Beastie: Taming the taxi conspiracy

Threats from the supernatural realm are not confined to living beings. Take taxicabs, for instance. They can be turned to the dark side.

I don't know how I missed this. Usually my worldwide network of volunteers alerts me. But at the end of July the San Francisco Taxicab Commission voted to keep the number 666 affixed to a cab that, according to its driver, is cursed.

There is a deeper level to this story. There always is. Taxis, it turns out, literally cover the globe. I ran across them even in India, where they are fancifully called "autorickshaws." Their worldwide distribution provides a perfect platform from which any number of nefarious conspiracies could be hatched.

Imagine how many bits of information are offhandedly revealed in private taxi conversations; how often the powerful or the famous or the criminal person uses a cab to travel to and from his or her deed or misdeed. Note: each taxi is provided with a radio transmitter. Many cab drivers are from foreign countries. And don't forget that Taxi Driver character played by Robert De Niro. And that sitcom Taxi back in the '80's. The evidence is overwhelming. Something is going on beneath our very noses, a veritable new "yellow peril."


The fact the story came out at all reveals a slip-up, a lapse, a momentary chink in the armor of the taxicab conspiracy. Well, it's not getting by me without an investigation.

I wheeled the Beastie machine out of its secure, temperature-controlled safe-room, set it on my dining room table and fed the new information into it's waiting input slot.

(Wringing the truth out of my Beastie Machine is getting harder and harder. Some days I'm tempted to feed the term "Beastie Machine" into the Beastie Machine and see what it spits out).

Anyway, "Taxi" and "Cab" came up empty. "Trilateral Taxicab Commission," though a promising idea, got the machine jumping way off the numerological scale.

Wait! I'm thinking locally, but acting globally. I've got to think globally! What about those autorickshaws I saw in India? (See photo at right of cold, calculating autorickshaw and it's clueless human stooge).

I tapped on the Beastie keypad: "bad autorickshaw." That came up as 662--tantalizingly close, but... no handrolled Habanos for me.

Got to get back to thinking locally. Taxis are one with the street, right? And street-wise, urban hip-hop type thinking would spell "bad" as "badd," like that 1991 music group "Color Me Badd."

Could this final calculation rip away the impenetrable veil shielding the demon Taxi conspiracy?

With trembling hands, I typed in "badd autorickshaw" and covered my eyes. The tumblers clicked into position, and the buzzer went off: 6...6...6.

Aha! The jig is up and the meter's running, my evil friends.

Bottom line: I don't know about ya'll, but I'm taking the bus from now on.


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666 taxicab, Christian humor, satire, humor