Loonies on the Path - XLIX part 2 - Raging continued

Alright, I had just documented how the arctic blast of winter had been replaced with a warm front that felt almost Springlike here in the southern United States of Crazy, when suddenly the cold wintry temperatures briefly returned. And with them, the calm, cozy, my-heater-is-on-and-making-me-sleepy driving habits of a coffee-addicted people. In short, everything returned to normal.

Then the warm front returned.

This morning the weather was freezing. Everything was fine on the way into work. By noon the temperatures had risen over 20 degrees and the sun was shining brightly. Once again, no coats were needed and the birds were singing happily. It felt nice outside. There are blue skies and puffy white clouds overhead. Sexy Olympic women are on the TV wearing body-hugging clothing that shows off every womanly curve as they fly through the air at 90 mph across the snow, demonstrating with their unequaled viewer ratings why the women's NBA will never succeed on its own without blackmailed corporate training wheels unless they change their uniforms to something tighter and sexier that shows the world "sure we can't dunk like the men, but we look good trying."


Sex on ice

Surely this lovely weather will inspire friendliness and peaceably coexisting on the highways, right?

Oh hell no! People are once again raging out there. I had an old fucker in a crimson Chrysler with a "Roll Tide" sticker on the rear window cut me off in the far right-hand lane. I was already going slow, looking for my gym, so I didn't care. But that wasn't what he wanted. No, he WANTED me to care. So he glared at me in his rear view mirror and jumped on his brakes.


Roll Tide and fuck you

Dude, I'm 5 car lengths behind you. I don't give a fuck. Seriously.

I assumed he was looking for his turn. Sure, he didn't turn on a blinker, but you know how people are. Morons never signal. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

He didn't turn.

Once I realized he did that for my benefit I decided to get rid of the shit head in the usual way. I passed him and got back over, now in front of him, but still a good 30 yards ahead. This should be of no concern to him if he's a sane, rational human being.

He came after me.

Realizing that he had hit his brakes purely to fuck with me, and being unaccustomed to being this warm, I got mad. When I saw the turn for my side-street, I put on my blinker, turned onto my dead-end street, and as I drove towards my gym at the end of the road I saluted him.

You know what I mean. I raised my hand inside my car, aimed in his general direction, and I showed him my finger. Yes, yes, I'm fucking 18-years-old today.

Nevertheless, had he been driving along like a normal person, he wouldn't have even seen my salute. He should have been looking at the traffic ahead and all around him, not at some guy driving away down a side street. But if he was an asshat looking for a fight with me then you know all of his attention would be focused on me for daring to pass him and escape. And thus he would have seen my very friendly one-finger salute.

After I saluted him, he whipped his car 90 degrees off the main road and onto the street behind me. I say 'whipped' but keep in mind he was only going 40 mph so it was more of a slow-motion turn. But to him I'm sure it was exciting.

Anyway, he came after me down the dead-end street which he apparently didn't know was a dead-end street. And I continued on to my gym. At the end of the street, I turned into the parking lot of my gym, got out, and stood there waiting for Mr. Asshat to pull in and try to explain to my foot why he felt outraged at me for passing and saluting him.

Once he realized it was a dead-end and we were going to meet, he lost his nerve. He stopped at the entrance to the parking lot and just sat there staring at me. I stood outside my car, holding my gym bag, and invited him to come join me. While this was going on, one of the guys I sometimes work out with, who stands about 6'4" and is rather thick with muscle, came out and walked towards me as he headed to his car.

"Hey Memphis, what's up?" he smiled and asked. He always smiles when he sees me because when we first met I was in the midst of a joke-off and I had told him and everyone else in the gym every single joke I know, with promises that I would be back armed with even more.

"Nothing much," I replied, "just coming for a workout. Hey, watch out for that old man in that Chrysler there. He's got his panties in a wad and he's looking for someone to screw with in traffic," I said pointing to the Crimson Fucker. Apparently the old fart didn't want any attention drawn to him, like most passive/aggressives, because when my friend turned to look at where I was pointing, Crimson Fucker took off.

I say 'took off' but keep in mind he's old so it was like that Toyota sudden acceleration thing where the driver is sort of vaguely aware that they are continuously speeding up without meaning to.


That's Ms. Bitch to you, bucko!

So anyway, after my workout, I showered and headed back. The weather was warmer than ever. The other day, with the first warm front, every single car on the road seemed to be controlled by a raging lunatic. But today is different. Today it is only the passive/aggressives who seem to be still experiencing the madness of wanting to kill every other person on the road including their own grand-kids who just turned 16 and like to drive fast.

I got stuck behind a woman in a gray Chevy pickup truck driving slow in the passing lane. She sat herself beside a gray Toyota Prius and parked there, matching whatever speed the Prius was doing so that they would remain side-by-side and no one could get anywhere. She was also talking on her cell phone as she was doing this. And she had a kid in a child restraint device tied up in the backseat of the extended cab. I was stuck behind her so I waited for her to speed up or get over. In fact, I waited a damn long time. But she was clearly not interested in allowing anyone to get anywhere, so I flashed my brights one time.

"Blah blah blah" she continued talking on her cell phone and ignoring me. I say 'ignoring' but as she was clearly fully aware of the speed the Toyota next to her was going, at least enough to make sure she stayed right next to him, obviously she was aware of what was around her and what she was doing.

So I flashed my brights again. Still no reaction from her. I was waiting a long, long time between flashes just to make sure she had every possible opportunity to not be a cancerous polyp in the ass of traffic. Once it became clear that this was no accident, I flashed several times in a row, and then began considering my horn. Meanwhile, she slowed slightly so that I was suddenly right on her rear bumper. I allowed her to do this and stayed there, close enough that a person sitting on my hood could easily have placed one foot on my bumper and another on hers without pulling a groin muscle or anything.

Hey, if she doesn't love her truck I sure as hell don't care. I've signaled several times, as the law requires, that she's obstructing traffic. If she adds a collision to that I'm willing to involve the police so we can all have a group discussion of the various traffic laws, even the ones concerning how closely you can follow the vehicle in front of you. I find that when it comes right down to it, most passive/aggressive women really love their shiny vehicles and don't actually want them smashed. Men, when they get mad, they're more like "fuck the car, I'm not putting up with that shit!"

Eventually the Toyota realized what was going on and slowed suddenly. I took the resulting opening the instant it appeared and passed her on the right. She, predictably, sped up and came after me.

Here she comes, here comes Speed Racer! She's a demon on wheels ....

Just up the road, cruising along at a speed somewhat faster than she had been going, a police cruiser came up the on-ramp and merged into traffic. And suddenly Chevy Bitch didn't want to play anymore. She slowed down again and resumed her game of blocking the passing lane, confident that the police never enforce the law with regard to obstructing traffic and so she would be safe even with the presence of the cop. I continued on my way, exiting the highway and merging onto the interstate.

Instantly I encountered more passive/aggressives. But I had 6 lanes to work with so I quickly left most of them behind.

Then I encountered Mr. Dodge Minivan. I was coming up behind an 18-wheeler and needed to get over one lane to the right. Mr. Dodge was back well behind me, in the lane I was moving into. As soon as he saw me coming over he gunned his minivan and blocked me out. Not only did he block me out, but he remained there, making sure that I never got over.


Mr. Dodge Minivan

I was forced to pass the 18-wheeler on the left and then come over 3 lanes in order to get where I intended to be, which put me smack in front of Mr. Assdodge Minivan anyway, much to his apparent surprise and dismay.

I drove on aways, thinking about the utter pointlessness of what he'd done in blocking me out and nearly hitting me. And then I decided I was mad.

I took my foot off the gas and slowed down to let him catch up. He didn't want to catch up, so he took his foot off the gas and slowed down, too.

We did this for awhile. Normally this would be a problem on an interstate where the speed limit is 70 mph, but this town is Passive/Aggressive Hell, so no one thought anything of it. People went around us at 65, 60 and sometimes 55 mph, totally unconcerned with how slow any of us were going. We slowed to 50 and still he would not come near me. So I hit my brakes to slow enough that I could change lanes further to the right by passing behind the car next to me and moved over towards the exit ramp.

Mr. AssDodge, seeing me exiting, regained his manhood, such as it is, and began to speed back up again. But it was a long way to my off-ramp and he ended up next to me for a moment before he realized it. I looked long and hard at him. He stared straight ahead, dressed in his powder blue plaid button-down shirt and khaki pants, gray hair parted lamely on the side like something out of Revenge of the Nerds, refusing to even glance my way for fear that eye contact might make him instantly pee his pants.

I didn't salute him. I didn't honk. I didn't do or say anything. I just thought about the lessons that 15 years of living in Memphis, Tennessee, have taught me. White people really are a bunch of chickenshit cowards. I guess I understand now what my black friends have been trying to tell me. All he had to do was just make eye contact like a man. Sure, he was wrong, but he could look me in the eye and show me that wrong or not, he still had balls.

But he didn't have any balls. That's why he got stuck driving the Dodge minivan while his wife is probably driving the Hemi Charger.


Honey, you're not man enough for that car

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Loonies on the Path - XLIX - Raging

I began this series of blog posts for my own personal information. I was simply documenting odd changes in general behavior of the population as it correlated with weather, lunar or solar events, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. For the past 2 months the Southern United States has been experiencing arctic weather. This winter in The South hasn't simply been cold, it has been Arctic blast cold. The freezing, snowing, sleeting, icy cold that would normally be dropping snow on Canada over the past 2 months has been dropping it on the Southern U.S. instead, causing quite a problem for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, as their snow is all melting and the temperatures hot enough to cause problems for the athletes up in beautiful British Columbia, where the women are as hot as the weather is cold, and the men are grateful.


Oh Canada!

Recently the record cold blast has abated. It was actually warm this weekend. The warm temperatures in winter have caused the expected result - rain. Today, a rotten, hated Monday, the work day began with the standard rush hour drive into work. Normally people are tired and calm, too groggy to cause much trouble or care about what is going on around them. But this morning the temperature is a balmy 50 degrees F, and the rain has created humidity. So, we're all sitting in our houses with the heat still on, wondering why we feel so warm all of a sudden, sweating as we're brushing our teeth, and sticky by the time we get into our cars to drive to work.

On the drive into work today, before I had even pulled out onto the highway to join the herd, I noticed some insanely aggressive behavior in traffic. People weren't simplyunwilling to let anyone pull out into traffic. No, they were swerving at people trying to pull out into traffic. "Try it, buddy, and I'll fucking kill you! ARRRRRRGH!"

Nevertheless, I managed to wheel myself out into the flow and join the loonies on the path. Instantly I observed that the flow of traffic seemed oddly halting, as we'd race forward, only to all jump on our brakes and slow to a crawl, then race ahead again. Everyone was piled up together. There was no space between cars to spread the traffic out. We were bunched like a group of 8 year olds in a soccer match all leaving our positions to go for the ball, clumped in the center of the field with no one playing defense.



I had a Jeep Wagoneer flying up on my ass, clearly angry that I had managed to pull out into traffic ahead of them,  tailgating me to let me know this fact, as if I cared or had in any way wronged them. I was going faster than everyone else, except for the Jeep riding my ass. But he had sped up to do that, so I figured "fuck him." I tried to shake him off by crossing from the far right lane, 3 lanes over into the passing lane. Seeing as we were flying anyway I figured the passing lane was where I wanted to be. He followed me, of course.

I found myself stuck behind a full-sized long-bed 4-door Chevy pickup truck. Everyone was riding the ass of the person in front of them and bunched all around me. 3 lanes of no one getting ahead had me boxed in between the Jeep and the Chevy, so I decided to just stay there. I noticed the Chevy having to hit his brakes a lot. I saw him swerve to the side slightly the way people do when they want to show up in the driver's door mirror of the car in front of them, as if to say "hey you jackass, speed up or get over!" This was precisely what he was saying, in fact.

After much halting progress, slow, fast, slow, fast, I noticed the traffic to my right open up slightly. Just as it did the woman in the tiny car blocking the passing lane and the Chevy in front of me whipped her wheel to the right, flying across the next lane and going onto the shoulder, nearly crashing off the road into the ditch. Then she whipped back to the left and sort of settled into the right-hand lane. The Chevy in front of me quickly sped past her before the crazy, erratic woman could change her mind and whip back over again. I began to move past her as well, expecting to see the usual cell phone attached to her face, explaining everything about her erratic driving. But as I passed her I saw no cell phone. She had both hands on the wheel and was glaring straight ahead, wishing death for all the cars around her.

Sooooo, you drive that shitty normally, eh? No cell phone? Wow, you really suck at driving!


You suck at driving

Further down the road there was more of this sort of thing, crazy people doing crazy things with no apparent reason for it.

By the time I merged onto the Interstate, the Chevy was getting irritated with me behind him. I wasn't riding that close, but on this particular day everyone seemed to be just a little too close. He changed lanes one to the left. I let him go and stayed in the far right lane. But I quickly ran into a jerk going extraordinarily slow and thus needed to get over. Unfortunately, the car in the lane next to him was also going extraordinarily slow. In fact, they were both driving side-by-side going the exact same speed. Fuckers!



As I changed lanes to get past the 2 rolling road blocks, I noticed that all 6 lanes appeared to be blocked by shitheads driving side-by-side all doing roughly the same speed. There was no rhyme or reason to it. There was nothing similar about the drivers to make me think they were intentionally working together to screw us all. There was just a dazed, hazy look on their faces and a general slowness about them that said "Zombies."

By this point, the humidity and frustration of dealing with a pack of elderly asshats was beginning to get to me. I went all the way over the far left lane, the passing lane, and began applying subtle pressure on the zombie blocking that lane, squeezing between him and the zombie who had been next to him just as he crept barely far enough ahead to make room for me to fit. And I do mean 'barely.' There wasn't room for a bird to fly between either bumper as I moved around them. But knowing Zombie Drivers as I do, I knew that if I hesitated for even an instant, the car to my right would instinctively creep forward and block me from getting over, maintaining the 6-lane rolling roadblock and causing me to roll down my passenger side window and communicate to him my feelings on the matter using sign language and a little creative shouting. I managed to avoid all of this and fly on ahead of them.

As I pulled away from the Zombies and instantly encountered more oddly angry drivers, the pattern began to come clear in my mind. Everyone on the road here today, in this unexpected heat and humidity, is RAGING. People aren't just a little bit pissy. People aren't in a daze. People are furious. Some are handling it by doing exactly the speed limit and refusing to budge an inch. Some are going well below the speed limit in the passing lane, on the interstate, enjoying the anger they're causing in the drivers around them. Some are running up the tail of the car in front of them and threatening to kill anyone who doesn't get out of their way. Some are passing on the shoulders.

But it is EVERY SINGLE DRIVER.

I was relieved by the time I got to work. It's Monday and work is the last place I thought I wanted to be. But traffic was so bad that I was actually glad to reach the parking lot alive. I was pretty pissed off by the time I got there. So I sat in my car with the radio on letting my blood pressure drop for a few minutes before turning off the engine and walking inside.

Once at my desk I was immediately greeted by an error message from Microsoft telling me that Excel had crashed. My browser had crashed long ago and was nowhere to be seen. The CPU was jacked up even though I hadn't started working yet. Yep, it's Monday. Fucking Microsoft.


Arrrrrrgh MICROSOFT!



And now for a fun video I stole from the Reluctant Optimist, who stole it from TheoGeo:

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