Thursday, August 25, 2005 It's like it's never rained before

This post is the third part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

I really love to drive. I've developed a system on the Interstates that serves me pretty well. I set the cruise control at 79 and just cruise. 79 is really the perfect speed. Fast enough to glide past the slow pokes and stay out of the way of the speedsters, yet slow enough that the cops ignore you. It also keeps you from catching up too quickly to those pockets of traffic that form around trucks.

Traffic, though, especially traffic caused by one inconsiderate jackass, really drives me up the fucking wall. Being a weekday and after the start of school, I figured we wouldn't have a lot of traffic. I was right, but driving for ten hours gives you plenty of opportunity to find inconsiderate and/or just stupid drivers, especially in Florida, which seems to be permanently under construction.

A few observations:

If you can't drive 40 mph, then get off the fucking Interstate. Driving with your hazards on does NOT make it ok to endanger everyone on the road. You want to kill yourself, that's fine with me. I understand that unforunate circumstances sometimes require less than optimal conditions. That's still not an excuse to drive farther than the next fucking exit and call a tow truck.

While on the subject of hazard lights: Do NOT drive with the damn hazard lights blinking. It's distracting. If your hazards are also your taillights, I can't tell when you are braking. If they are orange, I have to drive with orange spots in my eyes for as long as I'm stuck behind you. If you are so concerned with visibility conditions that you feel other drivers may not see you, then it's too dangerous for you to be driving. Get off at the next exit. Pussy.

On being a pussy: If the DoT wanted the lane closed RIGHT HERE then they would have closed it RIGHT HERE and not half a mile further up. Don't get mad at ME because you merged half a mile ago and have been sitting still, while I drove up to the merge in the perfectly open and legal lane to your right. Traffic moves faster when all lanes are being used and drivers are considerate enough to alternate into the merged lane. It's not my fault that you are a too scared to merge. Oh, and if anyone out there drives a semi and gets it into their head that they're going to BLOCK the soon-to-be-closed lane, understand full well, that I am just going to drive around you, as I would any obstacle in the road. Once I do that, as so many of you found out today, the cars behind me will overcome their fear of your big bad truck. Fuck you and stay out of the way.

Please, please, please, please, PLEASE, people, learn how to maintain speed on hills. Slowing down on the incline and speeding up on the downslope because you're too stupid to regulate the pressure on your gas pedal is REALLY annoying. If you are driving a heavy vehicle that simply cannot make it's way up a hill without slowing down and cannot be controlled down the hill without burning up the brakes, then get in the RIGHT FUCKING LANE.

On the right lane: The sign reads, "Slower traffic keep right." I understand that you may feel that you are not driving slowly. You may very well actually be driving fast enough. You are, however, still going slower than me. So move over. If you can't, I understand. As soon as you are able, however, get out of the fucking way.

On the same point: If I move to the right to allow you to pass, then FUCKING PASS! Don't meander past me and get me stuck behind slow traffic. I cannot stress this enough.

That's the end of the driving lessons. :)

The beach was great, but I am fucking exhausted. And tomorrow we get to start packing up to move to the new office. It's not going to be a good weekend.

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Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Vacation's End

This post is the second part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

My wife and I have been in South Florida for about a week visiting my father-in-law. He's a few blocks away from the beach and the weather's been nice (but hot) so we've been out and about the whole time. Since we're leaving tomorrow, I needed to check the weather to see what we'll be driving through. It's the first time we've turned on the TV since we've been here. :)

So I turn on the television and there's a damn hurricane about to hit Florida! Just showed up out of nowhere! Really freaked me out. They've got it tracking across Miami and then up into the panhandle by the end of the week. My mother-in-law is right in the path of it and her house is surrounded by giant oak trees. There's absolutely no way to evacuate her and my wife is nervous about that, but it's looking like a Category 1 all the way. I'm not really concerned about it. I didn't want to tell her, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm driving all the way home and then six hours back this weekend. It's nowhere near us, but it's pushing out a lot of rain. That will make for a fun drive.

I should probably sign off and go to bed. I have to drive for 10 hours tomorrow. In the rain. Ugh.

I hate the going home part of vacation.

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My 2008 Primaries Gift to Senator John McCain

Not that the GOP smear machine has ever needed any help fabricating an issueless warpath to DNC shortcomings, but there is a blaringly obvious silver bullet in the news I’ve yet to see anyone capitalize upon. If I don’t talk about it I am going to burst and rarified Funk & Wagnalls colloquialisms are going to spill out over my hardwood floor. I hate mopping. So, Senator McCain, this is my gift to you.

As we forge ahead in veritable disgust that the outcome of an election might once again come down to a Florida court decision or its doppelganger chez Michigan, this time the decision as to who would indeed be the Democratic nominee, it is only natural to look back at 2000 and dream of sawing the whole peninsula off like Bugs Bunny. “South America, take it away!” My persistent migraine still swims with hanging chads, butterfly ballots, voter fraud, spoiled ballots, hot-ass Broward County, and a particularly disturbing image of Pat Buchanan looking accidentally sexy to voters. In that swarm of post-election answerlessness, the avalanche of particulars raised over weeks and over the year to follow was enough make me want to ride a Diebold machine over Niagara Falls…the Canadian side. Somehow, there were so many scraps of a demolished process to consider, no one sticks out in our minds as useful today. Or does one?

Am I the only one who remembers the embarrassment we were showing the world? How many times did they insert into the news broadcasts the opinions du jour from the common folk on the streets of Paris or expatriates working in the far Pacific rim? We were the laughing stock of the global political landscape. We knew it too. More than once the proceedings called for a more rapid decision making process, not only because the American people deserved it, but reportedly because we looked to the world like we had no idea what the hell we were doing. Him Big Chief Democracy, Broken Noggin. To this day I mildly suspect that Gore threw the extended fight so that his country might save face, and no other reason.

Well, for the Democratic Party, doesn’t a similar embarrassment apply now? Sure they were within their rights to punish state bodies when those states had broken party rules. Sure the candidates were reasonable to sign agreements regarding what would be zero seated delegates from those states. Now, barely a couple months later, months in which the race has proven too close to call, places like Florida and the campaigns themselves want to revisit the defunct primaries to hedge bets. It seems as if the Democratic Party doesn’t know how to run a primary in much the same way the U.S. seemed not to know how to count votes in an election. All party conventions should now hand out dunce caps.

All John McCain has to realize for an early and applicable snipe is that the Democrats as a group now look bad either way. If the candidates honor their signed agreements, as worthy as that might sound, they are in effect saying they hold with the idea of discounting people’s votes. If instead they keep with the belief that every vote should count, an ideal we hold dear, not only will they cost those states millions of dollars to rerun primaries, but they also look like hypocrites for going back on their signed, documented agreements. Hypocrite or anti-voter? Whom would you elect? Bracketed in this simple way, McCain could have his first one-two punch, still with additional room to portray Democrats as not knowing how to run their own primary. How can they run a country?

My personal solution to the disenfranchised Florida and Michigan Democratic Primaries lies in New Mexico. Remember when the 2000 election tally was still close and the media started running down the “what happens in the event of a tie” possibilities, state by state? Well, New Mexico’s contingency had something to do with five card stud, drawing straws, or a game of high card being the deciding factor. Seriously, that was the law. As history repeats itself, the news just yesterday ran the story about a game of stud poker in New Mexico that decided its elected Estancia Town Trustee. No wonder illegals want in!

Well, there’s our answer. The Florida and Michigan Democratic Primaries have to be declared ties. Surely each state has its own legislated tie-breaker, a legit’ one they should have already budgeted for or a silly one that involves something like monkeys ripping into cupcakes. Yes, we are not talking about tie votes, but there is more than one way to look at a tie. We could backwardly argue that zero delegates or zero outcome for each candidate in these states constitutes a tie. We could even go a more philosophical route and claim that despite the number of votes, New Mexico voters legally voted to play that hand of stud while despite the number of voters in Florida, Floridians essentially voted in hopes of effectuating some ridiculous tie-breaker when they were told votes wouldn’t count. In any case, I am positive that a documented election tie-breaker would save millions, eliminate fraud, and at least in that academically philosophical sense count votes toward an outcome.

Should the DNC take my advice, however, Senator John McCain is going to get a great soundbite. It’ll be speechifying akin to, “Do you want your President elected or decided by rock, paper scissors?”

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