Writer's Block, Vol. II.

I sprayed Pam into a frying pan and got some on the counter. Now what? How do you clean Pam off of the counter? Pledge, you say? Won’t that just make everything even more greasy and slippery? Honestly, that’s like cleaning a shit stain with a melty chocolate bar. Yes, it’s exactly like that. In all seriousness, you could accidentally mix up the labels on your Pledge and your Pam and no one would know the difference. Well, until someone starts noticing a certain lemon-bleachy zest in the fried tilapia. That and everyone’s teeth start shining extra bright like freshly stained and polished cedar.  But, I feel that Pledge's whole ad campaign should be based on its ability to turn a regular coffee table into an air hockey table.

"Honey, pass me one of those coasters."

[COASTER GLIDES ACROSS TABLE AND FLIES THROUGH THE WINDOW]

"I win, I win!  One to nothin'!!"

Seriously though, when you go overly apeshit with the Pledge (or Pam for that matter) and get some on the floor by mistake, it takes years for the floor not to be slippery anymore. It's a death trap for anyone wearing socks.  Suddenly you have small zones of floor all around your house, marked off with cones, that you know to be careful around, like hardwood black ice.

“Careful over there, there’s a slippery spot. Don’t wear socks in that room. You need to put on your cleats.”

Who are these people that wear shoes in their own house?  Creepy.  Ever accidentally done the splits because of a Pledgey spot on the floor? Me neither. My mother used to clean the kitchen table with Pledge and when she would call us down for supper (in Canada, we say SUPPER), we would come running down, excited, and then go flying across the floor like some kind of linoleum Slip N’ Slide. Except instead of a refreshing pool at the end, it was an open oven. That’s actually how we lost our cat, Mr. Majestyk. In retrospect we should have called him Mr. Tender N’ Delicious. I’m kidding, we didn’t eat him. But he ruined our fucking lasagna.

Slip N’ Slide was one of those disappointing toys, wasn’t it? The commercial was full of guitar solos and people having an absolute blast. In reality, you were lucky if you even made it all the way to the end without veering to the side, touching the grass and/or pavement, and doing a horrifyingly painful backwards somersault. I guess toys like that set us up for being disappointed by a lot of things in life in general as adults. Oh shit, remember Pogo Ball? How were those asshole kids getting so much air in those commercials? Again, guitar solos, turntable sounds, jump kicks, sideways or backwards hats and flying happy ninja children. I’ll tell you, my brothers and I barely got the thing off of the ground, let alone got three or four feet of air. Picture trying to jump with THE PLANET SATURN between your ankles and you get a bit of the idea.

“Hey guys, check this out, I can jump even higher if I throw the Pogo Ball into the garbage.”

There was also a brief yoyo craze when I was growing up, but my attempts at the “Around the World” trick ended when the yoyo tagged me in the balls. What a nice surprise (see: Quelle Surprise!).  I always managed to get hit in the balls during sports growing up. I was the only kid that insisted on wearing a cup while playing hacky sack. I’d get hit in the nuts during Hide and Seek. Speaking of which, did you ever have a game of Hide and Seek that ended prematurely? You know, where everyone goes home before someone gets found, but no one bothers to tell that kid?

“Did anyone find Jeremy?”

“No, but, eventually he’ll figure it out. Let’s all go to our homes.”

Jeremy remained crouched in the garbage can seemingly forever, figuring that their cries of “come out Jeremy, come out wherever you are, we’re going home, the game's done” were just a lame ploy to lure him out prematurely. He was eventually found, hungry, shivering and holding a Pogo Ball for warmth.  He sat there, in a pile of his own poopies, victorious. He was the clear winner.

In short, sometimes it’s better to lose.

That’s it. I'm trying to use this hot Snickers bar to remove this skidmark.

Celebrate Good Times? Come On.

It all started off when somewhere, some lunatic first thought to themselves that “saaay, Friday is one day before Saturday, and boy oh boy does that ever make me happy”, figuring it was like some kind of a holiday to him. So he goes around wishing everyone a ‘Happy Friday’. Wow, so witty and clever. This is the same joker who probably has a nickname for everyone he’s ever met in his entire life.

“What up [enter obnoxious nickname that only this person uses]?"

Long pause.

"[repeat obnoxious nickname but stretch out the final syllable and make the voice go higher and higher by at least three octaves]!”

You know, I bet they have a big fucking barbecue too, and always mention that they’re going to grill or golf or whatnot. They do real well for themselves, no doubt.  They say shit like 'that's what I'm talking about' or 'you da man' or 'story of my life'.  They’re named like, Karl or Travis, or Casey, or like Wendy. Well shit, the keener intern/temp/asshole from two cubicles down (the one who bakes cheesy doodles and marzipan hot buns for EVERYONE in the office every two or three days) picked up on this cheerful and awesomely fun behavior and started applying it to Mondays too. You know, to be ironical and/or cute or something. It wasn’t. It’s not. They’re not.

Telling someone that they have a ‘case of the Mondays’, Office Space style, is lame, but it isn’t nearly as lame as suggesting to “turn that frown upside down” and then bringing it all home with a big ol’ “Happy Monday!”

Seriously fuck you. Turn your head upside down and stick it UP YOUR ASS WITH BROKEN GLASS. Now. Go back to the temp agency forever and ever please. Now.  But hey guess what? Happy Monday and Happy Friday just weren’t good enough for these happy office folk. It was only the beginning.  This brings me to one dreadful Tuesday,  when someone said unto me, ‘Happy Tuesday’. I don’t remember when it was, but I seem to remember taking a few personal days afterwards, understandably so. I even contemplated quitting.  I wanted to set fire to my ears and never go back to the land of hearing.

“Well, enjoy the freshly baked lemon poppy seed jalapeño popper pizza bagel coffee cupcakes that I baked from scratch. They’re healthy and nutrasweet! Happy Tuesday!”

This is where we’re at now? Celebrating moments of time just for existing once a week? Obviously Wednesday and Thursday came next, and so now, we’re all pretty much fucked. Perky, chipper, screechy-voiced wienies are coming out of the woodworks wishing us all Happy Anyday and wanting to tell us about their weekends and plans and home renovations. What’s next you ask?

“Happy 5th of November everyone!”

“Happy dusk on a Sunday!”

“Happy Bathroom Break! Seriously, number one or number two?”

“Happy Which Conference Room is the Two O’Clock Meeting in this Afternoon??!!”

“Happy 3:17PM Eastern Standard Time.”

What happens when their birthday falls on a Tuesday? Does their head explode when they try to process the joy at having two such gigantic things to celebrate?

“Happy… Tuesduh-Berrrthday- toomEEEeeEEEee HELP …. SYSTEM FAILURE…”

Explosion.

Dare to dream.

The only consolation is that these people probably aren’t happy at all, and that’s why they need to pretend that it being Tuesday is reason enough to throw a HAPPINESS PARADE. Guess what? It isn’t. You can be happy, and it can be Tuesday, but if ever you feel the need to say Happy [insert any day of the week], please stop for a minute, take a big deep breath, and jump out the god damn window.

That’s it. Happy Tuesday.

Love and Pepperoni.

In this, the age of information, we seem to be bombarded with a million options every time we have to make a choice. The grass isn’t necessarily always greener on the other side, but nonetheless our commitment phobic society tends to assume that, obviously, it must be greener somewhere. Not just any green, but a magical green that will solve all of life’s problems and make more people like you even more, if you just wait and wait and never choose, and never commit. It will all be handed to you.

“Sure, this seems like the right pair of boxer-briefs, but what if there’s another pair out there that massages my balls while I walk and makes my peen bigger?”

Honestly, if you set the bar high enough, you’ll never be happy with anything ever. In fact, you may never end up with anything period. Awesome. The one exception for most people, I guess, tends to be with food. People know what they like and where to get it from. They have all their brands and snacks and cheesies and pretznels and wundernips and frooble-dee-froo. Don’t get me wrong, people are still picky as shit when it comes to food decisions, but eventually when they make a choice, they actually stick to it, usually forever. This is especially true with pizza joints.

“Let’s get pizza. I know the best place. It’s the best. Oh man, I’m the man.”

Don’t get me started on the overuse of the word ‘best’ again (see: Best of the Best). The point is people have no problem committing to and trusting a food delivery place. I can’t imagine why that, when people can’t seem to commit to anything, this is what they are able to commit to. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just stuff like electronics and lederhosen that people were afraid of sticking to.

e.g.: “wait what there’s a new PiePhone? omg!!11 well shit, I NEED it, I can’t stick with this old shitty one, it doesn’t even automatically cook my turkey while I’m off skiing, if there’s a better one, then I need to have it ASAP, my want it, my wants, mommy mommy, my wants my new MyPhone, gimme gimme gimme” he texted to his mother from down the hall.

But it’s with relationships too! Sadly, nobody trusts anybody, and this is the real problem. I could deal with the attention deficit society if they didn’t apply the same spoiled brat adulescent childish ‘me-first’ generational behavior to love, lust and everything in between. I find it, well, strange that some people can call up pizza delivery restaurants and be giving a stranger their name, number, address and even credit card information, without batting an eyelash, but on another night have casual sex with a stranger, without wanting to divulge any one of those four. Unless of course they’ve managed to find a prostitute that accepts VISA, and then maybe one of those four could get satisfied. They could even have those portable little debit machines like they have in them fancy restaurants these days and bring it right to your bed.

“You can enter dollar amount or percentage for the tip, hun.”

“But, I already gave you more than the tip. Heyooooo!”

“Very funny, I already gave you the clap.”

“Can I get a receipt for that?”

But otherwise, in a non-professional scenario, the conversation after a typical adult themed casual encounter might go a little a something like a this.

“Yes, my name is uh… Dean. No, no last name, it’s just Dean, it’s like Cher or Eminem… and yes, I live here, at the Super 8, just call and ask for Dean, they know me here” he said politely to the woman who could have sworn last night he said his name was Dwayne, as he called a cab, and casually threw her underwear and khaki Capri pants out the window. “Wait, before you go, do you know the number for Domino’s?”

Brandon Toode (a.k.a. Dean or Dwayne) will give his real info to Domino's for handling his pepperoni, but can’t give it the woman who just handled his salami. What the hell kind of expression is casual sex anyways? In general, I have difficulty in seeing anything casual about penetration, of any kind. Try sticking your dick in some mashed potatoes and acting casual. Better yet, try sticking a cucumber up your ass and acting casual.

“Hey Pete, you catch Letterman’s Top Ten last night? Man, it was so-”

“Bill, umm, sorry to interrupt, but I believe that you’ve got a cucumber up your ass.”

“Oh, yeah, no big deal. I actually forgot it was there… Anyways, are you gonna finish those mashed potatoes?”

Honestly, anything that you can’t do in public without fear of arrest can’t be considered casual. Even simpler, if it involves your privates, it can’t be considered casual. Casual sex is just a way to disguise the term meaningless sex so that the people getting all random-sexied don’t feel meaningless afterwards. I guess they don’t really have privates, they have publics.

“It wasn’t meaningless! It was… casual.”

I guess paying a prostitute would be business casual.

It makes me wonder how these types could ever hold a steady job. I would have to assume most don’t make it past the first casual Friday, given their definition.

“I don’t know Trey, I mean, I got to work, grabbed my coffee, went to the morning meeting, dropped my pants, and then the next thing you know, I’m being escorted out. I mean, I thought it was casual Friday! I didn’t even have time to ask who wanted to get them some of this!”

“So, let me get this straight, they call it casual Friday, but you didn’t even get laid?”

No, he got laid off. Say, I wonder if that’s how that term came to be.

So, regardless of how often the pizza came late, the toppings were wrong, the pizza was terrible, the delivery guy was rude or even the pizza never came at all, we all still go back for more. Now, I know, you’re thinking, that’s because pizza is awesome. And you’re right, pizza is awesome. It’s the king of the culinary kingdom, housing all seven food groups in one delicious package: Dough, Sauce, Pepperoni, Fire, Crispy, Cheesy and Grease. Who wouldn’t want to hit the hut? If you get a hungry enough person, I bet you could lay a log of dump on top of a slice a pizza and sprinkle some extra cheese on it, and still, blindfolded, they’d eat the shit outta that shit.

“This is some good shit! What’s this pan crust?”

“You don’t know the half of it. Let’s call it bedpan crust. Those are homemade toppings too.”

But, where is that commitment and tenacity when it comes to love? Why did you break up with him/her?

“I don’t know, I mean he called my cell at 10:13 AM, like, that’s weird. I don’t know if I could be with someone that makes phone calls on odd numbered minutes.”

“She texted ‘haha’ and I’m more of an ‘lol’ kind of guy.”

“I mean, sure, her boobs were big, but they weren’t super giganto-big.”

“He only had like 37 friends on Farcebook. Oh Em Gee. I can’t be with a complete loser.”

“She didn’t wanna take shit on my chest. What a prude?”

“His name is Jeremy, and I’ve always seen myself with more of a Dean, or a Brandon.”

“It just wasn’t a love connection.”

Maybe you’re line is down. Maybe reception is just bad because you’ve built some hefty walls around you. Dating really seems to have gotten to the point where people treat it like shopping, or worse, real estate.

“Now’s not the time to buy, now’s the time to rent” claimed Brandon Toode.

The problem with ol’ Tooder’s attitude is that years of renting and moving around both repeatedly and frequently has damaged all of his furniture and left him completely bankrupt. Lost in the metaphor? Broken furniture and bankruptcy equals a busted wiener and the herpes. Shopping online for dates is kind of like browsing with a real estate agent. Paying for dating opportunities, much like the commission you might pay a real estate agent. Hookers and/or gigolos are more like a motel though, and the pimp is the guy at the front desk. Be careful! A really cheap motel could have crabs on the toilet seat and man juice on the sheets. Lost in the metaphor again? Crabs are, well, crabs. Toilet seat is... whatever you want it to be. You know what? Forget it.

People tend to lose sight of the fact that, much like a new apartment, no relationship will feel like home right from the start. Some things will be surprising, unexpected, different and maybe even scary (or simply not what you are used to). It takes time before you realize what you have could be something special, and that you have found where you belong. You’re home. Then again, some places do have rats and bugs. But maybe you’re into that.

Now I’m not suggesting that, whether we are talking real estate or relationships, you settle down prematurely. That just creates bad relationships, bad breakups and bad marriage statistics (I would say bad mortgage, bad credit, but I’m done with the analogy, starting... now). By all means, play the field for as long as you want or feel you need to. Just be sure to never lead anyone on into thinking that you are being exclusive if you have no intention on halting the sale of your particular brand of magical delights and treats at other retail locations.

“Exclusive? Nah, let’s be inclusive, baby, I will include you in the list of people I am seeing.”

“No thanks, please exclude me from your life forever.”

The pretend committers are often the same people that eventually become the actual cheaters. The delusion that you could cheat and never have your spouse or partner find out is almost as stupid as cheating in the first place. If you cheat on your diet, your spouse will find out. Go to the grocery store, buy a pepperoni stick, eat it on the way home, who’s gonna know? They will, every time. They’ll spot the sausage casing stuck in your teeth, smell it on your breath, in your car, on your clothes. Oh, you’ll try chewing gum, washing your hands, driving with the windows down, but still, they’ll know. Now, if they can pick up on the light guilt and fragrance that comes with speed-eating a Slim Jim and ruining your appetite, imagine if you’ve been eating or frequenting COCK OR PUSSY. I’m pretty sure those smell at least as strong as beef jerky or a good Colby cheese.

All this to say, if you feel like you’re ready to settle down, then stop being afraid and start giving things a real chance. You might get hurt, you might get happy, but get out there, and find the right pepperoni pizza for you. Find one so good, that pepperoni sticks don’t even tempt you anymore. Seriously, what am I even talking about at this point?

That’s it. I have to finish this kielbasa before my wife gets home.

Stupid is as Stupid Drives.

Seriously, cars create stupidity. I’m not talking about the obvious kind of stupid, like when a person sees a nice car and wants to check under the hood, groan and gnarl with a Timallenesque woof and beat off all over the V8 Carbonomator Spark Ploogues. No, I’m talking about the subtle kind of stupidity that cars manufacture, the kind that cars bring out of people. It takes real smarts to design cars and put them together and be all hella-fast. Wild scienticians are finding new ways to do more with less that costs less and kills less trees and shit. But once it’s finished and one of them geniuses steps into the car… potential moron. While I won’t bother to list obviously stupid driving mistakes made by regular people behind the wheel, I will list through a few of the more convincing and seemingly random arguments to prove that cars bring out the stupidest side of stupid, whether with their operation, their decoration or just their existence in general.

1) Vanity Plates.

Who first thought that this was a fun investment? Have you ever heard of a situation where having your license plate be easy to remember would be a good thing? Every time in life or in the movies you hear “Did anyone get the plate number?”, it’s generally preceded by something like hitting an old person, running through a restaurant terrace, exploding a fruit truck, drive-by shootings or running over a small family. In these cases, if your plate number is snappy and easy to remember, then shouldn’t we assume it makes you easier to catch? Wouldn’t it be embarrassing for a hooligan to get caught because of their vanity plate?

“Surely I’m not the only one in a silver Saab, I mean, what does that prove?”

“Is your plate 'MADD DOGGZ'?”

“Umm…”

“Seriously, otherwise I wouldn't have known where to find you.”

It’s not as if the coppers are tracking down anyone to reward them for good driving.

“Wow, did you see that guy parallel park in one move? Did anyone get his plate?”

“Hi, I heard that you witnessed the lady that came to a full stop at the stop sign… did you happen to get her plate number?”

“That’s the seventh car he has let in ahead of him, I’m going to take down his license plate and give it to the authorities, you know, for reward.”

So why bother having a nifty catchy plate? Is it so that the other drivers can know just a little bit more about you and what you’re all about? Sad.

“Say, that guy’s plate says ‘4 REALZ’. Geez Patricia, do you think he likes reality TV, or reality in general, or maybe he is a very genuine person? Oh! Maybe he is in a boy band called 4 realz… hmmm… well, I guess the only way to find out is to run him off the road and ask him.”

“I don’t know Stan, that one there says 'RKR CHK', she sounds like fun. I would assume that she is a chick, and also that she potentially rocks. We like to rock don’t we? I mean, in general, we rock. Let’s crash into her.”

“You never like any of my ideas!”

Divorce.

Some don’t even make any sense, because people take letters out of the words, usually vowels, and leave it up to you the reader to decide, like ‘BJNSHT’ you know for ‘Blowjobs and Shit’. They’re not always easy to figure out, which, begs the question “what’s the fucking point”. Sometimes the word is pronounceable, but meaningless to anyone but the driver, like 'SARTO' or 'FANAPY'.  Is ‘HPY’ hippy or happy? Is that a ‘5’ or an ‘S’? Who really cares? I saw one that said 'AXNDRA'… which maybe means Alexandra, or maybe has something to do with an axe. Why are people being so cryptic? If you are that lonely and desperate to have tailgaters know just a little more about you, why not just have a regular plate and then put a banner on your bumper that says “my name is alexandra”? Just state facts like “hey man, check me out, I like cats”, instead of ‘CNTLUVR’.

I guess that’s all bumper stickers are. I once saw a car that had a ‘Jesus Loves’ type of caca bumper sticker taped to the inside of the back windshield. Were they worried about changing their mind down the road and not being able to take it off the bumper? They don’t want to fully commit to the idea, but still want to display it. Apparently they just kind of love Jesus, for now, but not enough to make it a permanent fixture on the bumper. I find that kind of insulting, you know, for Jesus. I guess when someone better comes along they can just swap it out for Buddha, Tom Cruise or evolution. Bumper stickers are stupid.

Sometimes I come across a plate and I’m not sure if it’s a vanity plate or not. If vanity plates didn’t exist, this wouldn’t happen.

“'583 MAN'… hmmm… well I wonder what the significance of that is” he pondered as he drove the car into the snow bank. ‘Dreamer’ by Supertramp softly played in the background.

The only real use I could see for a vanity plate is if you actually plan on committing vehicular crimes and want to make it impossible for anyone to remember. Get a plate with 27 numbers, letters and symbols placed at random.

“Did anyone get the plate number?”

“I think there was a ‘J’ and a happy face in there somewhere…”

“No, it was one of those winking happy faces… I think… or the one with the tongue sticking out.”

“I think that was a ‘e’ with umlauts.”

2) Rubber Band Traffic.

Nothing says stupid like traffic caused by nothing. People slow down enough, to look at an accident, that it then has a ripple effect and causes traffic, or another accident. All because they need to slow down, check shit out and think or say out loud something extra dumb.

“Oh gee, I hope no one got hurt.”

Who, out there, is hoping people are hurt? Is anyone driving by thinking the opposite?

“Hmmm… ’94 Tercel, I hope they’re all dead.”

“New York plates? Well it’s about time.”

“If only they’d just FUCKING EXPLODE ALREADY!”

I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if people actually had thoughts of that nature. At least then they would likely speed up, and I would make it home in time to watch ‘Kardashians Take a Dump’, or whatever. Sometimes it’s not even an accident, sometimes it’s just some car parked on the side of the road because the driver probably shit their pants or needed to pee. Sometimes it’s because there’s a state trooper on the side of the road, who’s already pulled someone else over, flashing lights and everything. Well, shit, shouldn’t you speed up then? Now’s your chance! Floor that sucker, and give the trooper the finger on your way by.

3) Global Positronic Swerndieferndenspiel (that sounds right).

Didn’t someone follow their GPS into a river? I don’t really think any more needs to be said about that. Granted, it’s not as if before GPS people were smarter with directions, driving all around town with a few notes jotted down on a post-it (like “left at the second lights after the second MacDonald’s” or “you gotta go three stops past the Burger King”) that would cause people to get lost, not pull over to ask for directions, and subsequently have the night end either in divorce or dying in the woods somewhere thinking “we must have missed the turn somewhere back before we hit the Canadian border” or “seriously, I didn’t see any sign that said Fluffandstuff Beach, did you? There was no sign!”

4) Nose Picking.

There’s nothing quite like cleaning house after a long day’s work breathing in conditioned air and office dust. Next time you’re in traffic heading home from work, look around. Two out of three cars house a driver that is up to their wrist digging for gold. These people would never stand in line at the bank or super market and do this, but in the car, in traffic, they somehow feel safe, and are also too stupid to realize that windows are see-through and are too busy flicking boogers towards their passenger seat to notice that they’re being watched.

5) Ritualistic Car Washing.

If you have a good dozen or so bird poops blocking windshield visibility, or better yet, a homeless man used the back seat of your car as a brothel / toilet / bathtub, then go ahead and give your car a good once over. You have my blessing. Otherwise just wait until it rains. I could see cleaning your car religiously every week if you were going to drive it in your house. No sense in leaving pesky tire treads all over grandma’s new carpets. But since no one is really about to do that, let’s just take a deep breath and remember that we drive our cars outside, and outside is dirty. Nothing stays new forever, let your shit age gracefully, it’s embarrassing.

“Look at my car, it’s clean, it’s like new, I’m like new, I’m shiny, my life is empty.”

6) Motocyclette.

You know what? I won’t even get into this right now. They are half of a car and exponentially more stupid. Screw motorcycles. Motorcycles don’t make stupid, they just are stupid. You like motorcycles? You’re stupid.

7) Laws.

Why do we need so many road signs? Because we’re that dumb in cars. 'BRAKE FOR MOOSE'? As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t figure that one out, maybe it’s just your time. And what’s with those deaf child ones? Are people coming up to a kid in the middle of the road and not stopping? Are we not trusted to stop for a child unless we are told they are deaf?

“It doesn’t say deaf child anywhere, any non-deaf child should really know better.” BOOM.

Or honking once and hoping for the best?

“Well fuck him, I honked, he had his chance.” Kablammo-Smoosh.

I wonder if those signs are the result of some lawsuit where some scumbag got off scot-free.

“If I’d known he was deaf I would have flashed my brights at him, thrown my water bottle at his head and slowed down a little. But I really thought he heard the honks. I gave him a good half second to get out of the way. I’m the victim here. I thought this is what he wanted. You know there really should be a sign.”

How come you don’t see any signs regarding blind children? I would assume they’d be more likely to be out in the road accidentally. And why stop at blind or deaf children, or, hell, why stop at children at all? Why not just have a big sign that says ‘TAKE’ER EASY – people jump out into the road around here, totally at random’. That’ll get people’s attention. Sadly, while they are reading it they may have run over a child or two. Maybe we should stop building roads that go directly through play areas. Or were the playgrounds built near the roads? Chicken and the egg, I guess. Maybe they should point the signs towards the side of the road where all the kids are running out from and write ‘WATCH OUT FOR ROADS’ on it or something, or ‘CARS WON’T NECESSARILY STOP FOR YOU, KID’, or build a fence.

Even speed limits exist because people can’t be trusted. Without them people would just never stop speeding up.

“Slow down Gerald the exit is coming up!”

“Blow your exit out your ass, Vera! I’m going to keep going until the needle flies off.”

In any case, regardless of all the road signs and laws, people break them all anyways. You’d never shoplift, or kill your wife, or hamburglarize. But get behind the wheel and you’ll definitely do a U-Turn over a median going seventy-five in a school zone, drunk.

“Stick it to the man, God damnit! Laws were meant to be broken!” said Nigel, the LOCAL PRIEST.

They even have to make laws to tell people what not to do while driving. Like being drunk or making and eating a sweet hoagie. You have to tell people not to text while driving. And still you see people doing it all the time. Well, I assume that’s what they’re doing, as they only have one free hand on the wheel and are looking down towards their crotch and manipulating something. You got it – they may be whacking off. (Texting… masturbating, is there really a difference?) Probably shouldn’t do that either, though. I’d like to see Oprah challenging people to take that pledge. Celebrities would be lining up. Seriously, though,  imagine getting pulled over for that?

“License and registration please."
"Hold on, the license is in my pants, I threw them in the back seat somewhere..."
"No, sir, hand them to me with your other hand.”

“You got any Purell?”

In some colder areas of the universe they had to start forcing people to put snow tires on their cars… assumedly because people weren’t smart enough to feel it was necessary. As long as we’re heading in that direction, let’s ticket the moron that clears a fist sized hole out of the snow on their windshield, for visibility, and thinks they’re fit to drive on the highway.

“Hey, I can see my own hood, and that’s sure good enough to know if I hit anything.”

Helmet laws, SUVs in the suburbs, that robot that gets help for you when you’re in a jam, locking keys in the car, double parking, drive-thru anything, people listening to iPods while driving… ET CETERA ET CETERA.  Look, I know public transportation isn’t the answer either. I saw an ad campaign, for a while, that was trying to be all green and ecosexual, insisting that public transportation was the ‘car of the future’. Have these marketing assholes ever even been on the bus or subway? What a bleak future that would be – unreliable, old, smelly, and being driven by the absolute cream of the crop (people still rocking the mullet and wearing the same outfit since the mid nineteen seventies). Imagine picking up a date in the car of the future.

“Be on the corner of Stain and Shart at 8:02 pm.”

“Can’t you pick me up at my house?”

“Well, no I can't, Wendy, I have a very futuristic car of the future. Now, make sure you’re there at 8:02, because that’s when I will pick you up, in this future car, otherwise the date is cancelled, or I suppose you could just catch the next future car and meet me at our destination. Anyways, look for the car that is big and rectangular and makes lots of noise and says ‘Downtown’ on the front. Oh, and I won’t be driving, and there will be other people in it. See you then.”

“That sounds like the bus.”

“Bye.”

There are certainly some parents that could have some fun with it.

“Hey Dad, can I take the car out tonight?”

“Sure son, you can take the ‘car of the future’. Here are the keys” said the father as he threw some change out the window.

Thank heavens more and more people are working from home or just simply getting too fat to drive. Honestly, until we invent transporter beams or some kind of high speed travelling tube system like they have in movies set in the year 2000, I don’t think there’s much hope for intelligent daily commuting.  In the meantime, at least avoid the crap I just went over, and be safe, please.

That’s it. My exit’s coming up.