pop-culture for the people

In this exciting episode I examine:

Why huge trucks and SUV’s should die
Why smarmy people should rot in hell
Why I’m right and they’re wrong

and of course…

Why I hate everything!

Today I was going out to pick up Hathyr from work.  It was a typical day like any other.  Hadn’t seen any unrequited evil, ninjas or commie nazi’s in sight, so I figured it would be safe to leave the treasured halls that I call home.  So I got into the Official Monkeywagon and left the abode for the 3 mile drive to Hathyr’s work to pick her up. It was quite a warm sun shiny day and all seemed pleasant and well.

But there was trouble brewing, waiting for me.  Calling to me from the ether.  I paid no mind and just thought it was some crap playing on the radio or maybe bad air coming through the air conditioner and kept driving.

Pulling into the parking lot, I quickly noticed that the available spaces were taken, so I pulled along side the office and left the engine running so the air conditioning would be operational as I waited a few minutes for Hathyr to leave the office.  I get bored waiting very easily so I usually either bring something to do or hope there is something worth listening to on the radio.  As I was about to change the dial I noticed a large shadow casting over my small ‘95 Honda Civic.  A shadow that almost had substance to it, creeping up my neck and whispering in my ear.  A shadow that slowly rocked the car and slapped me in the face.  Seeing something moving from the corner of my eye I was about to turn my head when fwoom!  My car rocks back and forth and I turn quickly and see a behemoth towering over me like so much evil.  A fucking jacked up white pickup truck.  Dispair turning to anger turing to rage in less than a flash.  I honked my horn, but all it gave out was a whimper.  A sad, moaning whimper.  Like as if my car was crying out “You hit me, why did you hit me, please don’t hit me!”  I honked again a few times, not sure if the rider of the white beast heard my call.

Wave Your Fist and Spit in Their Eye

Stepping out of my car in a fit of rage, I walked to the window of the other car and said “You hit me.  You hit my car!”  Emotions running wild and blood boiling inside of me.  I see the injury.  A flesh would for sure, but it looked painful nonetheless.  Dent zones turned to dollar signs and my quick realization that I have to collision insurance right now made my stomach sink to the bottom of my legs.  I hope he has insurance.  I hope I don’t have to get into it with him.  I really hate confrontations.  I hate arguing with people.  I hate trying to haggle or persuade someone to give me something.  The Black Rider of the White Beast quickly grabbed his insurance information and handed it to me saying “I’m very sorry man, I didn’t see you.”  Of course he didn’t, his truck is closer to the moon than it is to the ground.  I hate big trucks.  I hate them even more now.

As this had just occured, when I was stepping out of my car, Hathyr was walking towards it.  I suppose she may have heard me honking the horn and thought I was being a jerk and being impatient.  “What happened, did he hit you?”  Yes.  After speaking with the Black Rider I handed Hathyr his insurance information and asked her to photocopy it.  Walking back to the guy in the White Beast I looked in the cavern he sat in as he said “I’m really sorry.  It doesn’t look too bad.  Hmmmm…  Your in a no parking zone aren’t you?”  Technically my car was in a no parking zone, but the law as I understand it defines a running car with its driver still in it as standing, not parking.  As far as I could see it, I was in the right.  It doesn’t matter where my car was, he still hit me.  You can’t go around hitting people’s cars even if they aren’t where you’d like them to be.  “Did my hitch get you?  Yeah, I couldn’t see it because you where there and it is a no parking zone.  If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t have hit you.”  Right.  If I had a gun and a quick fuse temper I might have shot him in the face, but using his logic, it was a good thing I didn’t.  Looking into the Black Riders eyes seeing his story evolving and realizing that I’m not really sure that I’m right about the law, I started panicing.  What if I’m wrong?  I don’t have money for a ticket.  What if the police get here and say that not only am I in fault for being where I was, standing in a no parking zone or not, that I was in the wrong and that the Black Rider had every right to ram into my car back and forth all day long until my car could fit into a suit case?  At that moment he gets out of the ozone depleting death beast and walks over to the business that he just left.  I turned around as Hathyr handed me the photocopied forms and saw a small crowd forming.  Apparently it was a group of friends of his from the businesses in the same center that Hathyr works in.  A scrubby looking zitfaced blonde girl in her mid-twenties that looked like she might have worked at a rundown roadside stripbar and a guy who looked more like a used car salesmen in his weekend clothes (who I’ve seen around because he actually owns a videogame store in that center, and coincidentally also drives a huge truck, his is red though) approach with a few other non-descript shady looking characters.  “Yeah, you are in a no parking zone, so you shouldn’t be there.” the trailer park queen says, reading me my rights.  Heard that one.  “It doesn’t matter” I say, “You still hit me.  My car isn’t parked.  It is technically standing; the engine is still running.”  “Doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t have been there” she says, quickly becoming something of a trashy version of Legally Blonde.  Deadlock.  We are getting nowhere.  The guy now has a group, I’m feeling pressured.  What to do?

“Alright, I’ll call the cops.  We’ll let them deal with this” the would-be leisure suit armored videogame dealer pipes up.  I’m imagining him getting the powerup and winning the game.  As he walks away, the Black Rider whips out a digicam and starts taking pictures of my car to document the evidence.  “It’s not that bad man, I mean they could pop it out pretty easily for a couple hundred bucks.”  I walk over to the drivers side passing the fresh wound on the passenger door.  Thank God he didn’t get me with the hitch.  As it was, it put a fair size single dent from the middle of the door to near the top of it, directly in the center.  Had he been going faster he would have broken right through the door and shattered the glass right into my face.  Or had he angled the megalithic monster a little less, he would have pierced right through the door, or worse, into the engine comparment.  It was very close to being a lot worse.  I quickly scribbled down the license plate number onto the photocopied sheet and noticed there wasn’t a scratch or dent on the White Beast.

I got inside my car as Hathyr stood by, looking for my insurance information to trade it.  The phone call to the cops was being made.  I really don’t want to get into this.  I really really hate this.  But I’m pretty damn sure I’m right.  But not 100% sure.  I’m not a gambler.  I didn’t like my odds.  I don’t want a ticket for parking, even though I wasn’t technically parking, in a no parking zone.  I can’t afford it.  I looked to Hathyr for advise.  “What do you think?  I’m not parked, I’m standing.  He hit me.  I don’t know what to do” I pleaded.  She agreed and said that the damage wasn’t that bad.  I asked her if she thinks I should just drop it and just deal with it.  She said yes.  So I went back over to the Black Rider and told him that I’d drop it and call it even.  He agreed and I handed him the photocopied paper and shook death’s hand and parted ways.

Getting into the car, blood boiling, stiff with rage, I overhear the Black Rider telling the guy to not worry about it and get rid of the cops.  Driving off Hathyr asked me in that tone of “I’m asking you, but really I’m telling you” to not drive out of the parking lot like a madman.  I am unfortunately known to drive a little wrecklessly when I’m angry.  As far as I’m aware it is the only time where my driving skills are impaired (as I don’t drink ever and drive).  I tried to stay my anger while I drove the 3 miles back home, not saying a word as I knew if I did I’d say something I’d probably either regret or wouldn’t like to hear myself say.  Usually when I’m upset I need to be alone for a while then followed by being around someone to vent or at least just talk about something, anything, to get it out of my system.  The air conditioning seemed to just eek out only enough cool air to barely keep me from passing out as I could feel my face flush with anger.

After cooling off at home for a half hour or so and going online to try to research dent removal to calm down, Hathyr knocked on the door and asked me if I’d like to go for the trail walk with our dog Satchel up in the mountains behind our house.  After venting for a few minutes, we left with the dog for a relaxing walk along the river that travels down the small valley at the bottom of a plateau a few miles up the road from our house.  During the spring she tells me it floods and can be many feet deep, but right now it is just a few feet deep in deepest sections.  In a month or two it will be all but a trickle as the area dries up and the snow that still sits in the mountains thousands of feet above us.  Relaxing.

After a few hours up there we came back and I looked through my book on car repairs.  I think I can fix it myself.  I almost wish the guy just gave me some cash out of his wallet.  I could actually live with the dent and have some cash in hand as I’m pretty broke.  But alas, I have a nice big dent in the side of my car.  This is the second accident I’ve been in in my own car, and the second one where another person drove into me.  The first time was in a parking lot of a Wendy’s where an old man backed into my first car, an ‘84 Ford Tempo and left a huge dent in his rear fender.  He didn’t realize what happened and I being the young dumb kid that I was, and being late for work, didn’t know what to do and after a short conversation with Gramps McAlzheimer’s realizing he didn’t know what he did, I left for work.  I didn’t really care about my car all that much, so I just said screw it.  80’s Ford car versus cheapo 90’s new Geo.  My car won that battle.  All I ask for in life are the little victories.  My car has a few other things that give it umm…  character.  Aside from the dings and dents it has collected since moving to southern California (most of which have been collected sitting in my own parking lot) I have a nice big group of scrapes on the windshield.  Vandals?  No.  A few years ago when I was still live at home in upstate New York on a winter’s morning I was late to work.  A thick coating of snow and ice covered my windshield.  I had just locked the door to the house and didn’t want to go back in to get my ice scraper, so I looked around to try to find something to improvise.  This is one of those moments where improvision is not a good thing…  I picked up a large flat rock by the back door and scratched away at the thick ice.  After about 6 scrapes my brain kicked in and I realized what the hell I was doing and dropped the rock along with my jaw.  The scratches are there to this day.  I like to tell people I didn’t have it replaced because I like to be reminded of the stupid choices I’ve made in life so I don’t repeat them.

In the 5 hours since this happened, I’ve come away with a new look on a few things.  I have a friend that is a police officer in the next town over (where the accident happened is outside of the the district he works in).  I’m going to have to pick his brain on who was right.  It is after the fact, and I am not one for kicking myself for past actions, but I’d like to know in case something like it were to happen in the future.  I’ll try to post an update if I remember as to what he said.

It is funny, because the spot I was standing in is used almost everyday by folks waiting for their pet or food to be loaded into their car.  At least once or twice a week it is used by the local fire department to park their fire engine while they go over to the Mexican restaurant for lunch.  It is used daily to unload bags of food, beer and a sundry of other things to the stores in the center.  That includes the businesses of two of the people that were in the crowd.  It is used by UPS, FedEx and the mailman to deliver mail.  It isn’t really a loading zone, but it is treated as such.  I guess it really kills me because I wasn’t even technically parked.  The entire time my car was still running with me still sitting in it.  Hell, I was only there for about 3 minutes before the ordeal begun.

I’m almost positive I got screwed on this deal.  You’ve got to pick your fights and I guess I decided it wasn’t worth it to fight this one.  Will I fight it next time (God forbid)?  Perhaps.  I hate people that try to intimidate me.  In fact, it angers me even more when I’m being intimidated.  I’ve lived through too much of that shit living at home with a beligerant stepfather and I hate it, and it was happening as the crowd was forming around me.  I’m a pretty big guy and I’ve been told that I can be intimidating but I just don’t have that type of mindset or mentality.  I don’t bully people into things and I expect the same from them.  Do unto others and all.  Most folks that know me know that I’m pretty relaxed, chilled out and I take it easy.  I don’t anger easily.  I forgive but never forget.  I guess I need to steel myself a little better for these situations.  Mr. Furious “Rage”, Wolverine “Beserker”, Hulk “Smash”, or fists ablazing?  Nahh.  I need to keep my calm, think clearly and make the right choice.  When I get pissed in these situations, I don’t do that.  Note to self: When blood boils, keep your cool and think straight.  Oh yeah, and carry a big stick.  With nails… ECW like.

Ramblings From an Angry Man

I hate people with huge cars and trucks.  I hate them to death.  I hate jerks that drive crazy on the road, I hate rice racers, I hate people that weave in and out of lanes, I hate people who don’t signal, I hate big stereos in cars, I hate shitty cars with fancy paintjobs, I hate spoilers, I hate those stupid HID headlights that blind you as they are passing…

To all of you that fit this description, I dedicate Alan Parsons Project’s I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You.  May you find your vehicle wrapped neatly around a tree and your wallet as barren as your collective intellect.

I Hate Everything…