and seriously considered putting a footnote-question in his MIT dissertation: "Should humanity decorate the solar-powered calculator?"
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Lance looked at his watch. He was driving down a sunny dry stretch of road in Arizona on a hot summer day in 2015. Lance took a much-needed vacation from his 'sociology of computers' course at MIT; he had been teaching the course for the last 5 terms at MIT while working on a paper assessing the social symbolism of the solar-powered calculator in American society. Lance was a solar-powered calculator 'nut' and had studied its use (sociologically) for the last 10 years of his scholarly career. He was about to encounter an 'apparition,' which would change the way he looked at eco-hypocrisy.
As his Ford Escape rolled along the road, Lance marveled at the engineering success of the eco-hybrid vehicle. He felt giddy about balancing cosmopolitan life with ecological maturity. His Escape was his baby, his treasure, and he was using it to temporarily escape the daily grind of his solar-powered calculator studies. As he made his way around a curvy road on a desert stretch, he saw what seemed to be the silhouette of a rather large man in the distance swinging something large (something like a sword) around his body by the side of the road and under the gleam of the sun.
As Lance's Escape moved closer and closer to this strange 'highwayman,' Lance gave a gasp of shock when he realized the stranger was wearing a black suit-and-tie and what appeared to be a mask made out of human skin! The sword-like object Lance spotted from a distance in the stranger's hands was in fact a chainsaw! Lance realized this 'highway man' was some kind of chainsaw-wielding super-psycho (and possibly a cannibal!). Lance put his foot on the gas and did everything possible to have his Escape zoom past this dangerous road-element.
Lance drove right past the 'highway man,' and when he pulled into the next town, he drove straight to the police station and reported his 'sighting.' The cops gave a good laugh and told Lance he must have heard the 'folk tale' in the region by word-of-mouth and then 'hallucinated' the 'highway man' while driving down a hot road on a sun-beaming hot day in Arizona. The cops explained that local legend tells of drivers spotting a strange chainsaw-wielding human-skin-mask wearing stranger dancing on the side of the road, allowing drivers to see him if they had performed some act of ecological responsibility.
Lance ran out of the police station and headed home. He realized he had spotted the 'highway man,' since he was working on a sociological study of solar-powered calculator use. He realized his study about the worldly eco-symbolic solar-powered calculator made him a 'human of eco-intelligence' and that that's why he spotted the 'highway man.' Lance wondered if he should take the sighting as a sign of continued motivation for his studies or if the 'highway man' served as some kind of unspoken 'dark cynicism' omen about the futility of eco-responsibility in the post-Industrialization era and seriously considered putting a footnote-question in his MIT dissertation: "Should humanity decorate the solar-powered calculator?"
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