And now I vent...

I have owned a car before. Let me make that clear before I go into this rant. I have commuted before. I understand rush hour sucks. I understand no one likes driving to or from work. I know all these things.

I also know that the people commuting now are markedly worse than they were just four or five years ago.

Maybe it's the Internet and the driving need for instant satisfaction without actually having to do anything to really get from Point A to Point B. Maybe people have just gotten uglier as their brains are slowly cooked by solar rays as the ozone shrinks day by day. Maybe I've just gotten older and more intolerant. Maybe that's it.

Or maybe, just maybe, people need to get off their goddamned cell phones while they're driving home in the evening. You know, there is very little that is so important that you need to fumble around for your phone, dial it while trying to watch the road and then gab ceaselessly about things like what you did at work today (which was the same thing you did yesterday) or what time you're going to get home (six-thirty - click...see that was easy)

I am against helmet laws. I am against the public smoking ban in places like New York and California. But I am for the seatbelt law and I would be so for a ban on drivers talking on the cell phone. Hell, if such a law came into being I'd pull over to the side of the road, park on the shoulder, whip out my cell phone and start dialing the State Troopers with the license plate of every moron swerving all over the road and starting and stopping in unexpected bursts because they're too busy yakking away in an attempt to make themselves feel important and add meaning to their impotent little lives.

While I'm at it, what ever happened to people actually letting you change lanes when you flip on your turn signal? Now it seems that if the person in the lane you want to enter - assuming they're not preoccupied with their cell phone - will actually accelerate even if they are half a mile back! It's as if no one wants anyone to be "in front of them." I know it is better to be a leader than a follower but I really think drivers with their foot pounding the gas are kind of missing the point of that little maxim.

By the way, "maxim" was a word before it was a stupid magazine.

See, this whole driving thing has got me so worked up I'm now ranting into tangents! So I’m going to just step back, cool off and get a cup of coffee.

Then I'm going outside and surrounding my car in twenty-four layers of bubble wrap to protect me on the bumper-car ride home we Chicagoans call "commuting."