It is said that a picture is worth one thousand words.
A screenshot is worth 46.
A car was removed from Lady Bird Lake on Monday over here by the boat ramp after a 9-1-1 call came in overnight reporting gunshot noises in the area. There may or may not be a single bullet hole in the car’s rear bumper. The report is that it looks like one.
The situation, of course, is dire. With headlines about a possible serial killer in Austin already dominating the news, we knew no man was safe. Now we have to tell our cars to keep their wits about them too.
Let’s be clear: There is no chance that Sunday night’s incident was simply standard gun violence, the kind that happens in cities and towns all around the country. If it happened on the same seven-mile long stretch of water surrounded by a city of one million people, it must have been related to the exact same thing responsible for the killings of those four people who’ve been found in the water so far this year. Much like police activity, there is no way that any gunfire in Austin right now is not related to this serial killer. It’s impossible.
With that established:
I’m scared that the movie Cars is real, that cars are sentient, and that cars in Austin are killing each other.
What if this has been going on for years, and we’ve only recently noticed because people have gotten caught in the crossfire? What if cars, for decades, have been coming to the shores of the Colorado River/Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake to murder one another in the dead of night, and have been using guns to do it? What if cars can only be killed by single bullets deposited just below their trunk? Lightning McQueen, save yourself!
The worst part of this development is that Austin is becoming a hub of automobile racing. Formula 1 has a grand prix here. NASCAR has three races here. There was an incident a few months ago where street racers evidently took over the city (I missed it happening, personally, but the New York Post was all over it). Austin is a city of races, and if cars aren’t safe within our city limits, I don’t see how that can continue.
We need the police cars on high alert along the shoreline. We might even need to ask the firetrucks to help.
As for me and you? Well, I don’t know if you have a car, but I’m going to need to have a talk tonight with my nine-year-old Jeep Compass.
