Workin' It: Good Intentions vs. Good Traffic

There are days, as a new dad, that getting out of bed before 6:45 anti-Meridian is as likely as Barack Obama second-guessing himself. But today I was DETERMINED to do so. Getting a good start on the day is vital to getting the F outta work early.

So I got up and got moving. With only the most-minor lollygagging, I was outta the house by about 7:45 so that I could get to work at a decent hour, so that I could walk the 1/4-mile from the off-site, across-street, near-campus parking afforded to me, the lowly contractor.

Normally I'll leave the house around 8:10-8:20 and, with but a few red light waits (great name for a bearded indie band NOW NOW NOW) I zip to work and arrive by 8:45. Today, ha HA!, I left around 7:50. There was a back-up to the on-ramp, through 2 lights, stretching nearly 1.5miles. I thought it was just a small backer at the crosswalk as some Immigrant youth made their way to the public transit stop so as to ride to their "America Today!" classes. NOPE... Big stinkin' backup. So I said a long stream of expletives about debt and mortgages and sleep deprivation and the entitlement of youth and people who buy Aplets & Cotlets and why can't I install a new version of an internet browser at work instead of the shit-pile that is IE6 which does NOT have tabbed browsing??? NO, it does NOT have it unless you bang-in the MSN Toolbar which I cannot do, as I'm lacking admin privileges on this machine. Otherwise I'd be elbows-deep in iTunes. Pssssh!

The huge back-up to the on-ramp ellicited a new circuitous route to 405-North.

Long-story short, when it comes to your morning commute, there are 2 things you must keep in mind.
FIRST, are you leaving the house at a time when you are accustomed-to, even if it gets you into the office a bit later, but absolves you of jams longer than Phish unspooling at Bonnaroo?
SECOND, are you knocking out your debt so that this morning commute will soon be a thing of the past and you can take that drive leisurely in the near future, driving in the carpool lane with your giant middle finger raised to the Rat Racers?

Had I not left for Los Angeles a few years ago we'd likely not be in a position where I'd have to go do this work or take this trip. But Life is funny the way bee stings are tingly. You gotta go and do a few different things to really remind yourself of why you gotta stay the F outta debt.

To paraphrase Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, thy traffic maps be damned." What an asshole. Probably telecommuted.



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A Traffic, Oil, And Giant Solution To Problems

My solution to traffic, fender-benders, the insurance industry, road rage, fat-cat oil company profiteers who can't drill in the Mexican Sea Gulf, drunk driving, that dipshit with the loud rap music stereo blasty-boom, people who demand you get out of their way because they are late for a latté, your impending short-comings due to underestimating the intense influence of a red-head, lowered Acuras driven by shit-head kids with no insurance crossing 4 lanes in 1/8 of a mile after merging, and Calvin peeing on a rival car makers.

(ahem)

Oh, and Nick Hogan.

Everybody would be in pods that have giant magnets in the front and back. Front magnets and rear magnets have opposite polarities, but all fronts have the same and and all rears have the same. See, that means you get close to, but not crash into, the other cars.




Then, the entire system runs on tracks that are magnetized, like those tracks that the bullet trains run on in Japan, Germany, and every other country we've kicked the S out of in a war. Losers better their positions, and the winners walk around making movies about our triumphs, that we have to drive to at $4.37 a gallon. Assclowns. And you zip right along, ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP. The track has magnets that switch polarities and zip you along quietly, with the only exhaust coming from Michael Savage.

THEN, you get in your pod, which would be like a comfortable little office or customized bathroom with a TV and WiFi connection and a place to "do business" and a boss-ass system. You punch in where you wanna go, hit the GO button, and you zip into the flow of traffic that is on the rail.

The rail system senses you coming in, and slows a car down a half-mile back, so you get right into where you fit best. NO MERGING. NO ASSFACE DISSING YOU FOR TRYING GET AHEAD OF THEM, HOW DARE YOU, SeatSniffer. And bingo, you're in the flow in a Merge/Purge lane.

Merge/Purge? That's the lane on the far right that goes about 15 M'sPH slower than the rest of traffic. You go there FIRST, then you get into traffic, and the lanes go faster depending on how far you have to go. If you're in it for the long haul, you get way to the left and zoom along at about 70-80 M'sPH. If you're heading to Trader Joe's, you get about 45 M'sPH, while finalizing your shopping list and talking to your therapist.

HANDS FREE, of course.
And I will still miss meetings because I'll leave the house 3/10ths of a second later than I ought to.

NO, this won't work, I know that.
Because we love our cars.
They give us the personality where our Personality should be.

And because people love being Tail-Gated by the... BITCH... who can't drive and talk at the same time and then acts like it's MY fault that she's gonna be late to work at the tanning salon. And it's not. It's her fault she can't keep her GPA up at a Vo-Tech.

And because the guy in the BMW M3 I see every day passing in school zones would have to develop a NEW skill to compensate for a flaccid personality. I wanna gutterball that doosh.

And because we love pulling to a red light, in the right-hand lane, and sitting behind the bootch who ain't seen that it's a RightTurnOnly lane, and there's no cross-traffic, so GO... GO AHEAD... go go go go go go GO GO GO GO GO GO GO... go. Please. Oh CheezIts Crepes, I'm going to push you into traffic. (yes, this happened today).

So anywho, that's just my suggestion. I think we're close to accepting the notions I proposed. However, until we find a way for people to be employed on the magnetic roads thing... I'll be cruising around town in a car not unlike the one seen below.

You know... for personality.

The great minds are all off-center, off-kilter, and need to be that way.

I'm changing the world. YOU change the lightbulbs.

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My Blog About My Dad