I began this series of blog posts for my own personal information. I was simply documenting odd changes in general behavior of the population as it correlated with weather, lunar or solar events, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. For the past 2 months the Southern United States has been experiencing arctic weather. This winter in The South hasn't simply been cold, it has been Arctic blast cold. The freezing, snowing, sleeting, icy cold that would normally be dropping snow on Canada over the past 2 months has been dropping it on the Southern U.S. instead, causing quite a problem for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, as their snow is all melting and the temperatures hot enough to cause problems for the athletes up in beautiful British Columbia, where the women are as hot as the weather is cold, and the men are grateful.
Oh Canada!
Recently the record cold blast has abated. It was actually warm this weekend. The warm temperatures in winter have caused the expected result - rain. Today, a rotten, hated Monday, the work day began with the standard rush hour drive into work. Normally people are tired and calm, too groggy to cause much trouble or care about what is going on around them. But this morning the temperature is a balmy 50 degrees F, and the rain has created humidity. So, we're all sitting in our houses with the heat still on, wondering why we feel so warm all of a sudden, sweating as we're brushing our teeth, and sticky by the time we get into our cars to drive to work.
On the drive into work today, before I had even pulled out onto the highway to join the herd, I noticed some insanely aggressive behavior in traffic. People weren't simplyunwilling to let anyone pull out into traffic. No, they were swerving at people trying to pull out into traffic. "Try it, buddy, and I'll fucking kill you! ARRRRRRGH!"
Nevertheless, I managed to wheel myself out into the flow and join the loonies on the path. Instantly I observed that the flow of traffic seemed oddly halting, as we'd race forward, only to all jump on our brakes and slow to a crawl, then race ahead again. Everyone was piled up together. There was no space between cars to spread the traffic out. We were bunched like a group of 8 year olds in a soccer match all leaving our positions to go for the ball, clumped in the center of the field with no one playing defense.
I had a Jeep Wagoneer flying up on my ass, clearly angry that I had managed to pull out into traffic ahead of them, tailgating me to let me know this fact, as if I cared or had in any way wronged them. I was going faster than everyone else, except for the Jeep riding my ass. But he had sped up to do that, so I figured "fuck him." I tried to shake him off by crossing from the far right lane, 3 lanes over into the passing lane. Seeing as we were flying anyway I figured the passing lane was where I wanted to be. He followed me, of course.
I found myself stuck behind a full-sized long-bed 4-door Chevy pickup truck. Everyone was riding the ass of the person in front of them and bunched all around me. 3 lanes of no one getting ahead had me boxed in between the Jeep and the Chevy, so I decided to just stay there. I noticed the Chevy having to hit his brakes a lot. I saw him swerve to the side slightly the way people do when they want to show up in the driver's door mirror of the car in front of them, as if to say "hey you jackass, speed up or get over!" This was precisely what he was saying, in fact.
After much halting progress, slow, fast, slow, fast, I noticed the traffic to my right open up slightly. Just as it did the woman in the tiny car blocking the passing lane and the Chevy in front of me whipped her wheel to the right, flying across the next lane and going onto the shoulder, nearly crashing off the road into the ditch. Then she whipped back to the left and sort of settled into the right-hand lane. The Chevy in front of me quickly sped past her before the crazy, erratic woman could change her mind and whip back over again. I began to move past her as well, expecting to see the usual cell phone attached to her face, explaining everything about her erratic driving. But as I passed her I saw no cell phone. She had both hands on the wheel and was glaring straight ahead, wishing death for all the cars around her.
Sooooo, you drive that shitty normally, eh? No cell phone? Wow, you really suck at driving!
You suck at driving
Further down the road there was more of this sort of thing, crazy people doing crazy things with no apparent reason for it.
By the time I merged onto the Interstate, the Chevy was getting irritated with me behind him. I wasn't riding that close, but on this particular day everyone seemed to be just a little too close. He changed lanes one to the left. I let him go and stayed in the far right lane. But I quickly ran into a jerk going extraordinarily slow and thus needed to get over. Unfortunately, the car in the lane next to him was also going extraordinarily slow. In fact, they were both driving side-by-side going the exact same speed. Fuckers!
As I changed lanes to get past the 2 rolling road blocks, I noticed that all 6 lanes appeared to be blocked by shitheads driving side-by-side all doing roughly the same speed. There was no rhyme or reason to it. There was nothing similar about the drivers to make me think they were intentionally working together to screw us all. There was just a dazed, hazy look on their faces and a general slowness about them that said "Zombies."
By this point, the humidity and frustration of dealing with a pack of elderly asshats was beginning to get to me. I went all the way over the far left lane, the passing lane, and began applying subtle pressure on the zombie blocking that lane, squeezing between him and the zombie who had been next to him just as he crept barely far enough ahead to make room for me to fit. And I do mean 'barely.' There wasn't room for a bird to fly between either bumper as I moved around them. But knowing Zombie Drivers as I do, I knew that if I hesitated for even an instant, the car to my right would instinctively creep forward and block me from getting over, maintaining the 6-lane rolling roadblock and causing me to roll down my passenger side window and communicate to him my feelings on the matter using sign language and a little creative shouting. I managed to avoid all of this and fly on ahead of them.
As I pulled away from the Zombies and instantly encountered more oddly angry drivers, the pattern began to come clear in my mind. Everyone on the road here today, in this unexpected heat and humidity, is RAGING. People aren't just a little bit pissy. People aren't in a daze. People are furious. Some are handling it by doing exactly the speed limit and refusing to budge an inch. Some are going well below the speed limit in the passing lane, on the interstate, enjoying the anger they're causing in the drivers around them. Some are running up the tail of the car in front of them and threatening to kill anyone who doesn't get out of their way. Some are passing on the shoulders.
But it is EVERY SINGLE DRIVER.
I was relieved by the time I got to work. It's Monday and work is the last place I thought I wanted to be. But traffic was so bad that I was actually glad to reach the parking lot alive. I was pretty pissed off by the time I got there. So I sat in my car with the radio on letting my blood pressure drop for a few minutes before turning off the engine and walking inside.
Once at my desk I was immediately greeted by an error message from Microsoft telling me that Excel had crashed. My browser had crashed long ago and was nowhere to be seen. The CPU was jacked up even though I hadn't started working yet. Yep, it's Monday. Fucking Microsoft.
Arrrrrrgh MICROSOFT!
And now for a fun video I stole from the Reluctant Optimist, who stole it from TheoGeo:
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