Last Tuesday, my preorder for In The Groove reached my humble abode. Having heard good things about this game, despite being tired, I shambled my decaying ancient carcass to a fan-driven version of DDR for a couple hours. Now, being a rather accomplished player with millennia of experience, I’d assumed the difficulty espoused by fans was as overblown as Bill Clinton’s penis. Not only was I horribly wrong, but my highly developed abilities were rendered irrelevant, outdated, and similar to a monkey executing spasm-laden flailing due to constant jabs from a cattle-prod. I’ve gotten better since that initial experience, though my pride is a beaten and tattered husk which may never recover. ITG constantly underrates song difficulty, further accentuating that their scale goes up to 13 instead of ten. Ouchy.

Sometimes, I must wonder how things happen. Dustin, a guy from work with a Mustang Cobra, invited me down to the local dragstrip for an event called Midnight Mayhem to watch him race. After getting lost attempting to follow them, I managed to get directions and arrive around 12:15. Hundreds of people were there, and easily a hundred cars were all lined up to pair off at the drag strip. I didn’t have any idea this would be such a huge event. While watching, I noticed a lot of modified Hondas, Toyotas, old pickups, classic Chevys, cars of all makes and descriptions. I came to the firm conclusion that my car could slap around over half of the participants, merely due to the sheer amount of wimpy 4-cylinder vehicles and old rust-buckets present. Why would a person willingly bring an embarrassingly shitty car to a drag-strip? One Honda in particular burned out his clutch and had to be towed off the strip.

I didn’t promise images, but here they are anyway. I really wasn’t making up the reflective nature of my car:

Let’s start with a simple picture of everything in profile. Looks pretty normal from here, right?

Looks like a cloudy day, and there are some trees behind my house, so sayeth the hood of my car.

So, I washed my car. Well, saying I washed my car doesn’t nearly illustrate the grueling procedure both I and my vehicle have undergone in the last two days. Here’s what transpired:

The Wash

The whole process started with scrubbing my car with Dawn. Yes, that Dawn, the stuff normally used for washing dishes, and could probably be used as an engine degreaser. Why? Because that’s what the instructions told me to do. It makes sense though, since practically nothing can withstand a Dawn assault, what’s left is a squeaky-clean vehicle.

I believe I’ve been living in a strange bizarro world for the past few days. In the last week or so, five people from work have been in a car accident of some kind. The first involved stopping to avoid an accident on I74, which of course caused them to be rear-ended by a lady on a cellphone, and sideswiped by a truck avoiding the person who stopped in front of him. They were fine, but the two-month-old car wasn’t so lucky: totaled. Next, girlfriend of a co-worker driving to work on I74 when suddenly she realizes a car coming at her from the other direction on the freeway. Another car on the right, concrete wall to the left, SUV plows right into her car and the one on her right: both totaled. Her car is flung into and partially over the wall, SUV flips multiple times and skids on its side for a few yards: totaled. Other than a few bruises and a sprained ankle, she is magically unharmed. Today, another two co-workers on their way to the office, loses control of his truck and sends it into a banked road to avoid a dump-truck: totaled.