Fat People Exiting Large Vehicles

Why do fat people continue to buy vehicles that they have such a hard time getting into and out of? I can tell just by their actions that they're putting themslves under a lot of unnecessary stress. It actually is qute amusing to watch.

The door of their van flies open and a big cankle shoots out. After several seconds (apparently spent slowly shifting themselves in their seat) a second cankle appears along with a sagging belly and a chunky arm embracing several Wendy's bags and a bucket of KFC.

Then the comedy begins as this person's toes point downward trying to touch the ground and they do that "belly-out" slide down the side of the seat. It just looks like a huge mass of flab spilling out of the vehicle. And the best is when they get their foot caught on the running board and fall out face first, spilling chicken all over the pavement.

Really, why buy a vehicle that's a hassle even while parked? Do fat people think the daily struggle of getting into and out of their vehicles counts as exercise? Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if did, given the amount of perspiration these people wring out of their shirts afterward.

Have you considered a Honda Civic, fatties? Not trying to be mean, just asking.

Road Warriors Part 3: The Two Idiots With Vanity Plates

Most vanity plates are stupid. Every so often though, you'll get a comedic genius behind the wheel who has come up with something that makes you chuckle. Given the two plates I saw today on my drive in to work, the individuals behind the wheel were NOT comedic geniuses.

The first one I saw came as a red Ferrari Testarossa came up on my left side. I glanced over as most people would do upon glimpsing a rarely seen car. The first thing I thought was, "Nice car...your love muscle is on the stubby side, isn't it?" And then as it passed I saw the licence plate and it was painfully obvious that the man driving was a total dickhead.

"HOT 4RE"

Great. You've proudly indicated to the world the vehicle you're driving and your opinion of it. Where do we go from here? I've never met you, but already I can tell you're a rich asshole who is too absorbed in his mode of transportation. Tell you what, let's cut the crap and I'll shell out the cash to buy you a new plate with a little more truth and a little less self-importance attached. "TNY DCK", maybe. Or "RCHASHL", perhaps. Or maybe you could ask the woman with the second plate I saw today if you can have hers...

"IM SPCHL"

(nice segue, huh?) This woman drove up past me, again on the left, just a minute after the Ferrari passed and since she was the next car in the lane after it, I thought maybe I should get off the road quick. Evidently I was sharing the road with some not too bright people this particular afternoon and things could turn dangerous.

Yes, lady. Yes you are special. But all crazy person jokes aside, this woman was worse than the Ferrari guy as far as I was concerned. The guy only implied that he was a pompous moron. This woman blatantly advertised that she's full of herself. Why did she feel the need to go about displaying her narcissism on her car? It's not like someone was handing out free bumper stickers and she casually slapped one onto the bumper. It takes some work to get licence plates.

I picture her waking up one morning and skipping down to the MTO office singing "I love meeeee! I loooove meeeeee!" and then waiting in line for half an hour with a shit-eating grin on her face that just won't go away.

Either that or she's just a cold bitch who thinks she's better than everyone else. Sorry, lady, driving a '97 Corolla doesn't make you a goddess. Better luck next plate.

These people...I'll tell you...

Charities Closing Major Highways

I drive a vehicle so automtically I'm a self-centred asshole in some people's minds. But I'm about to become an even bigger asshole because today I'm ranting about major highways being closed so that some charity can throw an event to raise money for themselves.

This weekend it's the Heart and Stroke Foundation closing down the DVP and Gardiner so they can ride their little bicycles and roller blades. Sorry to be a heartless bastard and stroke my own ego, but get the fuck off the highways! Go to Fergus or something, I don't care. The only time I really have any need for the Heart and Stroke Foundation is when my blood pressure goes through the roof as a result of them closing the fucking highways! I don't think they realize that they're pissing off a lot of asshole motorists such as myself.

My drive in to work takes long enough as it is. I don't need detours that slow the traffic to a near stop. I don't like taking alternate routes through the city because all the pissed off people take the same routes. Drving through town is slow enough as it is. Add a bunch of people that would normally be on the highway and you've got yourself one hell of a nightmare, my friend. And Christ, traffic lights every 5 feet?

I think the real reason this concerns me so much is because when I think of thousands of cyclists riding down two of Toronto's major highways, I'm thinking HUGE FUCKING BIKER GANG! I've told you before that a pack of 8 or 10 bikers makes me nervous, but here we've got a gang of bloody thousands! They're liable to burn down the whole city and crucify us all!

No good can come from bikers closing down the highway. And that's why next time I'm going to rent a dump truck, set the cruise control, and "shut down their little event", knowwhaddamean?

Road Warriors Part 2

It's been a while since the last Road Warriors post so it's time for Part 2.

People With a Lot of Stuffed Animals in Their Rear Window

It's a car, not your child's playpen. And if you don't even have children....what the hell is wrong with you?

And why does it always seem to be Winnie the Pooh characters? Why do so many people feel the need to have a bunch of Tigger and Piglet toys in their car? Not to mention the Pooh Bear window shades.

So you have a kid, good for you. So do a ton of other people. You don't need to flaunt it. You're not a super-special mommy and your toys aren't cute. Get that crap out of your window.

One of these days your mother will be in critical condition in an ambulance that is trying to get around your slow ass. She will die before the ambulance reaches the hospital and if Dora the Explorer hadn't been grinning at you in the rearview, you might have pulled over to let the ambulance pass and you mother would still be alive. Your stupid animals won't be so cute then.

Overly Friendly Courtesy Waves

In case the title was a little confusing, this is when you let someone merge and they give you the courtesy wave. But they take it too far and literally wave at you. They don't just give the open-handed, five-fingers-up-in-the-air, rear window signal. They give you the wave where they actually shake their hand back and forth.

Christ, I'm just letting you onto the highway, I'm not trying to make friends with you. Stop waving at me like a crazy person. There's too much god damned friendliness in today's world. Sometimes I wish someone would just up and start a war or something.

I appreciate the courtesy wave, don't get me wrong, but when I see someone frantically waving at me through their rear window I imagine the person at the wheel is dangerously happy. I always expect to pass them and look over and see a guy grinning maniacally and drooling. And perhaps he has large, random patches of hair shaved out of his head. When I get an overly friendly courtesy wave I think that maybe it's best I don't share the road with this lunatic for too long.

The worst part is that a lot of the time these raving wavers are mommies with a bunch of crap in their back window.

Too Many Gadgets in the Fucking Car!

Maybe these car companies wouldn't be such failures if they had stuck to building normal fucking cars instead of pumping a bunch of stupid, pointless gadgets into everything. No, that wouldn't work. People are too fat and happy and gadget-crazy and they wouldn't buy sensible cars. Wake up, you morons! You have too many gadgets in the fucking car!

The following accessories, in my opinion, are completely dumb.

-Power anything. Locks, windows...what have you.
-DVD players
-TV
-Heated seats
-Automatic transmission
-Separate headphone jacks for each family member
-GPS
-Back-up camera/sensor
-Climate control

What kind of bullshit is climate control anyway? I wasn't aware that each seat had it's own "climate". It's a fucking bench, not the tropics. Christ...

And we wonder why there are so many car accidents. People are comatose behind the wheel. The car does fucking everything for these morons. They don't have to crank down a window, they don't have to change gears, they don't have to watch where they're going because they've got sensors to do that, they don't even have to know where they're going because Mr. GPS is there to help. All these people have to do is kick back with a Big Mac as they gab on their cell phones. Then it's the other guy's fault when they get into an accident.

What the hell happened to an engine, four tires, and a windshield? Oh, I guess that stopped being fun for people so we had to give them something to play with while they're careening down the highway in a ton of steel. Heaven forbid they're not being entertained at all hours of the day.

And we don't need fucking DVD players in the car! When I took family trips as a youngster I didn't have Power Ranger videos to take me there. I sat there in the back seat with a book, I shut the hell up, and I was grateful if we pulled over for some McDonalds at the halfway point. Now these kids get cranky if they don't get to watch Miley Cyrus on the 20 minute drive to ballet practice. And Pimp My Ride doesn't exactly help matters. They put like 400 TV screens in every vehicle they make over. I saw one where the headlights were little TV screens that looped VH1's Behind the Music: Snoop Dogg.

These modern cars are ridiculous. I'm waiting for the jacuzzi, jungle gym, and bunk beds.

New Traffic Lights

Aren't they just the worst? They're the side affect of developing new plazas and whatnot. Or just making an intersection safer. But unless they're green, new traffic lights are a pain in the ass.

You see them up when the plaza's still being built. A dirty, incomplete intersection at first, and then one day you drive through and see the light stands, and then the traffic lights covered in heavy black cloth. You know the inevitable day will come when you'll have to slow down and stop for this bastard.

It's for this reason that I don't think very highly of new traffic lights. Because they're new! They just burst onto the scene. And suddenly they feel like they're running the show. Newborns aren't running companies from the moment they leave the womb. They have to earn responsibility and respect.

I feel this way about new traffic lights. Who are they to be telling me to stop? I don't have to listen to them. I've been around these parts a lot longer than they have. They should have to gain my respect before ordering me around. I want them to prove to me that they're capable of managing traffic flow. I don't just listen to any old schmo with flashing lights.

In any case though, I stop for them because they've got the law on their side. I think of it like the third-grade bully at school. The bully is just about ready to wail on some little kid and then the little kid's tenth-grade brother steps out and says, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." with his arms folded across his chest. The bully knows he can't win against someone bigger than him so he just kind of slinks away thinking, "Man, if you didn't have your brother on your side, boy the things you'd have coming to you, let me tell you..."

And that's how it is. Traffic lights raspberry me from behind the law's back. I can't stop for new traffic lights without thinking, "Why I oughta...two weeks ago I wasn't stopping for you and believe me, you're lucky I'm stopping now."

I'm tired of all these lights getting respect for nothing.

Smart Cars

I swear every time I see a Smart Car on the road I get a huge urge to crash into it as hard as I can. The Smart Car really is just a dumb vehicle bought by dumb people. How big of an asshole do you have to be to decide you want to drive a Micro Machine for the next little while?

I always think of how fun it would be to bonk into a Smart Car while driving. I picture them sliding all over the road, spinning around in little circles like when you used to hit oil slicks in NES games. I also imagine a descending slide whistle noise while this happens. They just seem like toys that would simply biff off a concrete wall and keep going on their way.

How can you possibly look cool driving a Smart Car? No matter what you always look like a fucking goof. Mr. 31-year-old financial advisor has childhood issues and still hasn't gotten over the day his mom told him he was too big for his Little Tikes car and sold it. So he buys a Smart Car and sucks his thumb and cries himself to sleep every night.

I mean really. It looks like it runs on double A batteries. I wish I had more problems with this car because I'm really stretching here. It's just dinky and stupid looking and I have great fun thinking up awesome ways to destroy them. Like parking it and then having two enormous dump trucks sandwich it on both sides at 80mph. Or drive like 30 of them into the Grand Canyon all at the same time so you just see all these little pieces of crap tumbling into the ravine. That's good stuff, man!

This coming from a guy that drove a Suzuki Swift for 5 years...

Road Warriors Part 1

I think I'm going to give a special category to people we share the road with. I anticiapte that I will have more driving stories to share at some point so I present my first subsection, Road Warriors.

The first road warrior is the asshole that won't merge when you allow him to do so. I spend a lot of time on the road because my job is not exactly close to home. Therefore I spend a good deal of time on the highway. I can't tell you how pissed I get when I'm in the right hand lane and some guy shoots up beside me on an entrance ramp, just slightly ahead of where I am. Being a courteous driver, I slow down to let him in before he runs out of ramp and barrels into a concrete wall, exploding into a gigantic ball of flames. Which I saw one time and it was fucking awesome. It may have been a minivan full of children, I don't know, the fire truck was kind of in the way.

But anyway, I slow dow to let this guy in and he matches speed. Let's go! I'm letting you in! Step on the gas, for Pete's sake! I always feel awkward. I don't want this guy to think that I'm matching his speed so he can't get over. I'm being a legitimately nice guy here! I'm letting you in, but you're driving like an ass, don't hate me!

At this point I've either slowed to about 40kms below the posted speed limit before he inches in or cursed him and floored it to get ahead of him. In both cases I wonder how this moron got a license and scream at him to stay the fuck off the highway if he doesn't know how it works.

Road Warrior #2 is the guy that stops at the intersection with no stop sign. I was driving home after eating dinner out tonight and came to a 2-way stop. East-West had to stop at the interesction. North-South did not. I was travelling East-West and came to the stop....right as North-South dickweed came to the intersection...and STOPPED.

As it was his right of way, I continued to wait there. This genius actually stopped where there was no stop sign and flashed his lights to let me through, all while holding up another vehicle.

Now that I think of it, I really should have taken George Carlin's advice. I should have stopped dead at the intersection. When he's waited there for several seconds and realized that I'm not going to move, he'd proceed. And right when he's in the middle of the road, BRRRRRRUUUMMMM, I floor it and crash into him.

"You told me to go."