C(h)ity Sidewalks

Hey!! Hey!!! You crack Mutherfacka neegar biatch!! Yeah that's riaght you!

Yep, you guess correctly if you said this scene was some chickie from da hood having a heated argument with her baby fadda on the street at lunchtime. Stepping out onto the sidewalk from my place of employement located in the slumbs of downtown can be, to paraphase Bilbo Baggins, "A dangerous business".

Now I consider myself as adventurous as the next person , but I really have no desire to witness some of the things I have during the short time I have been in this craphole of a location.

Once upon a time, most of the government offices were located in a safe quiet location on a building campus with lots of parking which was owned by the government (oops, I did mean TAXPAYERS really!). But then the government decided that this campus was too nice and that they must sell it to some crony of a politician's large corporation for a pittance as an incentive for the company to move here to our wonderful state. And so the campus was sold, but not before the government poured large amount of taxpayer's money into fixing up all the sidewalks and roads and landscaping on this large campus... I guess the tax breaks and the fact that the large corporation was buying the property for a fraction of its value wasn't good enough... so on the sly the good old politician's fixed all the things on the property that we government workers had not seen repaired in 10+ years just before handing over the property to their pals - at our expense. Nice!

Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of government workers who had previously worked on this campus, had to be relocated... but where? Again, the politicians came up with another great scheme.

Most of the cities in this area are horrible. They are nothing more than glamourized slums. There is little in the way of culture or attractions that would make most people want to risk their lives travelling through the slums to bother coming to any of these small pitiful local cities. Therefore, the government, which is constantly pouring more tax money into 'urban rivitalization' projects for the sole purpose of patting themselves on the back and pandering to low income people that live in those areas, had the wonderful idea to move all the government offices to these areas.

Now, we are all unwilling hostages basically from 9am-5pm monday through Friday. It is funny to see the "government worker" traffic. In the morning hours you see an influ of fairly late model cars containing middle class type looking people driving through these slums. Scenic view out the window of the commute generally includes a homeless person taking a leak on the wall of a dilapitated building or a crack momma screaming obscenities at her baby-fadda from the doorway of a building that looks like it should have been condemned five years ago. This is such a great situation for all of us that are forced to work in these areas. I'm sure that all the workers love it as much as me, as evidenced by the massive traffic snarls at 5pm caused by the government workers evacuating this shit hole city.

I'm sure us middle class folks are really helping to "revitalize" downtown business here... since most of us are afraid to even step out of our secured buildings at lunchtime. The sidewalks contain some messed up things here. I don't know what goes on in politicians heads when they do things like this. I think we should bus them in for the day and let them walk these sidewalks and see if they would want to work here themselves before they make decisions to force other people to do so.

Office Annoyers

Working in an office can be a strange experience. Often when I pass a pet shop at the mall and see the stacks of cages containing all sorts of strange and very different creatures from iguanas to gerbils, I am reminded of the office environment. All of the creatures in these cages are very different, and yet, most of them stare longingly at the outside of the cage wishing for their freedom from their small sphere of existance. Some of the creatures suction themselves to the glass walls or chew furiously with grand delusions of possible escape, but it is fruitless.

In the office, as in the pet store, the small cubicles assigned to each of the under-paid, harrassed government workers often contain very different creatures -- Most of whom are also longing for escape to the bigger outside world. I think the worst part of cubicle life is not so much the reality of being crammed into a 5x5 area for eight hours a day, but the fact that beyond your five-foot high wall exists a neighbor who is likely to be the most annoying person in the world.

I sit in an area that contains eight cubicles, four on each side, separated by a narrow aisle which connects to a wide corridor. My "cube" is the second one back from the main corridor which means that the traffic of four cubicle occupants and their visitors have to walk past my cube to get to and from the main corridor. This wouldn't be very much traffic (or so you might think), but it is. Yesterday I counted at least 30 back and forth passes within a 1.5 hour period. This is made worse by the way the cubes are set up, so basically you are facing with your back to the aisle between the eight cubes.

Now I don't know about most people, but for me, I literally can't stand people constantly walking back and forth behind me. It's highly distracting and just plain irritating to have to work like this. What is even worse is that the floor in this building is odd in that is shakes like an minor earthquake when most people walk on it.

The other thing that drives me crazy is that the cubes provide a false sense of privacy from your neighbors. Sure you can't see me, but I can still hear you. While you might not care that other people are hearing about your marital, health-related, or financial woes, trust me when I say that no one wants to hear about how your husband had to apply your hemorroid cream because you gained so much weight last winter than you can't reach it yourself and then you found a picture of him posing naked with the Swiss bikini team in his wallet so you think he might be cheating, blah blah blah. So please.. spare us or I may start recording this crap and selling it to Jerry Springer or reality TV.

Whistlers, snappers, and clappers... I have been in several different offices now containign completely different people... yet the one thing that seems to be peskily pervasive in every single one of them is a group of people I will collectively refer to as "Annoying idiots". Why must these people walk throughout the office loudly whistling, clapping, or snapping their fingers? Either they are completely oblivious to the fact that they are being annoying and disruptive to other people who are sitting at their desk trying to work, or they need a mass dose of Riddlin. Seriously, if you are one of these people knock it off. Go back to your cage... I mean cube... and do some work and let other people do theirs!

I could rant some more about the cubicle jungle, but I am getting antsy due to the number of people walking behind me. I think I will get up and take a lap around the office slapping and whistling at the same time for revenge.

"Hi, I'd like a number 2 with a sideorder of stupidity, please"

Today at lunch I pulled up to the BurgerKing Drive-Thru. There were about three cars ahead of me and I sat there for about five minutes because some rude asshole was holding up the line as he sat in place yapping to some guy he knew who was talking to him outside his car... Hey pal... I got news for you. You're a moron and some of us aren't on welfare like you probably are where we can roll out of bed at noon everyday and wait three hours in the drive-thru for you to finish your drug deal/conversation/Friday night date plans.

I mean seriously... What the fuck? I mean three people are sitting behind you who are ready to order and probably in a hurry and you are sitting there for literally 5 minutes yapping and completely oblivious to the fact that other people exist. I continued to glare at this retard until he eventually at his leisure concluded his conversation and pulled forward. I am fairly sure that if the obnoxious driver and his conversational partner had not both been two very large black dudes that looked like they could have been packing heat, everyone would have been honking their horn furiously at their blantant rudeness. Finally, Mr. Coolio decides to pull forward to the ordering window... Surprise surprise... he doesn't even have his order ready and we have to wait yet again while he makes an attempt to read the menu. I really hate people like this. Absolutely no respect for anyone else but themselves.

Another fine example is the people that take a leisurely stroll across the road taking their sweet time. They probably think because their fat asses weigh about 1/2 as much as a small car that most people will avoid hitting them. It is really aggravating though when there is a half mile backup of cars waiting to get through the intersection, the light only turns green for about 30 seconds, and fatass momma uses all but 5 of them to waddle across the road. Nevermind that there is actually a crosswalk and a little button she could have pressed and waited to safely cross without holding the cars up and causing more gridlock. She probably couldn't figure out how it worked, couldn't read, or maybe she just didn't speak English.

Does anyone remember the garbage barge? Sometimes i wish we could put all the people like the ones I described above on a small vessel and launch it out to sea or outerspace or something.

Thank god it's almost Friday.

Drive Drunking

So this morning my morning commute was sheer hell. The reason? Two females in the "early morning hours" (read: after the bars closed), were driving the wrong direction down a divided highway. Apparently they had been driving in the wrong direction for several exits and state police had received calls about them, but were not able to catch up to them before they ran head on into a propane tanker. Luckily the driver of the propane tanker wasn't injured and the tanker was empty. The two women? They were killed and of course the entire three lane highway was closed down for hours into the the early morning commute.

Honestly, I can't say that I feel sorry for them. Anyone that gets so blindly drunk that they are able to enter a divided highway via an exit ramp with all the "Wrong way!" signs and then continue driving for miles pretty much is asking for it. You would think that between the signs, and the fact that you really have to try to get on a highway like this heading the wrong way, and of course seeing the headlights of other vehicles driving in right direction would maybe be an indication that they were going the wrong way?

Also, it takes quite a bit of talent to not notice the headlights and sound of a tanker heading right for you... especially since each side of the divided highway has three lanes in which to manuver and during the wee hours when this collision occured, anyone who wasn't completely bombed out their gorde would have likely been able to avoid this crash even "if" getting on the highway was an honest mistake by a non-drunk driver.

I sort of resent that the news refers to this as an "accident" and the two dead people as "victims". Incidents such as these are not accidents at all, but instead calculated acts of stupidity. Not only are these morons jeopardizing their own lives getting behind the wheel when they are so messed up they can't even navigate their way onto a well marked intrastate correctly, but they are also jeopardizing the lives of everyone else that is unfortunate to share the road with them.

The real "victims" of incidents like this are the innocent people that these retards kill. For instance, the other day, a man killed one person and critically injured another as he drove home drunk... One of the victims he ran down was still lodged in his windshield when he called the police about 6 hours LATER saying he thought he might have hit someone... Hmmm what gave it away brainiac? The corpse lodged in your windshield? I wish this idiot and those like him would get the death penalty. Do I feel sorry when idiots like this take themselves out? Nope, not at all. In fact, I say a silent cheer this morning that there is one less drunk on the road and therefore the rest of us are all a little safer. If you think that is heartless then just imagine if it was your family member who died lodged in this asshole's windshield.

As for the passenger, perhaps in this case she was not driving, but "birds of a feather" do flock together. It is fairly likely that she was also bombed (or she would have offered to drive) and if her friend had not been the "designated driver" in this instance that she herself would have been behind the wheel. I don't think she is an innocent victim and she also had the choice not to get into a car with her trashed friend. She made a very bad mistake and it cost her her life. Darwin strikes again.

Independence from Laws = Independence from Common Sense?

Many of us think the government has gotten too big and that it is far too intrusive in our every day lives. For the most part I would agree with this. We have laws to dictate everything now it seems -from noise ordinances telling you how loud you can have your radio to building codes to set safety standards for new construction to the recent laws banning transfats.

My question is: Would any of these type of laws be necessary if people exercised even just a modicum of intelligence, common courtesy, and common sense? Have we become a society that is so legislated to death that we figure that anything that there is no law against is OK? There are actually warning labels on plastic RubberMaid (TM) storage bins now warning that they should not be used to store... PEOPLE... I mean seriously, WTF?!? If you honestly need a warning label to tell you that you should not hop into a small airtight plastic container and have someone seal the lid... Well, all I can say is that it makes a pretty good case for Darwinism.

Unfortunately, the gene pool these days seems to be getting more and more shallow. Those at the higher end of the IQ spectrum seem to be throwing their energies into financially rewarding endeavors such as law, research & development, selling their blackened souls into politics, etc. while those who are somewhat less than fortunate in area of gray matter seem to be reproducing like rabbits. That is not to say that every family that has lots of kids falls into this category, but as a whole it is those with lower IQ and/or not so good education that are making more babies.

This should be cause for some concern. I mean... Do you think that the founding forefathers and their families were the type of people that needed to be told not to stick hot coals in their rectums to avoid serious injury or death? Somehow, I really just can't imagine that being the case. Yet today we have idiots walking around that would definitely try something like this if not for the warning labels and some that would try it even despite the warning labels.

Another thing is common F'ing courtesy and common F'ing sense. People need to get some. This applies to people of all IQ's I suppose. It is just that many people have become so indifferent to rules of common decency that it is ridiculous. It shouldn't take a brain surgeon or a public ordinance for someone to realize that riding through a residential area at 2AM with SnoopyDoggyDog (C)rap music blaring out your open windows loud enough to rattle the glass in people's storm door is something you shouldn't do. I was just reading a story about how an off-duty veteran firefighter with a spotless record shot and killed three 20-somethings and wounded two others because their loud 4th of July party (complete with illegal fireworks) carried on past midnight.

Now obviously the firefighter shouldn't have done what he did, but it could have all been avoided if this bunch of selfish drunken brats hadn't completely disregarded the fact that, despite the fact that it is summer vacation for them, some people actually do have to get up for work and don't particularly appreciate loud parties and explosives being detonated 15 feet outside their window when they are trying to get some sleep.

I didn't see all the details of the story, but I think it is likely that the neighbor let it be known that the party was bothering him, and had his complaints summarily ignored by the obnoxious revelers, before he came over and started shooting. Even if that wasn't the case, isn't it common sense that having a large loud gathering and detonating explosive past midnight is probably a very rude thing to do? I'm not saying that these 'young adults' got what they deserved, but I think that if people started paying a little more attention to how what they are doing affects others around them, this sort of thing would be far less likely to happen.