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Auto Auto Wash

August 20, 2025
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My car,

A 2023 Kia Soul named Celeste,

Got a wash today.

She’d gotten the spattery dust-film that comes with rain

So this time round I paid two bucks extra for wax.

Nowadays

A car owner may get asked CAR WASH TODAY? on the pump display that has the card reader,

And a YES answer gives you three options

And I chose the wax one

And the receipt I got for my gas also printed the code

That I entered when I went through the carwash drive-thru

That greenlit the wax job as a pleasant nonhuman voice asked me to please pull ahead slowly.

.

Celeste is clean now

But there’s 20% chance of rain tomorrow,

40% Friday,

But the wax might make a difference in precipitation residue

But I’m pretty sure Celeste is indifferent

But auto-respect must be paid.

The All-Cliché Revue Review

May 11, 2015
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2012-06-26_11-39-47_983

“The new social media have created a self-awareness and self-absorption that puts the 70s–the so-called ‘Me Decade’–to shame.” –Public Domain

*****

the all-cliché revue

BOOM shakalakalaka BOOM shakalakalaka

DRINK the KOOL-AID
Kum Ba Yah.
DRINK the KOOL-AID
Kum Ba Yah.

I know you are, but what am I?
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
I cross my heart and hope to die.
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
And those who don’t can go to hell!
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
IMHO ROFL.
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.

Now look what you made me do.
NOW look what you made me do.
NOW LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO:
DRINK the KOOL-AID.
Kum Ba Yah.

*****

Review. To view again. First we view with our senses, then we view with our thoughts. It is possible to keep up one end of a conversation using nothing but cliché, quotation, and clichéd quotation. In this century the terms meme and trope have become linguistic common coin. In this century no one need wonder what meme and trope mean: here is what happens when they are searched for.

meme
mēm/
noun
noun: meme; plural noun: memes
  1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
    • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
      trope
      trōp/
      noun
      noun: trope; plural noun: tropes
      1. 1.
        a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.
        “he used the two-Americas trope to explain how a nation free and democratic at home could act wantonly abroad”
        • a significant or recurrent theme; a motif.
          “she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope”
      verb
      verb: trope; 3rd person present: tropes; gerund or present participle: troping; past tense: troped; past participle: troped
      1. 1.
        create a trope.

We have been deluged with cute kitty-cats and pithy words-to-live-by. We group-mind ourselves into nonselves. The shorthand of our thoughts becomes ever more semantically empty. Have some Kool-Aid. BOOM shakalakalaka. Kum Ba Yah.

Investigation, using 21st-century search techniques, reveals that “Drink the Kool-Aid” refers to a mass suicide of a religious cult; that “Kum Ba Yah” is an entreaty to the Lord to “Come by here;” and that “Boom shaka-laka-laka” is a chorus lyric in the song “I Want To Take You Higher.”

Have a nice day.