No. 4 for the win.

The polluting jalopy is this generation’s new Calvin & Hobbes-style wagon/sled.

Dear Dorothy,
Thanks for making my week.
Sincerely,
g3

I’m with tripleG – this is right where I am, and exactly what I needed to hear repeated back at me, better than I’ve been saying it.

During long tiring drives, I often felt that I’ve already crashed my car and I was in a coma induced dream of driving my car without me realising it. This strip conjured up that elusive feeling perfectly. Thanks.

I thought of the Calvin & Hobbes sled too, but maybe if the concept appears in a wide enough diversity of different times and cultures, it will be recognised as a universal device rather than the virile offspring of one particular mind.

Unfortunately Watterson has been referenced so many times that no one knows how to disconnected the sled from the device. I know I don’t.

I didn’t know Volvo made convertibles

It’s really interesting to add the question of our devotion to control to the issue of a lack of viable control. I think many people (Rand excluded, it seems) recognize that actual control is beyond reach; but to recognize that even the desire for control leaves our reach unbidden… that’s insight.

I love this one.

i like cat. just silently getting depressed and scared the whole time girl’s talking

To Jacob and David Thomsen: The gag of comic strip characters philosophizing while careering down a slope in a vehicle over which they had tenuous control goes back at least to Walt Kelly and _Pogo_. (I always wondered about those high-relief areas of the Okefenokee.) I think that’s a good thing about culture, that each generation gets to build upon the bits it likes of all the preceding
ones.

FYI, Dorothy has explicitly referenced the Calvin & Hobbes sled before: http://catandgirl.com/?p=1542

(Yes, I’ve been reading that long.)

Very nice work :)

“Off the Road” is a good read, by the way.

Can’t believe no one’s made reference to Christopher Walken’s character in “Annie Hall” yet.

E.A.S., thanks for the link — and Dorothy, thanks for the comics.

Atario: now you have, so it’s alright.

Every so often, as I drive down the road, I think, what would happen if I just went that way….

Left hand drive, right side of the road. Where are they, Bermuda?

Well, I sometimes drive on the wrong side of the road. I’ve developed an unhealthy sense of invulnerability, being an armored car driver.

Remember “Cat and Girl drive the Conversation” (http://catandgirl.com/?p=1488)? Girl is wearing those goggles again.

So true, so true. Dorothy you are on a roll.

This is so perfect

One could actually begin steering right or left off most roads at any given moment. But roads have a slight sphericality in one dimension, and volvomobile tire-tilting encourages travel at right angles to it. There are actually few or no exceptions to Newton’s laws, and this would not actually be one of them.

If any.

Ross Hershberger: Girl isn’t really driving on any side of the road. She’s actually weaving all over the road, if you look at the last three panels. In the last panel she seems to be almost perpendicular to the line down the middle. Maybe she has begun to drive off.

Jesus. That’s all I think about, and how I feel, every day. Apparently I have too much time on my hands. Or maybe I have mental problems. Who knows? Not me and certainly not you.

Yeah, I do this a lot.

this is a transcription of my inner monologue. I do wish I had Cat as my co-pilot though.

SHIRT!!

panel 3 to panel 4. Didn’t she just drive off the road there? Does Girl drive off the road all the time and no one calls her on it?

Did we really get stopped by the cops that night after the Dr. John concert stinking (redacted) and they just let us go.

Sometimes, it’s time to drive off the road.

Nice timing: http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html#

I feel it’s worth mentioning that I’ve been thinking about this strip every day since it was published. Good films tend to do that–it’s never happened with a comic strip before.

David Thomsen: we need to wait until most of modern culture is forgotten (yes, Calvin and Hobbes too) and enough Waterson homages turn up in historians’ hands without appropriate citations that people do believe it is a universal device.

I am sorry to say that this strip stuck the Billy Joel song in my head.

And the moral of the story is… don’t drive in a car from the mountain, use skateboard instead.

I drove off the road and there’s nothing over there! =D