Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Agent 1080 Contemplates Life's Most Profound Questions; Buys Another '68 Fury


  Lean Burn Technologies Compound, Cooking Lake, Ab: Following an extended period of near-total seclusion and total sensory deprivation ensconced in the seductive confines of  leather-lined luxury, Agent 1080 has emerged from his comfortable cocoon and looked fresh and youthful when he met with reporters at the All-You-Can-Eat perogy buffet over tempting stacks of bacon-encrusted carbo-balls
  "I had a lot of time to reflect while driving my late-model safety-balloon car; I wasn't looking at the temp or watching the gas gauge fall over".
  Reporters leaned in to hear the newly enlightened 1080 praise his economical-front-wheel-drive-V6-automatic-4-door-sedan-with-airbags-and-child-proof latches,
  "All that extra time to think about something other than what was about to break, it was a real revelation... I felt...

Free.

Agent 1080: Thinker. Visionary.
  Free to pursue a meaningful existence! Study art, languages, philosophy! I had thousands of hours of free time to do anything other than fix another Christ-forsaken Plymouth!
  I spent most of it in the city library, poring over the endless stacks of wisdom and philosophy, architecture and music; all seemingly preserved for generations just for me to discover and feast upon!"
  "For months I read and listened. The classics... Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. Then more- Luther, Calvin, Descartes; on and on I read for months and months! I was devouring this lifestyle! I felt like I had a purpose! No more mindlessly wrenching on grubby old clunkers for the shallow gratification of the smell of burning rubber! I was... a thinker."
  "Eventually I began to see a vision for my own existence shaping up, a new, whole and balanced 1080 with a clear purpose and unshakeable faith in the integrity of humanity...
   Well, it was inevitable that I would stumble upon the complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche; had I not decided to work chronologically through the stack, I might have saved a little time."
  "So, everything is pointless and futile, and art is the only worthwhile endeavor. Well, there you go. That answers a lot of questions. Kind of sums it up, really."
 When asked how all of this deep and profound contemplation changed his life, 1080 replied,  "Well, I figured it was time to buy a '68 Fury."
  One reporter asked if it was true that 1080 already owned at least a half a dozen of that same car, to which 1080 replied, "Yes, but I thought those gave my life meaning; this one celebrates the meaninglessness of it."
A moment to reflect, and contemplate '68 Plymouths.
  "This optional vinyl top, for instance; pretty much screams 'God is dead', and for me, the sweet red pinstripes really drive home the realization there is nothing in the world of any inherent importance. I'm going to put Cragars on it ASAP."
The President is, unsurprisingly, unable to be reached for comment. He was last seen carving obscene crop circles in his field with his shitty, hoodless 16-horse lawn tractor. He is dressed in full suburban assault camo: khaki driving cap askew under bright orange earmuffs, shiny black wingtips hammering the demonically grabby clutch and brake. The shirt is inside out, but at a distance the illusion is one of controlled lawn demolition; crude and graceless, but oddly compelling. Smoke from tortured belts pours out from under the machine like a thundering bong rip, while the titanic G&T in the custom-made drink holder shudders and splashes a killing strength cocktail that strips paint from the machine as he careens it over some of the roughest terrain ever to be assigned the term "lawn". The expression is one of grim concentration, like Snoopy aiming his doomed doghouse for the enemy guns...
   All Agents are encouraged to avoid HQ for a couple of days until a certain numbed-out nihilist has reconciled his personal philosophy with the practical concerns of suburban lawn and yard maintenance; as, according to local bylaws, the worthless absurdity of it is apparently no excuse.