The Autopian, Your Hub For Parenting Advice And Racy Oysters: Comment Of The Day

For the most part, when you come to The Autopian you’re in for a ride that includes car news, history on anything that moves, and your favorite used car junkies getting their next fix. In the last week, David and I have been dropping terrible crapboxes in our Slack channel and scaring our coworkers and contributors. I mean, just last night someone tried to phish my identity when I tried to buy their Volkswagen Eos VR6 and today someone else tried to scam me on a 2011 Th!nk City EV. Look, I don’t know, either. And it seems whenever Jason writes whatever gets uploaded from a broken iMac G3 to his head, we break something or someone.

I mean, look no further than this line that Jason wrote, which appears absolutely insane when taken out of context.

You’re driving around when you see a food truck that sells oysters. That’s a pretty unusual thing to see, and you’re so intrigued that you completely forget about your incredibly severe allergies to oysters. Plus, their mascot, a very sexy oyster, kinda hooked you in. You pull over on the side of the road, spraying gravel like a massive mineral spit-take, leap from your car and order a huge bucketful of oysters. You greedily suck them down like a starving otter, and then immediately swell up like an oozing zeppelin right there on the side of the road.

Hell, that paragraph is nutty even with the context of it being an Automotive Would You Rather. Jason’s just like that, and it makes me feel like we should just publish an article that’s just Jason quotes taken out of context. I’m pretty sure if you fed an AI Jason articles and told it to write something based on them, the server hosting the AI will overload and smoke itself out.

Perhaps this, and today’s Cold Start, are why reader Duke of Kent reports that RSS readers have no idea how to handle this:

My RSS reader often asks me to confirm the category of articles that appear in my feed. Usually it’s pretty good at recognizing “automotive” as the genre for Autopian articles, but Torch’s stuff always completely baffles it. Today the RSS reader asked me: “Is this article about parenting?”. I think it was the “infant yellow” remark that tripped it up.

Since we’ve been short on COTDs lately, we’re giving three of you the honors today. Pancakeman has chosen the right reason to be an Autopian Member:

“Plus, their mascot, a very sexy oyster, kinda hooked you in.”
This is why I am a member.

In response to requests for a sexy oyster drawing, Jason said that they’re limited to Autopian Rich Corinthian Leather-level members only. Oh, but our members aren’t letting him off that easy, from Drew:

Can we get an oyster that’s passably attractive at Velour?

So, uh, I guess you want oysters of varying attractiveness? You know what, here’s some out-of-context Jason:

The reason I considered canned hams is that, unlike a two-inch thick block of rubber, canned meats are available all over the place. Grocery stores and convenience stores and gas stations all often have them, and you can find those places pretty much anywhere. Canned meat also was generally about the right size and shape for bumper protection work, and seemed to have about the right density and elasticity.

And here’s a photo from Jason without context:

If you were to follow The Autopian as if it were a parenting blog, you’d teach your kids to collect broken cars, sleep in sleazy motels as you drive across the country in dead silence, obsess over taillights, and develop an addiction to the Renault Twingo. Well, and your kid may end up visiting OnlyOysters. I wonder how an RSS reader will attempt to classify this.