Self-parking car made believer out of me

Mark Morford

Friday, October 27, 2006


The new 2007 Lexus LS, the ridiculously silent ultra-lux Valium-on-wheels hunk of $75,000 Japanese transportation from Toyota's most prestige brand, can now parallel-park itself.

Here is how it works: You pull up alongside the car just in front of a parking space. You put your car in reverse, which activates the rear camera and sensors. A diagram of arrows appears on the nav screen. You indicate where you want the car to go. You press Park and let go of the wheel.

Then: Take a sip of your Remy Martin and send $50,000 to the Republican Party as you silently give thanks to the gods of Saudi Arabia and corporate conglomerates that your tax bracket is so stratospheric that it still affords you a V8 luxury automobile in the age of war and unchecked gluttony and the meltdown of Antarctica. The steering wheel starts to spin and the tires start to turn and millions of years of human evolution converge on a single surreal moment, and in about 10 seconds, the car has parked itself.

And there you have it. Proof of God. Proof that God, clearly, has a wicked sense of humor. There is simply no other explanation.

Oh yes, God exists. Simply put: God exists because she allowed us to invent something as ridiculous and beautiful and stupid and wonderful and surreal and genius as a car that parallel-parks itself. And what's more, we see it as a good thing. We will pay extra for it. It has value. (And, trust me, yes, I see the value in this feature. I have seen the retirement-community crowd try to parallel-park. It is not pretty).

There is this deep mystical belief taken from I-don't-really-remember-where, a sect of Sufism or maybe a secret tribe of Buddhism or some other luminous subset that terrifies Bush and the Midwest and the Christian Coalition (what doesn't, really?), a belief that claims God created the universe and all that it contains -- flowers and flies, cigarettes and lip balm, jackhammers and burritos, dark matter and black holes -- because, well, because she was bored.

Or, rather, because she wanted to know herself. Because she wanted to see divinity made manifest in ways and forms and via dimensions we can only begin to understand. Because it was just her and a martini the size of Canis Major and she had 18 kajillion channels of HD digital cable and yet not a single thing was on and so she went OK, this totally sucks, what can I do to entertain myself, make things interesting, add some zing to this vast blank canvas?

Behold, there were gases. Then, atoms. Swirling fiery microcosmic things that collided and congealed and copulated like naked hot-tubbing honeymooners on ecstasy. And lo, it was good.

Then: Mass. Planets. Volcanoes. Plants. Fish. Envelopes. Converse All-Stars. Four-dollar coffee drinks. Custom ring tones. Suddenly, just like that, a car that parallel-parks itself. And God went, whee! And God went, wow, those martinis are strong. And God went, wait, what the hell was I thinking? But it was too late.

There is this new book, a New York Times best-seller from renowned Oxford scientist and estimable atheist Richard Dawkins called "The God Delusion," and in this book Dawkins makes a nearly irrefutable case for the fact that God is this ridiculous and dangerous and ultimately absurd and fatal construct that we would do very, very well to completely remove from human consciousness.

God as some sort of supreme, judgmental mega-deity does not exist, believes Dawkins, and what's more, the fact that most people believe one does is the mark of a sort of grand idiocy and egotism that will, quite likely, be our downfall.

Normally, I'd be cheering. Normally, I'd be all over this fine book, extolling its virtues even as I disagree, on a mystical level, anyway, about the existence of a wicked delicious divine and luminous spark, a consciousness that connects us all and pumps hot moist love into the engine of the cosmos and lets us all sense that there is something beyond fast food and Jenna Bush and cell phones. But as far as a bitter Christian God is concerned, one that trumps all others and likes war and hates gays and invented everything in a week? I'm right there with you, Rich.

Except, well, not this time. Not in this particular column, anyway. Dawkins, clearly, has not seen the car that parallel-parks itself. He has not seen the slew of new digital cameras the size of a pack of cards that shoot video and play MP3's and translate text. He has not seen $800 Valentino iPod cases. Plasma TVs with 103-inch screens. Bling brand bottled water, 50 bucks a pop, each bottle covered in Swarovski crystals. And God went, whoa.

Maybe we are like a giant tank of magical little Sea Monkeys, a huge glass-enclosed experiment that God saw in the back of a cosmic comic book one day, and so she sent in 4 billion proofs of purchase and 16 trillion box tops and she waited and waited and finally one day Cosmic FedEx finally delivered the package.

And she got all excited and set it all up and poured in the magical goop and then watched the tiny pink creatures mutate and mate and create their little cities and landscapes and mocha lattes and cars that park themselves. And lo, it was cute. For a while.

But perhaps she has exhausted this particular experiment. Perhaps boredom has set in. The tank is, after all, growing stale. The little creatures have lost their novel vibrancy and are intentionally soiling their own tank and breeding like weeds and God is perhaps just sighing, taking another long pull from the cosmic martini and saying no, that's not quite what I had in mind at all.

By the way, this new Lexus? It also has a special backseat. The backseat actually reclines. As it does, a footrest emerges. And then, with the press of a button, the seat vibrates. It has an electronic massager built into the seat, just like those hideously ugly but oh-my-God-I-want-one $2,000 leather recliner-massager numbers from Sharper Image.

And God went, OK, that's enough. Now you're just getting silly.