Guilt by association. Or rather, actually, proximity.

One day, when I was in middle school, there was a food fight. Nothing climactic like you’d see in the movies, just a few boys sitting at the same table throwing French fries at each other, escalating to M&Ms. Someone’s half-pint of milk got knocked over. Faculty was quick to shut it down and issue punishment.

Rather than considering who started the fight or who escalated it, the teacher decided to simply drop the hammer on everyone seated at the table, equally. Including myself and three other kids, who weren’t in the fight at all.

I used to work a job with a 3-day work week, 12-hour shifts. 36 hours a week, company paid for 40. This was also physical labor, not an office job.

Four-day weekends were nice and all, but commuting during the week was brutal. After work, I’d have just enough time to drive home and go straight to bed, waking up just in time to go back. I honestly debated sleeping in my car sometimes, just so I could get more rest during the work week.

In my trucking career, one of my past jobs had me on a 4 days on/4 days off structure, which sounded nice on paper. But that company had a ton of behind-the-scenes problems that made things more stressful than they were worth. I would often have to work a fifth calendar day to end my rotation at home, and I never made anywhere near the money that company claimed I would.

My gaming desktop is only running Windows out of inertia at this point. Windows 10 LTSC specifically; I’m just waiting on the security updates to stop. Everything else in my house is already running something better.

Ooh yes, Insurgency is one of my favorites. I love the ‘quick reload’ mechanic as well, choosing between saving your leftover bullets and actually reloading faster.

Technically, being a truck driver, I sleep at work every day. There’s a mattress right behind my seat.

Most of my trips these days aren’t long enough to warrant pulling over to catch some shut-eye, but I’ve been that desperate in the past. Never on a highway shoulder though, I’d always try to be safer than that.

The vast majority of my customers will load and unload my truck for me, so usually, once I back into a dock door, it’s nap time.

• Initial D

• Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

• Cowboy Bebop

• Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

• Neon Genesis Evangelion

I drive an 18-wheeler. I don’t live in it full-time though, my employer calls me “regional”. Meaning I stay relatively close to home, rarely more than half a day’s drive.

I work Monday thru Friday, exact hours each day depend on what loads I’m hauling. Unless I have an early appointment, I don’t leave my house before noon on Mondays. Whatever time I get home on Friday depends on how work goes. Sometimes I’ll do some Saturday driving as well, but that’s almost always because I couldn’t make it home Friday night for some reason. Going to my house during the week happens sometimes, though that’s rare.

I’m legally limited to 11 hours of driving per day; most trucking companies see that as a target. My current employer favors a different approach: plan for 7-8 hours per day, so drivers can theoretically work as many days in a row as they want, without being forced to take a day off.

I generally push myself anyway. I’m not paid by the hour; the sooner I deliver my load, the sooner I get to go home.

My housemates have an odd mix of nicknames for their cats. One of them has a shortened name, two of them tend to get extra syllables added to their names, and the last one, Goku, is just Goku.

I usually can’t keep all their names straight, so when one of them bugs me, I tend to just point at it and say “…cat”.

I play a lot of airsoft. That alone isn’t very useful in day-to-day life, except for cardio.

But I own eleven airsoft guns. Mostly pistols.

Airsoft, combined with my love for the Payday games and John Wick movies, is also the only reason why I own any three-piece suits.

I like to have a special car for every occasion. Twisty backroads, or a track day? Roadster. Long highway cruise, or maybe moving some bulky stuff? I have a hearse, which sits on an '80s Cadillac limo chassis. Aside from commutes, I only drive my daily on the rare occasion I have more than one passenger.

If I ever get a third “fun” car, it’ll probably something like a Jeep for off-roading.

That’s what spices and seasonings are meant to alleviate.

The giveaways haven’t completely stopped, but they don’t make up every third/fourth review anymore. I think they only did two this entire year. And they’ve hardly ever pushed them when they did happen.

But yeah, I didn’t enjoy them either. Could’ve been better executed, at least.

Regular Car Reviews definitely peaked long ago.

They’ve largely stuck to the same formula for the past decade-plus, hiding masters-level literary theory, and copious amounts of toilet humor, under the guise of automotive journalism. And there’s nothing wrong with sticking to the tried-and-true.

I still enjoy their videos, I make sure to watch them every Monday morning like clockwork. But they just don’t hit the same anymore. There’s not much that’s memorable about their commentary these days, unless the vehicle in question is unusual on its own, like the shuttle bus RV conversion they reviewed… four months ago. I had to scroll past a bunch of videos for cars I honestly forgot they’d reviewed, when I checked their channel just now.

I miss the anger. I miss the passion that resulted from it. Brian’s acknowledged this, and he’s mentioned how he’s just generally calmer and happier these days. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I admit to souring a bit to all the giveaway cars he’d review/advertise… especially how you’d enter these giveaways by paying FIFTY dollars, pre-shipping, for a crappy camping mug, with a vaguely car-culture-related picture on it. But not an RCR mug. And I respect him for having (largely) stopped doing those giveaways.

But, like, the last video of RCR’s that has actually stuck in my mind, was when they absolutely ripped into an Oldsmobile Bravada. And that came out nearly 5 years ago.

I will say the second book, The Dark Forest, is much better, but I’d read it several years ago and I haven’t come back to it recently.

Whenever I recommend it to people, I just give them a quick synopsis of the first book and that’s seemed to be sufficient for them.

The book’s first puzzle is solved by Wade playing the arcade game Joust against a bot. Then when he wins, he’s dropped into the movie WarGames, replacing Matthew Broderick’s character, and he has to act out every scene to progress.

Seriously, that’s it.

Usually I go for something the crowd can get into, that I can also use to show off. Usually something by Queen.

My favorite go-to though, that I sing just for me, is One More Minute by Weird Al Yankovic.

Somebody to Love is my Queen go-to.

Quantum Leap. Oh boy.

This sprint could’ve been an email.

Rearview mirrors get removed too. Sometimes, especially on column-shift cars, the transmission is still in park.