I traded in a liar and got a smart ass.

I am happier now — the Lying Nazi Bullshit Diesel is dead.  My new Honda Civic is “nice,” but these god damn “smart car” features make me want to strip to my bathrobe and scream “get off my lawn”.

Thank your non-existent god I don’t own a bathrobe (or a lawn).

It starts before I can even get in.  I have to press “unlock” twice.

What fucking genius decided that my first push of “unlock” is a lie?  Mother fucker when I push unlock, unlock.

On push one, the car flips on the lights. I always forget to click twice. I end up standing by a lit-up car and pulling on a locked door like I’m stealing it.

Once inside, I’m trapped in a bad tech “fun house”.

The lights are on “auto” — the inside lights only come on in the day, and remain dark at night.  I’m convinced they put the light sensor in backward.

The headlights have a bunch of different settings.  Behind the wheel, I can’t tell the difference between the day time “running” lights and the regular lights.   I’ve turned the light dial every which way and it all looks the same.  So I just left it on “auto” and hope whatever light it projects will be legal.

Someday, I will be pulled over for running the wrong lights.   I’ll have to sit there like an asshole and explain to the cop that I don’t know how light switches work. Fuck.

At least the lights have real plastic switches and dials.  Not like the virtual shit on the “navigation” screen.

The first thing the screen does is pop up a warning  “don’t touch the screen while driving” — but I have to touch the screen to make the message go away.  Was that warning designed by the Macquis de Sade? I’m waiting for the day, I press “OK”, and the “Saw” character pops out and cuts off my finger.

There’s time for the defingerment too. There’s a fucking delay when I “press,” because the screen is waiting to register body heat as a “click.”

When I hit a bump in these crappy Tucson roads while the god damn screen is trying to figure out where the fuck my finger “was”… all kinds of random shit happens.  The only way I can get any thing to work is to only make changes when the car is stopped.  Brillant tech for a car.

My favorite game with new people:  “turn on the radio”.

No one has ever found the “radio.”  There’s three “Audio” pictures on the screen.  But when you press (and hold) it — maps comes up first.  Fucker, how do you get “maps” out of audio?

Count the “Audio” buttons… And the counting is 3.

Radio “on” takes these steps:

1. Press and hold “Home”
2. A ton of pictures appear, find the little “audio” picture (on the screen not the one on the left) — Press and hold “Audio” (maps appears)
3. Press and Hold “Source” at the top of the map (a set of icons appears)
4. Guess what the fucking pictures mean — there are no words on this screen.
5. Press and hold “FM” icon. (FM radio options appear)
6. Press and hold preset station button or press and hold scan buttons (repeat step 6 until some shit plays you want to hear — give yourself a few minutes this is going to take a while.)

Jesus fucking Christ, can’t I just have a plastic radio button that I can click with any damn object and the radio plays?

Connect the Phone

Fuck the radio, let me plug in my phone and play Spotify.  The Honda actually has a USB port and wire.  AHH finally something useful.

I plug in the phone, it kicks off some fucking “car play” app.  The screen on the car says — “use car play on your phone”, and you have to press and hold OK to make it go away or it blocks the screen from further use.

Repeat the above steps for “radio”, only for “source” find the icon that looks like a bad subway map to nowhere.

Don’t use the phone to navigate the apps, the car screen loses it’s fucking mind and does shit that has nothing to do with what I’m pressing on the phone.

If Spotify throws an error message like “can’t log in” (happens about 50 percent of the time) then you have to dismiss the message on the car screen, pick up the phone, click Spotify, click log in.

But sometimes Spotify gets “stuck”.

• Then close Spotify on the phone
• Restart it on the phone
• Quick switch to the car screen to see if the log in message appears
• • If it doesn’t, use the car screen to navigate the app.
• • If it does, start over, dumbass.

I’d make a flowchart for you, but you would kick the dog before you got to the end.

Alright, now comes the worst part — gettting out of the smart car.  It has “auto lock.”

As soon as I get out, it beeps.  Some random time later, it beeps again and locks the car.  Half the fucking time it locks while I’m walking around to the other door to take out my bag.  I’ve started to open the hatchback halfway around just to beat the clock on the fucking lock.

The other half it just starts sounding a random series of beeps because something is “wrong”.

But I can’t tell what is fucking wrong.  The auto lights are still on, so is there a door open — or are the lights still on manually?  Is the fucking radio still playing?

“What?  Tell me fucking WHAT and stop beeping — you god damn piece of shit…”

OK calm down.  Just hit the lock button.  It beeps some more and leaves the lights on for what feels like 5 minutes.  So I’m standing outside a beeping car with it’s lights on waiting for it to lock.  Have the neighbors called the police yet?

“How come every morning and every night it looks like that fat dude is stealing a Civic?”

Goddamnit, now I have to buy a bathrobe, so I won’t look stupid standing next to a beeping Civic, screaming “Fuck you smart car”

And hey, “You kids, get off my lawn.”