The Land of Bad Drivers

I live in the land of inept drivers. I know there are other far off lands where drivers pilot their vehicles with skill and grace because I have seen pictures have seen them on television, but I do not live in one of these places. I reside where drivers either do not ever bother to read and understand the driving manual or these drivers simply do not care about anyone else on the road but themselves.  The truth regarding these drivers may be something completely different.

Bad drivers will strike where you least expect them.

My drive to work is a 30 minute commute that consists mainly of freeway travel with a small fraction of surface streets thrown in.  Needless to say, I see my share of drivers.  Today, moments after I entered the freeway, I encountered one of these drivers that I will call the Pace Car. The Pace Car drives the speed limit in the left lane and will never, I repeat, never drive in the right lane. Now, where I live, all vehicles are to drive in the right lane unless passing. It is the law. This particular person entered the freeway and immediately changed lanes into the left lane, set the cruise control to the speed limit and ignored the approximate half mile traffic jam of people waiting to get by.



I have plans to install these this fall.

Is the Pace Car somehow unaware of the law and so oblivious that they missed the two signs they drove by stating said law or do they just not care about anyone else on the road, thus requiring anyone traveling at a higher speed to go around them in the right lane? I believe the answer to this question is none of the above. The answer lies in the second driver I encountered today.

A woman I came across the other day.
After I honked and yelled out the window she finally moved over.

Halfway through my commute I came upon some construction that required traffic to merge into one lane. Where I live the vast majority of people start to merge as soon as they see the “Left Lane Ends” sign. These people will start to merge into the other lane upwards to a mile ahead of the actual lane ending. In California, where I have spent most of my adult life, cars merged when the lanes merged. These two ideologies create conflict among some drivers. These drivers I will call “Hall Monitors.”

I will have no merry-making in this hallway. None!

The self-appointed position of the Hall Monitor makes it their duty to ensure everyone merges a mile up the road as they did. This driver will steer his car so it straddles both lanes of traffic so that no one will be able to pass him unless they drive off the road and therefore they will be forced to merge behind the Hall Monitor. I have seen variations of the Hall Monitor strategy by different drivers over the years. At times I will witness the Pace Car strategy being implemented by the Hall Monitor who will pull out into the lane that is to merge over and drive at the same pace as the other cars thus cutting off the entire lane forcing a "virtual merge". The most dangerous of the strategies used by the Hall Monitors is to swerve into passing cars to scare any other vehicle into not passing him. This is what I call the “I’m going to show my dominance by humping your lane” strategy.  These drivers would rather put the safety of every driver around them in jeopardy in order to make others submit.

Yes, I AM the self appointed ruler of everyone.  Why?

I believe that these two drivers, the Pace Car and the Hall Monitor, feel such a need to follow the laws that they suppose it's their duty to make sure everyone else follows them as well.  Now don’t get me wrong I am always a fan of following the rules, I drive the speed limit and in the right lane, but I do not feel the need to force everyone else to submit to the same rules I follow as if I was Kruschev ruling over the fast lane with an iron fist.

Of course some rule with a tiny iron fist.

These are not the kind of people you want in any kind of authoritative position. Let’s imagine a leader that feels an overwhelming conviction and forces everyone submit to them. Nazis anyone? Both the Christians and the Muslims felt the need to do this very thing between the 600s and the 1200s.  Well, the Muslims leaders still feel the need to make their subjects submit in the Middle Eastern countries.

...said the woman who will be stoned if she says otherwise.

Telling others about your convictions is a great thing. Forcing your convictions on others is a great tragedy. Today's lesson:  Do not be a Hall Monitor and cram your convictions down other's throats as if you are trying to force feed medication to a dog.  No matter how much ground beef you put it in people are still going to spit it out.

It's a Crying Shame

Whether it is snakes, carnies or even old people, everyone has something in life that gives them the hebegebes. We have a janitor that works in our building that is terrified of spiders. He made me squish a spider that was standing between him and the bathroom he wanted to clean one night. I’m pretty sure he had been standing there waiting for someone to save him for at least 10 minutes. Well as for me I have a few things that freak me out but the one I will discuss today is tears.

That's an eye full of nasty right there.

Yes, you read correctly… tears. Tears are one of the most disgusting things that come out of our bodies. Let me explain. Urine is primarily made up of water but the next most prevalent ingredient is urea. That potent smell of urine, for those of you who do not drink enough water, is caused by the asphyxiating ammonia that is produced by the breaking down of urea. Guess what is in tears. Yep, urea. So basically every time you cry you are peeing on your face.

"Did you just pee on your own face?!?"

This has become an issue over the years with my wife as she is on the emotional side of the scale and I am on the logical side. My wife’s side involves a lot of tears. Tears at the weddings, sad stories, disagreements, movies, television… she has cried at a movie preview more than once. The worst part about the tears is when they run down her face and gets close to her mouth her tongue slowly makes an appearance and captures the tear as it passes by like some kind of reptile licking her eyeballs to keep them moist. My look of disgust, of course, does nothing to help the situation either.

Wait, let me get that tear. Yummy.

On more than one occasion I have had a crying son come running up to me to be comforted only to be stopped at arm’s length as I get a blanket, towel, pillow or whatever is near by to soak up the urine coming out of their eyes. I do believe this may create some sort of bonding issue for the boys that will need to be sorted out with thousands of dollars of counseling in the years to come.

Not even with a ten foot pole.

One of the most memorable moments in anyone’s life is the moment they get engaged. I have to admit that for me it was also the most memorable moments as well, but for an entirely different reason. You see I drove my then girlfriend up the California coast from the greater Los Angeles area to San Francisco to visit my aunt and uncle that lived there. On the way up I made sure and plan our arrival to Pebble Beach (Carmel, CA) just as the sun was setting. Everything was planned out for a wonderful scene on the beach except the fact that it was Sea Lion mating season and from the sounds of it there was going to be a lot of births in a few months.

This is where we got engaged... taken just before "the incident."

Just as the sun set I turned to my lovely girlfriend, got down on one knee and pulled out the ring. Of course she didn’t notice I was down there in front of her so I had to nudge her with the ring box to get her attention. After I popped the question and she said yes she grabbed by face as I was kneeling down and bent over to kiss me. All I remember is… you guessed it… tears dripping on my face. Basically she peed on my face. It was by far one of the most disgusting moments in my life.

"She did what?"

To this day I have no idea how she ended up marrying me.  She puts up with my oddities, that's for sure.  I am the luckiest man alive.  Well... until she cries.

You Have Talent

What do Lady Gaga, Dolph Lundgren, Katy Perry and you have in common? No, this isn’t the start to a bad joke. They all have some thing specific in common.  Let’s take a look at each of these people and discover what why each of these people are sadly alike.

Apparently this is Lady Gaga as some kind of soggy mirrored gladiator.

To say that Lady Gaga is just a singer/song writer is to say that the Buckingham Palace is just a house. She is the biggest singing sensation to hit the world in quite sometime and if you have not heard of her you most likely have been spending quite a bit of time living in a cave feeding off small rodents. She has been awarded 85 international awards, including Grammys, AMA’s and Teen Choice awards, in the two years she has been in the public eye. Gaga, born with the good Italian name of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, learned to play the piano at age 4 and wrote her first ballet by the ripe old age of 13. When I was 13 I was still potty training. She was even accepted into Juilliard but instead decided to attend another school that is arguably just as exclusive. Like her music or not, one has to admit that she is extremely talented.

Countless muppets lost their lives in the making of Lady Gaga's outfit.

Let us look at the other side of the celebrity spectrum. Dolph Lundgren is a Swedish born actor/director best known for his role as huge Russian boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Since then he has gone on to act in 38 other action movies and directed 5 others, many of these movies went straight to video/DVD. Currently his career has been kick started by costarring in the summer hit The Expendables with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Mickey Rourke. What is interesting about Lundgren is not his horrible acting/directing career, because quite frankly he should have retired after Rocky IV. What is interesting is that Lundgren is that he speaks seven languages, holds a 3rd degree black belt in Kyokushin, holds a masters degree in chemical engineering, and even received a Fullbright Scholarship to MIT. For someone who plays a dumb brute in most of his extremely unpopular action movies this man is brilliant.

My body looks like that... under all my fat.

Back on the other side of the celebrity spectrum, we have Katy Perry. This singer/songwriter’s last album sold over 1.2 million copies in the US and went platinum or double platinum in 9 countries and gold in 8. Not to mention she also was voted the hottest woman alive by Maxim magazine, which by the way obviously did not look very hard or they would have picked my wife. I’m not saying that being voted hottest woman alive is a talent, but writing an album that is that successful has to take a little talent.

Ms. Perry playing, what appears to be, a real life Candyland game.

All three of these people have talents that are very apparent but the sad part is that none of them currently use those talents for what they were intended for. According to the book of John in the Bible, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.” All of our various talents, whether it is singing, acting, writing or even if you can floss your nose with a small snake, they all came as a gift from God Himself.

I really feel sorry for the poor snake that now has snot all over him.

Lady Gaga was obviously given a great musical ability and the ability to put on a great show. She even grew up in the Catholic Church. Today she is using her God given abilities to represent everything that is hedonism. Lundgren was given a great intellect for understanding languages and logic. Today he is making B-Rated movies. Katy Perry grew up with a pastor as a father and she even released a Christian album under her real name Katy Hudson. Today she has used her talents to become a pop sensation and a sex symbol for young boys every where. Her dad must be so proud. These three have gained the entire world at the expense of their eternal souls.

Here is Katy Hudson singing as a Christian artist.

In Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus tells a parable of a master that gave three of his servants a gift and left on a journey. When he returned the first two servants came to him and had used their gifts as the master intended, but the last servant took his gift and hid it in the ground so when the master came back from his trip the gift would not have been lost. The master rewarded the first two servants but to the last he took his gift and said, “You wicked, lazy servant!” and sent him away to be punished. God gives us gifts and talents to use for His glory not to bury away or to use for our own good.

Don't be a lazy servant...

Do you have anything in common with these three people? Do you use your God given talents for what God intended it to be used for or do you hide it away in the ground? Maybe you are using what God gave you for your own glory and not what was intended by the gift. Are you the servant that is using his gift as the Master intended or are you the servant who wasting his gift? The Master is returning soon. Examine yourself.

Foot in Mouth Disease

There has been many times in my life where I have put my foot in my mouth.  I cannot remember the first time it happened and and I, quite frankly, expect to do it again someday.  Not that I want to do it.  It is that I cannot help myself.  Here is one of the many stories of my Foot in Mouth disease.

A rather common occurrence.

While in high school I worked at a lovely department store called Shopko. If you are not familiar with this store it is one step above K-Mart and three steps below Target in the low price department store genre. What I remember most about Shopko is the fact that they used to require me to wear a dull orangey-rust colored smock that seriously hampered my ability to show the ladies the old Artie charm. But alas the ugly smock was no match for my acne speckled charm when I licked my index fingers and slicked down my sixteen year old mustache that consisted of exactly 37 hairs.

When puberty kicks in this thing is really going to take off.

While I was employed at Shopko I was a cashier. This was the best place to be because of the male to female ratio that was weighted heavily towards the female side and when a boy is at that age that is a very important fringe benefit. Another benefit of my position is that I would give breaks to different areas around the store that had cash registers. This also gave me a chance to branch out and sprinkle my charm in a larger area.

Pictured above is a perfect example of the male to
female ratio being skewed in the wrong direction.

One day I was walking to give a break to the cute girl in the layaway department when I turned the corner and noticed a line of disgruntled customers at the counter that stretched past the women’s activewear into the lingerie department where a mother was desperately trying to cover the eyes of her nine year old boy. As I neared the front of the queue I inquired about the employee’s whereabouts with the group and they all growled in one accord and pointed through double doors.  So off I went.

No one likes to wait in line.

I finally located the missing girl way in the back loading up tons of boxes for the mass of crabby people waiting for her. Wanting to show her my rapier wit I said, “If we don’t get those boxes down there in a hurry their going to hang us.” Then I flashed my suave and debonair grin.

Who's awesome?  You're awesome baby.

It was at that moment in time I discovered that I may not be as humorous as I think I was. Oh who am I kidding, I still haven’t learned that. Anyway, once I said those fateful words she broke down and started sobbing dropping a case of collectible Star Trek plates on the ground. Of course I did what any young man would do; with an expression of terror I put out one hand and patted her on the shoulder. Then I decided a little more of my flashy humor would be of assistance in this situation and I explained, “It’s okay, no one will get hung while I’m on duty!” She sobbed louder.

What did I say?!?

In between her sobs and her snorting the little bubble of snot that kept making an appearance in her right nostril back up she explained to me that the previous night her best friend had hung himself in his basement and she found him when she came over to visit. Oops.

It was all I could look at.

That day I learned to think before I speak and put extra thought into the words I use. Remember people’s feelings instead of making a flippant joke that could be insensitive or hurtful. Oh who am I kidding? No I didn't. Seriously who would have seen that coming? I mean really?

The Long Ride Home

When I was in college I would return back home in the summer and volunteer my time at a summer camp every year as I did in high school. There was a young lady that also worked there that caught my eye but every summer I would admire her from a distance as she had a boyfriend. One summer in particular I returned home and lo and behold she was boyfriendless. Now was my chance!

The sad reality about kids today and summer camp.

I had gone over this moment in time a thousand times in my head over the years and I knew exactly what I was going to say. So I walked up to her and asked her out. Well, I think I did. I really couldn’t hear what I was saying due to the loud thumping coming from my chest up into my head. Eye witnesses later informed me that I sounded as if I had went through some kind of major oral surgery moments before as most of my words were unintelligible. Apparently unable to resist my charm, or quite possibly because of pity, she said yes.

I really should have used my old standbye.  It never fails.

I decided to double date with a friend from the camp as that would lend itself to better conversation and less awkward first date moments.  To tell you the truth I really cannot remember where we went for most of the date, as I have tried to block out most of the date which you will soon find out why, although I do remember that we ended up at a 24-hour restaurant for desert. As we were leaving the car my date said she was chilly so I opened the trunk and retrieved her jacket and put in on her shoulders. This action would prove to be the worst move in my dating career.

Chivalry is not dead yet. Just on life support.

As the four of us walked out of the restaurant and came close to my car I quickly noticed that I did not have my keys. I could feel the blood actually drain from my face as I simultaneously searched every pocked I had and let out a slow, “Noooooooooo……” All eyes were on me. I remember my friend had a look on his face that said, “How could you do this to me?!?” About that time was when it I remembered I put them in the trunk as I put on my date’s jacket for her. It was all her fault! Curse women and their delicate skin!

Another moment in my life where yelled, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Luckily for all of us my friend’s date forgot to lock her door and we could wait in the car as the locksmith we called wouldn’t arrive for another two to three hours. Apparently others in the city had locked their keys in their trunks as well. The time dragged on as my first date conversation can only go on for so long before I start to run out of things to say.

This brings back memories.

After only two hours of awkward conversation the locksmith pulled up to the restaurant. As I opened my door and started to get out I looked down near my seat and noticed something that to this day I should never have told anyone. If I was a wise man I would have kept quiet, paid the locksmith to do his work and left. But I was not a wise man and before I could stop myself I let out, “The trunk release!”

Curse you hidden trunk release lever for making me look the fool!

It was a long ride home.