Monday, February 22, 2016

Road Rage

Last night I was indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, watching compilations of road rage fights on YouTube. It used to be that in a traffic related fight, two guys would get out, maybe with a pipe or
a bat, and duke it out. Now these guys go straight for the gun. It's horrifying to see some punk getting a well-deserved pounding from an outraged driver and instead of manning up, they dive straight for the glove compartment. Now if you find yourself in a road rage incident, they'll just shoot your ass. I must confess that I've been afflicted with road rage for about thirty years or so, and there ain't no cure for those boulevard blues. It begins during the daily obstacle course on the city streets that someone set up just for you. Here's a guy trying to make a left from the center lane. Here comes some fool barreling out of a fast food joint and pulling too far into the street where you have to swerve quickly and pray someone's not in the other lane. Here's a tiny lady who can barely see over the steering wheel driving 25 mph during rush hour. And that guy that speeds past you, cuts over three lanes, and ends up at the same red light as you. They're all just playing their parts assigned for that day to make driving a harrowing experience.

You would not believe the words that come out of my mouth that could never be used in any other setting. It usually begins as an irritant from observing another drivers' behavior. When something crucially stupid happens, I begin by saying, "You banking blank. Idiot blankerblanker. Wake the blank up and drive, you blanking blankhole." From their it only gets worse. Once I was driving east on Peabody and as I drew near S. Cooper St. where the road dead ends and splits either left or right, some knucklehead in front of me couldn't pick a lane. I thought I'd help him by laying on the horn, but he flipped me a particularly vulgar looking bird. Infuriated, I did the old trick of moving my hand in a back and forth motion near my mouth and poking my cheek out with my tongue. Certain that my gesture was far more disgusting than his, he went south and I went north. I stopped in the old record store in the Poplar Plaza and while I was perusing the CDs, this scrawny looking guy in overalls comes up to me and says, "You're the guy that just told me to "blank a blank" in the street out there. Not wishing to disrupt anyone's business, I took the gentlemanly approach and apologized. I told him that something inexplicable comes over me when I get behind the wheel of a car, but I'm really not that person. He seemed to accept my atonement and left. It was either that or throw down in the middle of the Rhythm and Blues racks. That's how I learned to keep my vulgarities and hand gestures more discreet.

My wife, Melody, has refused to drive with me for several years now. I don't mind if she wishes to drive, but I'm not that great of a passenger either. I enjoy explaining the psychology of traffic. If she passes some massive SUV,  I tell her to just watch. Psychologically, the other driver resents being passed by a smaller car and will invariably speed up. She also hates it when I stomp on the passenger's side brakes. I have noticed, however, that she'll occasionally cut loose with a tirade that could peel paint from a dry wall. I have to remind her that we don't go for the "blue" language. Still, the horror is unending. The interstates have become endless ribbons of aggravation. Believe it or not, there was a time when long-haul truckers were considered the most courteous drivers on the road. They moved over to allow you to pass and if you made a pulling motion with your arm, they might even let you hear a little airhorn. No longer. Since the petroleum industry lobbyists have stopped all railway progress in this country, the highways are choked with big rigs and the old Eisenhower expressway is too obsolete to handle it. That's why I try not to complain when the old 5:15 rolls through the center of town. I know that every boxcar is one less truck on the highway. Today's truckers pass you at eighty miles an hour, and blow your car off the road. There was also a time when you could hitchhike on the interstate and invariably a trucker would pick you up. I thought nothing of being dropped off at an exit ramp in Nashville and thumbing it to Knoxville. Even women once trusted truckers enough to hitchhike. I knew this musician who was around 5'4", thinner than a dime, with long blonde hair flowing down his back. Once, he was hitching with his thumb out and his back to oncoming traffic when an 18-wheeler pulled over. My friend jumped into the cab revealing his mustache and sternum-length beard and said, "I bet you thought I was a girl." The trucker answered, "Don't matter. Imma fuck you anyway."

If I were your president, I would begin building 21st century super-highways exclusively for automobiles and leave the old interstate to the truckers. What would it take- four more lanes? We need some auto friendly roads and not these corkscrew flyovers that claim a life a week. And the next Congress should make Drivers' Ed mandatory. That would thin the herd from some of these damn fools out there, and you know who you are. Just today, I saw some monster truck pull to a sudden stop behind me at a red light and when I looked into the rear view mirror, some slob was eating something out of a bowl with a spoon. I thought it must be ice cream but he was eating it much too fast to avoid brain freeze. I assumed it was either ramen noodles or soup and said loudly to no one, "You idiot blankblanker." Sometimes I just wish I had a giant yellow backhoe to cruise down the road, so when I saw someone driving like a selfish idiot bastard I could just crush in their roofs and push them to the curb. Oh yeah, I saw that on YouTube too.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, god. This is probably how I'm going to meet my maker, as the saying goes. I've actually improved, because (I live in Texas) I'm afraid someone really is going to shoot me. Imagine how they drive down here.

    Interesting about why there are so many trucks on the highway. I've noticed the increase in the last 4 or 5 years.

    Geoff Russell
    Houston

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your idea of refurbishing the interstate to accommodate more cars is dead in the water. You, of all people, must know that the U.N. Agenda 21 Treaty (now upgraded to the U.N. Agenda 2030 Treaty), along with the U.N. Convention On Biodiversity Treaty, is scaling back production of everything for the sake of sustainability. Change your vision to an interstate bicycle system. I guess then we would have bicycle rage, though. The problem is human nature, not the technology. Pissed off cave men went at each other with spears and boulders. Should spears and boulders have been banned?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It has recently come to my attention that a consortium of progressive egalitarians are distressed about an unaddressed element of inequality in our culture. It has to do with the fact that those who are attractive and intelligent tend to court and marry others who are attractive and intelligent. The unintended consequence of this behavior produces a class system of those who are attractive/intelligent and another composed of the ugly/stupid. All class distinctions are abhorred by egalitarians. They have the beginnings of a plan to address this nefarious inequity. They are prosing a vast new governmental bureaucracy to implement their plan, which is how egalitarians always implement their plans. First, individual freedom in courting and marriage must be eliminated. Free people making free choices create forbidden class structures as a result of their chioces. The plan is first to quantify physical beauty. Intelligence has already been quantified by I.Q. tests. The quantifying of physical beauty will be along the line of assigning everyone a physical beauty rating. The most beautiful and intelligent will be classified as A-1. The ugliest and most stupid would receive a Z-20 rating. Everyone would fall in this spectrum and would be assigned an appropriate number. The rest of the plan is relatively simple to implement. Before dating or marriage, each person must go through the Federal Equal-Opportunity Hook Up Bureau. A-1's will be required to court and/or marry only Z-20's, and so on with regard to each one's rating classification. Over time, the progeny of these unions will eventually wind up being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and the entire culture will be half-ugly and half-stupid. This genius of this system is that it redistributes genes for beauty and intelligence toward the shallow end of the human gene pool, thereby creating an egalitarian Utopia...a country in which every one will be equally ugly and stupid. You now understand the genius behind egalitarianism.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Progressivism/egalitarianism is actually regressive in nature. In order to create their vision of a Utopian society, individual freedom must be squelched for the sake of the 'good' of the collective. This cannot be done when people are free to choose. No free person is going to comport their lives to the vision of a collectivist Elite. That is like trying to herd cats. The problem with curtailing individual freedom is that it is through the freedom to be and do one's best that humanity spirals upward. This, in turn, is fueled by differential rewards...the fruit of one's labors. Inventions, creativity, production, etc., etc. are born of freedom, not coercion. This inevitably produces classes because each one has a variable allotment of intelligence, ability, and motivation. This is realty. The attempts by egalitarians to curb this reality for the sake of an artificial equity are regressive and anti-life. We will have a rude awakening when our ever growing, non-productive public sector swamps the productive private sector, thereby killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Who will then produce the wealth to sustain the public Leviathan? Has the thought of the end game of forced labor dawned on any of the socialist/Marxist types yet? The work must be done by someone and it won't be done by the Elites who are manufacturing this so-called Worker's Paradise. Remember, the Marxist leaders live in splendor while the masses labor in poverty. Freedom is not a bad deal as we will find out when it is too late. Have you figured out who the 'useful idiot' enablers are? Might they be progressive/egalitarian/liberal/socialist/Marxist types? The biggest mistake is their inability to come to grips with reality, especially human nature which can only be superficially modified by education and money. A wealthy, educated tyrant is no better than a poor, stupid one. A wealthy, educated psychopath/sociopath is no better than a poor, stupid one. Human nature does not change from the outside inward. Coercion, either by training, or other means only goes so far. Human nature is a bad motor scooter, especially when it is empowered. Rivers of blood throughout human history are a testimony to that fact. Choose freedom...not egalitarian tyranny.

    ReplyDelete