# ‘PEST CONTROL’ When I see a car lined street, I think of death. ​ Each vehicle was placed along the curb by a man. Each vehicle, the skin-shedding of a person who is now out there, somewhere. ​ Each car implies that man, implies a body it was built to hold—like a coffin, a casket. ​ A casket constricts—the carpenter takes his measuring tape to the cowboy, conforms the wood to his body. A car does not constrict. The average number of occupants per car is one and a half [^1]^,[^2]. It bloats around the body. It takes up space—like a grave. ​ We are running out of burial space. We’ve started to dig them up. We’ve started to burn the long dead. There are floors of skyscrapers in Singapore dedicated to bookshelves of urns, rented out on a temporary basis[^3]. ​ Before the great exhumation, Singapore gave 3.7% of its island to graveyards. Carparks consume 22% of your city[^4]. We line the streets with cars. We pave over the green space to make way for them. We place them in above-ground crypts, in mausoleums of layered concrete slabs. ​ They make me think of death. [[The Communist Eschaton|II. The Communist Eschaton]] [[A Malevolent Father|III. A Malevolent Father]] [^1]: _FOTW #1333, March 11, 2024: In 2022 the average number of occupants per trip for household vehicles in the United States was 1.5_. (n.d.). Energy.gov. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1333-march-11-2024-2022-average-number-occupants-trip-household [^2]: _National Travel Survey 2022: Household car availability and trends in car trips_. (2023, December 14). GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-survey-2022/national-travel-survey-2022-household-car-availability-and-trends-in-car-trips [^3]: *Life and death in Singapore.* 99% invisible. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/singapore/ [^4]: *Parking Lot Land-use Map Tool.* Parking Reform Network. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-much-of-your-city-is-parking-lots [^5]: Zeria. (2020, July 6). _The postponed communist Eschaton in Disco Elysium_. Floating Into Bliss. https://floatingintobliss.wordpress.com/2020/07/06/the-postponed-communist-eschaton-in-disco-elysium/