Dear Acura,
My girlfriend recently bought a 2008 RDX. Man, what a sweet ride! In January, the seat warmers were a real charm against Old Man Winter’s icy hand. We’ve done everything in this car–from careening down winding mountain roads to flying through isolated sections of the great southwestern American desert. This car has been a trusty steed to us. A friend of ours even gave birth in the car. No fooling. Life was brought into this world surrounded by highly functional elegance. With such sturdy power lumbar support, the baby practically delivered itself. And the clean-up was a breeze!
So, it is with some hesitation that I must tell you about a minor issue we are having with your otherwise stellar product. We recently had to change the car battery. After we did this, the radio wouldn’t work unless we provided a code. Zounds! You know that scene in 2001 when HAL says, “I’m sorry, Dave, but I cannot allow you to do that?” That’s how we felt. BETRAYED. Betrayed by an intelligence that WE helped to create. It was a dastardly moment, my friend…dastardly. The dealer didn’t give us no code or nothing.
So now we got no radio. It hurts my heart to see my sweet bespectacled girlfriend unable to cruise heedlessly towards the horizon while rockin’ out to some of her favorite jams (she likes Supertramp). So, here we are: no code, no Supertramp, no rasion d’etre. That’s our status, Gladys. It makes me wonder why Acura would craft such a ghost in the machine…a devil of a detail indeed. Could this radio-battery-code matrix indeed be the “modern Prometheus?” It reeks of overthought HOOEY to me.
My understanding is that this is a part of a larger anti-theft strategy. It seems like an over played hand from my vantage point. The only thing that has been purloined in this stratagem is my girlfriend’s ability to drive at top speed singing ‘Breakfast in America’ at the top of her raspy little lungs. And her loss is mine…and America’s. Have we become a nation of code-beating nimrods? Are we so locked into a game of numbers and actuarial charts that we’ll rely on metrics and order at the cost of true grit and liberty? Is the compartmentalized Wal-Mart madness of the age final? It makes me weep to think of it. If this is the case then we may indeed be in the end times. And I will not fall under the yoke of the Beast’s brutal mark. No sir.
In a world of code and pin and password tyranny even death seems prescribed. Well I say, “balls” to all of that. I’m going to grease up and get my kicks and codes be damned. In a land where the numbers crunch the living, Mexico is the new Jerusalem-a last refuge of milk and honey for the damned. And that’s where I’m going to find a cure for all of the vexing minutia of the 21st century. That’s where the absolution is…
Yours in Christ,
Seamus
p.s. How do you access the code to get the radio back on?