Worlds worst drivers

[HiTemp]

Visiting my daughter here in Maryland and I have never seen drivers like this. They make Boston and NYC drivers seem like amateurs. These drivers are even worse than taxi drivers in Egypt, and Egyptian cabbies are in a class all their own. Today on the way to check out downtown Annapolis virtually every driver around us doing 65 mph or better was less than 15 feet from the bumper of the car in front of it. Just one car having to stop suddenly and it would have caused a hundred car pileup. Absolute insanity!

And that doesn't even come close to the drivers in D.C. Holy cannoli, talk about suicidal. They change lanes with inches to spare, they might as well not even have directional signals because I didn't witness any in use. The rule for merging into flowing traffic seems to be if there is a gap between cars wider than the width of your car's tires, you're good to go so just hit the gas... someone will make a gap.

What this place needs is someone with a good heavy late fifties Buick with those famously massive iron bumpers to knock a few of these pinheads into the shoulders like bowling pins. No wonder the insurance rates are so high. Must be all the crab these folks eat around here

[Stetto, man...]

Societal mentalities can be read by observing the driving habits of some urban populations. I've been living rurally just long enough to fear for my life in any urban driving situation. Fargo, which only technically qualifies as a "city" by virtue of its population compared to the rest of ND, is made up largely of people who learned to drive behind the wheel of a sugarbeet truck. The high-production import of new dem voters by Lutheran Social Services from Somalia, Bosnia and Cambodia adds a nice bezerk unpredictability to traffic both in Fargo and other unsuspecting population centers in the region.

I'm fine where I am.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Wow, unless they develop some sort of transporter its looking like I am a recluse. I refuse to fly anymore, and now I won't be driving either apparently. I hate driving in heavy traffic anymore anyway. Using courtesy vs the rude attitudes in urban areas makes it nearly impossible to get around without a terminal case of road rage.

Besides, my arm gets tired at waving at everyone.

[zrct02]

When I'm in Houston, only one finger gets tired from waving.

[HiTemp]

This is one jacked up place.

I've been getting an education all week Aside from the maniacal driving there are many inexplicable phenomena to be discovered here The city of Baltimore has no "T" in itas I've come to learn. It has a "D"... Bal-deh-moor, that's how most say it The others call it something that sounds like "Bulmmore".

For a state with such restrictive gun laws there is hardly a retail shop or restaurant that doesn't sport a sign outside addressing weapons. No firearms allowed unless you're the po-po seems the most common. One BBQ place we stopped at actually had a sign inside that requested all firearms be checked in at the counter. Hehe yeah right, I'm sure all the local hoodlums swing by for some wings or ribs and turn over their "nines."

Speaking of weapons,I found where all the rimfire ammo is cached, Stetto. It's sitting on shelves in the Bass Pro at Arundel Mills. I can't find any 22mag at home but these guys have cases of it. Cases of 22LR in every common flavor except Federal. Stacks of green and yellow boxes of 22LR. Being a non resident and not having the required state issued okay to buy bullets, I could have none of it. They had the fullest ammo shelves I've ever seen. The sales person I talked to told me they always have full shelves because the laws are so strict even people who can legally buy it shy away from it My thinking is they prefer to defend themselves with an automobile rather than a firearm with the exception of the hoods in Baldimoor.

We went to the Inner Harbor in Baldimoor yesterday and there was one of these comic conventions going on in the convention hall across the street. There were folks dressed up as everything from ninja turtles to batman to anime comic characters Blue hair, pink hair, whatever it took Judging by the driving and the other cultural abnormalities around here, it seemed to fit right into place. I felt like I was walking around in one large living Star Wars bar scene

I can't wait to get home to some real civilization where there isn't a sign every two feet telling you what to do or what not to do (except drive safely).

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

What strikes me is after living like we do out here, and then go to places like that, (which I have never been to "Baldimor" or anywhere east of Kansas for that matter), is how they think nothing of the restrictive lifestyle they lead. My 1st tsate was going to LA many years ago, but even after Colorado turned blue, I notice when I go down there are signs everywhere about this ordinance or that, can't walk off side walks, can't ride or drive in places etc. and I am just astounded seeing that stuff that when I grew up there, it was a relatively free place to live.

Works both ways too I guess, I have on occasion when open carrying ran into to people out here who seeing it were either shocked and you could tell somewhat fearful, to one guy who was slightly ridiculing me by asking who I was going shoot. (he stopped conversing when I said, "Hopefully no body that isn't a threat"). But not just guns, it could be anything from dogs to what you drive. Once I was filling up with gas and I had 3 100 lb feed sacks on the back of my flatbed Ranger, and a guy with Virginia plates asked kind if incredulous if they allowed loads to not be strapped like that. I was thinking "What load?" and "Obviously this guy has never tried to move a full grain sack before." But I was polite and just said "yeah, unless it needs it."

The disparity of lifestyle between urban and rural is probably more striking than ever as the nanny state grows.

[Stetto, man...]

...And those will be the first to go when this government finally abandons them completely, either climbing gleefully aboard the cattle cars (under the watchful eye of Obama's "new" Americans), or in mass riots or being taken care of by the roaming gangs of destitute losers. Funny, they're also the ones bringing these times in, blissfully sniffing for unicorn farts...

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Wanting laws to stop the lawless, you would think some things are self evident, but what is evident is some people are insulated from perceptions and the consequence of choices made from them no matter how stupid.

[HiTemp]

Learned another tidbit today. Seems the area of Baldimoor that's right around the Stadium the Ravens play in and the area around Camden Yards where the Orioles play -and they are only a few blocks apart - is known as " chalk-off." This is apparently a reference to the chalk outlines placed around the bodies of murder victims. Certainly looks like a rough place in daytime, I can well imagine there is ample chalking off going on there after sunset.

Some locals even made reference to it when we were eating at a restaurant several blocks away. Our waiter mentioned one street that was a good one to avoid "unless yous wanna get chalked off." LMAO. Chalked off. What a phrase

On the way back out of nanny state tomorrow. Funny how in this state everyone is so paranoid over someone possibly being armed and less than half a days drive away people think you're suspicious if you ARENT armed.

I read many years ago how Maryland in their zeal to "protect the deer population" put hunting bans in effect and extremely limited seasons for deer when it was allowed The result was a boom in deer population with resulting crop destruction and many sick deer from poor diet and lack of predation. So they had to pay big bucks to contract hunters to thin them out. Yesterday's paper guess what's being discussed at the state level... Whether they can afford another deer kill contract to deal with the present overpopulation. DOH!!!! Not even ten years later same mistake made for same reasons by same gunophobes.

I'll be glad to be home

[HiTemp]

Back in civilization again. I pull in the driveway and my neighbor starts needling me about being on vacation same time as the Mighty O and his stand-up comic sidekick Joe. Pffft. They can have Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons. They can have Maryland too, for that matter.

Though that state is major league jacked up, I did meet many fine folks there, and it seemed odd to me that all of them hate the rules and regulations and nanny state BS. I asked, "Why don't you vote those people out?" They told me they try every election to do just that but the most votes are from the major metro areas like Baldimoor so they don't really get a say. Jeeze, our FL legislature just had to redraw the voting districts AGAIN because federal judges didn't like it that the districts proposed did exactly what Maryland does.

I guess in my travels and limited internet access I missed most of the story about the teenager in St. Louis getting shot by a cop. I see just now that Rev. Al is already on the scene so I plan to just watch and see whatever he says and believe the opposite. Rioting and looting out of control two days in a row... yet they wanted to FIRE the Police Chief in Sanford for merely suggesting they ought to consider that a possibility in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Never let a good double standard go to waste.

I'm sure this youngster was just walking along minding his own business and dreaming about going to college "for heating and air conditioning." The cop, surely thinking Rev. Al, Jesse, and Holder would never look his way, just jumped out the cruiser and mowed the kid down for daydreaming about college without a permit. That struggle in the squad car for the weapon... I'm sure we'll see Trayvon's ex-girlfriend on MSNBC 'splaining to the world how that din't mean a thang, how it's just how they roll in the 'hood.

It must be killing the media to not know the name or race of the officer who fired the shots. I'm sure there's more reporters out trying to ferret out those facts then the entire effort to break the Enigma code.

I also heard the crowd fired on a police helicopter - see, I told you helos were dangerous. Apparently the perpetrators used ineffective bullets instead of some kind of drone or balsa RC aircraft. Had they had the foresight to use a model airplane we'd be reading about the near fatal encounter and how the police helo barely managed to get back on the ground with it's tail rotor so badly mangled by all that sticks and glue.

Chalk this up as another notch in the belt of the Mighty O's legacy. Moving the no-fly zone from Iraq to St. Louis. What an achievement!

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Heheh, cause of crash - RC residue in the tail rotor.

I still am just baffled how burning cars and and stealing stuff is "justice".

[HiTemp]

Aug 12, 2014 18:35:26 GMT -7 Grug - American Neanderthal said:

I still am just baffled how burning cars and and stealing stuff is "justice".

Well because de Man has it in for all people of a certain race. Start with that as the basic assumption and it all folds together. de Man hates a particular race so they - to use the father's words - "execute" an unarmed yute. See, he had no gun therefore he wasn't armed. Don't be fooled by thinking two guys shoving a cop back into his patrol car is any form of armed confrontation. That was "just pushin' an shovin'" and even though said pushing and shoving would, in most reasonable folks' mind, easily cause an officer to lose control of his weapon and thus become one of those 'stistics, you'll never find these situations dissected to that level or even explored at all. We're not allowed to consider a possible scenario ten seconds AFTER the yute's actions if left unchecked, no, we're forced to deal with only the frozen frame of time just before the shot left the chamber. We have to work with who was armed THEN, not who might have been armed (and subsequently chalked off) had no shot taken place.

Based on that, there is no possible way to see anything in it BUT injustice. It's like these fools on YouTube Cop chase videos.. they drive through streets with reckless abandon, speeds in excess of 100mph, they cause widespread destruction until finally they are captured and dragged kicking and fighting from what's left of their car then dog-piled by several beefy cops until restrained. Then they want to talk about their fat lip or dog bites on their ass and legs like it was done to an innocent bystander rather than some hoodlum who only luck saved from being a vehicular mass murderer.

So, we have a predisposition to hate, responsive actions viewed through a narrow slice of time and portrayed as initial aggression rather than defensive or corrective, thus it's open season on cops and everyone else in society who has failed to stop the hate-filled cops from their time-slice moment of evil. It's just not fair what they do, so any stupid thing (looting, burning, destroying) is justified as a response because they had something done to them first. Thus no questions are allowed such as what would have happened had said yute politely cooperated with the cop? No, that's trying to cloud the issue with facts. Never get in the way of potential victim-hood; it pays too well. So, dis my peeps, I destroy your store and take home a TV set. Same thing every time this happens, be it in St Louis or in LA with the Watts riots. It's people who know better but elect to choose evil and try to justify it because of an act that hasn't even been investigated. Nothing more than opportunity for criminals and another BS reason to try and sell it as "normal."

But wait you say... they're destroying their own neighborhood. Yep. And that will make their plight even worse, that's why you're supposed to overlook it because now it's even more unequal and more unfair and even greater justification for even more riots and looting.

I'm not even sure if I understood what I just wrote.

At my former job I had a conversation with a coworker one day about a recent string of people stealing from local supermarkets. I'm not talking about a can of soup, I'm talking whole chickens, steaks, liquor, and more. My coworker said he didn't see anything wrong with it because they were hungry. I asked why it would be such a big burden for them to go to the local food bank and ask for some help, maybe go to one of the dozens of local churches with food pantries and programs to help people who can't buy food. His answer was, "well they don't have a car, how they going to get there?" I said "Why not steal a car? They don't have one, they need one, so it must be okay for them to steal one since they can justly steal a steak only because they don't have one of those. It should be okay to steal a bus or a taxi too because they don't have one and need one. I listened to him try to justify stealing food for about 3 more minutes when I thought my head would explode from all the nonsense I was hearing. While he went into the office to use the restroom I took his cable reel out of his truck and put it in mine. Hours later he calls me and asks if I have a cable reel... sure do. He says he must have misplaced one so he's going to drive over and borrow mine. When he got there I handed him his cable reel and he just looked at it and said, "That's mine... where'd you get it?" I said I stole it from you because I didn't have one and felt I needed one. But now you need it so I'm returning it but I'll probably steal it again if I need one and don't have one. Stealing is okay if you don't have something but you need it. Didn't you tell me that this morning?

He was maximum displeased and the entire point was lost to him. Stealing is fine when it's someone else's stuff, but never his stuff.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

And that is exactly what is wrong with our culture and society, no one walks in the shoes of the people they want to force their values on, nor have any real consistency. It really does come from the fact that we are not taught what rights actually are or the nature of property. You say 'rights' and people get an image of MLK, in which all context is seen against, you say 'property' and the get an image of the rich guy on monopoly, and that's as far as they see. No real respecvt for rights or property, unless its theirs of course, and even then questionable.

In fact in the urban poverty culture respect has been confused with fear.

[HiTemp]

It strikes me as rather odd that the same political group who insists all aspects of religion be removed from the public square are the first ones whining when a supposed prayer vigil is forcibly ended by tear gas and flash grenades. Why aren't they demanding no free exercise of religion in these particular cases, yet call for the immediate cessation of it when they don't like it? Double standard, maybe?

Sharpton et al are calling for the release of the officer's name. I want to know why? What exactly is that information going to do for anyone except make that officer and his family instantly the target of threats? Is it so we can then know the RACE of the officer, then rest on more solid ground that this is purely about racism, or is it just an intimidation tactic designed to make police fear making their families targets in any future exercise of their job?

I want some names too. I want the names of the people who actually picked up the phone and called Sharpton to come down there. I want the names of the persons who called Sharpton into his other forays into past cases where he painted a picture for everyone that he knew full well wasn't accurate and yet continued floating his lies until the facts caught up with him. At least the crowd in Ferguson gets it; it's being reported today that the crowd was pretty underwhelmed with Sharpton. There are reports that he was confronted (they used the term "heckled") with comments like "You (Sharpton) and Obama haven't changed a thing. F y'all!" Ahh, it only took 40 years, but some are beginning to see the light. If all these efforts over all these years, all this tax money spent on programs, were supposed to erase/reduce/eliminate/alleviate racism, then how come no one can detect those changes? 'Bout time some woke up to this reality. The answer is simple; it's only been a series of ploys designed only to make people believe group X is fighting for them, while group Y is fighting against them. We've know that since the first programs were deemed failures in the late 60s- early 70s. But as a political tool it seems to work like a champ. Give people a choice between real equality and an Obamaphone and promises of special rights and considerations designed to bridge the equality gap and most will choose option #2. The truth of it is they don't really want equality because that entails having to stand on your own and be accountable for your own successes and failures.

To me it's like these late-teen early twenty kids who are so into the bizarro scene where they get dozens of facial piercings and have things inserted under their skin like devil horns, then complain they can't seem to find meaningful employment anywhere. Well, DUUHHH, ya' think? Follow path A, you fail. Follow path B, you have some chance of success if you work hard. Oh, I'm going down A then I'll claim the world is not fair to me when I fail to achieve the same results as B. While my peers are taking out student loans and tapping their parent's savings, studying to learn their area of expertise, and I'm out partying and getting bones stuck through my nose and washers from a Case tractor inserted into my earlobes, I should still have equal expectations of somewhat similar outcomes and near equality in pay and lifestyle. That seems to be the fantasy many young folks carry into adulthood. It's not hard work and persistence that rewards, but only some appeal on social media for someone else to step in with a magic quick-fix and make all your bad decisions in life simply vanish.

They expect Darwinism to work everywhere except in their own case.

It will be interesting to see what comes from this investigation in Ferguson. My guess is that if the officer was totally in the wrong, the feds are going to drop that bomb within a week because it isn't going to take that long to discover that if it is the case. It's going to take longer to say he was following procedures and acting as he should have because they're going to have to explain the why behind every single command, response, and every single shot, and they will have to have every single stone uncovered ahead of time for anyone to believe it, particularly those living in Ferguson. I have serious doubts many there will accept it even if it is the truth, just as all those who called for justice refused to accept said justice when the jury said Zimmerman was innocent. They didn't want justice, really. What they wanted was a lynch mob painted with the colors of a legal justice system so they could believe they were not engaging in the very same acts everyone condemns the KKK for.

Murder and vigilantism do not suddenly become okay just because one paints them the same shade as the US justice system. We should have learned that lesson from Nazi Germany when we all got to see what murder, racism, and elimination of undesirables looks like when painted with the color of official government acts.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

Heh, yeah employers tend to not want to be represented to the public as circus freaks or gang members so they tend not to hire them. Its amazing how basic reasoning is absent in life.

Having said that, my daughter has pink hair right now. I told her not to do that kind of stuff and why, but she has to find her own way. I guess she is too much like me and too stubborn to learn but from school of hard knocks PHDs.

[HiTemp]

Ahhh the pink hair thing ain't too bad, really. Lot better than these facial piercings where kids have enough tackle inserted that they look like they could be tied up at a pier somewhere during a hurricane and they'd never move.

I actually had pink hair once myself... but it wasn't sought, it was the result of trying to paint a tiny bathroom and getting my noggin too close to the freshly painted wall. Don't be too concerned about it; the fad wears off and they find other more natural colors to work with.

[Grug - American Neanderthal]

I forgot to mention the nose stud, though it could be worse. She is starting to see how she is treated different, and not in a good way at times. If she is looking for approval, she is finding that being overtly unique isn't always the way to get that.

But I have to ask, you had to paint a bathroom pink? Were you kidnapped and forced at gunpoint by some insane person dressed as a clown?

[Stetto, man...]

I have painted two bedrooms pink in my career, both my daughter's, and one "painted lady" in various shades of pink. We dubbed it "Barbies House". The name stuck. After ten years the neighbor kids still knock on the door looking for her...

[HiTemp]

For a while I was doing a little side work for this guy who managed a bunch of properties. Everything from mobile homes to 5,500 sq ft homes. He had this one home where people just moved out of it and it needed quite a bit of work; plumbing fixtures replaced, some new moldings/door casings, a carpet replaced, and some painting. That house had a tiny bathroom and an OLD sink that had a really high back to it, almost like you find on some laundry or shop sinks. Normally when I'd paint a room with something like that I'd take it off the wall, paint, and then remount it. In this case he wouldn't allow me to do that and told me to just paint around it. Ooookay!

So while I was under the sink trying to get it all painted, reaching around taped-off piping and up under that built-in backsplash thing, I was twisted into a human pretzel and somewhere in there I guess my noggin came into contact with the paint - more than once. There was no mirror in there, so I had no idea I'd hit it with my hair. I thought it was my sleeve making all those swirlies on the wall. It wasn't until I got home and walked into my living room - that suddenly erupted into hysterical laughter - that I realized something was wrong. One wall in my living room is complete mirror with a lattice thing over it, and I saw my hair was pink-tipped and standing somewhat upright like a spiky thing. And of course the paint was completely dried by then and not very easy to get out. Scissors were involved, put it that way.

I have an old battle-worn ball cap that's now de rigueur whenever I paint anything. I guess if there's a positive note to the whole episode it's that it happened before the era of people taking cell phone pics and posting every little thing on social media. Otherwise my pink-highlighted dome photo might be up there in a simple Google search for "pink head" or "moron."

[HiTemp]

Aug 16, 2014 5:39:51 GMT -7 Grug - American Neanderthal said:

I forgot to mention the nose stud...

Now those things I truly feel are useless. If I was ever going to get something like that I would get something with about 1/4" of rare-earth magnet on the outside of it. I'm forever putting down my tape measure and losing track of where I put it, and a nice strong magnet on the side of my beak would be a perfect place to stick the tape while I make the cut on a board. Right there when you need it again.

I always wondered what people with a nose piercing do when they sneeze? Do they attempt to block effluent from escaping the third smaller nostril or do they simply rely on the stud to block or deflect any emissions? Do these studs come in various pressure ratings, meaning you might be able to pick up a 12-psi model cheap whereas you'll be paying top dollar for one with a quality bushing rated for, say, 150 psi?

Ah, the things a mind will ponder!