Seriously, this post was not supposed to ramble on like this

Yes, more car shit. But hold on, I think this is kinda funny. Well, actually, it's this. Yes, you can actually buy one of those in BMW's online store (you may have also seen similar offerings elsewhere, like the kids' Mercedes that they've sold at FAO 'Spensive). I find it simultaneously funny, cute, sad, and annoying. Funny and cute with the right kid behind the wheel, of course. Sad because, man, those are some yuppie fuckin' parents right there. And annoying because kids have no business having that kind of a sense of entitlement at that age -- especially albino kids (or little blonde-haired ones, for that matter). Sorry, I just had the need to make a joke about albino children; I'm better now.

Well, you know, maybe at least the kid in the picture for that car won't be self-entitled for long, not with dad looming in the background in the real M3 ready to run little Jimmy's ass down. Okay, his name's probably not Jimmy, but something like Preston or Carson or whatever the hell rich pretentious fucks are naming their boys these days.

I also find myself wondering what kind of suspension that thing's got. I'll bet you it's better than a lot of the shit you'll see out on the road these days, including the Ford Fuckus Focus with its "European inspired" suspension. If you see one of those commercials, just laugh, because it's a joke.

Getting on with some kind of point, though, I'm a firm believer that kids should have to suffer with their first car. I did, so everyone else should, too, because I said so. As I've said before, nothing pisses me off more than seeing kids driving in around in something like a 3er. Yes, I'm a spoiled asshole, but fuck if I didn't actually put in some time for this one, as opposed to mommy and daddy being loaded.

You know what my first car was? A 1986 Hyundai Excel. If you have any inkling as to what these cars are like, just sit back for a minute and take that in. If you have no clue as to the awesome non-power of the '86 Excel, go out into the middle of the street and sit there for awhile. Maybe move forward at about five miles an hour from time to time. Whether or not you're in an actual car while performing this exercise is entirely optional, because the end result is the same -- you're probably better off walking.

The Hyundai was given the moniker of the Rice Burner back in the day. Seriously, had it been powered by rice (you know, one time I actually saw some kid with a Japanese car that had a window sticker that said "Powered by Rice," and I totally would have wanted one if I wasn't anti-car stickers), it might have performed better. Check that, it might have performed. The rated horsepower on the engine? 68. That's not a typo; 68 fucking horses. Could they at least bump it up to 69 so it'd at least have some kind of a cool air to it when I told people the embarrassing stats? No. You're getting your 68-horse Korean shitbox and you're gonna deal.

Here's how bad it was: ETP had like a '72 or '73 VW bug back when I had the Rice Burner, and he could easily beat me if we were in some kind of sad little race at a stoplight or something. We actually once had a theory that the Burner was so slow that it could actually go backwards in time and create fuel as you drove.

As you can see, I have given that car relentless shit from the day I first took the wheel, but it has to be done. I mean, it was even just an Excel GL, not the fancy-schmancy GLS. I believe the advantage of getting the GLS over the GL was that the GLS had a sliding tray under the passenger seat that you could store shit in. Don't give me that look, that sliding tray right there is fucking class.

But no, I had the GL. Aside from the fact that it was about ten years old by the time it became my daily driver and the aforementioned joke of an engine (which that kids' M3 can probably outdo), the car wasn't horrid. At least in the sense that it really never gave me any serious trouble for the years I had it. As long as you didn't turn on the AC at a stoplight so that the car would stall and leave the people behind you not pissed but simply laughing at you, you were good. Oh, and as long as you had no desire to use the AC on really hot days, because that would cause the engine to overheat. I learned my lesson quick on that one, and instead started using the heater on hot days to try and keep the engine a bit cooler. Looking back, I don't know how the engine could overheat with as little as it seemed to be doing, but oh well.

AC and power and age and other random shit issues aside, it at least got me from point A to point B every time I needed it to. It was sad to see that car go, except that it wasn't, when I got my Civic. We ended up trading the Hyundai for $500 along with a couch and a chair that was decent enough for me to use up until fairly recently when I got my bad-ass Pottery Barn couch. Okay, I don't think you can refer to anything from the PB as "bad-ass," but it seriously is a nice couch. Getting off on another tangent here, but I always felt that we got the better end of the Hyundai-for-furniture-and-cash deal.

Yeah, for as lame as it was, that car was pretty good to me, especially when you consider that I'm a bad person and I really don't even deserve the kindness of inanimate objects. Despite giving me no serious issues all the time I had it, the Hyundai finally died about a half year after we bartered it away. I think blowing a major seal was what finally did it in, and when I say "blew a seal" I'm not talking about the kind of seal you'd see in the ocean or in concert. I think about the Hyundai from time to time and feel kinda bad for it, knowing it's just in a junkyard all alone somewhere, but I'm stupid like that. Of course, the feelings of sadness and sympathy always faded quickly when I remembered that I'm no longer driving the Hyundai.

But you know, if I look back far enough and stretch things enough, I could argue that the Hyundai wasn't even my first car. I could say that the honor goes to one of these (which they still make in a not-so-different form nowadays). Actually, you know what? That picture pisses me off, because I had an older model that was identical except that it didn't have the gas tank thingy that you see in that picture. That white lid opened up to reveal nothing more than a cylindrical cavity that you could put the nozzle of the companion gas pump into, but it served its purpose. I always wanted the version that had the thing for the pump nozzle. I even had that goddamn gas pump, but could I use it effectively? No. I had to sit there putting the plastic nozzle up against the flat plastic side of my shitty car merely pretending that there was a hole there like some kind of retard who doesn't know how to gas up his wheels. Shit, even the Hyundai had a place that I could put the gas nozzle into. Not like that procedure did any good; I was probably able to Fred Flintstone it in the Cozy Coupe and go way faster. No more humiliation at the hands of VWs; I have a yellow plastic roof and an orange plastic body!

Looking back, I realize that older boys could have probably found some use for that cylindrical cavity I mentioned. No, I never did anything like that because, as you may recall, I didn't have that particular feature on my Coupe. But if I had had it, maybe I would have stuck my dick in it at some point; who knows.

I was a weird kid anyway. Like there was this one time that this neighborhood fat kid and I got ahold of some cans of spray paint, and we proceeded to paint the fences in my grandparents' backyard. The fences and, oh, our asses. Yes, there was one point in my life where I spraypainted my own ass. Look, I was young, okay? It's not like this happened yesterday. And since you really must know, the color I used was brown. Whether or not that was meant to have some symbolic value or if it was just the only color still available is an issue for historians to debate. All I know is that for the next several days my grandparents spent time asking other people the best way to remove paint from a child's buttcheeks, and that too was kind of embarrassing.

Again... Tangent. But I know ETP loves that story, and this may be the only semi-legitimate chance I get to 'blog about it.

Hey, I'm not bitter about the Hyundai or the gas tank thing, but now you can at least see where I come from and why I need my aggressive "sport car." I mean, in addition to the fact that I'm a shallow, arrogant, selfish, material-driven prick. I paid my dues, motherfuckers. Now get the hell out of the way if you see those xenons in your rear-view.