Modes of Transportation
AUTOMOBILES
You know, cars would be altogether great if it weren't for one thing: other cars. When they move from the place you are to the place you want to go, they're damn near indispensable. But when, you know, you can't move because there are so many fucking other cars on the road, well, that's a problem. Actually, I just thought of another problem with cars, too. They're enitrely personal, so it allows people to express aspects of their personality that I don't really care about. Like that they like tennis balls on their antennae. Or they have infants on board. Or they like Garfields with suction cups on their hands. Or that they want you to honk if you're in some state of sexual arousal. Whatever. Minus 7 bullets.
TRAINS
Despite the fact that at this very moment I'm sitting in a hotel room where trains speed by at a very high volume every few minutes, I will never think that trains are anything but awesome. Allow me to enumerate the reasons: They carry coal and other sooty materials. At least one legendary steel-driving man has died in the construction of their tracks. No song about a train in the history of mankind has been bad. They have whistles that go "TOOOT TOOOT!" You can buy a wooden whistle that makes the same noise. Many expressions about trains are fun to say, like "gravy train" or "money train." I could keep going. Plus 10 bullets.
AIRPLANES
I enjoy that there's a mode of transportation that can get me from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco in less than a day. It's convenient. But let's consider for a moment what airplanes have really wrought: some of the worst comedy in the history of the form. Yes, there's the movie "Airplane," but there's also "Airplane 2." And thousands upon thousands of jokes about airplane food. And airplane bathrooms. And flight attendants. And overhead compartments. And none of them are fucking funny. Pretty much the entirety of the 1980s stand-up comedy was someone getting on a stage and just exclaiming "upright and locked position!" and people laughing like they heard something relevant. That's infuriating. Minus 5 bullets.
BOATS/SHIPS
I might be wrong about this, but my understanding is that seaborne travel is the only type that comes with its own wardrobe. And what a wardrobe it is: hats with little steering wheels on them, frilly shirts, pants with stripes up the sides, eye patches, various tropical birds. It's the height of fashion. Also, ships come with their own games. Or, at the very least, it's only acceptable to play them on ships. Like shuffleboard. On land, it's basically something you play only if you're warding off the cold, bony hand of death. On a boat, it's suddenly totally cool. Girls in bikinis will even join you! Fuck, I'm moving onto a boat. Plus 6 bullets.
BUSES
It's unfortunate that buses get such a bad rap so early on. They force us onto the big yellow things in school, where we're the victims of wedgies or where we're forced to look at crudely drawn pictures of vaginas or we have traumatic experiences in which older kids try to convince us that our male friends are our "boyfriends" and so then for weeks after we're saying our friends are our boyfriends and we don't even realize because we're young and stupid and not actually gay, but people think we are. But then we grow up, and we realize that buses are actually simply the places where vagrants urinate on themselves and people perpetrate terrorist attacks. Minus 4 bullets.
HOT AIR BALLOONS
Elegant. Stylish. Classy. Perfect for gentlemanly wagers amongst exclusive clubs made up of wealthy, aging British men who bet incoming members to go on impossible journeys in order to win the hands of their fair Victorian daughters. Plus 7 bullets.
Conspicuously absent from this piece: Large drills that are designed to dig in huge tunnels underground. I have no explanation for this.
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