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Tales of the commute

amazing sky

For twenty-four-and-a-bit years, I’ve been driving the same 26 mile stretch of I-95 between Providence and Boston. Now I’ve driven it for the last time. Probably. Unless we have a meeting up here or something. Anyhow, I’ve seen some wild-ass stuff.

I just missed being part of a 100 car pileup — that was the trooper’s estimate, anyhow. I only saw the butt end of it, about five car-lengths ahead. Snowy conditions, so nobody was going fast enough to be much hurt. Those of us behind it got out of our cars and milled around and chatted for a few hours in the snow before the troopers turned us around and sent us the wrong way up the interstate to the nearest exit.

Then there was the woman who committed suicide by leaping into traffic. I missed the event, but investigators came along afterward and spray-painted a fluorescent orange circle around every gobbet of meat. For months driving past the spot I had the same poignant thought: “shit fire, that lady covered a lot of asphalt!”

Funny weather. Accidents. Car fires. Bumper stickers. Vanity plates. Road kill. It’s an adventure every day. An adventure in suckitude.

But it dawned on me — I’m going to be totally lost! I do all my shopping up here. My liquor store is here. The store where I buy my underpants. The restaurants I go to. Now everything familiar will be a pointless forty-minute drive North. This moving thing is like peeling off a bandaid slowly.

But hey, check out this delicious moonbatmobile I saw in the way in this morning. The Lieberman slogan is repeated on the side window.

moonbatmobile

Connecticut handicap plate. Nice touch.

Comments


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 12:17 pm

Your photos remind me of a now-defunct site called Jerk Du Jour. IIRC, some couple had one of those horrifying California commutes over a mountain pass every morning and started photoing the jerk of the day (there was one every day) and posting the photo(s) when they got to work.

I didn’t know you could get a handicapped plate for political affiliation?! Next thing you know, they’ll be running for President. It ain’t natural.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: October 11, 2007, 2:53 pm

I find it difficult to believe that anything could be horrifying about California in terms of geography (well, apart from a fault line). No indeed, the only thing horrifying about California, surely, is the high concentration of moonbats, hippies and other. Of course, I’ve enver been anywhere near California – so what the fuck do I know.
So, according to that car, Lieberman’s number one priority is greater than Israel? So what’s the problem? Where’s the ‘Ron Paul is the only man who can save the Constitution!’ sticker? That’ll attract some unwanted attention, most likely, to this website via google-searching nutcases, but I always find them fascinating in a bearded lady sort of way.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a freaky stretch of road in the south of England. In fact, I think you’d be hard-pressed not to.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: October 11, 2007, 3:03 pm

Lieberman’s #1 priority is greater than Israel?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 3:35 pm

Its not the geography: its the traffic, dude! It sucks soooo mightily.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 3:58 pm

Dang, Christopher, you beat me to it.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 4:11 pm

…and so, in retribution, Christopher, I have stolen one of the Quotes of the Day on your blog, and added it to the rotating blurbs on mine.

Suffah!


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 4:23 pm

So which one was it, jw?

I like the “When in danger or in doubt; run in circles, scream and shout!” Heinlein did well.

But my favorite quote of all time was:

“Sir, you’re drunk!”, said the lady.
“And you’re ugly!” retorted Sir Winston Churchill, “But in the morning I’ll be sober!”


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 4:29 pm

Naw, it was the Nietzsche aphorism: “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it with faulty arguments.”


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 4:32 pm

My favorite quote is actually an exchange between Gladstone and Disraeli.
Gladstone: “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or venereal disease”.
Disraeli: “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”


Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: October 11, 2007, 5:31 pm

I don’t get it. If Lieberman’s #1 priority is greater than Israel, then what is the #1 priority in question?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 11, 2007, 5:35 pm

My guess is, the guy wouldn’t know the “greater than” symbol if you jammed a giant one up his butt. Sideways.

In case you can’t read them, the two nearest stickers are “Religion Ruled the Dark Ages” and “War is Not the Answer.” I can’t read the bumperstickers. One is for a sports team…I remember that.

We get the Vermont moonbats around here, too. Wooeee! That’s some pure crazy!


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 6:23 pm

Nothing like that woodsy outdoorsy smell to put the “batshit” in “batshit bark-at-the-moon looney.”


Comment from mesablue
Time: October 11, 2007, 6:49 pm

I went to the presidential debate in Dearborn on Tuesday. My favorite moment was when I saw a car in the parking lot with Canadian plates and a Ron Paul bumper sticker.

Canadian hippie Paul-bots.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 7:18 pm

I like both of ’em, jw. I think I’d read that Gladstoone one before. The Neitzsche one sounds like Liberals.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 7:25 pm

I don’t see a right or left tilt to that Nietzsche quote. I liked it because it specifically applies to the Ward Churchill story.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 9:47 pm

I didn’t mean that N was referring to libs – implicitly or explicitly. It simply seems applicable.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 10:00 pm

Ah, my mistake. Well, it applies perfectly to Churchill. And, to anyone else who supports an argument with faulty or fraudulent data.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 10:59 pm

Not your mistake: I did not communicate clearly.

Oh, yes, it fits Pow Wow perfectly.

“No such thing as truth”, my ass.

Wardo is an ashole. That’s the truth, pure and simple.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 11, 2007, 11:11 pm

Well, Steam, if there were truth (which, of course, there isn’t), what you just said would be among the truest of truisms.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 11, 2007, 11:27 pm

Oh. You mean “Truth“. Well, of course. But Wardo is still an asshole – whether I spell it with one s or two. They’re….um….cognates. Or sumpin.

Ya ever think about just how badly spoken languages suck? I think about that a lot. Usually when I’m reading a newspaper or listening to the MSM.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 6:21 am

Even if you don’t play video games, this review of the latest Tomb Raider is a hoot.

Nobody does ‘snotty’ like a Brit. Trust me on this.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: October 12, 2007, 7:33 am

“13-year old pocket-miners.”
Heh.

Meanwhile: Gore & the whole UN IPCC committee win the Nobel Peace Prize?!? Christ!

I can’t believe the Nobel committee has its collective head that far up its collective ass.

No – wait! Yes I can!

I forgot Murderer Arafat & Peanut Carter.

Geez. At least Gore has to divide the prize with 2500 other climate idiots – I hope. That’ll make it about $50 bucks each. Hell, after they stamp out all of those gold medals the receipients may OWE the Nobel committee.

I am so depressed. It’ll only encourage the loser.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 12, 2007, 9:02 am

Ugh. Don’t. I am this moment composing a post about my favorite Nobel recipient, Egas Moniz.


Comment from Lokki
Time: October 12, 2007, 9:57 am

My favorite quote – and I believe applicable to Al Gore winning the Nobel –

“Everyone believes in something; I believe I’ll have another drink”.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: October 12, 2007, 3:10 pm

I have been burned, yea verily!

Disraeli was an eminently quotable fellow, by the way. Our education doesn’t allow us such command of the language these days, sadly.


Comment from Muslihoon
Time: October 12, 2007, 5:33 pm

Dearborn? Dearborn, MI?

Jihadistan?

Wow.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: October 12, 2007, 7:23 pm

Yup, Chris. Autodidactism is our only hope.

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