– Excerpt from ‘An Honest Attempt to Decode Linguistic Perception Models in Vehicular Verbalisation’ published in The Motorised Gentleman, winter edition 1953
I’ve been relishing Sydney traffic of late – be it in an exotic taxicab miming evasive manoeuvres, as a fellow passenger or, soft underbelly exposed, on a 150cc French motorbicycle with malheureux handling. The call of this magnificent city is rather literally begging for motorised traversal with its outrageous toll roads and slew of new super motorway tunnels in which a flying machine could be touching down, so vigorously a boring was accomplished.
These cavernous connectors excite the heart of the true motorised explorer; a link between worlds hitherto separated by Darwinian rubric – the sage laws of nature which, by a twist of fate, were bereft of the opportunity to conjoin with the ingenuity of internal combustion when Darwin famously exclaimed to Nicolas Otto over the phone, “Well fuck me then. I looked at it more so as a set of vague probabilities!” after he missed his train to visit the Gasmotoren Fabrik in the town of Deutz.
Today, the sheer delight in the face of these wonders of modern infrastructure can, of course, be measured in litres of gasoline, shall one decide to turn the ignition and foray the divide of New South Wales’ Emerald City. The journey “below world” through the Nexum Occidentalem (Westconnex), will take you from the hedonistic eastern coastlines, marked with mostly naked, good-looking people drinking coffee, to the backwater western outskirts, where no good coffee can be found and cannibalism is rampant.
[…]
At 50 kilometres per hour(! sic) your strained faculties are wrestling a jumbled reality with one heavy, calloused foot on the accelerator. The signals and messages, shapes and sounds are compounding on you with intense fervour, interconnected only by a trusty strip of asphalt spanning the polarity of the hurtling landscape. Only 10 kilometres per hour more and your eyeballs, as biologists have long confirmed, would be turning in on themselves, showing you the other side of your cornea – otherwise known as the Edge or the Globlicki Effect in recapitulated phylogenesis for emission theory – which is known to instigate homosexuality in men and make women plain crazy.
Despite the dangers, to understand road and maritime magnificence is to understand ourselves. An unsurmountable obstacle for the unmotorised, loosely attached to sandals, often seen eating raw leather from discarded boots by the roadside. A lived experience in the civility of the polite gentlemen engaging in these exploratory endeavours with nothing but lead in their veins, to whom we have to humbly lend our ear, wish we to ever comprehend for ourselves what drives these remarkable exploits and concordantly our innermost desires. Their language however is an enigma to this day; a mystery conveyed through exotic wave patterns yet to be laid bare to the curious mind like the luminiferous aether before it.
What aperture of the spirit can be employed to decipher the message? Expression, while motorised, is effectively limited by the vehicle’s ability to sound. How are we to be enlightened when the voice is reduced to a horn? What’s expressed by a flat circular steel diaphragm acted on by an electromagnet in the sound-making devices of auto-motorists is fickle. To no one’s particular surprise, the aforementioned laws of the gene have not evolved us to discern properly the intent behind a fellow motorist’s vulgar honk or the gentle beep. But the answer could be closer than you think…
[…]
In lieu of such an elusive decoding contraption which would also have to reconcile with the limitations of the Rutherford model of the atom, I will attempt in the following to provide an abridged guide to the linguistic model of the motorway raconteurs.
Beep – “Erm.”
Bee-beep – “Erm-hm”
Beeep – “If you don’t mind.”
… Beep – “Excuse me, kind sir.”
Beep-beep – “Hey!”
Beep, beeep – “ Excuse me!”
Beep…beeep – “Excuse you!”
Beep, be-beep – “ Come on!”
Beep-beep-beep – “Buddy!”
Beeep… [thumbs up] (ironically) – “Oh yeah?!”
Beep-beep, beep-beep – “Brother, this is not Shenyang!”
Beep-beep-beep – “I don’t need you to tell me it’s green. I need you to wash your car.”
Beeeeeeep – “What the fuck are you doing?!”
Beep, beep – “Oh, you found it?! That’s great.”
Beep-beeeeeep – “You’re in this lane, too?”
Be-beep, beeeep – “Use your instincts here – it’s only suggesting you take that corner doing 85!”
Beep, beep, beeeeep – “Can you believe this absolute twat? On a Wednesday!?!”
Beeeeeeeeep – “Hey asshole, you’re in your car! Wake up!!!”
Beep-beep, bee… – “Okay, sorry. You drive. Your car your rules.”
Bee-beep, bee-beep, beeep – “You park like you fuck, you silly goose!”
Beeep, beeep, beeeeep – “Get out of your fucking car!”
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep – “Get the fuck back into your car before I forget myself!”
Bee-beep, be-beep – “Oh you’re from Tamarama too? No, you go ahead… Please. We’re all civilised here, miss.”
Beep-beeeeeeeeep – “Oh now you’re a pedestrian?!”
Beeeeeeeeep, beep-beep-beep – “I’ll flip your car! I swear, I’ll flip it!!!”
… Beep-beep-beep-bep-beep, beep… Beeep – “Yes. YES!… I don’t give a fuck!”
Bee-bee-beep – “No, no, it’s all good. Let’s find out if your shitty Hyundai can really fit into my boot!”
Beeeep, be-beep – “Your dog just called me a far-left cuck. Get a hold of that asshole before I drive you both off the road.”
Beep, bee-beep, beep, beeep – “Found the indicator?! Well, thank god you have your kids in the car or you would be indicating backwards with a hyperextended elbow on your way to ED.”
Beep-beep, beeeep-beep, beeeeeeeep – “I’m going to tear up your ass so wide, even you’ll be able to drive through it.”
Beep-beep, beeep, beeep, beeeep, beeeeeeeeep – “That’s right. That’s exactly what I’ve been mouthing for the last 800 metres!”
Beeeeeep, beep-beeeeeep, beep – “I don’t care if they take my licence away, if you come any closer, I’ll roll down the window and take a bite out of your leg!”
Beeeeeeeeep, beeeeeeeeeep, beeeeeeep, beeeeeeeep – “You will stop for petrol at some point and I will stab you in the pelvis with a sharpened bone.”
Beeeep-beep – “Of course your car is all banged up, sweetie.”
MD’A
The Blow Show 