In America today, nation of the automobile that it is, all of you probably drive cars, with the notable exceptions, of course, of my younger readers (teacupmammoths.com is, after all, rapidly overtaking Teletubbies as the number one source of subversive children’s programming) and my Amish readers (to whom the daily contents of my blog are delivered on a roll of vellum via carrier pigeon). And as all drivers are wont to do, y’all probably worry from time to time about certain of the dangers that are associated with driving, especially those of you who, like myself, are involved in the super mega offroad racing industry. And indeed, who doesn’t get into a fender bender now and then, or back into a sign in the parking lot, or get chased through a major city by a killer cyborg from the future? In situations such as these, most of us are probably thinking, “Golly gee, I hope my car doesn’t explode in an enormous theatrical fireball visible for miles in any direction and consuming everything within fifty yards in a seething holocaust of flaming death!” To you I say, just be thankful that you don’t live in Smallville.
Smallville, best known as the town in which Superman grew up, happens to be the site of many other unusual things, one of which just happens to be what has to be far and away the highest per capita number of exploding cars anywhere in the world. If exploding cars were fried chickens,
Okay, like I said way back in paragraph one, most of us have probably either been in or witnessed a car accident at some point, and the fact that we are still all walking around, eating our breakfasts and reading witty and ebullient blogs would tend to suggest that in most cases, the car concerned did not detonate with the force of a Patriot missile. In Smallville, however, this is not the case, for there even running over a squirrel, small child, or other woodland creature can easily ignite the contents of one’s gas tank.
Now, my real beef here is not so much that cars there seem to blow up with unusual frequency, so much as the fact that when they do, it is with a force altogether beyond that which a car is generally thought capable of. All I can say is that everyone there must be using the reeeaaaal high octane stuff, because when cars in Smallville blow up, they are generally thrown at least 20 feet into the air, flip over a few times, and then settle to the ground a good distance away as numerous secondary explosions are set off as the fire reaches other flammable automotive contents such as beer cans, laptop batteries, and the warp core.
I know what you’re thinking, there is no way that a car can explode with that much. Perhaps you believe that I am, so to speak “pulling your leg” or as the writhingly sentient funguous denizens of the 7th Moon of Zaar say as they float indescribably between the loathsome columns of their ancient and unmentionable red-litten cities of onyx beyond the penultimate gate of dreams, “beating you about the nostrils with a languid weasel.” If only it were so, but alas, it is all too true. Smallville cars explode with so much force that Osama bin Laden sits around in his cave in his Optimus Prime Underoos eating Cheez Whiz out of the jar watching every episode he can get his hands on in hopes that he may unravel the secret of making cars explode like that. Indeed, our nation hardly need even maintain a nuclear arsenal at all these days, so long as we keep on hand a ready supply of Smallville cars to drop on the cities of our foes. Recently scientists in fact have calculated that
If you watch carefully, in some later episodes you shall see that the logos on all the cars are obscured with black tape, which no doubt is a result of the myriad protestations of America’s automakers, who have taken exception to the fact that their cars behave in the least of collisions as if they were made entirely from dynamite and run off a mixture of jet fuel and plutonium.
On the bright side, Superman seems to have a power which was hitherto unknown to us; for he alone is able to guess with complete accuracy whether a given car is going to blow up or not, always running up and rescuing anyone trapped inside just in the very nick of time when detonation is immanent, while taking his time when the car is fated not to combust. He is so super, that he is never wrong. Like, never has he gone and pulled someone out of a wreck and run away only to see it continue to just sit there, nor has he ever taken his time pulling Lex Luthor from the remains of a Porsche only to see his nemesis to be consumed by a blazing inferno. Narf, indeed.
In short, should any among y’all, by clever writing, periodic crossovers, or any of your more common rifts in the space-time continuum, find yourselves in Smallville, I would recommend that you simply get a bike.
