Cars are better than women because they don’t talk back, and when you give them gas they don’t slap you! I mean, who’s ever complained about their car and their woman in the same sentence… unless it’s in a country song. I sometimes feel like I could detail my car in half the time that my wife could get herself ready. I mean come on, really? The beauty of a good clean finish on your car, you know that? When it gleams in your eye almost winking at you. That. That my friends is when you know you found something special, something that can only belong between a man and his car.

Now that you have found this lovely piece of machinery you must get it or keep it clean depending on the condition of the vehicle upon purchase. I have comprised a list of instructions for the detailing of your new chariot:

• Clean interior thoroughly with low gloss vinyl/leather cleaner -¬†Low gloss because your dash doesn’t need to be so oily that you can’t touch it without getting grease stains on your hands or clothes.¬†
• Use a Q-tip to get into those hard to reach places -¬†There is no reason your ac vents need to be dusty. Those seat belt slots should be well cleaned also!
• Vacuum like never before -¬†Move the blasted seats up and suck the crap out from under the seats and on the sides were everyone likes to drop french fries.
• Wash car -¬†Top to bottom with no drying of the soap or bathing the car in the sun.
• Dry car -¬†Water spots suck!
• Dry door, trunk and hood jams -¬†Thorough boys get more appreciation from the ladies, at least that’s what I heard
• Wipe down the engine -¬†This will make you and your mechanic proud
• Do the windows! -¬†There is no reason for slacking now!
• Dress the tires with tire shine -¬†Make everything shine, but don’t put on so much that you get it all over the rims or splatter it on the car.

If you have not done ALL these things, then please don’t say things like, “I will detail the car for you” or, “she’s detailed and ready to go!” It takes about 2 hours to do it right, but the satisfaction will be worth it. You know you have done well when you can’t stop staring at it while you are walking away.

So now I need a car, instead of buying my wife some wheels, we have to find me a car. I jumped right onto the trusted online shopping mall I like to call craigslist. There’s only one problem, this mall looks more like a flea market, but with convicts from other nationalities.

The nationals want you to send them money and they will ship you a car! Ship me a car!? Who does that!? Not this guy, I am not going to send you a check to help you out for something I have never seen or driven. Shhhyeahh! Right!!

These scammers used to do this with bank accounts and then moved up to telling you that you have an inheritance coming from some dude you don’t know. Now they want to ship cars to us for our inspection and pay them before they ship these “cars”. Craziness!

What makes this even funnier is that the website has at the top of the page “anything involving car shipping is a scam“. Not ‘maybe a scam‘ or ‘could be a scam‘ but, it is a scam!

Do people fall for this?

The other thing is, the people that think they are selling a 12 year-old block of gold on wheels and want top dollar for it. This is annoying because it never looks as good to us buyers as it does to the seller. “Oh, that will buff out“, “the miles are all highway miles” or my favorite “this car used to be my grandmothers“. There is too much to say here, but I will tell you that grandmas can spin donuts with the best of them…

So remember, when shopping on craigslist, patience, patience is the key to actually finding a great deal. When you do find that gem of a car, make sure that it was taken care of. If you cannot trust the seller, then bolt!… it wasn’t meant to be. But, if the seller shakes your hand with a tear in his eye, you can rest at ease, that man loved his car!

Good. Now we are on the same page (no pun intended). Normally you will find me cracking jokes and being silly, but when it comes to respecting the ride, I am all business. While I am at it, I will also address how you can have car tag and respect for a man’s vehicle at the same time.

I have caught some flak for when I say you should cr√®me your friend‚Äôs car with your beater and then I write about the loyalty and respect for one’s car. I will explain. First, men have aggression and this need not be explained. It’s just there. Like women have emotions and feel the need to cry while they are eating their cheerios in the morning. Dudes need to hit something, anything. This restores balance and structure into his life. So back off all you haters, mainly girls, about me playing car tag. I don‚Äôt understand why you cry… so forget about understanding why I like hitting things with a large sedan!

On to the code. You need to read this and post it in the car, especially for the newbie’s that don’t know any better. We continue now where we left off previously:

10) Remember well the glass rule. This goes for butt cheeks as well. NO TOUCHIING! This includes the headlight glass as well. If it’s clear… it’s in your best interest to keep it that way.

11) Never, and I mean never, tell a dude that he is driving too aggressively. It is a right of passage. I don’t tell you how to put on your pants so keep away from any urges that make you want to tell me to slow down.

12) If you have the shotgun position in the car it is your sole responsibility to check the locks and if you are in a 2-door car, put the seat back to its full upright position.

13) No smoking ever, no matter how much you paid for the cigarette. Please revert back to the glass rule, you mess it up, you clean it up, and no streaks.

14) Finally, if you have kids or a girlfriend that do not know the code and they are near your friend’s car, you better be briefing them immediately. That is, if you don’t want to start a never-ending war. I would also like to add that this would make it “open season” on your kids or girlfriend if she so much as even touches the radio.

No exceptions, no time, no matter what! Look out for the laminated versions of this car code it will be available for purchase.

There are several types of parkers out there so let’s run through the list. (And yes there is a list)

First, you have the careful parker. The one who parks as far away from people as possible. To prevent the door dings and the occasional parking lot scuffle.

Second, you have the fellow who parks right beside the careful parker. We will call him the derelict because he either does it to be annoying (mission accomplished) or because he likes the exercise. Either way, if you are out there quit it!!

Next, there are the big horns. No, not cows, but I am sure you could get a couple of cows in their vehicles. These fellahs get in the tightest places with no regard for the others around them. Usually their rear ends stick out a good foot from the rest of the cars. Then there is the huge trailer hitch on the back. Here is a clue! Ride a horse it would be better for all of us.


Last but not least, you have the paint magnet parkers! These are the most annoying, well, maybe the second most annoying. They usually drive average cars but they park on the line, just over it, or across it diagonally. Really, it’s not that hard to slide it right in between the lines. Think of it as coloring in the lines, well maybe that is what led to this. Never mind. Just get it right; it is a true show of how lazy some people are.

Now that I am done venting I can rest at ease, that is of course if you guys will park away from the car on the end. If the car looks like it costs more than your home then stay way, way, away from it. You can’t afford the wax for those cars and even if you could it’s called respect. I know this is coming from the writer of the beater car article but I have boundaries just like any other person. I mean, unless it is a beater give it a little bit of respect.

(Bee-t-r) Verb- One’s decrepit motor coach; another word for rolling POS; quite frankly, one key turn from the car compactor.

If you have never owned a beater you should indulge in this experience. There is something about rolling down the highway at 70 miles an hour just wondering when something else will fall off of your car. It is exhilarating. It’s living on the edge… much like a roller coaster at a theme park as it clicks up the big hill; my beater clicks up the hill not because it is full of fun loving passengers, but because it has a very bad transmission. Much like the roller coaster, with every click you are thinking, “are we going to fall back down?” or “will this thing stop when it gets to the bottom of the hill?” How about “will it stall when taking off from the bottom of the hill?” or my favorite “why is there smoke coming out of the a/c vents?”

I will have to admit that it is not all fun and games… especially when you have cars behind you wondering why you flew around them going down the hill, but now that you are at a stop you can’t go more than 15 MPH for about 2 of the most frustrating minutes of your life… all the while waiting for your tranny to get out of first gear. You can be sure that most likely they have not enjoyed the fruits of a free car. A car that bravely tries to get you from point A to point B with limited clicking, stalling, and smoking. Please indulge me and close your eyes and try to picture a guy in a 97 Chrysler concord as he is rocking back in forth trying to help the momentum of the beater. It may look like you are passing a victim of a violent crime trying to not go back to that place. You know what I mean… trying to find ones happy place. 

All that said, I have fun with my beater and I advise you to think of new ways to keep it new and interesting… well, old and interesting. My favorite way is to play car tag, yes car tag… the new sport for those that don’t play sports. Let me give you some kind of idea how this game is played. First, you have an agreement with one or more of your friends and their beater as well. This agreement is that you can hit their car at will as long as there is no damage to the mechanics of the beater. In other words you make my car no go… you lose. The game gets to be more fun when you start putting money on it or when you start knocking out headlights or taillights. Other than that there are no other rules, so if you see me rocking in my chair trying to make my car go one minute and then ramming into my friends car the next you know that I am not crazy.

This may not be the game for all you beater owners out there, but it will inspire spontaneous laughter. Of course the questions from friends and family (especially the giver of the free beater) “why is this fun?” “What if somebody gets hurt?” Or “what will you do if the cops see you?” Even, “what if I wanted the car back?” All I have to say is; because it is destruction, and that is always fun, its funnier when somebody gets hurt (you know that’s true no matter how much you want to say otherwise) just think of the look on the cops face when you tell him that it’s a grown mans version of smear the queer. And to the last question, why would anyone want this car back? Who gives a car and then wants it back?  That would make you an… nevermind. That is the bigger question, besides you won’t want it back when I am done with it.

*this article was featured on September 18, 2007

So you think this article is going to suck? I bet you found yourself here by mistake. As a matter of fact, I think you don’t even like this website at all. Well, not really, I am sure you are a mild mannered individual that needs to be textually stimulated just as I do. If that is the case please listen while I vent about a problem with my new car.

Awesome! You made it through the first paragraph. I have to admit I didn’t think you would. Anyway, I will stop hem-haulin’ around and get right down to it. I had to break down and buy a new car, well I didn’t break down, my old car did, but now I have to buy a new one. So I go shopping for a new ride and after looking around my eyes fell upon a lovely new Chevrolet. I am not going to tell you what year, make, model, or color because I don’t want any of you crazies hunting me down because I made you the butt of one of my articles. So with that in mind I will tell you that the car is a mid-size car costing in the mid twenty thousands. I love the car, as matter of fact it’s one of my favorite out of the ten or so I have had in the past. So now I own this car and have been driving around for sometime. Everything seemed just fine. Little did I know…

One evening back in December I was watching a football game at my brother-in-laws house when around half time I had to leave because my son was feeling ill. No problem, I live about twenty minutes away so we hopped in the car to go home, it was about seven thirty so it was dark outside. We are heading home when we hear, and I feel, my son throw up his dinner all over the car and the back of my head. Now I am missing the rest of the game with puke running down my body on a cold December night with my wife yelling at me to stop… all in about 30 seconds my world went from bad to worse. Now we are just a few feet from the busy road and I have popped the trunk to see if I can find a towel. This would have been easy except for, oh yeah… I DON’T HAVE A TRUNK LIGHT!

This made an interesting event even more colorful given the language I was speaking anyway. So off went my shirt as I wiped down myself and my screaming two year old. I am cold and cranky, as is my child, and my car smells of vomit. So back into the car I go only to reach home, flip on the TV to see who won and I find that I have missed the rest of the game altogether. It’s at this time that my wife tells me to go out to the car and get the soiled clothing out of the trunk so she could wash it. I run out to the car (still shirtless mind you) turn on the garage light because why? I DON’T HAVE A TRUNK LIGHT! That’s when I discovered not only a towel in the trunk but a dry blanket that was there in case we got caught in a snow storm, or there was a nuclear holocaust, or my kid vomits all over me. Despite the relief that this should cause, you know how nice it would be to have a blanket in a snowstorm right? I was furious because had I realized that while I was on the road I would not have had to drive home with hard nipples while my son screamed in his vomit soaked diaper.

The one thing that almost puts me over the top with this whole un-illuminated trunk space is, my two friends both recently bought new cars. Both of these cars are the same make as mine and both have trunk lights. To top it all off, the price of both their cars added together still doesn’t equal mine. So I will tell you what to do: check the oil, check the accident record, and you should even check the transmission fluid. But one thing is for sure… always make sure there is a trunk light. Just imagine you get thrown in there by the mob on your way to the bottom of some lake, you don’t want to die in the dark do you?

The rules are very important if you would like to move up to shot–gun status in your group of pals, or remain in the car or even alive for that matter. The rules are very easy, so take careful notes. I will advise you that by not following these rules you will be subjected to some of the worse pranks, stunts and probably some mindless shots to the groin.

1 ) When riding in the car NEVER touch the glass, no glass anywhere, not even the flip down mirror in the visor. By no means should you ever touch the windshield or the back window. If you are any kind of man (and I employ you to double check your pants) you understand the painstaking hours that go into cleaning the back and front window… the streaks, bug guts, and dust. It’s enough to drive a man mad, and now I have to wipe off your smudge marks from your hands, or your lips (when trying to pick up the chick in the car next to us) or your greasy forehead after a night of alcohol hedonism.

2 ) Next, lay off the leg crossing and the removing of your shoes. There are two problems here…one you never take off your shoes no matter how uncomfortable you find yourself. Its never cool to stink up the car for comforts sake, this also goes for the umm, how do I say it? Farting is off limits, especially if the car is newer then three years. Now that that is out of the way, no crossing your legs in my car, seriously, there is no reason for it. There is also no reason for your freaking scuff marks on my dash, that will get you beat with your own shoe.

3 ) There will be no eating… this includes snacking

4 ) No peeing in the vehicle (even if it is in a bottle)

5 ) No changing in the car (especially if it means your nakedness touching my seats)

6 ) Definitely no scratching or picking ones nose.

7 ) No making out with some chick that “seems nice” when she doesn’t smell nice!

8 ) You can forget about leaning, sitting, or lying on my car, this goes for everything from watching the 4th of July fireworks to escaping hot lava coming from a volcano.

9 ) Always ask permission before altering any controls on the dash. Nothing is more annoying than someone screwing with your perfect climate control settings and the cd track without asking.

In closing, keep the code and watch your back when denying these rules. Also, watch out for more amendments to the code in future articles.

Check out part two of the car code!

*this article was featured on September 6, 2007