I've never been a guy who has had a great love affair for the automobile. Not that I'm some kind of ecological activist who dreams of the day that we all as a people can toss off the shackles of the evil automobile and all sweat together on the eco-friendly bus to the hemp factory wearing our Kodiak Birkenstocks. I hate public transit; I've never liked it. I used to have to take 3 types of transit for over a year to get to work and disliked every minute of it. I would gaze longingly out the train window looking at all the commuters inside their cars, listening to their radios, enjoying their own personal space and eventually guiding their vehicles conveniently to the front of their own homes. Meanwhile, I'm trying to constrict my body into an undersized seat, helplessly listening to the conversations of pinstriped suit types yammering in business speak, flawlessly combining annoying and intelligible words to echo from their mouths. Needless to say that when I finally became a car owner, I was ecstatic. I had a big hunk of metal that would give me the freedom of going from point A to point B, any time I wanted. That's how I always felt about cars, I put gas in the hole thingy when the meter reads "E". Then drive to where I'm supposed to go and drive the same way back. I would pay exorbitant amounts of money to get it fixed when I heard a funny noise and wash it when the car got disgustingly dirty. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one to take great pride in my automobile, unlike other people I've seen.

There are people out there who seem to love their cars so much, that they have to show the world how great their cars are. These people make vain attempts to distinguish their cars from the rest of the pack, in their own special way. These are the people that scare me the most.

Now when I say these "people," I mean the people who choose to add extra features to their cars to distinguish them from the rest of the pack. Now when I say distinguish I use the word lightly. I'm talking about the people who decide to make sure the rest of the drivers know exactly what kind of car they're driving by plastering the make of their vehicle in bold letters across the top of their windshields or on the side of their doors in brilliant gold letters. "Hey you in the lane beside me I'm driving a HONDA! Hey you driving in the car in front of me, look in your rear view mirror! I'm driving a ADNOH!" You'll see people who've decided that their normal license plate frame just doesn't cut it, so they must replace it with a glowing purple neon frame that adds that Las Vegas flair, making it so much easier for that police cruiser behind you to enter your plate in the computer at 2:30 in the morning. Huge fat tires that no raccoon would be able to survive their Goodrich like onslaught. I pull up to traffic lights and look to see a driver beside me wearing a straitjacket-like seat belt and has a fire extinguisher conveniently strapped beside the windshield, revving an engine that rivals the noise a jumbo jet makes before take off. I'm just heading out to get a bag of milk and this guy looks like he's about to enter a dogfight with the Iceman. People who drive pick-up trucks seem to suffer from the same affliction. I see the countless numbers of pick-up trucks with various classy decals plastered to their back windshields. Some "Bad Boy" showing off his bicep, Bulldogs with dumbbells firmly clenched within their jaws, Calvin smoking a cigarette and mud flaps that have the Playboy logo on them erotically protecting the tires from the dirty, dirty, dirty mud. I seem to notice some drivers have a knack for covering their entire dashboards with endless amounts of these bobbing head dolls that bob in unison as they launch into the intersection one nanosecond after the light turns green. Air fresheners, that looks like they've been stolen from the Tower of London. Little plastic dogs that sit in the back window, condemned to bobbing their heads until the end of time. Unbelievable as it may seem, you can still see Garfield the cat, stuck to the passenger side windows, damned to a hellish existence of being burned by the unforgiving sun. Car's undercarriage's lit by neon lights. Gigantic flying V's, garishly mounted to the trunk. Windows tinted with a sparkly rainbow like glow. Hubcaps that should have stayed on the chariots, in the movie "Gladiator." Air fresheners hanging from the rear view mirror sporting a naked woman, giving new meaning to the words, "large, firm, breasts." Not to mention the myriad of bumper stickers out there. I honestly don't give a rat's ass if your other car is a Klingon War Bird or you just "Love's to go fishin'". The list goes on and on.

Go outside and take a good look at your car. If any these things exist, in any shape or form on your vehicle, get rid of them. Get rid of them now. You look like an idiot. Wake up! Because when you're cruising down the road and you look to your left and see someone smiling at you. They're not actually smiling at you; they're just trying not to laugh their ass off after seeing that flame paint job on the side of your Volvo station wagon.

Whatever happened to a simple pair of fuzzy dice? Now that's classy.

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