Out Of Gas

One of the biggest adjustments, good or bad, that I’ve had to make during the course of Project Bachelor Pad is coming to terms with the fact that I no longer need to drive somewhere everyday. It is a little crazy to realize that up until now, aside from vacations and the old little exceptions here and there (and that weird semester in first year when I inexplicably decided to experiment with the bus), I have pretty much literally been on the road every single day over the last decade. Be it two minute drives to the corner shop, 20 minute commutes to the subway station, or fictional nine hour odysseys to strange cereal vendors, there had essentially always been a point in every single day of my life where I was behind the wheel of an automobile.

…or two points, because I would usually have to drive back.

Once I was legally permitted to do so, if I wasn’t at the helm of our mighty Dodge Caravan driving to school on the weekdays, then I was driving my mom’s car on the weekends when I went to see friends, or serving as the designated driver when I went out with the family. During summers in high school and university, if I wasn’t driving to summer school, then I was driving to my summer job. So it’s strange to me that I regularly go a whole work week now without even seeing my car.

All this driving for all these years has somewhat cultivated a sense in me that I am a relatively decent driver. And by that, I mean that I consider myself a fucking awesome driver. No one drives this much, for this long, and drinks this much without at least a couple of accidental vehicular manslaughter charges, right? And the fact that I don’t have a single one of those on my record so far (all of my vehicular manslaughter charges have been intentional) means I am pretty awesome. I used to think that if everyone in the world drove like me, we would all get to where we’re going on time, we wouldn’t have any more accidents, and we would all have a lot of fun doing it. And then I realized that in this magical world where all drivers had my skill level, all the 18-wheelers and school buses out there would all crash and burn, wiping out while they attempted turns 40 kilometres faster than they should, because I am not professionally qualified to drive those types of vehicles. Also, everyone that rode a motorcycle would die instantly. But still, for the purposes of operating cars that fall under the umbrella of an Ontario G-endorsed license, I am king.

Of course, this all changed this weekend when I ran out of gas while driving to pick up Jess, three minutes from her house.

Once you run out of gas on the road, unless it was under extraordinary circumstances that involve a zombie apocalypse that causes the world’s entire fuel infrastructure to collapse, you can never again consider yourself a “good driver.” From hence on, you are a shitty driver. Even if you turn into the Elder God of Driving, Lord of the Road for the rest of your life, you will still just be a shitty driver that has coincidentally been driving well lately, despite yourself.

It’s a lot like boasting about your sterling record as a heterosexual man…and then finding yourself in a situation in which you have a dick in your hand, and you’re wondering how it tastes like. Having a dick in your hand is one thing – a lot of crazy shit can happen in a man’s life in which he is forced into a situation in which a penis which does not belong to him is within his personal space to an uncomfortable degree. Prison rape, drunken rape, recreation rape, bro rape…it happens, dicks get in your hands from time to time, it’s just a fact of life. But if you ever find yourself wondering what it tastes like…? Then I am afraid you can never make a serious claim towards heterosexuality ever again. Even if you duplicate James Bond’s sexual history after that, you will still just be a homosexual man that has coincidentally been acting very heterosexual lately, despite yourself.

Running out of gas says much more about your driving ability than getting into an accident. The latter is just a fact of life and is sometimes completely out of your control, much like prison rape. The former is just a gross miscalculation that is completely, 100% avoidable, if in fact, you are a “good driver.”

The worse part of it all is having to ask your girlfriend’s father for help. (Actually, that was the second worst part. The absolute worst part was how fucking cold it was outside last night.) I think for most of you, Your Girlfriend’s Father is likely just a completely abstract concept akin to The Next American Idol Winner, or perhaps at best, a hazy guess augmented with your imagination like An Asian Red Forman With More Hair. But for me, the role of Your Girlfriend’s Father is a filled by a real life human being, who fills me with a terrifying sense of both fear and respect. The relationship between a man and the dude who dates his daughter is a complex one. Occasionally in my darkest nightmares, I catch a glimpse of the hypothetical terror of having an Asian daughter and all the multitudes of scum who bubble up from society’s murky filth to make claim to her. So I couldn’t ever imagine if anyone can truly be comfortable with seeing someone like me as one of the scum bubbling towards you. A slight misstep undoes mountains of work you’ve previously put in to establish your credibility and reputation as someone who is not a fucking asshole.

Of course, the man who is My Girlfriend’s Father was nothing but generous and very understanding of my plight, as I expected he would be. But I know that secretly he plots my demise.

Because I would do the same.

– Have you guys been keeping up to date with that superhero Conan forced Bruce Timm to create in his image? They even sent him a clip of Young Justice where they had the Flaming C drawn in place of Superman, which was actually an brilliant piece of marketing goodness from those DC guys. This is usually the part where I provide a link to you, but I am feeling way too lazy to dig it out. I mean I’ve seen it already, so what do I care about you? Anyway, someone turned it into a custom action figure and it is pretty awesome. They would make a killing by mass producing these as limited edition/exclusive whatchamacallits…I would probably get one. You’re sitting on a gold mine, O’Brien!

– The Del Taco Inception Burrito is a glorious idea, and appeals to me on a multitude of levels…not unlike the levels of the dream that is realized by eating a massive, movie themed, Mexican snack food. They even accounted for the totem in there – the write-up is absolutely brilliant. The only way this link would have been more appropriate for this site is if it was about Jean Claude Van Damme jump kicking a Malaysian bear.

– So the Wachowskis are looking at making another few Matrix movies? Of course they are. It doesn’t really matter if everyone thought Matrix: Revolutions was crappy, because they managed to make over $300 million on the movie, and there wouldn’t be a studio out there that wouldn’t green light the shit out of this. Can you imagine how much money they would make today, considering how big of a boner the industry has for 3D movies now? Yes, the impossibly convoluted plot lines in the last two movies made it impossible to tell more stories within that universe that would make any sense at all, but I’m pretty sure everyone already mentally checked out of the Matrix movies by the Architect scene in the second movie. There’s really nothing to lose anymore, and it’s not like all the stars are too busy with other commitments these days.

And because it’s from Ain’t It Cool News, that’s not even the craziest thing about that link. At the end it mentions that the Wachowskis have also sold “the most expensive script in history” to Warner Brothers about “a modern futuristic take” (so is it modern or is it futuristic?) on Robin Hood, and it is “an action movie that would have the same impact visually and technically that Terminator 2 had.” Oh and it stars Will Smith. You couldn’t even make this up if you wanted to!

“Don’t be afraid. That’s what it says. ‘Don’t be afraid.'”
“Yes.”
“But you are afraid.”
“Yes.”
“You’re afraid we’re going to run out of air. That we’ll die gasping. But we won’t. That’s not going to happen.

We’ll freeze to death first.”