I am driving east on Calder today and stopped for the light at Lucas. I engaged my signal for a right turn, ready to make a right on red. This, Yuppie, for lack of a better description, stopped in the southbound lane on Lucas. He made about a half turn into the westbound lane on Lucas, adjacent to me, then straightened up and drove south, passing in front of me. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?
The driver — in an SUV — didn’t signal when he was about to turn left. I mouthed some words like “WTF” with a look of puzzlement on my face because he narrowly missed hitting my work car. The guy couldn’t have heard me, of course, since our windows were up. More importantly, he couldn’t hear me because HE WAS TALKING ON HIS FREAKING CELL PHONE!
Adding insult with no physical injury, the guy FLIPPED ME OFF!
Talk about your gall. There it was. As the departed Richard Pryor might have said: “All unmitigated and s**t.”
Think about this.
The guy was talking on his cell phone and shoots me the finger with the hand that was on the steering wheel. How is that for driver agility?
I didn’t do anything wrong except staying put as one obeying traffic laws might do.
It isn’t like I flipped him off. I just kept my comments to myself.
Yet, Mr. Big Shot unleashes his anger toward me.
It leaves me stunned, astonished, dumbfounded, dumbstruck, flabbergasted, stupefied and so forth.
Here in the “wide open spaces” of Texas is where one finds everything is bigger — excepting intelligence of governors — and that includes larger trucks.
Texans love their big trucks with their big tires and big cargo beds. Drivers of those big ol’ Texas trucks also pay big ol’ dollars for them and their monstrous tires. Let’s look at what Texans really like, both big and luxurious. Edmunds shows the 2012 Ford F-450 Super Duty King Ranch (the latter of course refers to the South Texas ranch spanning five counties and one of the world’s largest) is 263 inches of pick-em-up with a 6.7 Liter engine, V8, 800 horse, with a leather steering wheel, leather trim on the center console and a leather toilet in the back seat right next to a shower with leather curtains. Well those last items I made up, but this 4 x 4 ought to have those home comforts given its invoice price of $63,385. Throw in some Kevlar all-terrain tires and assorted other options and you might walk away for $70,000 You can buy a nice little starter home for that sum in some places.
A Space Hog at work today at Gateway Shopping Center in Beaumont
Despite how huge everything is in Texas, most parking lots are the same size you see at every other super-duper market, or mall or big box store everywhere else in the U.S. of A. There are some places which mark areas for compact cars only. Yet, you still see people in a big truck or Hummer parked in those spaces, usually taking up enough room for three Corollas.
I have nothing against big trucks or SUVs. I have friends and relatives which drive them. I do have a problem with “space hogs.”
Perhaps it is the vastness of Texas that gives some in our state to park however the hell they please. Taking up more than one space, which they call “double parking” in some places, is more of a big deal in big cities and in areas with a high density of population.
In New York the fine is as much as $65 for:
“Standing or parking a vehicle beyond markings on the curb or the pavement of a street which marks a parking space, except when a Vehicle is too large to fit in that “marked” parking space. Where a vehicle is too large, it shall be parked with its front bumper at the front of the space and the rear bumper extending as little as possible into the next space.”
As for me, I tend to look at it in more socio-psychological terms. And when I start talking stuff like that, it can be just as annoying as someone slicing your tires.
Sorting out the social aspects are pretty easy. I’ve already alluded to a couple of the issues. The vast space that is, or rather was, Texas gives some the impression that we’ve got plenty of space so it doesn’t matter how one parks. Some folks tend to associate economical cars with environmentalism and get tired of hearing how the atmosphere is getting dirtied-up. So they drive big gas-guzzlers and park however the hell they want as a statement. Then, others see the awesomely big luxurious truck which costs a pretty penny as a status symbol. It’s funny though, you don’t see a lot of people driving a BMW Series 6 convertible, which can set you back around $90,500, with the need to park in more than one space although you may see said Beemer far away from the rest of the cars with two empty spaces surrounding it.
I am sure the shrinks can come up with many psychological reasons why people manifest their anti-social tendencies in the form of a space hog. Maybe they didn’t get enough attention as a kid. They were picked on perhaps. Maybe they had toilet training issues. Maybe they were just a**holes as kids and grew into adult a**holes.
Who knows?
It really doesn’t matter much what I or anyone else says because words alone will not have affect a space hog. No, in their case, action speaks louder than words. I never did like very much the space hog, but I like it even less now that I am more or less disabled from my ruptured disks. I don’t have a disabled placard, not yet at least, because I can still walk for a little ways without feeling like someone stuck a pitchfork in my lower back. I don’t advocate vandalism, but I have left notes on people’s cars chiding them and perhaps trying to embarrass these space hogs a bit. I think businesses should also do more to discourage such double parking, but I doubt many will since they are more worried about the almighty dollar.
About the best one can hope for is a little karma will come the way of the space hog. Perhaps that second space in which the violator parked their big honkin’ truck will have some kind of debris that pokes right through their $300 tire. I admit it would have to be a large and sharp piece of junk. One can always hope.
It was, sort of, by accident that I stayed at a hotel on Saturday that was just a block or two from Reliant Stadium in Houston. That was where our Texas Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry was holding a semi-large prayer meeting. I say semi-large, the semi-official draw to the free event at the Houston Texans football home was about 30,000. That is about 15,000 less than Joel Osteen preaches to in person at the Lakewood Church at what was once known as “The Summit” and “Compaq Center” which is, I am guessing, about 4 miles to the northeast as the crow — or white dove– flies. I must point out as well that I once saw the Grateful Dead in concert in The Summit. It was during a break to buy a very overpriced beer during that concert that the sweet lady selling me the brew told me out of nowhere: “You don’t look like you’d listen to the Grateful Dead. You look more like a Merle Haggard fan.” Well, I told the sweet lady, I am indeed a big Merle fan. In fact, I once helped Merle get out of jail after he got tanked up on Lone Star Drafts and some unknown black tablets in a bar up in Cut and Shoot, in Montgomery County or Liberty County or wherever, and he shot out every light bulb in the place and then went to shooting out car lights along Highway 105. If you see a crease on the Cut and Shoot city limit sign, just about halfway between the city sign and a smaller sign pointing out that Cut and Shoot is “a NRA All-American City” that was where Merle missed when I took the Colt .45 from his speeding hands just after he fired his last shot.
Now, everything I wrote after I wrote “I am indeed a big Merle fan.” is a lie although I did stop once at a bar in Cut and Shoot with my good friend, now gone for more than a decade, Waldo.
I am getting off track here, but needless to say, Rick Perry didn’t fill up Reliant Stadium with his bunch of shady preachers. I did walk down to the Metro rail stop just outside Reliant to catch a train. When I returned to Reliant and the old fading Astrodome from visiting the Houston Fire Museum and a very cool eatery called Natachee’s Supper and Punch, a fellow wearing a bunch of pins and ribbons, told me to “come on.” He meant for me to come with to the prayer meeting and this fellow added: “I was down at 9/11.” I guess he saw my El Paso Fire Department cap that my friend Rene gave me. I was down at Gee Dubya’s Ranch entrance outside of Crawford on 9/11 talking to some nervous Texas State Troopers. I don’t really know if homeboy who was going to the prayer meeting really had been at the World Trade Center or there abouts on 9/11. I have spent a lot of time around present and former military folks, both while serving in the Navy and as a writer who covered the military and veterans. If I was going to bet with myself, and I would probably lose at that, I’d have to wager that the fellow might have been at the trade center in his mind on 9/11. I remember getting back to the office that terrible morning after returning from the “Prairie Chapel Ranch” only to discover more than 300 New York and New Jersey firefighters were likely dead at Ground Zero. I couldn’t grasp that number because I once worked for a small fire department with only four stations, at the time, and a total of about 60 personnel.
I bring up all this malarkey about lies and the truth and the good truth and the bad truth and the ugly lies and the ugly truth. And so forth, Kurt Vonnegut!
What Rick Perry was trying to do leading a prayer meeting at the Reliant Stadium is beyond me. I think he’s got a bad case of the “cutes.” He is trying to be the cutest presidential candidate what’s never yet run. “Oh I got to me drag this thing out and who knows, I might follow the footsteps of that reprobate George Bush? Eeeeeee. Well, that isn’t how Perry talks. But it should be.”
I have nothing against prayer. And Ricky Boy was not doing his prayer meeting on behalf of the Texas State government. Still, we don’t know all the details as to who is paying for his security and whether or not those Houston police officers or Harris County deputy sheriffs who were out there on Fannin or just off the South Loop directing traffic. But we do know from what Perry and his preachers said, that they were talking up a storm about our government, our national government.
Furthermore, I can’t look into Rick Perry’s heart, into his soul, and see how much of his talking was about his own spirituality and how much was motivated to bring in the “Holy Rollers” who might, at the very least, help Perry get enough support for the GOP vice presidential candidate. I can’t see into Rick’s soul just as I can’t look into “Ground Zero’s” heart.
Are people jivin’ us? Are they telling us little white half-thruths? Beats me. I could have followed Ground Zero into the “Conniption” or whatever Perry called his thing. But I walked on down to the hotel and rested my weary body.
I have talked face-to-face with Rick Perry on several occasions. Each time I looked at him, and asked him a question, it seemed as if I could look right through him. Beyond that hair, beyond that weathered face and beyond that Texas A & M cheerleader “good looks” — I probably should have erased that — I have seen nothing but transparency. I am not talking about transparency as in an open book, I am talking about transparent as nobody’s home.
That is what I see in our coy boy governor who, in our Texas vulgar vernacular, I wish would s**t or get off the pot. Run for president. Run for dog catcher. Run for the border. Are you telling us the truth Ricky Boy? Would you know the truth if it slapped you in the face? I don’t know. I do know that if somehow Rick Perry, as close to nothing as anyone I have ever known, ends up being sworn in as president of these U.S. of A., then, I am going to need a change in scenery. A change in nationality.
First, it’s raining, but just a little bit. Just a little bit here and there and a lot there and here. That’s the way things go down here on the coast in the summertime, when as Mungo Jerry sang: “… and the weather is high, you can stretch right up and touch the sky.” Then, something, something about having women on your mind. It’s probably because of those little bikinis and thongs. Oh my goodness. Some folks get weirded out about a 55-year-old man talking about things like bikinis and thongs. Grow the f**k up, Junior!
But it looks like we will just get rains in fits and spurts like always until that tropical storm comes along and sits off the coast for a few days. We can only wish. The fits and spurts have made some progress here on the Upper Texas Coast though. We’ve had some pretty significant downpours. I’m sure you are interested in our weather here. Sorry, I’ve tried writing about other matters and came up short.
An editorial in The Wall Street Journal, one of the News Corp properties in the U.S. along with Fox “Faux” News, says the liberal media and critics of Murdoch have just been piling on. When all else fails, blame it on the liberal media. Personally, it wouldn’t hurt me one iota to see Fox News tank. I have said and I continue to say that Fox News is nothing more than a propaganda tool for the right wing. And yes, I include their news operation, especially their news operation. They should know better.
Finally, here is hoping a new, good and fair collective bargaining agreement gets approved by the NFL players. Yeah, the players make millions. They deserve it for a four or five year career that can leave them crippled for life with traumatic arthritis and brain damage. It’s their fault though, right? Well, yes, or their parents or coaches or teachers or school board or television or Wheaties or the Punt, Pass and Kick program or the late Dandy Don Meredith. They shouted out, “who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me,” ah “Sympathy For The Devil” a Rolling Stones classic. I can still see Mick Jagger way down there on the floor of the Louisiana Superdome singing/shouting “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name … ” It’s a great song. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Have a good rest of the day.
Nothing. That is after certain former Capital One customers get reamed by the credit card company whose TV commercial Vikings ask just that question.
That is because the company is searching its books for debt and telling some former customers that they still owe for charged off credit card debt, some of which is at least a decade old. Like everyone else seems to do, Cap One is blaming it all on the government. Ah, yes the big boogyman Uncle Sam, what a mean ol’ cus our uncle.
