Andrea and I have spent a lot of time the last two weeks playing Burnout 3 for the PS2, which is an arcade-style "racing" game where the entire point is basically just to get into huge-ass crashes and fuck up your car (and other cars) as much as humanly possible while driving drunk and wigging out on caffeine pills.  Well as I was going to a doctor's appointment the other day, I realized that driving through the streets of downtown Boston at any time during the day or at nght really isn't that much different than video game racing or running the gauntlet in American Gladiators while monkeys throw cantaloupes, tennis balls and scrap metal at you.  You've got other cars swerving all over the place trying their best to crash into you, crazy obstacles flying in from all over the place, and all kinds of unexpected bullshit that you have to pay attention to if you want to avoid killing yourself and potentially everyone around you.  Remember that game Paperboy, where you were some jerk kid riding your bike down the street in the suburbs of Crazyville and you had to avoid smashing into people, remote-controlled cars, mailboxes, dogs, ninjas, old ladies and all kinds of ridiculous shit?  Driving here is like that.  I pretty much usually just blame it on the fact that they probably haven't re-worked the streets here since the freaking American Revolution, and while it might not have been too bad to fit two horses down these streets side-by-side, there really isn't enough room to squeeze two rows of parked cars, two lanes of traffic and all the other crap that people decide needs to be in the middle of the goddamn street here.

To illustrate my point that driving here sucks, I'm going to run down a list of all the shit that will fly infront of your car whenever you try to drive anywhere in Boston or the immediate surrounding area.  As a nod to the video game that got me thinking about this, I'll also provide a score for each item so that you would know how many points you would get for hitting these things if you were playing the video game of my life.

Moving Vehicular Traffic

Obviously, the most common problem you will encounter while driving is the fact that every other car, person and vehicle on the road is actively trying to kill you at all times.  While I know every place you go to has its own version of "insane drivers" ranging from the decrepit half-blind old people that overwhelm the streets of South Florida to the maniac drunk driver werewolves all across America, I have to say that in my experience I have found Bostonians to be the most reckless drivers this side of Europe or China.  Here are some of the many things you'll need to be on the lookout for if/when you decide to drive in Boston.

Bitches in Nice Cars Talking on Their Cell Phone: 

Going to college in Boston is not cheap.  As a result of this, the majority of people who attend universities in Boston come from families that are totally loaded and don't mind dropping thirty hundred thousand dollars on a totally sweet luxury car for their irritating prissy bitch daughters as long as "that's what she really wants" and who vacation in the Berkshires and go skiing on the bones of dead poor people.  As is true with all overly-wealthy bitches, these chicks went out and had that special surgery where doctors permanently attach a cell phone to their ears so that they don't have to suffer the ignominy of going forty-five seconds without complaining about something pointless to their sympathetic and equally-bitchy friends.  Since it takes SO much fucking concentration to talk on the phone and drive at the same time, the end result is a bunch of fully-loaded Lexuses (Lexii?) swerving around in traffic, drifting into your lane, cutting you off and (hopefully) slamming head on into a telephone pole.  (1500 points)

Cabbies: 

Cabbies make a living out of getting people where they want to go as quickly as possible no matter what.  These guys spend the vast majority of their waking hours driving their cars around the city, so you would think that they would have so much experience that they'd be the safest and most competent drivers on the road, right?  Wrong.  Cab drivers in Boston are scary.  They dart through traffic like amphetamine junkies on the last lap of the goddamn Daytona 500, cutting people off, driving on the fucking sidewalk, tailgating anything with at least two wheels and reeking of petchulli or incense.  In fact, when you're on the road with a cab, you basically have to assume that at any given moment he's going to slide into your lane with no warning and sideswipe you off a bridge before circling around, driving straight into the water and running over your dead body.  (800 points)

Dickheads in SUVs: 

As I mentioned before, the roads in Boston are not very wide.  However, this does not preclude people from buying fifteen-person ten-foot wide machine gun-equipped Urban Assault Vehicles and driving them down the streets where they basically take up a lane and a half and destroy anything they come across.  As such, it's impossible to ride beside them, so your best bet is to just try and pass them by darting into the oncoming traffic lane and hopefully zipping around them before you head-on a semi and are liquidated into a crimson smear on the asphalt.  SUV drivers, however, don't seem to realize that they're driving a fucking M1A1 Abrams tanks down the middle of the street and will try to change lanes, cut into traffic and merge without warning, leaving you about five seconds to get the fuck out of the way, drive up on the curb or slam on your brakes to avoid getting smashed into scrap metal by a fucking Gravedigger-sized monster truck piloted by a middle-aged super-bitchy soccer mom on a mission.  (2000 points)

Native Bostonians: 

Native Bostonians are used to all this shit, so they don't even seem to notice it.  They just calmly look over and think to themselves, "oh those ten cahs ah tryin' to merge ovah heah.  Bettah give 'em some room."  They calmly zip through traffic, seemingly unfazed by any of the insane driving going on around them.  The problem with the Native Bostonians though is that they are so used to insano-bizarro-driving world that they have no tolerance for anything other than complete insanity behind the wheel.  It's apparently very unsettling to them when somebody actually is so crazy as to obey the rules of the road.  For instance, do you only want to go five mph over the speed limit?  Get used to hearing the colorful Bostonian phrase, "FUCK YOU BITCH MOVE YOAH GODDAMN CAH OAH I'LL KILL YOU!!!!!"  Did it take you more than two seconds to hit the gas after the light turned green?  You'll probably get the finger and have some delightful fellow tell you to get your head out of your ass and/or shove a flaming baseball bat up there.  The moral of the story:  if you don't drive like a fucking lunatic, get the fuck out of town.  (Note:  This is the category that I fall into these days)  (800 points)

Out-of-Town Retards: 

These folks are the opposite of the Native Bostonians.  They don't seem to understand the importance of driving twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, changing lanes at while passing within inches of other cars or getting the fuck out of the way of people who actually know how to drive.  A good litmus test to see if you're dealing with this kind of mouth-breathing dumbfuck is to see if they have plates from Vermont, Connecticut, New York or New Hampshire.  If they do, you better just pass them immediately or accept the fact that you will NEVER reach your destination on time, even if your only time constraint is "some time before I die".  IF you are able to spot them early though, they generally aren't too much trouble and you can zip around them and give them the finger with little to no effort.  (600 points)

Yankee Fans: 

Why anyone would put a New York Yankees sticker on their car in Boston is beyond me.  Shit, you'd probably be better off putting "please key my car and beat me within an inch of my life because I suck" in neon fuscia spray paint across your chest because at least then people wouldn't really know WHY they were kicking your ass.  While (generally speaking) Yankees fans aren't exactly WORSE drivers than the typical out-of-town retard, I'm listing them as a separate group because smashing into them awards you a far greater number of points than the typical OoTR would.  (5000 points)

Oh yeah, I went there.

Non-Moving Vehicular Traffic

Double-parking is an AIDS-sized epidemic around these parts, mostly because there really isn't a single parking place available in the entire city of Boston between the hours of 9am and 5pm.  While this would generally encourage normal people not to drive but rather to take public transportation, most people are selfish fuckheads who think the entire world revolves around them.  Those jackasses just park in the middle of the street and expect you to go around them by going up on the sidewalk or into oncoming traffic.

"I Own the Road" Fuckheads: 

Generally, this is the category that most double-parkers fall into.  They drive nice cars, they have cool hair and they sit in their cars in the middle of the street while their girlfriends run in and pick up their dry-cleaning for them.  Sure, you can pull up behind them and honk your horn, but they really don't give a shit about anything other than themselves and are probably even too busy composing ballads in their head about how awesome they are to even hear your shitty horn.  Just go around them, and maybe sideswipe their front end as you're doing so.  (700 points)

Delivery Trucks: 

It's not just cars that double-park in the middle of the street though.  Mail service and delivery trucks won't even think twice before slamming on the brakes in the middle of a crowded intersection and blocking two lanes of traffic while they unload their useless shit.  (400 points)  (1000 points if you can drive up the delivery ramp into the back of the truck like in Spy Hunter)

City Buses: 

Not only are the city buses here larger than most US Navy Aircraft Carriers, but they also stop every fifteen feet to let their stupid passengers off.  While this in and of itself is more or less to be expected of any major city, buses in Boston have the added benefit of making everyone within a ten-block radius of them drive even crazier than usual, as cars from everywhere will swerve all over the place, peel out and run over pedestrians in their frantic efforts to pass the bus before it reaches it's next stop.  Seriously.  Few things are more abhorrent to the Massachusetsean mind than to have to wait in traffic five minutes longer than they have to for any reason at all.  I don't think its an exaggeration to say that most Bostonians would probably kill their own parents with a hatchet than be stuck behind a bus on a two-lane street, and their efforts to escape it undoubtedly be one of the most harrowing experiences of your life.  (200 points)

Confused Foreigners in Shitty Beamers: 

I don't know what the deal is with this, but about 45% of all people I see double-parked on the streets of Boston are foreigners driving beat-up 1980s BMWs and sitting in their cars looking around like they just fucking fell out of the sky and landed in the middle of the street and they have no clue where they are or what the fuck they're doing.  I'm not sure if this is some sort of conspiracy or something, or if I'm just seeing the same guy over and over again or what, but it's honestly very confusing to me.  (500 points)

Idiot Pedestrians

Pedestrians in Boston have a fucking death wish.  You seriously can't drive one hundred feet anywhere in the city without some suicidal lunatic stepping infront of you car, basically daring you to splatter them on your windshield.  They're like lemmings.  You see them and you think, "no way this person is so dense that they will step into the middle of the road where they can be so easily killed by me" and then - BAM! - you're slamming the handbrake in a desperate attempt to avoid being sued for breaking a pedestrian in half.  Generally speaking, these fuckheads fall into four categories.

Oblivious Student with Headphones On: 

I think like eighty airhead students in Boston are hit by cars every single day because they put their headphones on and walk into the middle of the street without looking ALL THE MOTHERFUCKING TIME.  What the hell is wrong with these dumbshits?  How much effort does it take to turn your fucking head ninety degrees to the left before you step off the curb and ensure that there isn't some maniac driver getting ready to murder you?  The way I see it, looking both ways should be a requirement for admission to any university, because all the calculus knowledge in the world isn't going to save you when you are underneath the tires of a car, fuckhat.  (1000 points)

Guy You Really Wish You Could Hit:

Boston has some of these "tough guys" who are just too cool to give a shit about things like "not getting hit by cars" or "not putting on enough fucking cologne to choke a donkey".  These self-absorbed wannabe-Mark-Wahlberg posers probably figure that the sheer amount of coolness that they think they exude will stop any sort of projectile from hitting them or that their bulging muscles will deflect any damage a speeding car might do to them.  These fuckers will actually look right fucking at you and then step infront of your car while you're driving down the street.  Its these douchebag self-absorbed cocksnatchers that get me the most.  I really think that if there weren't jail time involved with vehicular homicide and just like a fine or something I would probably plow these fuckers at least once a month because the sheer satisfaction of having one of these tough guy bitches rolling up on my hood would be worth pretty much any fine you could issue.  (1500 points)

Confused Old People: 

At least once a month I see some decrepit old person trying to get off the train when the T doors close on them.  It never stops being hilarious.  These are the same idiots who walk into the street thinking that maybe, just maybe they'll be able to hobble to the other before you can kill them despite the fact that their top speed is approximately 0.75 miles per hour and you're only a block and a half away from them doing 70 mph in a 35 mph zone.  (300 points - too easy)

Yappy Dog-Walkers: 

Boston also seems to have an over-abundance of bitchy-looking professional yappy dog walkers meandering throughout the streets of downtown.  These "urban professionals" struggle to keep all fifteen of their fluffy irritating terriers at heel by yelling at them and pulling their leashes, and in the confusion they often end up walking out into the middle of the street without warning, a prime target for any yappy dog-hating drivers that might happen to be careening their way.  (300 points plus 100 for every yappy dog)

Bicyclists

Ah bicylists.  Big enough to bully pedestrians out of their way, yet still human enough that you'll get in trouble for running them over.  They generally want the best of both worlds;  they demand to be taken seriously as motor vehicles and ride in the middle of the fucking street, yet they don't abide any of the laws of the road.  They frequently run red lights, ignore signs and do whatever the hell they want at all times.

"Serious Bicyclists": 

Serious bicyclists are the ones who dress up like Lance Armstrong and ride down the middle of the street pretending that they're motorcycles.  Well guess what?  If your top speed is 25 miles per hour, get the fuck out of the road.  You don't see me trying to drive a fucking golf cart down the freeway at rush hour, so you get your ass on the sidewalk and I won't run you off the road with my car.  Seriously.  I could probably crush you and your bike and not even cause any significant damage to my chassis, which is actually LESS than could be said about a golf cart.  Let's make a deal:  YOU use the goddamned sidewalk, and I won't sideswipe you into a mailbox.

Comically Ridiculous Posers: 

These guys aren't "bicyclists" as much as "bicycle enthusiasts".  They don't wear the bicycle outfit and don't top 15 mph but they also ride in the middle of the street and do stupid shit like use hand signals and point at you and expect you to know what the hell they're doing.  Guess what dipshit?  I DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND BIKE HAND SIGNALS.  THAT IS BECAUSE I DRIVE A CAR.  You looking at me and pointing to the street means exactly jack shit to me, so just get the fuck out of my way or I'm going to honk my horn at you again and throw coffee at you. 

The Retina Scorchers: 

The "retina scorchers", as I like to call them, are the guys who get so decked out in neon reflective gear that shining your headlights on them at night is like staring directly into the sun.  They fucking totally blind your shit, which should technically be grounds to run over them.  It's like, "OK asshole, I see the fucking neon reflective vest you're wearing.  You don't need the reflective pants, blinking red bike helmet, pedals and reflective backpack.  You look like a motherfucking Las Vegas casino."