...and besides, it's already Friday SOMEWHERE. (We had that discussion with Emily last week.)
So here's my Friday Bite the Wax Tadpole (again, keeping the language PG as that's the convention on this blog).
the flaming idiots who drive their giant beater boat cars slowly down the MIDDLE of a residential street while they gibber on their fornicating cell phone and fail to obey any of the safety laws (especially when there are small children walking home from school on said street) deserve to have that phone dipped in hot queso and ground walnuts and have it inserted in a particular bodily orifice.
I do not know why it is suddenly fashionable for the young set to suddenly buy up the late-70s model "granny cars" (like LTDs and the old Crown Vics), but they've been popping up in my town. They're usually driven by folks in the 18-24 age group, driven badly, usually there are several guys together in the car, and they're all talking on cell phones.
I don't know if it has anything to do with the similar fashion to have subwoofers and such installed in cars so that when the sound system is turned on, all the people living within, oh, about a 3-mile radius of the car just hear loud, blurry, metal-rattling bass. It is as ANNOYING as STINK, especially in the middle of the night, so those guys who have the stupid autobot-to-noise-weapon transforming cars can also bite the wax tadpole. And the fact that there are at least some chaps who are the intersection of those two very annoying sets, they can really bite that tadpole.
Another thought on cell phones: I generally dislike "creeping legalism" but I'm beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea to rewrite the traffic laws so that if a person commits a traffic violation or (especially) is involved in an accident, and it's clear that they were distracted by talking on a cell phone at the time, it gets treated similarly to a DUI. Because I cannot tell you how many near-misses I've been in with some gibbering fool who can't hang up their frickin' phone for two minutes to pay attention to traffic - I've had people pull out in front of me out-of-turn at four-way stops. I've seen people run red lights. I've seen people turn at stoplights when I clearly had the right-of-way and if I had been a leadfoot I would have been t-boned by them. I've seen people nearly hit pedestrians. I've seen people weave all over the blessed road - all behaviors that, 30 years ago, would have made a cop wonder if the person were drunk. Now it's all, "Oh, she's on her cell phone."
(And I say "she" specifically. Maybe I am being sexist but about 80% of the really bad near-accidents-involving-cell-phones I've seen have had a woman driver committing the offense. And *I* am a woman driver. But - I don't talk on a cell phone, I don't do my makeup in the car, I don't root in my purse for crap when I'm driving. I don't even play the radio if it's heavy traffic or if I'm driving somewhere unfamiliar!)
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Gonna be busy tomorrow...
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irritating people
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1 comment:
Ricki,
On the "she" subject, contrary to Los Angeles stereotypes, I walk a lot. I can't tell you the number of times I have almost been run over by some driver that can't be bothered to, oh, I don't know, make sure there isn't a bloody human being in the crosswalk before making their turn. I'd say the 80% is about the same for me. It's almost always women, either chatting on their phones or doing something else stupid instead of paying attention to objects in front of the potentially life-ending piece of machinery they're operating.
But that goes both ways. I was driving down a street in a cozy little town called El Segundo, near LAX. It's got this whole Mayberry feel to it. The main street is a 25 mile an hour zone, which I always obey. The thing about pedestrians in California is that they're given the automatic right-of-way, but too many of them are too stupid to consider that just because drivers are supposed to stop by law doesn't mean they flipping see you. Anyway, I'm toddling down this road at a snail's pace, come up near a crosswalk (no stop sign) with a bus parked on the side of the road and a woman steps out from in front of it into the road without even looking. I darn near hit her. Then she stares dirty at ME as if I was supposed to have been mustering my psychic powers to just KNOW she was going to be stepping from behind the bus. Dumb broad.
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