Nobody in this City can Drive

Fredericton has some of the worst drivers in the country. I believe that I recall a study at some point that indicated as much in regards to the Maritimes in general, but not Fredericton specifically, so in this, I speak only from my own experience. Any drive I take in or around this city is generally characterized by three successive emotional states. First, an inevitable outburst of anger, at whatever driving offense I happen to see first among the innumerable many occurring in this city at all times. After a frothing, barely sensical tirade that no one else is thankfully around to hear, I enter a state of quiet disbelief, muted by a throat screamed raw. Finally, after several such instances in quick succession, I enter a state of jaded acceptance. Much like in the episode of the Simpsons where Marge becomes a cop and takes a depressed walk through Springfield, internally reciting a grim litany of crimes she observes ("Man parked across three handicap spaces"), I silently take note of each further offense, slowly becoming more jade statue than man.

A car with no lights on.

A van tailgating me so closely that I fear the next stop sign.

A tractor-trailer passing on a double yellow, on a road it's not supposed to be using.

A motorcycle almost run into by a motorist who doesn't notice anything smaller than a car.

A sport-utility vehicle idling at a green light while the driver talks on a cell phone or applies their make-up.

A truck trying to turn left across a busy street during rush hour, while a dozen more cars planning to turn right wait behind it.

A full line of ten vehicles waiting to turn left at a set of traffic lights, none of them with their turn signals on, and the front one a full car length in front of the stop line.

And the one unifying theme behind all of these offenses is that the driver is either completely ignorant or completely unapologetic. Or both.

As I witness all of this, I am forced to turn my examination inward, because I am far from entirely innocent in this. I'd like to think I'm a pretty good driver, but we all make mistakes. Am I this city's best driver? Certainly not, but sometimes it seems as if anyone with opposable thumbs could have a reasonable shot at the title. When I cut that guy off that I was late in seeing, do I feel embarrassed and appropriately apologetic, or do I suddenly feel irrationally angry, as if that anger will cover my guilt? And if other people are in my car, do I hope that my bluster will somehow convince them of my innocence as well? Or do I instead merely shrug it off for the benefit of my audience and pretend as if it was all part of the plan? Well, it depends on my mood, I guess, and the situation. So I am not without fault, and not immune to the irrational desire to pass the buck, or to feign ignorance. So, does that mean I should put myself in others' shoes and forgive the myriad offenses I see every time I get behind the wheel? Hell no.

You see, I may make the occasional error, but, as the term I chose implies, they are occasional, and they are errors. If the guy who I just cut off is pissed off, he damn well has a right to be, because I was in error. Should he blast his horn at me? Hell yes. When you're driving, mistakes can be a matter of life and death, and everyone could use an occasional reminder of that gravity. I wish I myself would lay on the horn more often, but that hand-to-horn reflex just isn't there, and doing it after the fact isn't quite the same. Bad driving seems to be an epidemic in this city, and no one seems to care. Through my own experiences, and through conversations with other people, I have concluded that there are four primary causes of bad driving: lack of skill, ignorance, laziness (the most grievous of all), and, finally, impatience. Lord help you if you run into someone exhibiting all four.

So, the first, and the one of which I am most forgiving, is lack of skill. For some, this might be temporary-- an unavoidable product of inexperience that will ideally disappear once the driver gets several years of frequent driving under their belt. But even then, that experience needs to be broad. A decade of city driving in good weather is of no use to someone driving on a highway in a blizzard for the first time. I can certainly attest to this-- you can generally count on at least one car sliding off the road at Bluebird corner (a sharp S-shaped corner near my home) every time there's a bad storm, and I only need to watch someone pull off a busy highway into a driveway once to know if it's something they do often (the majority of city drivers aren't cognizant of the informal experience-driven rules governing this). However, even with experience under their belt, some people just aren't cut out to be skilled drivers, and likely never will be, in much the same way that no amount of experience would make me a skilled diplomat. Unfortunately, driving is a necessity in the lives of many, or at least a perceived necessity, so they just have to make do with the skills they have. This is certainly not ideal, but since I understand the need for a vehicle, I can forgive them, provided that their skills are at least passable.

However, I am much less forgiving of ignorance. Some people just don't seem to care that they have bad driving habits, and make light of the danger they present to both themselves and others. One of the examples above was drawn from a conversation I overheard while working with Supply and Services several years ago. One of my co-workers drove a motorcycle, and was complaining about how someone had almost just run into him. One of the women he was speaking with laughed and said "oh, I just don't see motorcycles." How precisely is this funny? He certainly didn't seem to think it was funny, although he waited until she left to say as much. That's like someone walking around downtown swinging a rifle and laughingly proclaiming "oh, I can never remember to put the safety on." If you typically don't notice motorcycles when you're driving, then you'd damn well better start paying more attention.

Similarly, suppose you find yourself idling in front of a green light for a third time while distracted by talking on a cell phone, doing your makeup, or fixing your hair. Perhaps at that point in might occur to you to STOP DOING IT? And if you keep finding yourself having to slam on your breaks when you drive, maybe you shouldn't be trying to kiss the bumper of the fucking car in front of you all of the time. BACK OFF. Or suppose that you keep stopping at the same set of lights every morning, and never get the left-turn light that you want. BACK THE FUCK UP AND GET BEHIND THE STOP LINE BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE TRYING TO MAKE A TURN FROM THE INTERSECTING STREET RUNS INTO YOUR IGNORANT ASS. *Ahem* Sorry for yelling. That one is a pet peeve. No hope of a career in diplomacy, remember? Anyway, moving on...

Finally, there's the truck I mentioned above, trying to make a difficult left turn. Does the driver realize how angry and impatient everyone behind them is getting? If they have to wait five minutes to successfully make that turn, and cut someone off to do it, then maybe it might occur to them that it's not a turn they should be making in the first place. There are of course exceptions to this, but, generally, if the driver is willing to take a moment to plan their route, they can avoid that turn by going out of their way a little-- perhaps taking a different, less direct route, or taking advantage of a set of traffic lights placed elsewhere on that same street. That truck might not be attempting that inadvisable turn out of ignorance, however. It is equally possibly that they are simply too lazy to be bothered with an alternative route, and that is something that I simply cannot bring myself to forgive.

I have come to believe that people are, fundamentally, lazy. Even the hardest workers will occasionally take pleasure in simple acts of laziness, like not bothering to get the newspaper out of the mailbox when they get home, leaving the task to someone else in the household. At the very least, most people are prone to bouts of laziness. I, for one, am incredibly lazy. I'm so lazy that I don't eat ribs, on account of their being what I call a "high-maintenance" food, meaning that I find it too much of a bother to eat around and properly dispose of all the bones. So, yeah, I'm damned lazy. But even I can be bothered to check my blind spots, to put on my seatbelt, and to telegraph my intent to other drivers via those little flashing lights on the outside of my vehicle that everyone in this town seems to think are decorative. I am talking, of course, about turn signals. If I were to hazard a ballpark estimate, I would say less than half, that's right, LESS THAN HALF, of the drivers in this city generally can't be bothered to use their turn signals on a regular basis. And it BLOWS MY MIND. How goddamned lazy do you have to be that you can't exert the energy necessary to move your FUCKING INDEX FINGER up and down a couple of inches. Your INDEX FINGER. A COUPLE OF INCHES. That is the sum total of the necessary effort required to telegraph your intent to everyone in sight of your vehicle, and to make the lives of all of those same people a little safer. It's just... ARGH. *sigh*

Finally, we come to impatience, the vice of which I am most guilty, which I'm sure surprises no one who knows me well, or has read this far (Hell, reading the previous paragraph would probably be evidence enough). I suspect that this one is perhaps the most prevalent of the four, but it really can't help but be, given the high price of gas these days, and because a city full of drivers lacking skill, effort, and common sense can't help but breed impatience in everyone else. Impatient people make bad decisions, and they quickly turn into angry people, who make even worse decisions, and become so self-absorbed that they tend to become ignorant as well, losing situational awareness. As you may infer from the yelling above, I am prone to road rage, as are many others. I also like to be punctual (although the desire seems to lessen with each passing year), and have little patience if I feel that another driver may cause me to be late. I generally try my damndest to keep that rage inside the car, and not let it be reflected in my driving (the verbal outbursts are generally useful in this respect), but I don't always succeed at this. At the very least, I make the effort, which can't be said for many, and I'm aware of the problem and do my best to address it. Leaving a few minutes early is often the simplest and most effective preventative measure, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone else who is prone to road rage.

To get back to drivers in general: impatience/anger makes people do very stupid things. Small holes in traffic suddenly seem bigger. Fast approaching cars suddenly seem slower and further away. Cars in front of you suddenly seem much slower, and dashed lines suddenly seem to go on much further. Pedestrians suddenly seem to be much further away from crosswalks. Yellow lights suddenly last twice as long. And, finally, no one else on or off the road seems as important as YOU. Clearly, that's a very dangerous point of view to have when you're behind the wheel, and, as such, impatience may very well be the most dangerous of the four vices I've discussed (although the remaining three are still quite dangerous in their own right). However, it is by virtue of this very possibility that the other three suddenly become more important. Let's revisit the offenses I listed above. They certainly don't all seem to be life-and-death situations, do they? Well, this isn't entirely true. You see, any one of those situations has the capacity to turn an impatient driver into an angry driver, and some of them have the capacity to turn even a patient driver into an angry driver. So, by the time that tenth car in line finally gets his chance to turn right after waiting for the front vehicle to turn left, he may be quite angry, and, if he is, he's far more likely to impatiently dart out into a small gap in traffic. This being the case, I think that the best cure for road rage is for everyone, ragers included, to do their best to become more skilled, more aware, and more considerate drivers. Like that's going to happen. :-/

So, Fredericton's drivers are dangerous. Does that make them the worst in the country? I'm certainly a poor judge of that, given that I've never been further west than Hull. That being said, any driving that I have done outside of Fredericton has generally been a more pleasant experience, and that's saying a lot, given that I'm often angry over my own mistakes at the time-- the products of driving in an unfamiliar place (getting in the wrong lane, getting lost, etc). Even my last drive through Montreal, while hectic, caused me to notice a sort of bizarre skill in the other drivers as they weaved recklessly through traffic. Still, I can't claim that we have the worst drivers in the country with any certainty. But I still feel safe claiming that nobody in this city can drive. If we're not the worst in the country, I'm quite thankful that I don't do much traveling.

Jordan Bramble, Homeowner

It's not what you're thinking. Well, unless you're thinking "Jordan's obsessed with Oblivion lately, and can't afford to buy a house-- I bet this is about that damn game again." Then you'd be spot on. I tried hard to think of something unrelated to Oblivion to talk about, but that's like asking a man who's on fire to talk about something other than what is slowly cooking him. Being on fire tends to focus the mind, you might say. For instance, if I were to ask Mr-On-Fire: "What do you think about those gas prices lately?" his response would like be something along the lines of: "AAAAAAARRRGHH!! FIRE! FIRE! OH GOD IT BURNS! FIRE!" Similarly, if someone were to ask me what I thought of those same gas prices, my response might be: "My horse doesn't need gas. And even if it did, I live just outside the city, no more than a few minutes' walk away from the marketplace, and, when I'm not shopping, I spend most of my remaining time in caves and ruins-- what need would I have for gas? Besides, my Athletics skill just reached the Journeyman mastery level." You know, on second thought, maybe it's not quite the same thing after all.

Still, the point remains-- pretty much any conversation I have these days inevitably turns to the subject of Oblivion, just as pretty much any conversation you have with a man on fire quickly turns to the subject of said fire. However, conversations with the latter tend to end much quicker, whereas conversations with me tend to drag on until the other participant(s) flees in terror. I feel like I've gotten a little off track here, what with all of the fire talk. Suffice it to say, I am on fire, and loving every minute of it. Oh, and in anticipation of possible responses to that: no, that does not mean that I'm flaming. Although I do have a flaming two-handed longsword that I recently scavenged from the corpse of a highwayman who made the unfortunate mistake of demanding that I pay him a fee to cross a public bridge. It's flaming, and it swings both ways. ;-)

In any case, to return to this post's supposed topic-- I am the proud new owner of a nice piece of waterfront property, on the banks of the beautiful Imperial City. Admittedly, it's a bit of a fixer-upper (read: run-down shack), and it's a little too cozy for my tastes (read: small run-down shack), but it's home. I've done what I could with the interior to try and spruce it up a little-- when I first bought it from the Office of Imperial Commerce for the low, low price of 3000 Imperial Septims, the furnishings consisted entirely of a bed in the corner. Now I have a dresser, some cupboards, a dining table, a set of clay dishes and utensils (although I've had my eye on a nice silver set in the marketplace), a couple of chairs (although I rarely have the opportunity to entertain guests, and my only guest thus far wasn't much interested in talking, and can regrettably no longer talk at all), a warm fireplace, and some lovely wall-hangings and paintings. I'd like to have a bookcase as well, in order to display my growing collection, but for the moment I've contented myself with storing my library in a chest in the corner. I'm looking to purchase a summer home in Leyawin at some point-- perhaps some bookcases would be a better fit there.

Although the residents of the Imperial City are generally good people, I can't help but notice a certain unsavory element frequenting the waterfront. Most of my neighbors seem to be rather, umm, rough around the edges, let's say, so I don't socialize with them much, and I keep my door locked when I'm not home. I even had a group of pirates moored not far from my home when I moved in, although they're no longer around after a visit to their ship by myself and a few Imperial guardsman . However, even they are preferable to the local wildlife. The Imperial Legion does their best to keep its citizenry safe, and I applaud their efforts, but they seem a bit more lax in their patrols out here on the waterfront, and I've had to deal with a host of animals on my property. At first, it was only the occasional mudcrab (nasty little things), but since then, I've had to deal with everything from wolves to lions and bears. I even had a troll stumble by once! That was certainly unpleasant.

However, ignoring these issues, I'm quite pleased with my purchase. I'd have a house-warming party, but the place isn't really big enough or properly equipped to entertain a crowd, and I suspect you'd all have trouble finding the place anyway. Still, if anyone wants to visit on an individual basis, I'd be happy to have you. Leave your boots and gauntlets at the door, and don't mind the blood on the floor.

Did Someone Mention Oblivion?

I've had a pretty uneventful week. That is to say, a pretty uneventful week in real life. See, I've spent pretty much every waking moment outside of work playing Oblivion (aside from one evening spent playing Advanced Squad Leader with Nathan, which also included a great deal of Oblivion discussion), and even then, much of the rest of my time is spent thinking about Oblivion. In fact, I can't stop thinking about it. If any of you are talking to me in the recent future, and my eyes glaze over, chances are that I've forgotten that you're there and my mind has wandered all of the way to Cyrodill. I haven't been this obsessed with a game since the original Phantasy Star for the SMS, back when I used to sit on the school bus and day-dream about fighting spiders on Motavia. All my carefully laid plans of playing in moderation have been shot to hell. Since, as I said, nothing much has happened in real life this past week, I considered regaling you all with some of the dramatic exploits of my law-abiding male Nord Paladin, Loric. However, fortunately for everyone, I came to my senses. So, rather than bore/scare everyone, here is an abstraction of what that probably would have looked like. Enjoy.

Oblivion! Oblivion Oblivion Oblivion Oblivion, Oblivion Oblivion Oblivion. Oblivion Oblivion Oblivion-- Oblivion. Morrowind? Oblivion.

Oblivious

As of this past Tuesday night, I am the (somewhat) proud new owner of an XBox 360 (well, actually, it's in transit ATM, but money has been exchanged), and noone is more surprised than I am. I've stated on this site in the past that, while pretty (which doesn't count for much on my aging big-screen), the 360 didn't have much in the way of software that interested me, so I wouldn't be buying one any time soon. However, I also mentioned that I would likely have to buy one eventually, if for no more reason than to play a handful of upcoming Bioware games (which is essentially the role my current XBox assumed for this hardware generation, cross-platform releases aside). Still, I was quite comfortable waiting for a increase in supply (and possibly quality) coupled with a decrease in price. So what happened to prompt this foolishness on my part? Oblivion happened.

For those not aware, Oblivion is an RPG for the XBox 360 (and PC) that is notable for its large, immersive single-player world and its flexible character creation/role-playing engine. Unlike the traditional Japanese-style console RPGs that I spend the majority of my time with, Oblivion is a PC-style role-playing game. I'm not certain that I'm up to the task of describing that distinction properly, but, to make an attempt: Japanese-style RPGs tend to be turn-based 3rd-person affairs with inflexible storylines and pre-defined player characters, while PC-style RPGs tend to be much more open-ended free-roaming real-time 1st-person affairs with player-defined characters. I've never really been fond of PC-style RPGs, and have only spent quality time with two(-ish) of them in my lifetime: Might & Magic 7 for PC and the Ultima games for the Commodore 64. The Ultima games were an early love for me, and some of the first RPGs that I ever played. However, I wasn't really up to a game of that complexity at that age, so play sessions generally degenerated into getting lost and eventually killed in dungeons or robbing the store and getting killed by the town guards as I tried to escape (which, even that long ago, gives you an idea of the flexibility afforded by PC-style RPGs compared to their Japanese counter-parts). So, the only PC-style RPG that I've played that I was of an age to really appreciate was Might & Magic 7, the game which, as some of my friends have heard me rant about at length, stole an entire summer of my life that I'll never get back.

See, I've always described myself as a completist when it comes to my video games. I like to find every bell and whistle, leaving no stone unturned, and am generally not content until I've found and done everything that there is to find and do, regardless of how many hundreds of hours (literally-- these games track time spent, and I've passed the 100 hour mark on many) it takes. And, I'm proud to say, I'm generally quite good at it, even without today's readily-available and oh-so-tempting FAQs. I have a real knack for it, you might say. I was able to "complete" every game that I'd ever played, up until Aiden introduced me to Might & Magic 7, an introduction that I still curse him for to this day. For, you see, Might & Magic 7 destroyed me utterly. The many Japanese RPGs that I'd spent so much time with left me completely unprepared for MM7-- the game was, to me, incomprehensibly broad and deep. I could go anywhere, and do everything, and I could just pick a direction and stumble across a new dungeon, or an island full of monsters guarding treasure. I spent almost every day of that summer (I had it off between years of high school or university-- I can't recall which) in the following manner: get up, play MM7, eat supper, play MM7, go to bed. I was unwilling to admit defeat, so every day, I plugged away at that game, convinced that I was nearing the end. After two solid months spent in this manner, and roughly 400-500 hours of play, I finally, in a moment of weakness, went online and grabbed an overworld map. At first, I thought that I must have gotten the wrong map, but that was just my skewed sense of scale-- I soon realized that I had explored only roughly 1/6 of the game world. I then promptly uninstalled MM7, gave it back to Aiden, and never played it again. I was defeated.

So, given that history, why in god's name do I so desperately want to play Oblivion that I would buy a $500+ console for that sole purpose? I wish I knew. There's just something about the game that demands it be played-- I'm powerless to resist it. It just looks so... fun. So, I've bought it, as well as an XBox 360 (it was either that or a new PC, and I'm pretty attached to my current PC, relic that it is), and, once I finish one of the two games I'm currently playing (I discovered long ago that I can reasonably handle no more than two different games simultaneously, and they must be of different genres, and, even then, it takes some work), I'll begin playing it. I do have a plan in mind to try and prevent a repeat of what happened with MM7. I intend to play Oblivion in moderation over the next year or two while I continue to work through my backlog, one game at a time. If I'm able to stick to this plan, rather than surrendering to Oblivion utterly and playing it non-stop, I think it might work. I'm historically not known for my willpower when it comes to gaming, but I remain optimistic. Time will tell, I guess.

I consulted a few people on this purchase before I made it, and Nathan strongly advised against it-- he couldn't comprehend buying a system for one game (although, incidentally, I do intend to buy at least a few more games for it over its life-span, such as the upcoming games from Bioware and Mistwalker). As I then told him at the time, the funny thing is, this is historically how I make all of my system purchases. When I buy a console, it is with a single game that I must play in mind-- everything else is just icing on the cake. Of all the post-Atari consoles I've owned, from the Sega Master System to the PS2 and XBox, the only console I did not buy to play a specific game was the Gamecube. He suggested that I instead play Oblivion's predecessor, Morrowind, which is affordably priced and for a console that I already own. It would certainly be the smart thing to do. The problem is, that game is 1/2 a decade old, and, to be frank, it just doesn't grab me in the same way that Oblivion somehow has.

One discovery I made with this purchase is that the XBox 360 drought has well and truly ended, which Microsoft has tried to claim is the case for some time now. I had no problem finding a 360, and my wait will be but a matter of days-- and most of that is shipping time. I ended up purchasing my 360 at Amazon, rather than EB, which is where I make the majority of my video game purchases. This is because EB will not sell me the console by itself-- they insist on offering only expensive package deals that come with the system, several games, several peripherals, the kitchen sink, and so forth, ballooning the price to ridiculous heights for the biggest bundles. This is a problem, because I don't want all of that extra crap-- if I wanted to play Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo while frying bacon on the damn thing, I'd have bought one of those bundles at launch. Instead, I waited for games (well, a game, at least) that I actually want to play, and now I just want the console itself (or the Premium version of it, at any rate). Fortunately, Amazon is offering the 360 Premium box (the console, one wireless controller, a headset, a media remote control, 3 months subscription to the online service, and a hard drive, which is needed for backwards compatibility) by itself, for a flat $500 plus tax.

Now, those who know me well might question why I'd want 3 months of the online service, since I generally hate online play, and they'd be right to question. To be frank, I don't want it-- but I need it anyway. You see, the way in which the 360 supports backwards compatibility is through emulation software specific to each game, and that software is downloaded on demand from the online service when an original XBox game is inserted. It's a one-time operation, since the download will be stored locally on the hard drive after I'm done, but in order to play my XBox games on the 360, I'll need to connect to their online service initially. Just don't get me started on the save files for those games-- Microsoft made a specific decision to not support transfer of save files for XBox games to the 360. Bastards. I guess I'll have to keep my eyes out for a work-around-- until then, I'll be hanging on to my old XBox. To sweeten the matter of the online service slightly, there is also downloadable content on offer for Oblivion, at a small cost that has generated no end of debate (I intend to speak at length on this on Smiling Politely in the next couple of days). So, I'll probably make some use of my 3 free months, but after that I may simply cancel it, as I did with my XBox. That being the case, I guess I'll probably need to look into picking up a wireless router sometime soon.

So, anyway, I'm now a XBox 360 owner. I never expected to be an early 360 adopter, but here I am, dubious though the reason may be. It is my fervent hope that I won't come to regret it.