The Vroom Closet

I like to think positively of cars, for the most part. They whisk our population hither and yon at liesurely speeds of 90 miles an hour from their homes to their jobs to the stores, from San Antonio to San Francisco, and, depending on who's driving, the bottom of the Hudson River. They're wonderful contraptions of our own whimsical design, and being without one in the New American City delegates you to the Second Class, known elsewhere as the pedestrian, crawling languidly along the infinite sun-seared concrete desert while high school kids in Ford Broncos hoot and throw cans at you from their windows.
I, personally, have gradually given up use of my feet ever since I received my 1994 Nissan Quest at 17. "Why, you horrible lazy man! How could you substitute your own legs for a series of controlled explosions!" Don't you judge me. Within walking distance of my home, I have four things: Taco Bell, an empty strip mall, a 7-11, and another empty strip mall. Wild. But I won't lie to you, dear reader, these places are no more than 100 feet from my house, and I have found myself driving to these very places to the point where I do indeed question my last shotglass of humanity as I pull up to the drive-thru window. My city is laid out with people like me in mind.
Here in the Old World, on the other hand, things are different. These cities were founded at around the same time as the finishing touches were put on the Sphinx, meaning that these cities, in stark contrast to our oh-so-familiar urban sprawl, were built on the assumption that people will be walking to where they need to be. The houses are on top of the shops, the shops are next to the cinemas, the cinemas are beside to the canals, the canals are between the cafes, which, by the way, have consistently provided me with a cornucopia of the best sandwiches in recorded sandwich history.
Instead of blathering on about the apocalyptic struggle of Man vs. Machine as we've already seen in Terminator and its ilk, I'd like to wrap this shmeal up simply and succintly: One day, robots will work our fields and wash our hair for us. Until then, we in America are one car malfunction away from irrelevance.