Snotmobile

We fell off the wagon this weekend. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but the wife and I sallied forth and bought a Prius. Welcome to cliche-ville. Population: us, and every other filthy yuppie in the area. The damn thing is even painted green. (The technical term for the color is Sea Foam Green. I live in a land-locked state, can't swim, and associate sea foam with drowning, seaweed and bad smells, so until further notice I'm calling it Snot Green. I don't expect the salesmen to start using my term, but I think it's significantly more descriptive.)

Back to cliches. We can now drive our Prius to Whole Foods, bust out our official Whole Foods reusable bags, and stock up on all the free-range organic soy our yuppie hearts could ever desire. That mental image made me so nauseous that after buying the car, I drove us straight to Wendy's, where I ate the biggest bacon cheeseburger I could find.

It had been nearly six years since I'd bought a car. I remembered the experience being unpleasant, and boy, was I ever right. The salesman started with stupidly low offer for our trade-in, which I certainly expected, but seriously... with all the information available on the internet, any non-retarded person should know about what their car is worth. They offered half that, which was almost insulting. Though at least our salesman admitted as much, saying, "Well, that's the game. We offer something low, and you try and bump it up."

We went back and forth for a little while, but the wife and I didn't have much bargaining power. With gas expected to hit $4 this summer and Priuses (Priui? Prii? WTF?) practically evaporating off the lot as yuppies scramble to replace their SUVs, they could have sent a different employee over every 30 seconds to give us the finger, and we'd have had to grin and bear it. Had we walked away, there were 30 cliches-in-waiting lined up to buy the Snotmobile, and the bastards knew it.

So now we own a Prius. I actually feel ok about it. Yeah, the car screams, "I don't actually burn gas at all! I'm fueled by NPR, Starbucks and my own staggering moral superiority! Look upon my trendiness, ye earth-haters, and despair!" Yeah, it's a goddamn eyesore. But... it has a weird, misshapen charm (kinda like my head!). And it does get that crazy gas mileage. But most importantly, it's a tech-nerd's dream car.

You can unlock the door, start the car and drive away without taking the key out of your pocket. It actually senses if there's someone sitting in the passenger seat and, if nobody's there, the car shuts down a bunch of the touch screen controls (did I mention there's a touch screen? Because there is) so you don't fiddle with them while driving. There's voice-activated navigation and GPS and Bluetooth, oh my. And finally, there's display screens that show your mileage and how much energy you've regenerated by braking, which turns driving into one big video game complete with high scores and bonus points. It's practical and silly and addictive all at the same time, even if it's quickly turning my lead-footed wife into a Sunday driver (mashing the accelerator causes your MPG to fall off a cliff, ruining your score).

In conclusion, gimme some of that tofu Kool-Aid, because I dig the Snotmobile. Now all we need to do is name the GPS voice lady... what's a good name for a female who's bossy, hard to shut up, and is frequently wrong? Insert cheap mother-in-law joke here.

Oh, and since the entire western world is breathlessly awaiting the update... the new pants fit, kinda. They're a little tight on the thighs, but I made the mistake of trying them on in front of the wife, and she liked them (she's fighting a long, grueling, uphill battle to make me look metrosexual), so now I'm keeping them. There will be no stockpiling, though.