Stupid Is As Stupid Does

This posting could have another title…

Safety Barriers Getting in the Way of Unsafe Driving

On a local road not far from my house, within two mile of each other, there are two sets of Safety Barriers used to control traffic. They are intended to keep the drivers of cars from running into each other.

The first picture below will show you what the barriers are supposed to look like…

There are five thingies inserted into the left turn lane. They are there to keep our Atlanta Knievels from getting into the center left turn lane and charging ahead at a high rate of speed in order to make it through the light before it changes.

The Safe Driver waits until he gets closer to the light itself before sliding into the left turn lane.

The danger is that the Safe Driver ends up being hit from the rear by the speeding Unsafe Driver.

The next two pictures show the second set of Safety Barriers which have been repeatedly hit and just about completely destroyed by many of my fellow drivers…

 

I guess I don’t need to peck out a lot more words to get you to understand that there are crazy drivers all about me. I know you will take solace that they are around me and not around you.

The late Paul Harvey just walked into my computer room, looked over my shoulder, saw what I was pecking out and told me to tell you The Rest of the Story…

The type of drivers that have destroyed this second Safety Barrier are not just crazy and unsafe. They are crazy, unsafe and stupid. On more than one occasion (including last Saturday) I have seen these people swerve to the left into oncoming traffic and make it back into their coveted left turn lane just ahead of a head-on collision with oncoming wide-eyed drivers.

Do you see why I added “stupid” to their descriptive adjectives?

Some of you are probably asking yourselves why the first Safety Barrier is still intact. Could it be that there are better drivers only two miles away?

I feel certain that that is not the answer. I think it is probably much more likely that the Department of Public Safety has just finished replacing that Safety Barrier after it had been destroyed and was looking a lot like the second Safety Barrier above.

I’ll make it a point to drive back that way in about two weeks to see if my speculation is correct.

Would I kid u?

NOTE: Don’t blame me…BlogSpot (Google) is responsible for those ads at the bottom of my blogs.

Tin Cans … Can You Handle The Truth?

If where you live is like where I live, you have Traffic Reports on the radio every day. I know that those poor souls that still have to work for a living probably depend on these shouted bulletins to help them survive their commutes because the traffic is awful!
Actually I really have no sympathy for those of you still working because it is your own fault that you are still working. If you had been born sooner you could be retired like me.
Back to the awfulness of the traffic reporting. Here is how it sounds to me…

• The darn things come at my ears every 6 minutes. This is not another of my foolish made up facts. The radio stations are actually proud of this 6 minute thing. They announce every 6 minutes that the reports come every 6 minutes. Commercials take up about 3.5 minutes of these 6 minutes. This only leaves 2.5 minutes for the Talk Show Host to make us worry and/or get disgusted at whatever he has uncovered that  he thinks we ought to get worried and/or disgusted about.
• The traffic reports are very loud. I guess they are trying to wake up the bleary-eyed commuter. It’s sort of a hysterical public service announcement.
• The traffic reporter talks unbelievably fast. It is really hard to understand what he is saying. In my opinion they take what would be a 4 minute bunch of words and spew them out at us in about 30 seconds.
• Usually I try and ignore them (remember I am not a commuter). The times I have tried to listen to them I have gotten very confused. Since they are working commercials into the traffic reporting, I find myself saying to myself, “I don’t even know where Neutrogena Anti-Wrinkle Street is”.
• The biggest deception perpetrated by the Eye in the Sky People is that they are not in the sky. They try and make it sound like they are up in a helicopter and broadcasting to us through a radio transmitter by talking into a tin can from their well grounded radio station studio.

I know of what I speak in the last bullet above concerning the Tin Can. Back in my former life the U.S. Army taught me how to recognize the difference between a radio broadcast asking us to land where the good guys needed us to pick up wounded soldiers and the sound of a Viet Cong (bad guys) shouting very loudly into a tin can. They used to try and trick us into landing where they were so they could make us feel real unwelcome.
Thanks to your having read this Foolishness…Or Is It?, next time you hear the Eye in the Studio Guy shouting into his tin can, you will know the truth and then you can handle the truth. General Jack Nicholson would smile at this last line (if he were lucky enough to be on my notification list). 

Finally, if you find out where Neutrogena Anti-Wrinkle Street is, send me an email and let me know. It’s not in my GPS.

Would I kid u?
Smartfella

NOTE: Don’t blame me…BlogSpot is responsible for those ads at the bottom of my blogs.

Ugly Should Not Be Allowed In Church

I did it again in church yesterday. I allowed my mind to wonder while it should have been praying for you, my dear readers.

Those of you who have been reading my stuff for awhile may recall I did this once before when I became fixated on Blue Jeans, Shorts and Flip Flops in church. Click below to revive an old chuckle or two…

http://forii.blogspot.com/search?q=jeans

This time I got to looking at people’s feet. To be perfectly blunt, Feet Are Ugly. Why is it that people want to walk around any place at all, much less in church, with their feet exposed is beyond me.

The worst part of feet is toes. They go all directions when people walk. They are bent left and right. Some are so long they hang off the end of the flip flop. Some point up at about a 75 degree angle and then flop down as the foot hits the ground. Quite simply stated, feet are a mess.

Somewhere back in the past Mr. Revlon convinced women that their toes ought to be painted, so Mr. Revlon could build a big mansion to live in. The lady in the pew with me yesterday had selected Putrid Green for her little piggy's. They kept me awake during the homily. I kept peaking at them to see if they were still there and still Green.

Some of the feet that I saw had closed end shoes so that the toes were not visible. I also analyzed this phenomena and drew the inescapable conclusion that people with good looking toes must not be allowed to show off their toes.

Given enough time all toes deteriorate. Eventually they all become ugly and by federal law, once ugly,  they are required to be exposed. The agents of the Federal Department of Ugliness (FDU) are probably roaming our streets and byways with their handheld x-ray machines on the lookout for ugly toes still hidden by shoe coverings. Once FDU determines that your toes are ugly enough, the person who is connected to the toes is required to wear open toed sandals or flip flops. If they can’t afford to buy their new foot gear, taxpayer dollars are used to give them what the law requires that they wear. It’s the only fair thing to do.

Some of you are probably thinking I have really stepped into it this time because I have offended all those out there who like sandals and flip flops. Actually this is not the case. All such people think that they are the exception to the rule and that their ugly feet are pretty feet and, therefore, I am not talking about them and their pretty feet. In this misguided belief they are pretty wrong.

If feet came without toes, I might not be this riled up but they do and so I am.

Would I kid u?

Appendix To … I Was So Shocked I Almost Ran Off The Road

I am so happy that I now have conclusive proof that at least one person is reading my Foolishness, even if it is a relative.

In response to my blog “I Was So Shocked I Almost Ran Off The Road”, my cousin sent me this info. I think the People Picture it paints is priceless and is proof that my original posting was right on the money.

I was out of the United States (Vietnam) when this happened and this is the first time I have been told about it…

• My grandfather’s house in uptown New Orleans had very wide front steps that could accommodate around 20 people (neighbors and/or relatives).
• Most nights In the 1940s the steps would be full of neighbors and/or relatives.
• If one of these neighbors and/or relatives would have started talking about what was on TV that night, the rest would have really been puzzled about what a TV was.
• On September 9, 1965 Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans.
• This is the hurricane that made the people in the New Orleans area fear future hurricanes.
• Much of uptown New Orleans was without electricity for up to three weeks.
• During that No Air Conditioning and No TV period of time the neighbors and or relatives returned to my grandfather’s front steps.
• For a very short period in 1965 it was 1948 all over again.

I wish I would have been there but probably would not have appreciated what I was experiencing at the time. It very likely would have taken the hindsight of today to understand how nice those three weeks were.

To finish this one on a sad note, when the electricity came back on, the neighbors and/or relatives went back inside to their Air Conditioning and TV's and have not been seen since.

Would I kid u?
Smartfella

I Was So Shocked I Almost Ran Off The Road

I was driving along the other day and I looked to my right and there it was something I don’t think I have seen in 45 years. There was a man sitting on his porch in one of his porch chairs. Don’t you get it? Ok, I’ll say it again but more slowly this time...

There ... was ... a ... man ... sitting ... on ... his ... porch ... in ... one ... of ... his ... porch ... chairs.

Stop and think about this sight. Ask yourself when was the last time you saw someone sitting in a porch chair. Been quite a while has it not?

Everyone who has a porch has porch chairs. They are everywhere. They are probably a billion dollar industry but they are not for sitting in. They are for looking at. Porch chairs are probably one of the most useless things we have in the good ole USofA.

Life before TV...

• We would sit outside after supper on our porch chairs and wait for the neighbors to come walking by.
• My family did not have a porch or porch chairs but we did not let that stop us. We did have concrete area in front of the plate glass window of our family grocery store and that served as our porch. For chairs, we brought out four kitchen chairs to serve as substitute porch chairs.
• This routine was always initiated by my father saying, “Time to set up the kitchen chairs”.
• As we sat, the neighbors would come walking by and make chit chat... “Nice night”, “How are you doing this evening”, “President Truman sure made a big mistake by sending our boys to Korea”, “Dat (I was raised in New Orleans) hurricane (New Orleans is in Louisiana) will be here tomorrow this time. Don’t forget to put the masking tape on your front plate glass window”, etc.
• At some point in the evening it was our turn to get up from our kitchen chairs and walk around the neighborhood to chit chat to the neighbor who had returned from their walks or had yet to walk their walks.
• We left our chairs setting there without giving them a second thought that someone would steal our kitchen chairs while we were gone. There was no need to put chains around the chairs like Wal-Mart has to do with their lawn mowers today.

I know I have confused you, my dear readers, by using a term in this posting that you are completely unfamiliar with and for that I apologize. I will now explain myself.

As you read above you most certainly said to yourself, “Self, what is a neighbor?” (Educating my readers is one of the greatest pleasures I get from blogging)...

Neighbors are the people who live in the houses around your house who you never see because they are inside their houses watching Dancing with the Stars content in the knowledge that their porch chairs are on their porch making them look neighborly.

Getting back to the beginning of this Foolishness, is it possible that that guy I saw sitting on his porch in his porch chair is not the beginning of a comeback for sitting out after supper, walking and chit chat? Could it be that his TV was broken and he was waiting for the Best Buy delivery truck? That, my dear reader, is a sobering thought. I wish I had not thought it.

On the other hand, Televisions and Unnecessary Porch Chairs just might be conclusive evidence of the progress our society has made since I was a kid...or is it?

Would I kid u?

I Am Very Much Into My New Undertaking

I am going to devote many of my waking hours in the years to come toward supporting a new and much needed organization called…

Association of Mothers United for Safe Texting (AMUST).

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this, so I won’t.

Their Vision Statement tells it all…

Texting while driving is a fundamental right of all Americans. The most important rule of texting is Quick Response. To address this issue, driving habits need to change with the times.

AMUST lays out their Platform very succinctly…

• AMUST agrees that texting while driving can sometimes be dangerous.
• In the interest of safety, AMUST supports texting only while stopped at traffic lights.
• The problem is there are not enough traffic lights, and the few that we do have, do not allow enough time to text your inner most thoughts.
• AMUST proposes that traffic lights be erected every six blocks and all traffic lights should be timed to stop traffic in all direction for a minimum of sixty seconds.

AMUST feels that ought to do it but, being an organization with an eye toward the future, AMUST has already developed Phase II. I personally do not see why they are dragging their collective feet and are not proposing Phase II right up front. I ask you, what’s wrong with a light every three blocks and ninety seconds long?

Texting must be protected in the Constitution of these United States somewhere and, if it is not, it ought to be.

Would I kid u?

This Is A Short One

The next time you hear one of our Congressional Rulers talk about reducing expenditures so they can spend the money saved on something else, ask yourself…

Would It Not Make More Sense To Take The Money Saved And Pay Down the National Debt Instead Of Spending The Money Saved On Something Else?

Then we could really save some money by Not Paying Interest on the National Debt … or is that against federal law?

Would I kid u?

Where Do They Get All That Money To Build Those Fancy Casinos?

This Foolishness…Or Is It? is not about the blowing up of the Mississippi River Levee in Missouri. It actually is about something I read in an article about the levee blowup. At first it looked like Foolishness. I make it a practice to make light of Foolishness but this one is truly sad.

The article said that down the river and into the state of Mississippi there was another problem. A local official was quoted as saying that the high water in the river had caused nine casinos on barges to close. He went on to say, “That can kill a community like ours. It’s our number-one revenue source”.

It appears that the Downstream Folks are working hard to make money and the Gambling Industry Folks and the Local Taxing Authority Folks are working hard to take their money. The hard working downstream folks are putting on their Vietnamese jeans made with Egyptian cotton and going to the casinos to get rid of their money, a.k.a. “Revenue Source”. They used to deposit their money in a bank but now they deposit their money in a casino.

Once again I offer a solution. If these downstream folks are running out of money what we need is to get someone to raise their debt limit. That ought to make it all better.

Would I kid u?