Okay, I didn’t quite manage to get an Automotive Would You Rather last week, but I sort of made a half-hearted promise to a child to do these, so I’m determined to get one done this week, even though I’ve been swamped editing and podcasting and other crap today. But I don’t care, we’re going to do this! Are you feeling ready? Is your cerebrum all lubed up and well-massaged? I don’t want anyone to pull a brain lobe, because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone not being able to conjugate verbs or whatever. All good? Off we go.
Scenario One
You have a friend who works at a particle accelerator, and she invites you over for a tour of the facility. She shows you around the huge ring of the accelerator, and then takes you into her lab, which has a smaller cyclotron whirring away in it. She seizes you by the arm and tells you that she’s on the verge of an incredible discovery, but she needs your help.
She’s found a way, by manipulating the flavor of the quarks in matter or something you didn’t quite catch, where she can adjust the “phase” of matter, to the point where she can selectively cause physical objects to pass through one another. Her eyes are wild and flashing, and you can tell she’s deadly serious about this.
She presses something into your hand. “It’s a suppository,” she says, making you cringe a bit, but she presses on.
She tells you that when you have that suppository in your rectum, you can give it a voice command and it will adjust the flavors of the quarks in anything in direct contact with you so that you can pass through other matter.
You remind her to say it, don’t spray it, but she doesn’t listen. She tells you that in order to keep you from just passing through the surface of the Earth, she had to limit its use to a specific set of parameters, and knowing you like she does, she tweaked it so it can only work when you’re driving, where you can use it to pass through traffic like it just didn’t exist. Because you hate traffic.
That’s right: When you have the suppository in you, you can just say SHIFT PHASE and then you can just drive right through all the other cars, for as long as you want. You can get from Silverlake to LAX in like 12 minutes with this thing! It’s incredible! Just say SHIFT PHASE again to return to your normal matter state.
However, there’s a catch: Nature, she explains, always balances her books. And, the frustration that you feel in traffic is a known and quantitative sort of energy, known by scientists as frustrationic energy. So, it has to be replaced, somehow.
As a result, for any given amount of time you spend being frustrated in traffic, you need to have an equal amount of frustration energy to replace it. In order to keep things favorable for you from a time standpoint, she has arranged for the most annoying, irritating, smug, biggest assholes she could find to lecture or yell at you once a week to compensate for the frustration you saved by being immune to traffic. By having you encounter colossal assholes, it’ll take less time, because they’ll be so fucking frustrating to listen to. She figures an hour of traffic is equivalent to 15 minutes of listening to some asshole, so it’s about 25% of the traffic time, translated into asshole time.
She already booked Ben Shapiro for a six-month gig lecturing you!
Scenario Two
You show up to your local Cars and Coffee, wishing you had a really cool car to bring, when you see someone with something amazing: An Iso Grifo. It’s a really unusual car to show up at your little car meetup, so you strike up a conversation with the owner. He’s a very cool guy, and tells you he has a massive car collection, and is always on the lookout for new cars to buy. In fact, he continues, he has a sort of special club for people, like yourself, with highly discerning car tastes and interests.
You’re interested, of course, because the club sounds incredible. In fact, he lets you know that his club does something special that could even result in you owning pretty much any car you’ve ever wanted!
His intensity is scaring you a little bit at this point, as his eyes are wide, glistening with excitement. He tells you that, yes, he has a sort of kink, one shared with his club of wealthy car collectors. It’s harmless, really, and if you play along, you can have any car you’d like from his or any of the collections of the other club members, or, if they don’t have it, they’ll buy it for you.
You just have to do one thing: Sculpt a rectangular pound cake into a recognizable shape of a particular car using only your mouth. In front of everyone.
That’s right: if you can bite, chew, lick, nibble or whatever a dense, tasty poundcake into a car that is identifiable (and approved) by at least 85% of the members of the club, then you will be presented with the car you represented via pound cake. If not, then you have to eat six entire pound cakes in front of everyone.
Keep in mind nothing is stopping you from practicing at home! And if you want a VW Microbus you’re already halfway there before you take a bite! Though they may demand more detail for that one, because, you know, they kind of get off on this.
So, what Would You Rather? Be able to drive right through traffic any time you want, at the cost of having to listen to an asshole rant bullshit at you, or would you be willing to try to chew a poundcake into your dream car, in front of a bunch of rich weirdos, and if you fail you’ll have to eat way, way too much pound cake? Choose wisely!
Pound cake. Its got to look like something and something with wheels is better than nothing.
Not germane to this subject; I went back to the old Jalopnik site for the first time in months and boy has Autopian had an impact on them! They are copying your format almost exactly as to lay out and content. Much less click bait shit and they corralled all their commercials into one easy to skip over section. Having said all that, I am still a loyal Autopian and won’t be visiting that “other place” again anytime soon.
Take the red pill
it’s a suppository
Pound cake is not sponge cake, but it’s still pretty rubbery. I think I’d have a tough time nibbling out an E-type: I bet the jury would think it’s a Datsun. Which would be fine if they gave me a 240Z, but , at the level of detail afforded by rather blunt teeth working a yielding substance, I bet I’d end up with a 260 2+2. Pessimal. And forget trying for a Volvo 1800ES. Rules question/quibble: do you nibble it out & display without telling them what you’re trying for? ‘Identifiable’ seems to imply that’s the case. I would think you’d have a better chance if you told them what you’re aiming for.
As an aside, I now have a Kasutera en route due to this article. It’s a sponge cake the Nagasaki area is famous for, and I became addicted to it last century when we lived there. $20—and I know I’ll be disappointed because my memory is of <week-old stuff.
Damnit, Jason(&Amazon)!
Pound cake beats a suppository & Ben Shapiro anytime. Plus, like someone else noted, the overwhelming amount of what little traffic I am subjected to is while on the clock—and it usually becomes overtime.
The pound cake one is the obvious winner. Pound cake is delicious (unless it’s the sad cellophane wrapped stuff you see in gas stations and vending machines) and this could end up being a fun, albeit unorthodox, hobby with a bit of practice.
The risk of the traffic suppository just seems too great. I’m fortunate to no longer have a lot of traffic in my daily life, but see the appeal for road trips here on the east coast, etc. On the one hand a six month Ben Shapiro lecture tour might provide enough suppository fuel to last a lifetime. The worry, however, is that you get numb to these jerks and have to go in search of ever bigger and more depraved frustration hits. Delving ever further into Twitter replies just to FEEL something
These convoluted drawn-straight-out-of-your-ass articles is not really me.
I’m more into strange automotive facts, like for instance that the vanity mirror in a Fiat Dino Spider is curved and on a sunny day burned a hole in the interior of one of my old car friend’s nice blue one. Actually much like the opera windows on that forgettable italian american coupe, you wrote about on that other site.
But I just HAD to click on it, because the illustration had the beautiful Peugeot 403 Berline. So I guess that it some kind of 20th century click bait?
– I would of course chew my way to ownership of a 1976 Lotus Esprit, but the “judges” would probably see it as the FSO Polski Fiat 1100 Coupe…
The pound cake option sounds like far too much of a challenge. I’m already painfully aware of how difficult it is to get extra calories out, once you’ve eaten them. I’d probably fail 9 times out of 10, and end up spending months in the gym working those 54 pound cakes back off because if I take this option, I’m definitely going to have a large collection of incredible cars.
I’ll take the phase shift, but here’s my trick: I’ll only use it sparingly when needed, and only about ten seconds at a time, so maybe two minutes a day, total. I’d love to hear a loudmouth asshole like Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan try to make their completely stupid point in between 2.5 and 30 seconds. That would be more like humor than irritation to me.
Do the pound cake calories count?
“Sculpt a car out of pound cake by nibbling on it with you teeth”
Well, the new season of Great British Bake Off came out today, what are the odds that this will be one of the Showstopper challenges?
I pick phase shift. You never said we couldn’t talk back. And I’d gladly let ‘er rip at Ben Shapiro in 15-minute increments. But I’ll act frustrated so that it still counts. 😉
The vast majority of cool cars are basically shaped like wedges. How is that supposed to be identifiable in the medium of pound cake? We’re supposed to nibble away lighting details and door handle styles? I call impossible.
Anyway I’d go for being a ghost or whatever. Ben Shapiro is fine, give me a week or two and I’ll convince him to off himself so he can join me in the netherworld. Then us other ghosts will exclude him from our haunting crew. That’s what option two is about, right, becoming Ghost Rider but with a car? I didn’t quite follow.
What if I “SHIFT PHASE” but continue to sit in traffic dealing with the frustration?
Obviously that would make it more frustrating.
Will nature balance her frustrationic energy in an opposite manner?
Will I have to deal with less assholes and frustration in my outside of the car world.
Will I suddenly not even notice when say.. someone pronounces the word frustrated like the first R is a silent R?
If so.. I’ll take the suppository and sit in traffic.
If there’s a finite and set amount of annoyances I must endure every day I would prefer to deal with them in my car.
I can always just roll the windows down, put on some tunes, shift gears more than necessary and deal with it.
Wow! The comments suggesting pound cake are just too many.
I would rather live my NORMAL life of listening to assholes every… fucking… day, and be able to whisk through traffic as needed. Shit, just any normal day will be enough to cover me going about anywhere.
The added bonus is the suppository, obviously.
I pick pound cake. It’s just, like, Twinkies without the creme filling, right? I am not that familiar with it. But it sounds good.
Ben Shapiro can kiss my ass.
Going with the phase shift, it’s not like I’m going to use it all the time so my time with Benjamin Sharpie won’t be long and I’d never need to learn how to parallel park. Although mostly picking phase shift because I do not trust my ability to carve out a car from cake with my mouth, and eating 6 cakes as punishment sounds like hell. I may have won a soap carving competition by making a Mustang, but I have a feeling that skill doesn’t really translate here.
Eating six pound cakes does sound like hell, especially if you’re a diabetic.
““It’s a suppository,” she says, making you cringe a bit”
Oh for fucks sake, I can’t stop laughing…
I was all set to go for the traffic one because I do waaaay too much driving in and around Boston and it suuuuucks. However, the frustration factor makes it a zero sum game. Nothing is gained, except time I guess, but most of the time when I’m in traffic I’m on the clock so whatever. There isn’t enough benefit.
The pound cake one sounds pretty easy to be honest, especially if I can practice. It’s not a life-sized sculpture, right? I’m just sculpting a normal sized pound cake into a car, with my mouth? That doesn’t sound too bad, I bet I could pull that off and get a sweet car out of the deal. If it turns out to be harder than expected, I’m sure I can at least do a Volvo 240.
Oh! Or a Lancia Delta Integrale! That would be easy and awesome.
Pound cake: boxy, but good.
I had a similar line of thinking – with regard to Boston traffic, though I only occasionally have to deal with it, and as far as being able to sculpt a 245 with my mouth. I might end up with a 740/760/940/960 or maybe a Nissan Stagea, but that’d certainly be fine too..
Let me get this straight. If I A) Shove something up my ass, it results in C) Getting lectured by Ben Shapiro? I realize there was a B in there that was nice and all, but fuck that noise and pass me the pound cake!
my analysis:
1-phase shift
pro: no traffic delays &
potential safety impact also – you can’t smash into another car
con: sticking something in my ass & unnecessary interaction with assholes
2-pound cake
pro: free dream car of distinction
con: undemonstrated oral sculpting skills – might get a srudebaker when aiming for a ferrari; & potential humiliation and physical distress of eating a bunch of pound cake then walking home sans dream car.
pound cake for me
Fuckin’ love pound cake.
I feel like I could bite-sculpt a fairly convincing replica of something simple but rare, like, say, a Fiat 128 3P, which would be cool to have. So I chose that.
I am completely unsurprised to hear that frustration level is a universal constant, however. I have long suspected as much.
I had the unique opportunity to ride in a Fiat 128 3P Berlinetta, new, in Verde green… Down the autobahn – with my mother driving. I was a teen, too young to drive it myself. I wish I had it now, such a nifty and nimble little runabout!
“She already booked Ben Shapiro for a six-month gig lecturing you!”
Absolutely not. I will take all the traffic and all the pound cakes please. I do not see any downside to eating pound cakes.
Pound cake, hands down.
Yum pound cake. Can I get it from Sara Beth’s in NYC? Hmm, Ford Taurus or 34 Chrysler Airflow?
WellI chose pound cake because I like pound cake. Just having a regular source of free pound cake is cool. I would also add toppings like ???? to create a paint scheme. Win/Win. Also zero sum game to bypass the frustration driving if you get the same amount elsewhere. Also my female friend seems to have gotten a sex change towards the end and that makes me leery. I would not make a pretty woman so I would have no upside for the sex change.
I’m going with the pound cake because I think cheating at chess is despicable.
If you really believe he cheated please explain to me how you can efficiently convey complex information via cordless vibrating anal beads in a timed, professional chess match.
Morse Code is out. Takes to long.
How do you effectively transmit whatever information the A.I. has for you via a few vibrating beads in your butt?
“Rook to Bishop 4”
How do you translate that?
I know enough about the game to play recreationaly, but not enough to play rectalationaly, so no further comment.
Also rook to bishop is a Catholic term and I’m not in the sect.
Most chess notations are 3-4 characters long (Bxe5 for example) and Morse letters are 3-5 transmission units (. or -) long. So assuming 2 seconds to transmit the longest letters (3 – and 2 .), you’d have, at worst, an 8 second butt tingle. I think it would work.
Also give me the pound cake. I love cake.