Robot Monkey Pants

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. That’s what’s awesome.

You know what’s more annoying than hearing one side of a cellphone conversation you’re not a part of?  Hearing both sides.  Loudly.  With beeps interspersed.

I’ve owned a Nextel.  I’ve used a Nextel.  I’m going to introduce you to a concept that must be completely alien to you.  It’s a concept called “keep your conversation to yourself!”  And you know how you do it?  There’s a little button on your phone called a privacy button.  Use it.

I tend to think of myself as a generally easy-going guy, but it’s not uncommon to find myself just fuming and raging when I’m behind the wheel of my car.

I don’t like that. There’s no good that can be accomplished by it. In fact, it’s because I was irritated by an annoying driver that I wrecked my previous car, and put Tisha’s well-being in jeopardy. I am not happy about that.

As I caught myself fuming at another idiot driver (said the guy with 5 accidents in his 17 year driving history), I recalled the exercise I’d promised myself I’d do. I’m going to publish it here so that I’m a little more accountable for it.

But first, an exercise I used to do, but alas doesn’t apply to all situations. If someone’s driving like a maniac, zipping in and out of lanes, speeding excessively, riding the shoulder — you know the drill, pretend it’s someone in a medical emergency or a doctor on his way to give rush life-saving surgery. It’s almost certainly not going to be the case, but it might be. I used to do that, in my “Zen-lite”^TM ambitions to be a calmer person.

However, that doesn’t work when the idiot driver in question isn’t going fast, but is just being stupid. So I had to come up with a different method to keep myself in the driving zone and not in the anger zone. My first attempt was “pretend you know the other driver”, but that doesn’t work. I know a good number of idiots. Next up was “pretend the other driver is your friend”, but that didn’t work because some people pull some stunts on the road that would make me question my friendship with them. But I think I found the solution.

I pretend the driver in the other care is someone who I want or need to respect me. And it works — as long as I remember it. It stops me from retaliating in some stupid road-rage manner, like cutting them off, or giving them dirty looks, or flipping them off^*. Imagine the horror if you did something nasty, and later that day at work you were introduced to your company’s new CEO, only to have him recognize you as the guy screaming obscenities and flipping him off while grabbing your crotch with the other hand earlier that day. It wouldn’t bode well.

So pretend every asshole driver out there is someone on whom your very livelihood depends. It may not restore your faith in humankind, but at the least it prevents you from being an asshole in return.

* This is not something I’m typically prone to doing. I wrote some article for the Daily Probe years ago in response to someone flipping me off because I unexpectedly found myself in a car pool lane when I was not qualified to be there. I felt pretty stupid until that guy flipped me off, at which point I felt it was all worthwhile, as long as I pissed off some dude in a pickup truck who was the type of guy who’d flip someone off. Yeah, I’m a hypocrite. Bite me.

Gates warns Iraqis U.S. commitment not open-ended

Bush stands firm on veto threat over Iraq war

If we don’t set an end date, isn’t that by definition an open-ended commitment?

After a month of no progress, finally a downward tick in the graph.  I’ve revised my short-term goal, since I had significantly missed the “less than 300 by Christmas [2006]“.  Now I’m shooting for under 300 before my next Newfoundland trip this summer.  The current Weight Watchers session is 12 weeks, which takes me to around Independence Day.  Ideally, I want to be under 300 before that date, but I’ll have a better idea of how attainable that is after next week’s weighing.

If significant weight loss stories are your interest, this guy also weighed 400 pounds, and only 3 months into his weight loss journey ran a bloody marathon over the course of 9 hours.  That’s… astounding.  There’s no way I could do that.

I’m very conflicted on gun control and the second amendment to the constitution.  I’m a strong believer in the Bill of Rights, but I don’t like guns.  At the moment, I currently fall into the “I believe in the second amendment” camp, but I’m very wary of those who derive so much enjoyment from practicing it.  Of course, a government that disallows its citizenry from arming itself is setting itself up to be beyond their reach and become totalitarian.   But I don’t think that’s likely to happen in the immediate future, as much as I despise this particular administration.

I’ve lived over 36 years on this planet without the need to use a gun.  The only time I’ve ever fired one was a shotgun at a target on a weekend trip.  Aside from insects (and two unfortunate occasions when I hit a road-critter with my car), I’ve never taken a life.  I’m the last person who is likely to exercise my second amendment rights, but I know why they’re there and I’m becoming okay with that.  I just think there needs to be some sort of control on the free flow of guns, and I don’t think that’s counter to the spirit of that amendment.

I just read a particularly excellent write-up detailing how wrong some of these people extolling the virtues of carry permits are.  Whenever something happens such as the shooting at Virginia Tech, the gun control advocates pipe up, and the pro-gun folks shout that if we were all armed this wouldn’t happen.

More guns won’t solve this.  I encourage you to read the link — it’s quite good.

Venture Bros. is one of the best shows ever.  Seriously.

Ever since I visited London this past fall, I’ve had a fascination.

Ever since that visit to the grocery store, a Sainsbury’s. And I saw it in the freezer.

I was intensely curious.

But not as curious as my lovely wife, who one day plunged the depths of Google and found this.

Family of faggot fans fly the flag

The Onion wishes they could have written that.

Just messing around with a new plugin.

Looks like this is what my new passport will look like. I’m going to bleed apple pie, too.

(If only the eagle were crying.)