Viking Van

My car came from a place called Joe Holland Hyundai, which was in the news recently because they'd decided to file suit against the federal government to avoid having to provide contraceptives to their employees under the healthcare laws that will soon take effect in our nation.

I'm beginning to appreciate my decision to have the Joe Holland name plate taken off my car before I drove it off the lot. Not only is it silly to drive around with someone else's name on your car, but I don't want anyone thinking I had aligned myself with that dealership in any way.

On one hand they give excellent service and their staff is always dressed professionally and everything is very clean; that's what I pay for. On the other hand I must acknowledge that some of my money is going to fund Joe Holland's ass clown religion.

Even today I had my car serviced there. Even today I was riding to work in their courtesy shuttle.

Watching a cross dangling from the rear view mirror swing back and forth, I suddenly had an idea.

I was thinking of an episode of This American Life called "That One Thing You're Not Supposed To Do" that I had listened to a few days ago. There's a segment in it in which some illegal aliens turn themselves in to the border patrol in order to help those already being detained from the inside. They were infiltrating the system.

I was like them. I was infiltrating the system! I was inside the inner workings and there was potential to do harm. I slunk down a little in my seat and thought.

I could rip the cardstock sign that proclaimed that God, did indeed, love me, off the dashboard and crumble it up, but I felt like this would lead the driver into some dogmatic fit and I'd end up having to walk the rest of the way.

I could fart some noxious offense from my bowels but I've never been one of those people that can conjure those on command, and it wasn't really what I was looking for in my new guerrilla style.

Pulling into a stoplight, being momentarily distracted from my mission by the SUV next to me with the stick figure family on the back, and casting a hate bubble around the whole thing, it came to me. It was one of those beautiful moments, like pacing your steps so accurately that some asshole doesn't stand there and hold the door open for you, making you do that run-thing and becoming an asshole yourself.

I rolled the window down and leaned out slightly. I needed Soccer Mom to see this. I was about to invade her day like a viking. A calm, blank-faced viking, leaning just a little out of the Joe Holland Call For Pick Up! Courtesy Shuttle, and flipping her the bird. Flipping her, and her dumbass little kids, and their whole way of life, the bird. Fuck You, from Joe Holland.

She did the Ignore thing and sped off. The kids just kinda starred but the boy in the back was laughing crazily as only little kids can.

The next car was even better. Sleek, clean. A coiffed man hiding behind his sunglasses. It was hard to even stare-break into his world but when he finally noticed me I was giving him a V with my fingers and wiggling my tongue between them. Call For Pick Up! He let the shuttle pull out in front of him, hopefully committing it to memory. Remember just which shuttle gave you such an inviting offer for when you call later that morning.

I don't think this is how vikings acted. But I'm sure this is how they felt. I'm pushing my way into people's days, riding my Joe Holland Viking Longship onto their shores and pissing them off. Hopefully they'd load their abused feelings into cellular catapults and retaliate.

At the last light before my stop there was a black biker guy idling his hog. I didn't think the two maneuvers I was already referring to as "classics" in my head would be the best tack to take with him but I had to do something.

In the end all I could think to do was hold up my Paula Deen cookbook and nod.

I'm just kidding about that last part, I don't have a Paula Deen cookbook.

You think I need diabetes?