one unhatched-chicken, two unha...


          After my car arrives, what will be the first alteration? 

          The badges—forward of each side mirror—will be replaced.

          Basic models are 'pure', cabriolet's 'passion', and limited editions each have their own.


          Mine will arrive with passion badges (in about a month) and I will immediately replace them with wampeter, which Smart Madness has custom made for me.


          Kurt Vonnegut coined the word in 1963 with the novel which begins:  'nothing in this book is true'.  Something which connects or ties an otherwise unconnected group of people together is a wampeter.

          Some salesman and loan officers; a few mechanics whom I've yet to meet; me; my family, friends and neighbors; you; the person who made the above badge, and then picked up her iphone (which has a green velvet case) to look it up and ordered Cat's Cradle using her Amazon app; other smart car owners (some of whom I'll exchange waves with in passing, others I'll exchange ideas with online, and a few others I may actually meet at the 2015 Portland smart car rally...which does not exist outside of this sentence as far as I know) — none of these people are in any way actually connected by this vehicle, this tool, this mode of transport for one or two people and an average-sized grey striped cat.  Nobody actually thinks a mystical-phantasmagorically-cosmic connection has actually been created by artfully combining plastic, metal, rubber, glass, cloth, leather, and matte grey paint, into the object which is currently sitting in the rain, in France, in a huge lot surrounded by thousands of other micro-cars.  I realize, nonetheless, that it is harmless to ponder this connection as if it actually existed.  So I ponder.  Busy, busy, busy.

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