Why.

“I’m going to give you something to cry about.” I can’t count the number of times that I heard this statement being shrieked in the middle of a public venue when I was a kid. I have to admit that I don’t recall my mother ever uttering that phrase, she was too busy screaming at the top of her lungs that she was going to scream, but I remember seeing kids in the market or whatever crying and their mother threatening to give them something to cry about. I didn’t ever really feel particularly bad for the kid as I figured he must be some sort of monster if his mother was screaming that instead of just screaming. I couldn’t really relate.

But as an adult I can relate to that sort of hostility that was displayed by the screaming parent. I feel a similar sentiment towards people that needlessly have a handicapped decal hanging from their rearview mirror.

I know quite a few people that actually need these handicapped designations on their vehicle; they have a genuine reason to need to use one of the spaces near the front door, for example, they have an artifical leg or the fact that the wheelchair ramp is very hard to open when you’re wedged between an empty shopping cart corral and a lightpost. But if appearances mean anything, the handicapped sticker/badge has become a status symbol in these parts, where the only handicap exhibited by the driver is:

1. They completely lack parking skills
2. They’re lazy
3. They have an unfortunate sense of entitlement (the American way!)
4. All of the above

This afternoon I saw a bright blue, 1980s vintage, unnecessarily big pickup truck zoom into the handicapped spot in front of the Dollar Tree at an unusually high rate of speed. The driver, a woman, parked at a 30 degree diagonal to the lines denoting the space. Because of this, a state owned wheelchair capable van had to park further down the lot next to the aforementioned cart corral. The big truck had a handicapped sticker dangling from the mirror; I noticed then when the woman RAN from the truck to the front door of the store.

Unfortunate.

Once the wheelchair van was unloaded of it’s two passengers, both in wheelchairs, the driver calmly walked behind them as the folks in the wheelchair wheeled themselves to the same store.

The fault of this idiocy really does belong to the town halls or whatever layer of red tape is responsible for giving out these handicapped badges that hang from the mirror. “Give me a box of donuts, Gertrude, and I’ll give you a handicapped sticker so you can park closer to the donut shop.”

You wouldn’t ever see one of these people spring for the paperwork necessary to get an actual DMV-issued handicapped designated license plate. Too much work and effort required with the need to prove that you’re indeed handicapped.

It would cut into their entitlement time.

When you work with a large group of people, there is seldom going to be complete agreement when it comes to politics. Our office is no different from the norm. The office as a whole leans conservatively (typical Upstate New York) but it’s nothing radical or extreme. Those that are very right wing are countered by those on the opposite side of the scale.

However, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is this: Sarah Palin is not going to be the next president of the United States. Folks either find her amusing or a complete mess and they find her as a good source of a chuckle but no one takes her seriously.

I have to admit I was kind of happy to hear that.

Last night as I was driving home from work I passed through the small village area before getting out to the much preferable countryside. The village has five traffic lights that I have to pass through. The lights are mostly unnecessary outside of the traditional traffic hours, the usual time that folks are driving to and from work.

I sat at the first light with two vehicles in front of me. The vehicle closest to the light was a red, mundane vehicle. The driver looked to be a young girl. Behind her was a man around my age driving a pickup truck. Pickup trucks are popular in this area. The truck was signaling that he wanted to make a right turn.

After about 15 or so seconds at the light, the truck pulled into the left lane and made a right turn AROUND the vehicle in front of him. He flipped off the driver on his way around her. She looked aghast. It was then that I noticed that she was also making a right turn, as indicated by her blinking directional lamp. The man was obviously pissed because the woman was just sitting at the red light instead of making a perfectly allowed and legal right turn on red.

New York State (outside of the city of New York) has allowed legal right turns on red since the early 1970s. I’m going strictly by memory, but I believe it was 1974 when this law was passed. Technically, you can also make a left turn on red, as long as you are going from a one way street to another one way street. As Earl is quick to remind me, one is not obligated to turn right on red but you are allowed to turn on red.

Personally, I think if you are incapable of handling a right turn on red then you should be relieved of your driver’s license, because it isn’t actually brain surgery to figure out how to turn right on red. It works just like a stop sign. You stop, see that there is nothing coming, and then you make a right hand turn and continue on your merry way. The reason this law was enacted so many years ago was because it kept traffic moving freely and decreased wait times at traffic signals for the traffic that wasn’t turning right.

The lack of turning right on red has become a huge pet peeve of mine. Again, Earl reminds me that no one is obligated to turn right on red. There are people that have printed bumper stickers up that say “I CHOOSE not to turn right on red”. I’d like to smack them. Hard. I guess I have a violent streak.

I overheard a mother telling her friend that she wasn’t letting the teen in her house (who presumably had a learner’s permit) turn right on red. “It’s too risky.” This is bad. It is when these young drivers have their learner’s permit that they are learning driving habits that are going to stick with them the rest of their lives. If they don’t turn right on red now, and don’t properly learn how to turn right on red, they’re never going to turn right on red. And then they’re going to clog the roads.

The City of New York doesn’t permit right on red because it’s too damn crowded. There’s pedestrians and all that. The drivers claim they can’t see. The folks that live in the City of New York need their nanny laws to tell them what to do and how to keep safe. The right on red law is, thankfully, something that was still considered for the rest of the state, we are allowed to be freethinkers up here. At least when it comes to right on red. The reason that I mention this is because over the past several years numerous folks from the five boroughs have been migrating northward to get some fresh country air. They are easily identified by (among other means) the different inspection stickers on their car windows. They never turn right on red. They clog up the streets. If it’s good enough for da city, it’s good enough for the world. I don’t like them.

One thing about right on red that baffles me, though, is that the younger drivers are interpreting the sign that indicates a “right turn only” (the arrow with the word ONLY under it) as “you can only turn right when the light is green.” The two concepts are completely unrelated but then again, driving and texting at the same time should be completely unrelated and not done in tandem as well, and we know how well that is turning out.

So as we continue to dumb down society by making mundane chores seem scary with nanny laws, we are also apparently reducing the average IQ.

The next time I choose to rant about something traffic related, we’ll discuss the “KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS” concept that is completely ignored on America’s freeways.

The weather folks predicted rain today. There would be lots of rain with highs in the upper 30s/low 40s. Murky but manageable for a Monday.

It is 11:30 and 2 1/2 inches of snow has fallen since I arrived at work at 07:45. Yay for meteorological accuracy.

I have decided that I must be stupid. Living in this part of the world gives us snow when many Americans are talking about the wonders of spring, gives us the opportunity to pay some of the highest taxes in the country, let’s us listen to politicians croak on and on about how great they are in an accent that doesn’t apply to anyone north of Westchester and gives us the dignity of living in an area known as the Rust Belt.

Stupidity.

I dream of desert sand, warm winds and dry air. I’d be downright giddy over a mobile home that has an adjacent storm cellar. I don’t care if I live in a shack the size of an outhouse. If I’m warm, have some sort of job (even though I have to ask “if I want fries with that”) and have my loved ones still loving me, I’m good.

I don’t need Park Avenue. I’ll settle for the Haney place.

Happy first full day of spring!

42% of my yearly incentive bonus from work went to taxes. 42%. And when I use my incentive bonus to buy anything, I’ll be paying one of the highest sales tax rates in the United States on my purchases. This bothers me too.

I’m either getting old or starting to think more. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

The news outlets are hootin’ and hollering about a “massive” snowstorm that is going to “blanket the lower Great Lakes and New England” Tuesday into Wednesday. The National Weather Service fired off the obligatory panic warnings with a Severe Weather Alert. I long for the days when that alert signal was reserved for an air raid attack or a nuclear meltdown. Now there’s a flash of lightning somewhere in the lower 48 and they fire off those stupid tones and send everyone running and crying like the god mode of SimCity. It’s stupid. But I digress.

The forecast they released predicts two to four inches of snow. This is a Severe Weather Alert? Show me a woman riding a bike in the clouds and we’ll talk.

I’m sure that at this stage of the game, even our friends downstate and in Boston would agree that two to four inches of snow in the northeast is no biggie. When did we become scared of Mother Nature?

I think the 24 hour news outlets are going to be the death of our country. I can get more reliable, less sensationalized news from various sources across the Internet. I typically follow U.S. News from non U.S. sources like the CBC, BBC and France 24. I even read the English version of Al Jazeera. These folks are not being controlled by corporations with a political intent and it’s good to get a perspective from someone outside looking in. Plus, don’t buy into the new American way of being hysterical about everything. I feel like the American news channels are controlled by ratings and ad revenue and that they hype things way beyond reality. Many buy into the hype and basically fear everything outside of their comfort zone these days but I enjoy trying to get a different perspective on it all.

The hysteria over weather this winter is kind of making me angry because there’s nothing we can really do about it. Make sure you have the basics stocked up, act responsibly and then simmer down and enjoy what Mother Nature is bringing us. That’s all you have to do. It’s actually fun to get snowed in once in a while. Worried about food? Cook or if you have to, pop open a can of pork and beans. Buy some C-rats if you’re super paranoid. If you can’t get out, you can’t get out. The sense of entitlement is futile when you’re messing with the elements. Just go with the flow and enjoy nature for what it is.

So what if the forecast turns out to be wrong and we get dumped on with three feet of snow in a day. We’ll shovel and scrape and get on with our lives and by April it’ll be melted and you’ll be enjoying the spring.

People need to chill, forget the ratings and stop buying into the hype. Seriously.