Not necessarily violently. I don't condone violence. If somebody pulled the plug on them without violence, that would be just fine, for me and everyone else affected by their products and services.
As we know, I live life with Unreasonable Expectations. I ask to go out and have fun now and then. Totally unreasonable. Normies can do it, just not me. Today it was fruit. Just fruit. There's an apple orchard I've been going to since I was knee-high to a parent. Since there was a very interesting event, including homemade ice cream elsewhere, we went to look at fruit. Have I mentioned I'm allergic to apples? She wanted to go, so for the 2nd time in my life, I kept my mouth shut. You have no idea how difficult that is.
Unfortunately the orchard is in New Jersey. New Jersey is not a pleasant or happy place. You don't know this until you hit the turnpike, at which time you get demoted from Driver to Target. The rest of them drive in the left lane, 25 mph under the speed limit. If you think you can change lanes, you're more deluded than a president. To be honest, it's not an ugly place - it's just filled with ugly people. When they get out of their cars at the orchard, they exchange them for carts and drive the same way. I asked several if they were locals, after almost being run down. I try to be considerate when they let me out for the day. Sometimes it's difficult to even appear considerate. So I stepped away from displays and out of the way so inconsiderate assholes (and that's just the old ladies) would cease banging into me. Wife's legs are black and blue from this. 5 more minutes and I would start throwing carts. I was quite put out when I discovered they had 19 varieties of homemade pies, none of which were chocolate. Like I want a peach pie.
Now, a word about fruit: they had lots of it.
You could sample the apple cider. Wife went to sample it, got bumped, and emptied all of it on the floor. Perhaps a small-yield something or other, dropped from a plane. The kind that only hurts people - not buildings. Or fruit. They had the most amazing fruit and vegetables I have ever seen. While I didn't see him, I suspect they have someone come in and buff the produce: it shined. It must have been great, as I don't like vegetables or much fruit.
Where's Google? With fscking Waldo.
I tend to write stuff down. Google managed to get us there, whole. Not on MY phone, of course. You know how hard it is to reverse directions ("we made a right into the lot, so we go right"). Google doesn't do so well at this. It's not like anyone typed REVERSE. The home address was put in, and off we went. Really far off. About 10 miles down the road, it started to give out directions that didn't look right. By the time we figured out where we were, Google had us turn around THREE TIMES on the same Turnpike. The people at the tolls greeted us by name and asked how the dog was, each time.
I think it's personal.
While we were driving, Google had their Head Asshole busily plotting. He accessed the satellite personally, to make things difficult. "He hates Google? Watch how Google feels about him." Turns out this is also Microsoft's favorite little game. So we toured New Jersey. It's not that big a state, and feels really inferior, as if its little wee wee were tiny and it was overcompensating. So we went north. Then we went south. Then we went north again. Then we turned onto routes that didn't have numbers. I was terrified we had driven into Day of the Dead, but then Google sent us east. This seemed somewhat odd, as we are quite west of New Jersey. It's not like you can ask it a question or tell jokes about its mother. Eventually Google got bored of making life extremely difficult and frustrating, and let the satellite take us home. As we were now so far away, an hour trip took 2 hours. This from a satellite that can tell if you move ahead 1 foot (12 litres Canadian). If you sneeze, the satellite says you moved and 'bless you.' And this is the slightly accurate setting. If war broke out, they'd set it to Military Mode, where it can count your nose hairs. Then it tells you that your nose hair is a lot longer than last time and the hair on your head is growing more slowly than before. Yes, we drivers get Dumb Mode, where they can only tell how fast you're going and is accurate to only 3".
Remember I said we marry our parents? It is about this time that I became Wife's father. I was only asking a simple question... "Had you considered grabbing that ticket from the ticket machine at the Turnpike exit we went through?"
"YOU MAKE ME NERVOUS."
And how, exactly, do I do that?
I don't know, you just do. I never have any problems until you're in the car. In spite of the words rolling around my mouth, at times stabbing me with toothpicks and torches, I somehow resisted the urge to say, "Gee, I have that same problem, only with the house."
We've been together for a long time. You were never nervous before.
But I'm nervous now.
I see.
Stress, mostly at the hands of Google and Microsoft, tends to ratchet up all the hidden animosity we keep toward each other. Oh c'mon, like you don't secretly want to murder your spouse at times. Or all the time. So we start getting snippy. I tried pulling down the Cone of Silence, but had to put it back up because we'd never get home otherwise. It's not enough to drive defensively in Jersey. You have to drive like your life depends on it, because it does. It's the ones you can't see that are most likely to do damage. You never think to look UP when you're driving, but it's mandatory in New Jersey. They have signs at the toll booths: WARNING - FALLING CARS - LOOK UP. Most of them aren't simply falling.. they're just driving like they normally do. They had the same sign by the shopping carts at the orchard.
Me? I just discovered a new Mexican place near us. They opened secretly. They did it so secretly that we thought they closed immediately. That the Flying AIDS got them when, as a restaurant, they weren't considered essential by Governor Stupid. We drive by that area often, and there is never a soul in or near the place. The other day we noticed a strange light in the window. There were still no people in or near the place, but the light said OPEN. You could have knocked us over with a guitar string, that snapped while you were playing, and it embedded itself in your eye or thumb, which actually happened to me onstage once. I said to myself 'no, that silver thing should probably not be embedded in your thumb' I said. It was only going to bleed, and when I start to bleed, my brain keeps me from getting upset and has me pass out. I love my brain for this.. it keeps me First in its mind. Nobody else does that for me. Not only was there an OPEN sign, we caught what looked like an actual person inside. It's hard to locate in the dark, but he appeared to be on the other side of the counter, making him either an employee or a thief. Or both. HEY - that place might still be in business.. although it's probably being used to launder money for criminals, as no one is ever there; employee or customer. Specifically including ME.
Promises they will be every bit as effective as the old rules
I, for one, am shocked. SHOCKED.
I need to find some things out. Since I don't know where to look, I'll phone the Ministry of Where to Look. There has to be a study on assholes. Ok, plenty of asshole studies... it's probably the 2nd largest branch of government (behind the Ministry of Cash Giveaways). I want to know why drivers and their driving have gone to hell. There have been assholes in cars since Henry Ford, but the sheer volume of assholes and the quality of their assholiness is astounding. As with most things, I have to know why.
I know the Ministry of Where to Look will direct me to the Ministry for These Kinds of Things, where there will be a study on Quantity of Asshole Drivers Through the Years, with Emphasis on Transitions in Upward Assholiness Over Time.There are lots of formula(formuli? formulae? formulasses?) to predict or explain the explosion of ASD (Absolute Shit Drivers), also known as ABW (Assholes Behind the Wheel). Because people don't think of the larger problem, they only see ASD (Asshole Shit Drivers). People like me, who think they're pretty clever and blog about NIP (nothing in particular) for NIP (Nobody in particular) and have VFR (Very Few Readers), tend to think in LP (larger pictures). Cars haven't changed significantly since I was born (they shrunk like hell), so that won't explain the upward tilt in Assholitude. This also leaves out gasoline. Battery power is a different item, as people who started with the Toyota Priapus thought they were in a class of their own, like iDevice users. While these drivers have the Smug<tm>, it wouldn't cause them to go Instant Asshole. So it must be the people who are turning into rabid, snarling, gun-toting sociopaths, with terrible tempers and a complete disregard for anyone else or safety in general. When flying cars become a thing, it will be mere seconds before some of them die, expecting their car to fly, right off a cliff, like Wile E. Coyote (Super Genius). On the way down, they'll fly past all the other asshole who thought their car could fly, while not using turn signals and completely disregarding their own eventual demise. For good measure, they'll give everybody the finger on the way down. If there's sufficient height, they'll even get a few shots off at the other falling vehicles. They take off, burning rubber, and beat you to the SMASH at the bottom (or the red light) by a quarter of a second (and 5 gallons of gas).
So what is it that turns people into violent sociopaths? Reality shows? Judge Judy? The Masked Furry? Other assholes in cars? Other assholes in your car? Traffic cameras and plate readers? The Phiily Parking Authority (as seen in the show Parking Wars or something like that)? The debt ceiling would be a great guess, but most people think the debt ceiling is the place you paint last, while wearing all sorts of protective gear and spending tremendous amounts on paint. Maybe it's the generally narcissistic bent of humanity. Perhaps the Ancient Asshole Theorists will be able to tell us if the theory of assholiness explains our particular assholes or any society over time. NASA has not released this information yet, but ancient Martians evolved 274 million years before they all got up and Went Elsewhere. Just imagine how overdeveloped their assholes were (and I'm not talking about anal probing).
It will only be a short while before warring groups of Ancient Asshole Theorists start their inevitable and doomed arguments over their particular pet theories (all of them laughable). No one will take them seriously until there emerges a spokesperson of great intrigue, personal magnetism, and VTH (Very Tall Hair), like Giorgio Tsoukalos. Giorgio cannot be the person because he speaks for the Other Guys. Well, also because of his hair. Aside from being VTH, it just added Artificial Intelligence and has come alive. There's no telling what his hair is getting up to from day to day. Sometimes it all points to the left, sometimes only half of it sticks up, and sometimes it waves at fans, which tends to terrify children. So we'll need someone even more outspoken, with more or less static style hair (SSH). I was thinking of Linda Fiorentino or Emilia Clarke, but I'm always thinking about them and neither would look good in VTH. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman would do, but but she had VLH (Very Large Hair - my favorite). So it's settled: the spokesperson for Ancient Asshole Theorists will be Julia Roberts, Emilia Clarke, or Linda Fiorentino, either or all with VLH. It would be like Disneyland for me.
Remember: if there's a keyboard or windshield, there's an asshole behind it.
