Rant Village

Open Rant Thread...

2006-06-20T11:17:00.000-05:00

This is an Open Rant Thread - give it a try in the comments section.

Really good rants will be reposted as an article of their own.

Rant Away!!

Village Idiots #1

2006-06-20T06:18:00.000-05:00

I'm very sorry I haven't had the "ummph" to work up a good rant lately. I have had some engine problems one of my boats, minor in nature but annoying, and with the end of school, having one of my kids in the house recovering from major surgery and all the other things that come in the course of daily retired life (don't ever believe that one "retires"), I just haven't been able to really gnash my teeth and rail against that which aggravates me.

Plus, I've been jousting with my good and long time friend at "The Rued Morgue" and that deflated the angst baloon.

However, I'm back in form - the malaise has left the building. This post is the first in an occasional series of rants titled "Village Idiots". Village Idiots covers a lot of ground - some of it will global (as in "Global Village"), it will be local (as in "Village").

Stay tuned.

I have a routine that I've practiced for the last five or six years - every morning I ride down to the local GhandiMart (sometimes known as 7Eleven or convience store), pick up the local newspaper (useless but my wife reads it and thus She Who Must Be Obeyed is appeased) and two one liter bottles of Diet Pepsi. Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall - everyday, once a day.

Well, the local GhandiMart just went 24/7 and hired an overnight clerk. Said clerk is one of the first examples I've seen of just how one can ruin one's life at an early age by becoming a Space Cadet, First Class.

Allow me to explain.

Normally, the paper and two one liter bottles of Diet Pepsi cost me three bucks and fifty one cents - same everyday. Recently, however, Pepsi has a promotion going - two one liter bottles for two bucks. New cost is two dollars and fifty seven cents.

The past few days, the Space Cadet has tried to charge me three bucks and ninty seven cents.

How she reaches this conclusion is a mystery because there is a HUGE Pepsi promotion sign right over the register not to mention that even at the regular price, it's less than what she has been tring to charge me. And I've had to correct her every single day for the past five days.

This apparent lack of ability to find her ass with both hands tied behind her back must be directly related to the amount of metal she has in her head. I have seen some rather bizzare sights including extreme tatoos, but this girl has studs everywhere on her face including three tongue studs that click when she talks. Just by memory alone, I can count 30 different studs, piercings, rings and chains (that ear to the nose thing that the Bajorians wear) from memory alone. I can only assume that all the metal is some kind of indicator of the ranking structure in the Space Patrol indicating where you are in the hierarchy.

Be that as it may, it is my opinion that all that metal is attracting tachyon particles to her head and affecting her cognitive abilities. Obviously, she needs to build a deflector dish and wear it as a hat to keep the tachyon particles at bay.

Plus the fact that she is - well, let's be generous here - stupid.

Of course, this isn't the only thing she has done which annoys me. The other day, there was a sign on the counter - she needed fives for change. I happened to have three fives in my pocket, so I told her to just give me a ten and change for the two Diet Pepsi's and newspaper. I swear, she actually had to think about what I said. For at least two minutes - she stood here with the three fives in her hand and kept looking at the register change display AND COULDN"T FIGURE IT OUT!!!

I finally told her how to do it and she still didn't get it. Finally, the Manager came over and fixed it quickly with little fuss giving me the look that said "Hey, she's the best I can find".

So, here's to the local Village Idiot of the day.

God help us all.

Rant #1 - "And you can kiss...

2006-06-08T07:06:00.000-05:00

this" she indicates, flipping off the driver next to her merging onto the highway applying, of course, the universal language of finger talk using the "index/flying eagle" finger second in from the thumb in case you confuse that with the "index/pointer/booger finder" finger which is the first finger in from the thumb.

I was reading an article yesterday about road rage - apparently, we all suffer from something called "intermittent cognitive dissonance syndrome" or something equally strange and obtuse. End game on the article - we all lose it from time to time.

Well, knock me over with a feather.

Having been a driver for over 40 years, it still amazes me how bad other drivers habits are. And how infuriating a simple process like merging onto a highway can be.

Just this week, I was cruising down the local inter-interstate - RT 395 - in my diesel F-250 towing my 20 foot Ranger center console - 6,000 lbs of truck and another 3,500 lbs of boat and trailer - call it five tons of mass at 60 mph moving along the road. As I approached an on ramp, there was a little Hundai/Honda/Chevy Geo type car - maybe all of 1,600 lbs of car and driver - speeding down the ramp. The driver matched the speed of my truck and didn't slow down - even though the on ramp is a merge lane - as in yield to traffic in the travel lane.

She didn't slow down, she didn't even look left until she figured out that she was running out of merge lane, then instead of slowing down to move in behind my truck and trailer, she speeds up!!

Ok, discretion is the better part of valor, in particular when you are towing $50,000 worth of high-performance fishing boat, but I had a problem - I had somebody following me much too close and I had an 18 wheeler coming fast on my right. I backed off the throttle a little, slowing down - easy application of the brakes and what do I see when I look at the little tin roller skate car?

The broad is flipping me off and honking her horn as she swings wildly into my lane missing the front of my truck by maybe a foot.

Did I mention that she had to switch the cellphone from the left hand to the right hand in order to flip me off?

At 60 mph? With about 40 tons of combined steel and fiberglass surrounding her 1,600 POUND car?

Oh yeah - real smart.

It's at times like these when I wish Darwin would get up out of his grave, wave his boney fingers and make people like that disappear.

Intermittent Cognitive Dissonance Syndrome my ass.

Stupidity is more like it.

"And So It Begins"

2006-05-27T16:21:00.000-05:00

Having given up on "Stealth Fish", I have now created a new entity - Rant Village.

This will be a blog for the rest of us - rants are allowed.

No more, no less.