Just a little something I am starting for when I really need to rant and such.

My license plate is BADDRVR. Do you know why? It is simply for the reason that people avoid bad drivers. When I am on the road, I have to be constantly aware of the number one threat to my life: good drivers.

You may ask yourself, “What is so frightening about good drivers?” Allow me to indulge you a little. People who claim that they are good drivers are liars. I have been rear-ended, slammed into, T-Boned and sideswiped by more people who “don’t understand how this could have happened” as they are “such good drivers.” People who have informed me that “the DMV should have never given them a license” earn far more respect from me than the previously mentioned self-enabling liars. In the case of an accident, I would honestly prefer to know that a person lacks faith in their driving skills than hearing yet another poor soul delude themselves into their own false sense of security.

America’s highways are what I like to refer to as our national war zones. Each and every day, drivers in cities all across our fine nation will decide that today is the day that they will no longer put up with their life’s hardships; releasing their pent up frustrations on the unsuspecting motorists that dot their surrounding roadways. They can be classified by type, and are easily divisible into three categories of bad driver.

Now, you may think that I am overreacting just a little bit, but step back for a moment. Have you not been in this exact situation before? You are riding along in the slow lane, behind someone who is going marginally slower than you, and you decide that this offense warrants their being passed. You check your mirrors, fiddle with the turn signal, and move over into the next lane. Once there, you come to realize that the car in the fast lane was only going one mile an hour faster than the idiot you were just behind. This God-forsaken occurrence happens with such frequency that I have begun to commemorate it in haiku form. I will share with you my most recent.

Minivan. Fast Lane.
Oil and Water, They Are.
Why, Dear God? Why Me?

This is our first classification, and easily the most frequent. They are the causes of road-delays everywhere, and given a name befitting of their crime: Motorus obsticalus. While they pose no real threat to your life, your schedule can be entirely massacred if you allow them to delay you too greatly.

Our next classification is one of little risk to your safety as long as you are aware. Motorus vindictivian is one who specifically targets those who have wronged them. While normally no threat to those who have remained innocent of direct personal offences. This classification is the type that, when cut off, is likely to ride inches from your bumper for the remainder of your voyage. It is common for Motorus vindictivian to have fantasies of driving a James Bond-type spy car, armed with rockets and wheel spikes, so please try to understand the giddy laughter that occasionally accompanies their vengeance. So long as you are vigilant and remain out of their paths, you should escape from this classification relatively safely.

This final classification is likely the most dangerous, and is deemed so for two simple reasons. Primarily, they are classified as dangerous because they aren’t aware that they are driving dangerously, and secondly for the threat to the safety of others that they pose. The third and final classification is Motorus cellphonici. These are the people that we need to be ever watchful for. Look closely at the cars around you, and you should be able to spot these drivers. A few tell-tale signs of Motorus cellphonici include: random swerving into other lanes, hysterical laughter that can be heard by the surrounding drivers from a joke that no one else was privy to, flailing of the arms, and finally an action that has been given two names. These motorists are often seen “driving Braille” or “reading the road”, a type of driving that involves using lane division dots as a means of obtaining daily news and sports results so that they might have something else to talk about on the telephone.

What is it that we can do, you might ask me, to keep ourselves safe on today’s highways? My answer for you is simple. I have no more of an idea than you do, save for license plate warnings. Keep yourself aware on the road, because everyone except you is out for blood. Remember, model drivers, the eternal words of George Carlin, “Anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and anyone who goes faster is a maniac.” Perhaps, when the whole world is more aware, we can once again be safe to read, eat and groom behind the wheel.

Pure genius! :'D

Wow, you hit the nail on the head, man.

While driving, I once thought about the risk of going five under the speed limit. In my opinion, going five under is much more dangerous than going ten over. Driving like a granny, makes everyone else drive like a loony. Am I right?

It is even funnier the second time!

And yes Stane, you are completely right. Just think about your emotions when your stuck behind some slow-driving idiot? Yeah. Thats why its better to drive faster.

Is this old? I think not!

WARNING: ACTUAL SOBER RESPONSE TO WRITING AHEAD! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE JUST READ CENTRUS' POST! YOU WILL FEEL JIPPED!

That was like, total epic wtf moment right there >_< Although you make your generalization of good drivers to be bad ones seem quite plausible, I'd like to say that I consider some drivers to actually be good drivers with some faults that may or may not show up on a drive by drive basis, depending on the conditions. For example, I'll put myself on the line here, I consider myself to be a good driver. Well, relatively good. Okay, not good, but simply 'okay,' mostly due to my numerous faults. One such fault is that I basically contract the existence of the car I'm driving in all cases besides changing lanes to being the length from just behind where I'm sitting to the front of the car. Now, this is a valid assumption, so long as I'm driving faster than 15 mph. However, any slower then that, the angle of my front wheels cause the sides of the car to move towards the back wheels and the back wheels towards the front wheels, right? Well, that's the case in all speeds, right? The only difference between this and higher speeds is the amount of allowance that I give myself. At slow speeds, it's easier to drive with precision, so you can slip by people with no more than a few inches of clearance on either side (has done this on numerous occasions). Thus, the assumption that I tend to make, of foreshortening the vehicle I'm in all cases but lane changes, fails miserably, due to the non-negligible nature of the angle that the car makes with the surrounding objects relative to the clearance.

Then, however, there's the person who considers his or herself to be a good driver while others may call him or her bad (please note that I don't consider myself good, just relatively 'okay' with faults), such as the speed-demon without eyes. These kinds of drivers are soo annoying. They lane change when they 'feel' that they are 'most likely' going to be able to make the lane change WITHOUT LOOKING. OMG! I hate those people! Anyway, that's my spiel on that... Uhhh, what else?

The mini-van drivers. My personal qualm with them is even more intensified if they just sort of, oh, I don't know, accelerate to fifteen mph above the speed limit for the first five seconds past a traffic light just to slow down by almost thirty mph to a slooowwww crawwwwllllllllllll.

crawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

So, on an ending note... HOLYCRAPWDFXUPWITHBADDRVRS!111!!!?1??1!!!?!1

Go centrus >_<

This one makes me look like an asshole. Even if it is fictional, I feel like an ass when reading this.

I was sixteen, and, as all sixteen year-olds are these days, happily passing my time with the love of my life. We were made for each other. Completely disconnected from the ideas of our society, we prided ourselves by living in our own counter-culture that believed in nothing but each other. We had spent one year, five months, twenty-two days together, an eternity to our youthful minds. We were the superiors in our little world, above all those poor saps that merely wished they could have a love like ours. We were whole; we were complete.

It was during a conversation on January 4th in which the beautiful charcoal artwork that was our undying love received its smudge. In one of the seemingly unending phone conversations that we held each night, my true love asked me the question that would forever find itself etched into my memory banks. “So,” she asked me, “When we get married, how many children do you want?”
When we get married?

In that instant, every façade of security and truth this relationship had held came crumbling down like a shoddy house of cards. In that very second in time, the entrancing artwork of our time together became little more than crayon lines on a household wall. The careful balance of disassociation and acceptance of that which may come that our love balanced on was knocked askew in that one moment. How could she do this? Why would she do this? Oh how my confusion gave birth to indecision, to questioning of that which had been carefully layed for over five percent of my life.

“I don’t know,” I said. It was all the answer I could muster. With this new question thrown in where once there had only been security and safety, all the things that I had been overlooking due to my love for her came into view. As the spotlight centered on the way we did things, I came to realize that I had abandoned all of the people I had previously held dear for her. I realized that I had changed who I was for her. I had even feigned stupidity for her. I had completely disassembled myself and been rebuilt as the perfect match for her, something I now realized I wasn’t.

The stark silence hung on the line for what seemed like an eternity. Then, realization of the real meaning of those words sank in upon the both of us. For just a moment, I thought that maybe I would have to deal with something I would rather avoid. Then, as the silence grew uncomfortable, there came a single word over the line.

“Oh.”

It was in this single moment in time, it was with that one word that I knew she understood. As the muffled sobs came from the other end of the line, it was apparent that my decision affected more than just me. Yet somewhere inside I could not bring myself to identify with this girl’s pain. There was something within me that had already allowed itself to distance me from her. Try as I might, I just couldn’t feel anything that would allow me to feel sorry for her. It was not something I really understood, but it was comforting to know that I was content.
As the crying on her end continued, I couldn’t even bring myself to apologize to her. As far as I was concerned, I had little reason to do so. I had completely changed myself to fit her needs, and I no longer had any need to be that person. The part of me that felt sympathy for people who hurt prodded me just the slightest bit, but for reasons beyond my comprehension, I was okay.

That was the important part; I was finally okay.

Why the heck would you feel like an ass? It sounds realistic enough to me. Or do you mean you feel like an ass about the cold reality of it? Or maybe it isn't cold reality at all and I'm just misinterpreting it.

But, really, that's interesting. In the good way :)

You're a terrific writer, man. I could totally feel the moment. I actually learned something from it: don't change yourself for others. Whether you meant that or not, it's made me think about my friends and etc.

Uhh, you're not an ass. It's completely awkward and weird for someone to ask that... especially at SIXTEEN WTF. D:

But don't feel bad. ): I would probably have just hung up right there. (:

And I agree with Stane--I like it when you write like this. Sometimes I just sit down to write a rant or complain or something, and I often like the way it sounds.

I read a lot of short "essay" books that are meant to be funny or just to write down what they think, and I think that if you made your thingies a little longer and wrote more of them, I would buy a book of your essays. (: Gogo Cent!

Huh? Is that about something/one I know?

Anyway, random fact: I saw a license plate that was called: CNTRAAS. I thought of you <3

Good stuff.

It is art in some form.

My day.

Growing up, I knew my father was a superhero. Go ahead, search his closet if you don’t believe me. You might not find the tights and cape, but you will find dozens of shirts that sell his secret identity. Surveyor by day, technical genius by night, you can put any problem in front of him and have a happy ending before the credits roll. No feat is impossible for the man that raised me. However, as any comic book will prove, the greater the powers of the hero, the greater challenges they will face.
In 1970, my father and a friend were driving down an east coast highway when a gasket blew on the hotrod that they had been working on all year. With no phone and telepathy not on his list of abilities, my father was left with one option: improvise. Finding a soda can, his superhuman brain went to work. Ciphering, as he likes to call it, he quickly figured out the thickness of the gasket that had blown, and how much soda can would be needed to replace it. Working the can, he sheared it until it was of comparable size, and managed to slide it into place. They drove 300 miles with a flimsy piece of metal acting as a stand-in for an essential engine piece. Chapter one of his comic was written that day.
As his life progressed, new challenges arose. Not only did he have to deal with the extraordinary task of building his Batcave that attached to the garage, but he raised two boys. My brother left home immediately after high-school, and at the age I was, all I saw was a solidification of his superhuman image. He was unafraid to send his boy off into the world, and had faith that his son shared in his lineage of heroism. It was awe inspiring, a memory that won’t seem to fade. In fact, of all the memories I have of my father, only one stands out stronger. This is the day I found out my father was not a Man Of Steel, but indeed of flesh and bone.
My grandfather, surely the source of my father’s powers, was diagnosed with lung cancer the summer before my senior year of high-school. It hit hard and fast, and within a month he was restricted to a rocking chair in the living room. My dad took a very active role in his care, and was there every moment he could be. It was here, watching my father cater to the man that took care of him, that I realized that he was human. The unflinching face that I had seen earlier was gone, replaced by something sad, something scared. There were tears in his eyes on the drives home. My father didn’t cry! The man didn’t even have tear ducts, how could he cry? It came to me then that Superman is Clark Kent. They are not two separate people, but two sides of the same coin, just like my father. And there, in that living room, I realized that his most difficult challenge in life didn’t call for superpowers, but for the humanity I now saw in him. It was in that moment that I realized that to be truly extraordinary, all we have to do is be human.