Delusional Grandeur

How sounding powerful takes the place of substance

Automakers following age old religious models are enhancing the sounds of the engines with the loud performance of speaker noise. VW, BMW, Ford, GM, and others have loudspeakers that roar, making the cars sound more powerful than they really are. The best of these is the Corvette muffler bypass system—that opens a gate when the throttle is mashed, making it sound more ferocious than a Ferrari V8.

Enter religion—

All bark and no bite is the way of the WORD as generations idle-by in first gear, always looking for more substance that never materializes. The true believer has been left to the wind with a low horsepower belief that cranks out high volumes of excuses and low performance—a gas-guzzler lemon stuck on the road of life, long before the first automobile rolled out of the factory. Are we there yet? Appearance is everything—masters of underperformance and smooth sales talk…what should be their finest hour has become an expected disappointment. The Corvair is Christianity—as Ralph Nader said, “Unsafe at any speed”.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

36 thoughts on “Delusional Grandeur”

    1. Hehe. What improvements has religion forced its hand? Sacerdotes Católicos (catholic priests) comes to mind. The parental abuses of the evangelicals is a sweetheart too. All in the name of love, of course

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  2. Are we there yet – I love that comment!

    Speaking of Corvettes, I wish I had that bypass system on mine to quiet it down in town. I have Borla headers and exhaust on mine and the stupid thing will set off car alarms if I try showing off with it when I’m in town. Sounds great in tunnels, though

    Those speaker systems for exhaust noise– good grief, I’ve seen those and I still can’t believe they’re real. They drop a 4 cylinder into a car and then beef up the sound system to play sounds from a V8 over it so it sounds like it has a real engine. Sigh…

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    2. Grouchy, you hit on something I fanatically wish I had my hands on when male drivers of their souped-up cars/trucks (obviously over compensating for some severe deficiency somewhere on their body!) and have their boom-stereos up SO LOUD that it vibrates everything and everyone within a 1,000 ft radius. What is that device I wish I had?

      An EMP device, or Electro-Magnetic Pulse projector! Hahahahaha! Man… I would be firing that thing off non-stop at those Neanderthal Alpha-males watching their entire automobile come to a complete stop, none of their thousands of dollars in the ear-noise machine to ever work again! Bwahahahahahahaha!!! 😈 I’d so love to have one of those devices.

      Then again, how would I protect my own phone and laptop? Hmmmm. 😉

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      1. I hate those thumping booming car stereos. They always seem to stop next to me at the light in town. If it’s any consolation, the drivers and passengers in them will all be deaf before they hit middle age from ear damage.

        The EMP gadgets are tempting, aren’t they? Not only for car thumpers but for people who talk on cell phones in restaurants, theaters, etc. It actually isn’t that difficult to build devices that would put out enough RF energy to disrupt those systems, but they’re also illegal to build, sell and use. Depends on how serious the damage is, but fines start at about $10,000 and go up from there, plus jail time.

        You can protect your own equipment from an EMP without a lot of difficulty. Just keep them in a Faraday cage type box. Just about any kind of container made of metal like steel, copper, etc (as long as it’s conductive) will work. The box has to be electrically continuous, use something like aluminum tape to seal the edges of the lid and make sure it has good electrical contact. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

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    1. It’s interesting too, how belief itself has remained highly prized. Shameful, really. And don’t forget, if you merely don’t believe the story you are a spawn of hitler

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  4. In high school, I replaced the muffler on my 64 Valiant with a noisy glasspack because I thought it’d be cool. It was not cool, and all my neighbors hated me. It was especially obnoxious when decelerating. It taught me a lesson, though.

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      1. That 225 slant six wasn’t a bad engine at all. With a 3-speed column-shift transmission, I blew the doors off my cousin’s 63 Dodge Dart with a 4-speed 273 V-8 in a short race. No kidding!

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        2. egads, that brings back memories. I had a 68 Valiant with a slant six. It was a damned tough little engine and reasonably quick. After highschool in the early 70s my friends and I were all gear heads. On Friday and Saturday nights the local drivein looked like a car show – Camaros, Firebirds, GTOs, Chevelles, I had a 68 Charger, one guy had a GTX, a few Roadrunners, and all with modded engines, wheels, exhausts. At the time they were all pretty cheap cars, though. Now? The last 1968 Charger R/T I saw go up for auction in good condition went for $78,000. I swore I was done with that kind of nonsense a long time ago, so of course now I have a modded 600 hp ‘vette and I go through a set of rear tires in about 2,500 miles. Sigh…

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          1. Those were the days! Another cousin of mine had a beautiful 64 GTO (“Goat”) and also a 63 Catalina with a modified 389 having 3 2-barrel carburetors in a progressive linkage. A normal speeds, it’d run on one carb, and the other two would kick-in if you stepped on it. When we did, which was often, the whole front end of the vehicle would rise up and roar like a monster! I was partial to Mopar, though.

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            1. Funnily enough as a band we rarely annoyed the neighbours.
              We usually practiced in an old hall that was far enough away from residents not to be much of a bother.
              For a while we also rented the vacant top floor of a pub.
              However, that lasted only for about a month if memory serves.
              The landlord’s musical tastes ran more towards the Carpenters rather than the Stones and Hendrix.

              Aah … thems wos the days.
              🙂

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  6. Oh yes. The loud religious programs permitted (holy roller/Pentecostal-type) in prisons are a good example. The incarcerated are let out of their cells (if they go), entertained with not-so-bad live rock band level music, and fed with great food. They are also treated to entertaining, down home revival-type preaching about how god loves and forgives them. For the prisoners, it maybe the best time they have all week (religion or not). To be fair, other religious groups, when they can get permission, also treat the captive audience to fine food, but with no god talk and less noise, but it’s rare. Betcha a secular group would have a difficult time getting permission to do the same.

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      1. Equal access? Not gunna happen. It even matters what denomination you are. Stats on % of atheist inmates show very low occupancy. However, I taught secular (non-faith based) drug and alcohol recovery classes for parolees. Attendance was high, but it was so were the faith-based programs.

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  7. Wow. I had no idea that fake (lip-sync’ing – LOL) engine rumbling and revving was being done to all those trucks and automobiles. 😲 Then again, when it comes to huge mega-corporations and manufacturers — where profits & pleasing shareholders are the #1 priority way above any level of honor, principles, integrity, etc. $,$$$,$$$,$$$ — I’m not that surprised at all. But this blatant engine-faking doesn’t affect me at all; I’ve never had any hard-on whatsoever to be a gear-head, grease-monkey or showoff on the road. Yawn. 😉

    Now your analogy/metaphor Jim is VERY fascinating to me and so apropos!

    Appearance is everything—masters of underperformance and smooth sales talk…

    You nailed it right there. The ONLY thing Christianity has going for it, I mean the ONLY singular thing is orthodoxy. That’s it! And when you analyze all aspects of it under the cumulative microscopes, the religion doesn’t even have pure orthodoxy. The green curtain of Oz gets thrown open. What Christianity DOES have are large groups of mental disorders flipped into superstitious codes of “faith.” Period. End of discussion. Rehab required. LOL 😛

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      1. Hahahaha!!! Echolalia, that’s a great description! Hey… maybe that’s why all church services are inside an autotorium, huh? And OF COURSE the Joel Osteen-ish churches are literal enclosed sports stadiums for penetrating special-effects too! LOL 🤣

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          1. Indeed Jonathan. I’ve been in too many of those auditoriums/stadiums and it truly is an intentional overwhelming of the human sensory-receptors. In scientific terms it’s called the Placebo-effect surrounded by sensational theatrical performance causing Mob-mentality. Simple really. 🙂

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