What type of driver are you? Pt. 2 and Some Driving Tips

So here we go. More driver profiles. As I stated in my last post, these profiles are here for your benefit, whether you fit one or just want to be a more aware driver, these descriptions are like you road map for driving...but not like the road map you use for driving, but rather a road map, used, for the action of driving.

So without further harumph, here are more driver types:

3. The Very Important Businessman


Sphere of Awareness: limited to his cellphone or headset, and the initial 10 feet in front of his car.
Chance of Encounter: Very high
Average speed: Obscenely fast
Driving style: Reckless and dangerous

Description:The Very Important Businessman, due primarily to his high rate of speed, is a very hostile creature. They usually drive expensive German vehicles or fancy SUVs at velocities up to 200 miles an hour (in the Metric system that's 984.12 micrograms per cubical). The Very Important Businessman suffers from "Me Syndrome", a disease which convinces him that he's the only person that exists in the world. This flaw results in The Very Important Businessman devoting absolutely no attention to the safety of others or the effect his erratic driving may have on them. As far as he's concerned, all other vehicles are simply large metallic paperweights that are trying to slow him down and keep him from getting to the golf course for his scheduled tee time. Unfortunately, the only known cure for "Me Syndrome" is death (either yours or his). The Very Important Businessman has a short temper and likes to scream at cars around him, so next time you see one, insult the Republican party and watch the sparks fly!

4. Mr. Midlife Crisis

Sphere of Awareness: limited to anything shiny
Chances of Encounter: Below average
Average speed: Fast enough to make other drivers notice, but not too fast to be reckless
Driving style: Very safe

Description: While Mr. Mid-life Crisis may at first appear to belong the the species of The Very Important Businessman, a closer inspection will reveal distinct separations between the two. The most striking difference revolves around the tendency for Mr. Mid-life Crisis to own a convertible or some type of car which has a removable roof. While The Very Important Businessman may own a similar car, Mr. Mid-life Crisis will be the only one to actually have the roof off. Scientists believe this is because they want to feel the wind breeze through their newly-implanted hair, or perhaps let the sun tan their cosmetically-altered faces. Mr. Mid-life Crisis, due to his dramatically shrinking penis size and the realization that his life is a hollow shell of failure and wasted lies, has a tendency to overcompensate for his shortcomings by purchasing things which will make him look younger and more appealing to women who are attracted to embarrassingly stupid looking middle-aged men. You will often see them wearing brightly colored Polo shirts, khaki pants, and whatever sunglasses were recently featured on a "hip" action movie. Surveys have shown that over 87% of these people have customized license plates, the most popular ones reading:

1) 2fast4U
2) ZOOOOM
3) CYA

They are often seen traveling at high speeds from the local mall (where they bought a nine gallon jug of cologne). Although they do go very fast, they are often harmless, as they hate to cause damage to the vehicle they just spend half their life savings on (the other half spent on designer sunglasses). Women aged 18-30 may receive uncomforting looks from this species and should NEVER make eye contact, as this could result in the knowledge that a little Viagra-enhanced part of his body is rising to attention.

5. Little Miss White College Party Girl

Sphere of Awareness: Zilch
Chances of encounter: Can range from extremely high to rarely
Average speed: Unnecessarily fast
Driving style: Aggressively terrible

Description: Exposure to numerous alcohol-induced frat parties and Dave Matthew's Band concerts have left Little Miss White College Prettygirl with one of the smallest Spheres of Awareness possible, limited to whatever's happening in her severely damaged brain. Although this alone makes her very dangerous, the mere fact that she did not pay for her own car or auto insurance nearly doubles the aggressiveness of her driving. If she wrecks daddy's Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer into the side of a Gap, she can just go get a new one on her Visa Triple Platinum credit card. An effective technique to lure away Little Miss White College Prettygirl is to call up her cellphone claiming to be "Stacy" and asking why she's not at the important rush meeting. This will cause her vehicle to come to a screeching halt and immediately turn around, hopefully resulting in a tanker trailer full of Hydrocyanic acid to collide and dump its contents all over her tanning booth enhanced face (containing no more than 45% medical implants and cosmetic enhancements). Exercise extreme caution.


Hopefully this has been a help to you. Now, as an added bonus, here is a handy field guide to some helpful tips while driving:

• Never stop moving. Stopping is considered a sign of weakness and will allow the larger, more aggressive cars to gang up and bully you around. Your car should always be in motion. If, in some bizarre situation you cannot physically move forward at all, you should shift into reverse and slowly go backwards until there's enough room for you to inch forward again. If you cannot move backwards, you should flee from your vehicle and carjack somebody else in the other lane.
• Tailing people makes them go faster. If the dimwitted, idiotic waste of skin in front of you doesn't feel the pressing need to floor their accelerator in a school zone, it is your God-given right to get as close as humanly possible to their rear bumper. This will set off their car's "Go Faster Detector" and cause them to increase their speed by at least 30 miles an hour. If you want their Go Faster Detector to work even quicker, throw your arms in their air and say, "for God's sake, move it!"

• The horn is the most essential part of your vehicle. It lets everybody around you know that you do, in fact, have a functioning car horn which can sporadically emit loud, piercing noises. The horn should be used in the following cases:

You want somebody to speed up.
You want somebody to slow down.
You're angry.
You're happy.
You're alive.
You weren't sure if your horn was working.
The sky is blue (or any other color).

• Talking on your cellphone is strongly encouraged. You look "cool" if you're chatting away on your phone while changing radio stations, eating a sandwich, and playing a particularly heated game of Solitaire on your Palm Pilot. This makes you look like a veteran, experienced driver who just came back from competing in the Indy 500 or flying secret experimental government spaceships. People will remember you as being the ultimate commuter when they read about your charred, decapitated corpse in the next day's newspaper.

• People will understand if you're in a hurry. If you really need to get somewhere fast, it is perfectly acceptable to make a right hand turn from the left lane, drive through 50 consecutive stop signs, and cut off the busload of orphans who are on their way to church. Your Sphere of Awareness should be inversely proportional to the speed you're going; the faster you go, the less you should care about the people around you. Flashing your bright lights on and off repeatedly is the universal sign that you're in a hurry. It also means you're a real asshole.

• If you get in a car accident and your door is critically damaged, don't be afraid to replace it with a different colored door from another vehicleI. This shows the rest of the world that you are a rebel and are denouncing their fascist, materialistic values. If you are rear-ended, feel free to tie the trunk to your bumper with some rope you found wrapped around a bale of hay. If your windows are damaged or smashed in, replace them with garbage bags or lots of Saran Wrap. In the unfortunate chance your tire blows out, replace it with a spare and use it until it blows out. Then abandon the car alongside the highway.

That's all for today...stay safe on the road!


Peace Love and Understanding

What type of driver are you? Pt. 1

So, you're all grown up now, got your own set of wheels now. You're ready to hit the road, right? Wrong! You have no idea what kind of freaks could be out on the road! I have assembled a helpful guide so you can easily identify those cretins we call "our fellow humans" out on the road. Hopefully, once you learn about each group of people, you can either ID yourself as one of them (poor you), or you can become a more savvy driver. The choice is yours!

To start off, we have the very common

1. Homeboyz:

Sphere of Awareness: Miles, since they are always scoping the horizon for rival homeboyz, potential honeys to holler at, and anyone with a louder stereo than theirs.

Chances of Encounter: High

Speed: Either insanely far above or below the speed limit

Driving Style: Agressive

Description: There are four primary types of Homeboyz to be aware of: white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. Other groups, such as the Icelandic Homeboyz and the Norwegian Homeboy probably exist, but don't have such a strong presence. The Homeboyz can be easily spotted thanks to an early warning detection system known as "sticking your head outside the window." If you hear a faint, repetitious thumping noise, you can be almost sure that a Homeboy is somewhere within a 15 mile radius of your automobile. Homeboyz vehicles are notorious for going against the "traditional" vehicle cost structure (how the majority of the money invested in the vehicle is spent) which is as follows:

1) The car itself (most expensive)
2) Additional safety features
3) Burglar protection system

Instead, the cost structure for Homeboyz cars is as follows:

1) Stereo system
2) Tires
3) Spoiler / stick-on decals that display their car manufacturer's name in gigantic letters

The actual cost of the car ranks somewhere around 158th place, right below "crown-shaped air freshener". As a result, you will see many Homeboyz driving around in "souped up" (read as: "has car doors from a totally different vehicle") cars like stolen and recently impounded Hondas. Despite having an above average Sphere of Awareness, Homeboyz are usually reclined back in their seats to the point where the top of their forehead is well below the dashboard. Many scientists studying the habits of Homeboyz were at a loss to explain how they were able to see their surroundings through the metal and plastic of the car.
However, it has recently been discovered that Homeboyz have actually evolved to their driving style, featuring something dubbed a "Homeboy Periscope" which allows them to see the road in front of their car while being submerged up to five feet below the dashboard. If you encounter a Homeboy, do NOT under any circumstances look in its general direction, as the glare from all the chrome of the vehicle and the 10 cubic tons of imitation gold around their necks will instantly blind you.



2. Elderly Couple About to Die

Sphere of Awareness: Very Low
Chances of Encounter: Fairly high, especially on a Sunday afternoon
Speed: Dangerously low
Driving Style: Unpredictable and unstable
Description: These people simply drive as slow as they can on every highway or side street in America. They oftentimes will have their turn signal on for miles, never turning once. They seem to think that everyone around them is going too fast, and that they have somehow earned a right to do whatever they want because they have earned it. How you can you tell if you are one of these people or if the person in front of you is more than just a slow driver? Here, find out! They/you have one or more of the following:

Collection of foam hats on the back windshield
License plate holder which reads "World's Greatest Grandparents"
Bumper sticker that mentions either Jesus or the VFW
Car is the size of a large houseboat
Beanie Baby collection on back windshield


Luckily they are not very aggressive, although they do have a tendency to shift into other lanes with little to no warning. Scientists believe that not even the Elderly Couple is aware of when they're going to shift lanes; an unpredictable biological impulse is suddenly sent to the driver's brain and he immediately reacts by swerving to the right or left. No cure has been found for this disease yet, as the test subjects tend to keep dying.

I will have more tomorrow, and then more the day after that

Peace Love and Understanding

What the heck! More T-Shirts!!!

After that dynamic post about Dragon shirts, I figured I would discuss some other types of t-shirts that you may see people wearing in your everyday life.

To start we have the BRAND NAME SHIRT:


The common American brand shirt comes in a seemingly endless variety of breeds, from the austere Nike to the playfully wacky Billabong to the gravely endangered Gecko Hawaii and Co-ed Naked. Whether they represent athletic shoes, surf or skate equipment or are advertising nothing but themselves, brand shirts make a bold and simple statement: "I am willing to forfeit my identity to build the mindshare of a company."
Certainly, none of the wearers of these robust specimens don them with this explicit thought in mind, but rather have entrenched their spirits so deeply into their American habitat that such considerations are nothing more than reflex. Brand shirts are often worn for the purpose of "fitting in," or at least making sure people know that you have some interest in some area of society.... and they do an admirable job; since our conscious minds tune out thousands of corporate logos every day, brand shirts are the most effective urban camouflage imaginable.

Next, one that is near and dear to my heart, THE BAND SHIRT

An interesting subspecies of the brand shirt is the band shirt, which is essentially the same beast but offers a comfortable illusion of individuality. Often found scuttling around college campuses and record stores, the band shirt allows its wearer a hollow identification with an artist of his choice. Say for instance, that the wearer wants to make sure everyone knows that they are a "hippie." Well, in the event that they don't have any burlap smocks available, a simple Phish tour shirt will do the trick nicely.
The peacock-like plumage of the band shirt presents a gaudy social display in which the wearer attempts to attract notice; his desperate hope is that someone, hopefully of the opposite sex, will acknowledge his taste in music. In my case I am still waiting for a girl to notice my Medeski Martin and Wood shirt.When that happens, and it probably never will, the wearer will feel famous and noticed, as if he's actually a member of the band. Maybe someday, a member of the band will see the wearer out and about and will be filled with a sense of meaning, knowing that they indeed have a fan.

Next, we have the JESUS PARODY SHIRT

Much in the same way that Our Lord was tortured upon the cross, so too do these shirts torture a stupid pun within an inch of its life. This unfortunate creature warps a recognizable brand logo or pop-culture slogan into some "clever" slice of theology and seemingly arbitrary reference to Jesus. The result is a near meaningless jumble of slogans and awkwardly-placed crucifixes. Though it is a skilled mimic, the Jesus parody is born without a sense of humor: "The Da Vinci Code" becomes "The DiVine God." The Mountain Dew logo becomes (Jesus) MEANT TO DIE (for you), "The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe," which is already Christian to begin with, becomes "Jesus The Lion of Judah." The YooHoo chocolate drink logo is mauled into "(it was) You Who (he died for)." The Jesus parody shirt is a strange beast, and naturalists have yet to determine its purpose.

Providing some wackiness is the WEED PARODY SHIRT


The only thing lamer than thinking that warping pop-culture into Christian references is edgy, is thinking that warping pop-culture into WEED references is edgy. However, this bizarre creature of a shirt is seen fairly commonly in the wild, especially among loser high school students and people who didn't go to college and hang around the mall all day using the money they make working at that kiosk that sells air-brushed baseball caps and Hip=Hop Looney Tunes shirts to buy a Big Mac in the food court. And, although these shirts may be similar to the Jesus parody shirt, there are some subtle differences that set it apart.

First, they're about weed instead of Jesus. One would think this was an obvious difference, but even a skilled naturalist may have to stare at a distorted product logo for quite some time before he can tell what it's promoting. Second, despite the brain-dulling properties of the substance they advertise, weed parodies are always cleverer than Jesus parodies. They still rank at a level of cleverness slightly below sticking your index finger through the fly of your pants and wiggling it around like a little penis, but they're generally about twice as clever as their religious counterparts. Substituting "Fillabong" for "Billabong" is much more natural parody than replacing "MySpace" with "(Jesus died for) My Space (in heaven)."

Regardless, due to the demographic that wears them, weed shirts are way more lame overall than Jesus shirts.

The CLEVER SHIRT

Nothing is worse than posing as edgy except possibly for posing as smart. These shirts make the wearer do just that, featuring such delightful images as a picture of Shakespeare featuring the phrase: "prose before hos." Ohhh see what the shirt did? it made a clever joke for smart people! This shirt serves as a surrogate personality for the wearer, and serves up pre-chewed and spit out bits of jokes derived by the shirt's maufacturer.

Finally, the worst of all shirts, THE "I'M AN IDIOT" SHIRT, aka THE BLACK SHIRT WITH WHITE WRITING

A parasite of a shirt that infects the weak and stupid, the idiot shirt prays upon the insecurities of its master and compounds his internal idiocy into something far more vile and pathetic. Generally worn by those unfortunate souls who are so far gone as to think wearing a shirt that essentially says "I look like an idiot and I beg for your acknowledgement" is somehow a powerful statement of individuality, these shirts are a depressing reminder that some people are unwilling to make even the feeblest grab at dignity. "You laugh because I'm different," these wretched shirts say. "I laugh because you're all the same." Translated into human speech, the phrase reads: "you laugh because I look like an idiot. I laugh because I am an idiot." This past week, I saw not one, two or three, but FOUR different people wearing a shirt that said "Genius by birth, slacker by choice." I wish I could have ripped those shirts off their pasty, flabby bodies and strangled them with their own lame t-shirt, but then I remembered that the shirt itself was God's way of preventing these people from every having children, so I left it at that.



PEACE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING

Dragon Shirts and lots of them!

There comes a point in life when a friend (well hopefully not a good friend) or acquaintance approaches you wearing a garish silk shirt with a dragon design on it. This friend will then attempt to draw attention to said shirt, even though your attention is no doubt focused squarely on it already, and brag that he just bought it for $50 with the kind of naive pride that makes your skin crawl off your body and slither under a nearby rock to die. It is as if he expects his shirt to give you a massive fire-shooting dragon boner right then and there. In these dark moments you will undoubtedly be unable to feign enthusiasm, yet too cowardly to tell him how stupid the shirt looks. "Wow" or "that's an expensive shirt" are common diplomatic responses.

If you yourself are the unfortunate individual wearing said shirt, be it silk button-down or plain-T, I hold a great amount of pity for you. I would really like to sit down with you and see if I couldn't get a deep, insightful look into what would possess you to actually spend American money on such a product.

It seems to be widely accepted that dragon shirts are really lame, yet each year, literally dozens of people purchase these shirts for some inexplicable reason. In this post, I seek to discover why.


A Brief History of the Dragon Shirt:

Dragon shirts depict dragons, which are mythological beasts prevalent in the histories of a multitude of cultures. Dragons are more famous in Asian cultures, but let us not forget their role in European culture as well. Myths of brave knights slaying dragon still echo through time, causing feedback in the great sound system of history. Naturally these gigantic beasts were often brought to life in a variety of artistic mediums including outer-wear because, well, actual physical proof of their existence is quite vacant.
A thousand or so years later some jerk got the idea to put pictures of dragons on shirts, thus concluding our brief history of dragon shirts and bringing us to the contemporary era.

Today, overweight males with bad haircuts are the primary wearers of dragon shirts. Simple research into the field of dragon shirt sales will show you that these shirts are often sold in sizes XL, XXL, XXXL, and MCMXCVIII. There is also a disturbingly high correlation between dragon shirt ownership and novelty katana ownership. Whether there is a valid relationship has yet to be proven.

Why Would Someone Wear One?

The reasons as to why some people wear dragon shirts have been elusive to most researchers, however two broad characteristics define dragon shirt wearers: A complete lack of self-esteem, or a lethal abundance of self-esteem. In either case wearing dragon shirts only furthers the problem without coming close to helping it.


In summary, there is no known logical reason for anyone to wear a shirt with a dragon on it.

However, there have been a few very interesting statistics gathered: In 2008, the United States Census Bureau began asking residents questions about dragon shirt ownership. This is what they learned:

65% of dragon shirt wearers have ponytails.
49% have terminal neckbeards.
67% have been to an anime convention.
67% reported experiencing true happiness for the first time at an anime convention.
26% believe that they actually are a dragon on the inside.
12% own motorcycles and are over 50.
87% of people that own a dragon shirt own another dragon shirt.
100% of dragon shirt wearers are lame.

I hope this update has been informative and enlightening, perhaps making it easier for you to cope with a friend or loved one foolishly donning a dragon shirt. If you are wearing a dragon shirt while reading this, I plead with you to take it off and discard it immediately. I also plead with you to immediately put on another shirt, because chances are your bare chest is unpleasant to look at.