Cranky Driver (8 comments)
I'll never understand the American populace. On my Thanksgiving trip, I made note of a few disturbing trends on the roadways:
- SUVs going over 100 MPH on the interstate. If you want to drive fast on pavement, get a sports car. If you want to drive fast and carry lots of stuff, get a sports wagon. I really don't like the tendency of SUV drivers to assume their vehicles can do absurdly inappropriate things.
- Cell phone usage is no longer seen as an obstacle to safe driving. While it used to annoy me to see someone putting on makeup or talking on their phone or combing their hair or smoking while driving, drivers now seem to think they've reached a level of competence that allows them to do all those things simultaneously.
- Most Pontiac Grand Prix drivers are assholes. No idea why, and I know people who drive them who are decidedly not assholes (hi Vik), but that car in particular seems to be responsible for an oddly high amount of unnecessary aggression.
- While the Scion xB seems to be selling well, I've yet to see someone who's looked happy to be driving it.
- Fog lights on. All the time.
In the world of more civilized driving, I'm really pleased with GTA: San Andreas. once I turned on the subtitles and got past my white-boy-can't-understand-urban-discourse issues, I started enjoying it as much as (if not more than) GTA: Vice City. It feels uncensored, and the game has yet to present a new feature that I don't think adds to the gameplay. Right now, my only complaint is that I can't go to a firing range to raise my machine pistol skill, so I'm still limited to holding one Uzi at a time.
It makes me feel old, but I find that feel somewhat concerned that San andreas is being played by so many kids who might not be ready to view the game play material in appropriate context. Actually, that's not entirely true. I'm concerned about the number of parents who put their junior-high-aged kids in front of the game and don't bother paying attention and explaining why CJ's relationship with Catalina is a bad thing.