traffic

For some ridiculous reason I was still at the office at 11:45pm yesterday. When I got on the highway at 11:55pm, I mistakenly assumed that traffic would be minimal and I would zip home.
Ha!
They closed the 405.
They. Closed. The. 405.

Comically they chose not to let you know that it was closed from Getty Ctr. Dr. to (freaking!) Sepulveda until you were about 50 yards from what turned into an hour-and-a-half delaying detour through un-get-off-able mountain passes and backwoods backroads.

What’s amazing to me is that there are the same number of maniacs applying make-up, reading, pitching pilots on their portables, and trying to eat ramen with chopsticks while driving at midnight as there are at 7am. (That number, by the way, is two trillion.)

Every city I’ve ever called home has had something nasty … some ineffable idiosyncrasy … that its dwellers hold high, wave with pride, and flaunt in the face of visitors. In Daytona it was how stupid all the tourists are (were), in Gainesville it was the humidity (and / or stupidity of visiting Seminoles), in Boston it was the months of dark, gray winter. Have you ever had someone from Gainesville visit your home city? “You call this humid? In Gainesville this would be dry!” How about a friend from New England? “You think this is cold and crappy? Hell, in Bahstin we’d be running around in t-shirts if we were lucky enough to have this sawta weathah.”

In LA it’s the traffic. People here brave the traffic and even - though they would never admit it - take pride in battling the world’s worst commute every day.

The Superior Court of California has a terrific web site. I have no idea what possessed them to use *images* instead of *text* for all their links, though. That’s just plain stupid. But … I was able to pay my latest traffic citation on line, which was very nice.
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My drive home is always exciting.

On the way to work this morning I was delayed by a “SIG Alert” on the 101. I don’t know what a “SIG Alert” is exactly, but I know that there was an accident. A multiple-car accident that blocked three lanes of traffic and made me almost an hour late to the office. There were injuries, but I don’t know details. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that someone was killed.
On NPR there was a story about a water-shortage in some third-world country - I don’t even remember which one - and how people are starving to death there. I read today (on line) about some teenagers killed in Ireland, and another shark attack. Several Iraqi soldiers were killed when the chemical weapons they were developing exploded.
There is a homeless man that plays his harmonica for change on the corner of my exit. I pass him almost every morning while I’m talking on my cell phone and driving my shiny red pick-’em-up truck.

Three hundred sixty-five days ago today I left Tampa, Florida and began the drive that would take me to Los Angeles, California.

So much has happened in that time, and so much hasn’t happened, that I am amazed that I ever look at my life and worry about what it is.

It is a life.

And it is pretty good.

One of the reasons cell phones are such a hazard is that people hold them, keeping one of their hands from the wheel. That’s why many of the proposed laws ban hand-held cell phones. But that’s just a start. If holding a cell phone is dangerous, so is holding a hamburger. That’s why a law should mandate that McDonald’s sell only hands-free Big Macs in their drive throughs.

The Pseudodictionary is full of words (and phrases) that aren’t really words but should be. In the early 80s we used to call these sniglets, a term coined by, I think, Rich Hall of HBO’s Not Necessarily the News. I first found the Psuedodictionary several months ago when there were only a handful of words there. Now the site is a veritable cornucopia of fun and exciting ways to say things you already say but didn’t know other people said, too.

I just submitted BFE (butt-f*ck egypt). BFE is, of course, a place very far away from where you are and to which you would need a very good reason to travel. BFE is interesting because in Gainesville, Florida it was any place that was more than a five-minute drive from me. I considered the Oaks Mall (less than ten miles away) to be in BFE. In Los Angeles though, BFE is much, much farther away. Now I don’t think twice to drive twenty minutes to get someplace. So.

People in LA really freak out when it rains. I haven’t seen any real rain here yet, although it’s drizzled once or twice. A few nights ago we got <sarcasm>almost one half-inch</sarcasm> of rain and you would’ve thought it was the Great Flood. There were over 400 auto accidents on one stretch of the 405 during the hour or so that there was wetness in the air. It is pretty grey and ugly out there today. Here’s a really cool radar loop image from the area. ‘Sposeta rain again tonight. Snow in the mountains.

Been thinking about super-powers lately. I think a pretty cool super power would be the ability to give anyone the hiccups just by touching them. Another good one would be the ability to stop time. Oh, sure. I know what some of you are thinking: If you could stop time you’d probably freeze the world so you could perform some amazing act of cyber-terrorism or sex up Russel Crowe.

I know what I would do. I’d freeze time while I was sitting in traffic on the 101 or the 405 or Ventura or Santa Monica. I’d get out of my car and walk forward 10 or fifteen vehicles. I’d tap on that guy’s window and say, “Hey there! How’s it going?” And when he looks at me, all confused, I’d say, “Y’know how sometimes you’re sitting in traffic? And you’re wondering why you’re not moving? Why am I sitting here going so slowly or stopped when there’s really no reason for it? What asshole is holding up the flow?” And when the guy nods and says, “Yeah, I hate that!” I’d slap him a good one and say, “You’re the asshole, buddy! What the hell are you doing? Now move it, you jerk!”

I also would have frozen time on the elevator this morning and given the uptight, reeking-of-perfume, grumpy lady who was staring at me like I’m a freak-o a swift kick in the behind.

Yeah. Super-hearing or the ability to fly or super-speed would be cool, too. I’d also like to have Green Lantern’s ring, maybe. And a Bat-utility-belt.

I‘ve talked about this happening IRL with several people recently and tonight I finally remembered to visit the site. bigdig.com details “The Central Artery/Tunnel Project” in Boston. Basically they are taking the entire highway system in Boston and putting it underground. It’s amazing.

Fun Fact: Underfund is the only other word in English that begins and ends with ‘und’.

I am stealing another one from Dan. 405 is an excellent short film. Go. Watch it. Now.

I seem to have a slight problem with obeying the speed limit. Is this really a surprise? And now, for your entertainment, I give you a list of the dates on which I elected to take a driver improvement class in the state of Florida to banish any points from my “record”:
05-25-90, 05-28-91, 08-21-95, 05-15-98, 08-04-00