Monday, August 29, 2011

Driving: Even Morons Do It

I had the unfortunate experience of driving on the freeway for a few hours in the last couple of days. There’s nothing in the world like a sixty-mile drive on a CA freeway to remind us that the average I.Q. is 99. In light of this, I am proposing some new rules for moron drivers. Not that they’ll read this blog post, but it’ll sure feel good to type it.

Rule 1: Use your head in the left lane. While sixty-five or seventy may in fact be the speed limit in a certain area, take your ass out of the fast lane if you are going to drive that slow. If by VW Beetles and mini vans are passing you on the right, you are doing it wrong.

Rule 2: Turn off your damn brights. If you are going to lift your pickup obscenely high and not re-aim the headlights, at least please leave your brights off. It’s bad enough that your thirty-eight inch tires sound like a freight train approaching and that your exhaust is annoyingly loud. Adding the bright lights in my mirror seals my hatred for you.

Rule 3: Pick a speed and stay there. Few things boil my blood like a missing-link that goes from eighty to sixty-five in the span of four seconds, and then back up to eighty. Then back down. Then up. Your car, like almost every car offered after 1978 probably came with cruise control. Use that shit. That way, you can maintain your speed while you text someone and change the station on your crappy radio.

Rule 4: Sit up. Just because you’ve seen a few Snoop-Dogg videos doesn’t make you a gangster. Leaning to the side in your primer-gray Honda Accord with a buckled hood isn’t cool. At all. The chick you managed to take with you thinks you look like an idiot, and she’s correct. Maybe if you spent less on cologne and hair-gel you could get the stupid thing painted. Just sayin’.

Rule 5: Merge smoothly. I don’t see houses or school crossing signs or speed bumps on the freeway. I see cars moving along at eighty miles an hour. The people in those cars want to get somewhere. Entering the freeway at forty miles an hour is not only unbelievably annoying, it’s also dangerous. I realize that many cars these days have no power, but when the on-ramp is the downhill kind and it’s a quarter-mile long, you can get to sixty. Trust me, jerk-off, you can.

Rule 6: “Powered By...” stickers are stupid. Like, really dumb. If I see a 1998 Honda Civic, I do not assume it has a Chrysler mill under the hood. That a Honda Civic would be powered by Honda is very logical, and unnecessary to advertise. It makes you look as dumb as the wing on the back and the coffee-can-sized muffler you have installed for “performance”. No matter what you do to that car, it will never be a hot rod. You have failed.

3 comments:

LivingstonLabs said...

Mr. Sunshine has tasted of the dark Cool-Aid, and he likes it!

Lark said...

Driving the freeways in Houston is an experience. We liken it to attending a clown college, actually. Rush hours are when graduate students of the clown college make their doctoral thesis presentations - each prospect tries to outdo the others in ever greater displays of jackassedness.

And don't even get me started on "the vortex of stupidity" which surrounds the Galleria Shopping area, especially at Christmas. Duh!

I think this blog entry should be required reading, Derek. Those who get it and nod in agreement wholeheartedly will find it entertaining. Those who get defensive or offended? Well, now, those folks might be in greatest need of your words.

Kudos, dude!

Derek Odom said...

Haha! Thanks for the kind words, Lark! Definitely made my morning (afternoon) coffee taste a little sweeter. :)