Is it wrong to drive a (rented) PT Criuser listening to Propagandhi? I figure it’s ok as long as you drive as poorly as I did. I drove on a pedestrian trail, I drove the wrong way on a one way, and I drove through a park. Hey, I saw no “keep off the grass” sign. It was great fun.
I seem to attract busy traffic patterns. It’s my turn to drive, I hit the on ramp, get up to speed to merge with the flow, and all that happens just in time for me to hit the brakes and coast at 10-15 for a while. Even when things are flowing ok, I find ways to entertain myself. I actually tried to maintain a safe following distance. Thanks to some painted symbols on the road, I found out that a safe distance is something like 5 or 6 car lengths, which means you’re creating a playground for people who drive by their instruments. You know, the people who figure if they’re in their car, they’re doing 140, regardless of weather, traffic, and possibly even hemmorhoids. Anyway, I put the alpha instinct aside, and if someone invaded that wondrous personal space in front of me, I just made a new one. The interesting part? The car behind me started to do the same thing. I don’t know if my fantastic driving skills caused inspiration and hope to emit from the vehicle, or if the poor fool following me was just scared I’d hit the brakes again. Speaking of which, I used to ride with someone who would lock his brakes if he felt someone was too close to his rear bumper. Much fun.
Back to the show, I got to a point of stop and go where I started driving like a drummer, if that drummer was that guy from Def Leppard, only instead of losing his arm he lost a leg and had to play the bass drum and that cymbal thing that has a pedal, so he’d have two pedals but just one leg. Yeah, I drove just like that guy who doesn’t exist. That was me. I’d drive according to whatever song was playing. It became clear after some time that I am still rhythm impaired. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to win a battle of the bands or a car race to stay alive. With any luck I’d wake up before the start of either event and say “wow, what a crappy dream”.
Are all of these game shows like Survivor and Dog Eat Dog (haven’t seen either) and whatever just the new style of American Gladiator? Instead of celebrating physical ability we’ve just gone to a “mental” (choose the context) game where people at home can maybe identify with the contestants a bit more. Next up we’ll have something even more identifiable like “who can go longest without showering” or, crap, I don’t even know, but I bet whatever I write has either been done or will be soon. Actually, I think the showering thing was a MASH episode. What if all future game shows are just based on MASH? They could perform surgery on each other. “Bob, to stay in this round, you have to let Sherrie remove your appendix”. Or something.
Tomorrow I’ll write something about the weekend, both because I haven’t actually talked about the weekend except for the journey part (which I hear is the reward), and because I don’t want to make up some story about something fun. Tomorrow will most likely not be fun, what with the whole “hey, thought you were taking today off” “yeah, well, bite me” conversations I look forward to. By morning I’ll find a way to make a game out of it. A game, mind you, not a game show. Co-workers, your appendices are safe. If you still have them.