Cynical Meat Sack

New Car Smell, Old Car Exhaust.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Death by Cell Phone

Rising fuel costs saved my life today.

Kinda different tone than the title of this post...but, it will all fit in a minute.

My name is Kyuball, and I listen to talk radio. NPR, Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingram, Free Talk Live...to name a few of the shows that I end up listening to. (Any friends of mine that know my real name, just passed out.) I can't help it, I love to hear conservatives and liberals rant. It's a sickness, really. Let me clarify: I don't actively seek out these hosts...well, maybe Savage...they're just on when I want to listen to radio.

Anyway...for the last few weeks, rising fuel costs have been on the lips of most of these talk show hosts. What can we do, who's to blame, Iran must be paved over, Bush is insane...blah, blah, blah. Well, one of the "tips" that continues to be mentioned is to slow down and try not to drive too aggressively and you can save your gas mileage.

So, today, I left work early because my son is sick and took a back road from work to get to the highway. This back road has lots of hills where you can't see over one to the next to see what's coming...so, it's a "no passing zone". Seems reasonable. I use this piece of road often because I can avoid traffic in getting to the interstate.

When I turn on to this road, generally I open it up a bit...not too bad, but I generally hit it at 60 mph...it's a 35mph zone. Today, I decided that I'd cruise it a bit and scaled it down to about 45 - 50mph.

interlude

You know the saying that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes? I think it's more like a heightened state of awareness. Your brain goes into hyper-mode. I believe that your brain has the ability, in fight or flight situations, to become a mega-super computer that can process millions of calculations in a split second. This doesn't mean your body can react to the signals fast enough...just that the brain tries to. This is probably why people also say that, "It all happened in slow motion."

end interlude

As I came to the second hill, a sliver Buick Le Suckbre, crested the hill from the opposite direction. In my lane...not the two drivers-side tires...no, full on, all fours and more in my lane headed right for me and my little Japanese truck.

In the span of saying, "Holy fucking shit! You fuck, you fuck, you fucking fuck." I experienced a moment of total awareness:

The sun, was partially clouded...and shone through the sun-roof, pleasantly heating my scalp. The radio station was on NPR and the music was a slightly melancholy piano solo. The Le Suckbre was freshly washed and sparkled in the sunlight as it crested the hill. It was driving at a 7%-10% angle to the lane it should have been in which would put it in the grass on my right in less than 40 yards. I'm driving at 47 miles an hour and will be seriously injured if we collide head on. My health insurance card is in the third sleeve of my wallet. The co-pay for emergency room visits are $75. The driver of the Le Suckbre has a cell phone in his hand that he is holding up in the middle of his steering wheel in what appears to be a vain attempt to drive and use his peripheral vision while he A) Finds a phone number in his contacts list. B) Sends a text message. C) Plays Tetris. or D) Drives his car like James bond through his phone, but his controller is inverted. I don't have anti-lock breaks. There is no real shoulder on this part of the road. There is a retention pond on my right, that runs the length of this stretch of road, with a Male Mallard Duck swimming in the middle, he looks at my truck. I apply my breaks at 80% to 90% of full force and turn the wheel sharply. My breaks lock slightly, but do not squeal, the sound is like dragging cardboard over dry dirt. The patch of grass is not too bumpy, I won't flip over, but I may land in the pond after we collide. Water will leak into the cab through the crack in my windshield that's been there for months. I'm still waiting on the insurance company to call me back to inspect my "hail" damage. I'm 15 feet from the other driver. He looks up. I'm far enough over to the right now that he will miss, I turn left slightly so as not to shift my center of gravity too much and flip into the pond. The duck begins to take flight. The LeSuckbre passes me on the left, the driver has dropped his phone, and his mouth is shaped as if he's saying, "Oh..." I think he's going to finish with "...oh I'm a complete fucking moron, please don't beat me with a gas pump handle." I pull back on to the road and see in my driver side mirror the LeSuckbre begin to pull back into his lane, just in time to miss the red Geo Metro(sexual) that was following me. In my passenger side mirror I notice that my tires did not kick up any dust. Probably because of the rain we've had recently.

All of that in the span of less than 3 or 4 seconds.

Had I been doing my usual 60 mph, I wouldn't be typing this right now. I'd be in the hospital having the steering column of a '91 Toyota removed from my colon...maybe worse.

I'm not going to get all sappy on you, suggesting that we all go out and hug our families or live life like every day is your last. Hallmark moments, one and all.

However, I am not going to drive and dial. I would ask that you do the same. If you see someone texting while driving...honk, and flip them off. If they don't look up, pull over and wait 10 minutes...someone's going to be in an accident soon, you don't want it to be you...find a different route to where ever you were going, traffic is going to be backed up soon.

If you happen to see a red Toyota 4x4 parked on the side of the road next to a man beating the fuck out of some one with a cellphone stuffed in a tube sock...honk and wave, I'm visiting your town.

(I just taught spell check the word "LeSuckbre." Aren't computers fun?)

Monday, April 24, 2006

Few and Far Between

I have been blogging since a little before September of 2005. Not very long, but long enough to get the gist of the program and really get a handle on what I like to read and blog about. It all started...

Ok...let me put a little disclaimer in here before people start to rapidly click on the "next blog" button or start cycling through their "favorites" sites...I'm not about to bore you with my history of blogging. I might bore you, but not about what you think I'm going to bore you about...er, something...ok, continue...

...with tpsreports...a blog by a guy that works in the IT department of an office from hell. Don't go there, the archives have been wiped out...but, it got me thinking that I might just be able to write one of these things and be half-way descent. (The wrong half, but it's still a half.)

So...since September I've been boring you folks with my rants and drivel. Up until now, I've been able to avoid the one topic that almost everyone else I've read has posted about at least once. Blogging. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just seems like when someone gets writer's block, that's the first topic they go to...so, I was really making an effort to avoid it.

Guess I failed, cause here I am with a case of the writer's block and I'm blogging about blogging.

I've got two collaborative blogs that I write for, one you've seen and one you haven't yet. I'm blocked on those as well. I just haven't been inspired enough to write anything...even comments on my other favorite blogs. Ain't feeling it right now...must be the spring weather, but I'm just not as cranky as I have been in the past...which makes for a decidedly un-cynical, cynical meatsack. Funky.

In closing, I leave you with a few questions I've been pondering recently:

Why does the nation care who the next mayor of New Orleans will be?

What the fuck happened to baseball?

(Related topic: Keith Hernadez made an offcolor remark about a woman having no place in the Mets' dugout...a lot of people were surprised by his comments...blah, blah, blah. I've been in a professional baseball club's clubhouse...that's NO place for a woman. The shit those guys do...holy crap. Let me tell you, take a typical frat house, and turn it to eleven. You're damn right that's no place for a woman...unless she's a stripper, a hooker, or a stripper/hooker.)

When is Harry Belafonte going to finally die?

Have the Brokeback Mountain jokes finally stopped?






















(Guess Not)

Why do we want Britney Spears to fail as mother?

When will the entertainment reporters and gossip columnists STOP concatenating celebrity couples names? Bennifer, Bengalina, Tom-Kat...STOP IT, IT'S FUCKING ANNOYING!!!

Wasn't the parade for the San Francisco earthquake just a little bit weird?

Wouldn't you like to get President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President Hugo Chavez Frias, and President Vicente Fox Quesada in a small room and beat them with the handle of a gas pump while singing God Bless America? (No? Maybe it's just me. )

Would you rather do that with Sean Penn, Katie Couric, and Ty Taylor?

One final comment...

Penn Jillette is a no-talent, ass-clown...but Penn & Teller: Bullshit on Showtime is funnier than a sack a rabid weasels strapped the crotch of a pedophile.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Cynical Meatsack, DST edition

My mind is like a shotgun blast from 100 yards today, so "bare" with me...

A couple of posts ago I was semi-braggin about the wireless network I hacked into...I prefer the term piggy-back, thanks DKT. Apparently, I'm a complete amateur compared to what some Brits pulled off in London a few years ago. I have a completely new love for Pringles now.

Indiana just began to observe Daylight Savings Time as of 2am Sunday morning. (I think Arizona is now too.) Great. I wanted to devote a whole post to the nightmare that Microsoft Outlook created for the IT group...but, the events that would have been transcribed from that night are already 6 days old and won't be nearly as funny. However, I'll leave this on the table: If I ever again "volunteer" for any "quick" program fixes that need to take place after hours; I've requested the services of several close friends whose job it will be to kick me repeatedly in the man-sack until I come back to my senses.

This past weekend I attended the National Tattoo Association convention in Cincinnati, OH. I've got one tattoo...so, I felt extremely underdressed. There was some amazing artwork there. Here's a couple of pics:









Medusa










definitely, NOT Medusa.










I've got more, but you get the idea.

I'm currently in Atlanta. Me and the family are headed to the new Aquarium tomorrow. The hotel we're staying at offers free wireless...just like at HOME! They also offer free ant colonies and musty rooms. We switched rooms, but only after my loving wife began counting the ants. "That's 9, Honey...oh, no 10 now." Yeah, fun. Now, we're in a nice clean room but I've still got the itches like Chris Rock in New Jack City. Nothing makes be twitch like the thought of bugs crawling on my skin.

(How many of you just scratched something? Yeah, I thought so.)