Road Warrior

I live in New York, not the city, but just outside of it.  My morning commute at the moment consists of getting on the road at around 6 am and driving approximately 40 miles south of me to my job.  Like anyone's morning commute I imagine everyone gets frustrated by traffic, people that drive like goddamn fucking morons, and anything that lengthens or detours your routine trip to work.  Well, there are three things that I find particularly enraging during my morning travels, two of which are probably mutually aggravating to most of you, but one that only a specific group can subscribe to.  Since today I pretty much had to deal with all three, and I don't think any of them heard the insults being hurled at them from the automobile I was traveling in, I will use my allotted internet space to vent.  Here we go.

HEADACHE 1:

Don' let their smiles fool you, they're only happy because they know they're fucking up your drive...the sadists!

I'm sure this is not a secret to anyone.  There are few things in life that make me want to punch a baby more than stopping and going for what seems like ages at any point in a drive, let alone when you're trying to get somewhere on time.  Hell it even annoyed me when I had to take the bus every day.  And since kids these days are becoming progressively more lazy...or stupid...or whatever, there are more stops per trip.  Allow me to explain.  When I was of bus taking age, the bus would make five stops in my neighborhood: the bottom of the hill, the top my hill, the middle of the street that connects my road to the top of the mountain I live on, and the two cul-de-sacs at either end of the last street, that was it.  Rain or shine, snow or fucking hail, our asses would be huddled in groups of all the neighborhood kids waiting to get picked up.  Now days the bus stops at every single fucking house, and if the kid isn't outside waiting, the driver patiently waits for them to come out.  If I wasn't ready and waiting for my bus, that thing was there and gone and I spent the morning getting yelled at and smacked and dropped off at school whenever I got there.  But that's besides the point, the issue here now is that since bulk pickup is slowly being abolished, every time you get stuck behind a school bus, along with getting a face full of exhaust every time the driver hits the gas, you are guaranteed to be stuck behind it longer than ever... in history (a bit over dramatic?)  

HEADACHE 2:

Don't get me wrong.  I love the rain and fog and snow.  It always has and always will put me in a good mood for some reason.  What I dislike about it is that if there is the slightest bit of moisture in the air, or even the threat of it, the road seems to turn into amateur hour and everyone drives like they're navigating an oil slick, constantly testing their brakes to make sure they won't slide off the road into oblivion.  But that's just one of two extremes.  The other is everyone who owns an SUV thinks that ice and massive puddles are mere cannon fodder for their "tank".  These people are bigger douches than the overly cautious drivers.  Where the overly cautious driver may pose the minor threat of a fender bender when they are driving Miss Daisy at 2 mph and slam the breaks like they just hit the edge of a cliff, the over rambunctious SUV driver will be the one doing 80 in the fast lane, hitting a puddle, and hydroplaning into oncoming traffic, all wheel drive or not.  

In my area, when it rains heavily, the Taconic Parkway tends to flood in the two outside lanes, leaving the middle lane the only safe one to really travel in at a decent speed.  Unless of course you're above that because you have to climb into your drivers seat with a step ladder.  During any one of the said heavy rains we experience during a year, one could drive on the Taconic (if they didn't close it) and see numerous cars flipped over on either side of the parkway.  Now combine these two extremes with rush hour traffic and you will have a clear picture of headache numero dose.

HEADACHE 3:

This is the annoyance only a certain group of people have to endure (that being anyone close enough to the state to be blessed with their company): the Connecticut driver.  Whatever the road condition, time of day, traffic, or anything, the Connecticut driver is the only thing guaranteed to cause you grief on the road.  Driving in a constant state of confusion, this person of Connecticutian origin simply does not know what the mother fuck is going on when they are behind the wheel.  I don't know what the standard for passing your road test is in that state, but driving the same speed as the car next to you in a two lane road for 50 miles must not only be acceptable, but a requirement since this seems to be one of the favorite things to do.  You'll never see one speeding, because they all drive at least five under the speed limit; always.  Properly switching lanes or merging onto the highway next to one seems to turn into a game of keep up.  This is because getting around them must be some sort of personal insult since they refuse to let you do it.  It's really hard to explain the things they do and why they do them; just trying to makes my brain hurt, so hopefully you understand because I need to stop before I have a seizure.  Please heed my warning: if you ever find yourself near one of these license plates on the road, save yourself the aggravation, pull off the road and take the long way to wherever you're going; you'll probably get there faster and have your sanity intact.

The Gamer Revolution

My name is Steve and I am a gamer. I have been since as far back as I can remember.  I just love video games.  In my many years of playing I've traveled the expanses of this universe and many others, rewrote history several times, met hundreds of thousands of interesting characters and killed everything under the sun in every way possible.  In online play I've been privy to some of the most cringe inducing, mother dissing, racial. sexist, shit talking any one person can hope to hear in a lifetime (usually during every session and I find it utterly hilarious; part of the whole experience, if you will). Yet here I sit an (arguably) well adjusted young man, with two jobs, a gorgeous girlfriend, and no deep seeded evil urges spawned from my many years of gaming.  Considering all the violence and other insanity I've been part of on various screens and devices in life, not once have I ever felt the need to reenact them in any way.  Of course I've wanted to go completely Trevor Phillips (to call upon a semi-recent industry reference) on people over the course of time; not because video games warped my fragile, young mind, but because most people I deal with over the course of a day are total fucking assholes and they piss me the hell off.  As a matter of fact I think training myself not to throw my controller across the room every time a game got the better of me was great practice for not backhanding anyone I deemed in need of an attitude adjustment in my day to day.  Now before I get too carried away I would like to share my inspiration for this piece:

Gamers Solve Decade Old HIV Puzzle in Ten Days
TL/DR: Scientists get frustrated at proteins; call upon gamers to save the day; gamers crack ten year conundrum in ten days...

How awesome is that.  The hive mind of a group of gamer's blew a decade's worth of scientific research out the window IN TEN DAYS.  Admittedly there have been plenty of studies before this one about how video games can improve driving abilities, cognitive thought processes, puzzle solving abilities, team work, and social interactions (you can trust me on this since I read them all the second they cross my computer screen) so this is nothing new; but at the same time this is the first study I've read where gamer's have potentially bettered mankind, and for FREE.  You bet your ass that those scientists, in their fancy labs, with their fancy degrees, were getting money dumped on them to solve this conundrum.  But on a whim they upload the puzzle to a forum of a game that has similar properties to the protein research they were conducting, and ten days later I bet they received an email that contained a line somewhere in it like this: "...your level has been pwnd, git gud *teabag*...".  

Sure video games might be mind numbing at times, with senseless violence, toilet humor, touchy subject matter and whatever else, but its engaging entertainment.  If you're playing alone or with friends, games cause you to use your brain and sharpen your mental skills.  Whether you're dodging bullets or playing solitaire you are thinking, you are doing, you are honing your mental abilities because your synapses are firing like Duke Nukem in LA Meltodown.  Think of video games as gyms for the mind.  Running for miles on a treadmill is no different than endlessly crushing candy.  Getting a new max bench and starting to build from there is like prestiging in a shooter.  When some old guy / girl walks into you bare assed in the locker room and you have to dodge their flailing, er...extremities traumatizing you for a minute, its like the knee jerk reaction you get when a zombie busts through a wall and bites you in your face in a survival horror game.  The analogies are endless but do you see where I'm going?  Video games aren't evil as some may think and can be just as beneficial to your mind as exercise is for your body, it's just finding the happy medium.  Living in the gym is no better for you then living in virtual reality.

So the next time some lame brained politician thinks hes gonna solve the worlds problems by crusading against video games, just send him a letter explaining how he's endorsing HIV coupled with the above article.  Let's face it, video games and other forms of entertainment are never and were never the problem, its stupidity, irresponsible people, bad parents, and just plain crazies that cause the issues.  Blaming video games is just another scapegoat for people who don't want to accept responsibility for anything. Its easier to point the finger anywhere but in the mirror, but that is a whole different post for another time and place.  For now, though, I'll wrap it up and start thinking about what advances in medicine I could potentially make tonight while I'm stealing cars and blowing shit up in the quiet of my living room.  VIVA LA REVOLUTION!! *teabag*

The Village Idiot

There's a bit of an issue in my house that arose early yesterday morning.  Around 7:30 - 8:00 am, my mother was getting ready for work when my dog started going ape shit at something out the window on the side of our house.  Being that she's a dog, and my ma wasn't fully dressed yet, she didn't address the issue right away.  After a few minutes my dog, Pepper, was still whining and barking at whatever it was.  Deer usually scatter, the occasional squirrel sits there and taunts her ever once in a while, but she seemed a little more agitated than normal.  So my ma finally goes to check, see's what she is barking at, grabs her phone, and snaps this picture:

EXHIBIT A:

What you see here, clear as day, is the neighborhood asshole in all his glory.  This classy fellow, thinking no one was home (at least I assume he thought that, but I may be giving undue credit) since all our cars were at work and my ma's was in the garage, decided to walk his dog into the middle of our, and our neighbors lawn; this picture was taken as he was on his way out but as you can see he's still a good 20 feet in.  And the kicker: HE DOESN'T EVEN LIVE NEAR US.  No people, this isn't your usual case of neighborly dog poop wars, this asshole lives at the bottom of the street, many houses away, yet he somehow finds the will power to waddle his fat ass up our huge hill with his yippy, ratty, little bitch (see what I did there) and allow it to shit and piss all over our lawn, our neighbor's to the left and right of us lawns, and our neighbor across the streets lawn.  Not to mention the house across the street from theirs is on the market and he uses it like a puppy Port-o-Potty.  What a dick, right?  Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, this is far from the first incident or only problem with our friend in the picture, and also far from the oddest.

Picture this.  One night around eleven, I leave my girlfriends house to head back home.  I pull onto my street, like I usually do, undo my seat belt on the home stretch, like I usually do, and go to pull into my driveway into my usual spot, like I usually do, except, not like usual, there is a weird man in sweat pants with his gut hanging out of his T-shirt standing in front of my mailbox, smoking a cigarette, and staring at my house.  Allow me to stress again, this is NOT usual, nor remotely neighborly.  I live on a street that has no street lamps, so its dark, especially on a cloudy night, at eleven.  A time when most normal people aren't having stakeouts in plain site in their pajamas.  Imagine my surprise when I almost hit this fucking nut job as he stared blankly at my house like, well like this:

EXHIBIT B:

To top it all off I park and get out and he doesn't even move.  Just stands there.  I assumed he was drunk, high, or found an extra chromosome at some point that day.  Now I have to say something.  Great.

"Hey, what's up. You need somethin'?"
"Nope.  Nice night, huh?"
"Yup, I'm gonna go inside now..." I left off "...and pump my BB gun fifty times and aim it at your creepy ass."
By the time I got in and informed everyone of our night watchman, he had already gone.  Either home, or to go creep the hell out of some other poor neighbor.  This is what we have to look forward to, our neighborhood entertainment; at this point I can't tell if the genre is comedy or horror.  My sister has had similar experiences, as have my ma and her fiance and other people on the block.  Not to mention the fact that this guy parks his work van on the street, the wrong way, two fucking feet from the curb.  This is the type of person we live near.  Not someone you want to see on your lawn first thing in the morning.

Don't worry though.  Since the photo evidence it has been brought to the attention of the police (not that they will do anything about it until something happens, of course) and the photo has been blasted on Facebook and brought to the attention of all our neighbors, rather comically I must say.  It's easy to laugh at if you think about it.  A middle aged, husky dude, walking a mini dog on his neighbors lawn gets caught red handed and ridiculed on the internet by those who live around him and even those who don't.  I'm laughing as I write this to be honest, and it will continue to be funny...that is until its just him that shows up on our lawn in the morning and takes his morning dump in our flower pot.  Then I might start to worry.

I Almost Called This "And So It Begins..."

So this is it, my first post in my first blog ever; and only after years of telling myself, "Yeah, I'm gonna make one of those."  This recent wave of "I think I'll start a blog today..." lasted about two weeks, not a record for procrastination by any means, but here it finally is.  The process began, as it almost has once or twice before, by sitting in front of my computer trying to overcome the mental anguish that is picking a cool and catchy title, the perfect font, the most eye pleasing layout, bells and whistles, and which Jing Tinglers, Flu Floopers, Who Hoovers and Blum Bloopers to use.  Then I saw the pattern starting over and I almost frustrated myself out of the whole thing...again.  Reminding myself this isn't supposed to be that hard, and before I got too obsessive with the little details, I decided to start writing before "I'll do it tomorrow" became the new title of some dream blog I write in my head while driving to work every day.  Reluctantly, I dragged my mouse up to the new post button, pushing back the feelings of "what if it's not exactly, perfectly, to a T" anxiety that began to subtly form in the back of my head (side note: I've read and re read this paragraph fifty goddamn times, from here on out I'm just going to type and not look back) and clicked.

I arrive at the writing screen thinking I'm finally going to start this thing and get sucker punched by one final question to throw off my blog writing zen: "Title of Post".  UUURRRGGGHHHHH, ok, fine, title of post.
Well, it's my first post, so lets start off with a clever intro title, something to get people interested, welcome them in a creative way.  And the words "And So It Begins..." manifest themselves in the type box and I'm thinking I'm a freaking genius.  At this point I decide I have earned myself a cup of coffee and get up to go get myself one.  From the time I stood to the time I sat back down to to begin (a grand total of about two minutes) I had developed a severe bruise from kicking myself in the ass.  "And So It Begins..."? Really Steve, that's your clever title?  Like every hipster, melodramatic asshole to ever write a blog didn't begin with something like that thinking they were oozing with originality and setting themselves up for the blog of the year award (my sincerest apologies if I just lumped you into such a category unjustly).  Stop it, you're better than that I tell myself, but now I gotta think of another title; or do I?  Some quotation marks and a self pat on the back later the title that resides atop this master work is born; full of cleverness and wit and awesomeness.  At least I think so, but please feel free to shoot me down in the comments section...if there is one...I really did minimal research about this blog thing.  I just know this site is free and wont spam the shit out of my inbox.

Now, what else?  I got my feet wet, I'm gonna ease myself into the water I guess.  No need to ramble just to fill space.  That's the great thing about blogs, isn't it?  There are virtually no constraints or expectations on what has to be entered into the void.  You can write what you want, when you want, how you want.  No grades, no requirements, and best of all no pressure.  I don't have to try to impress anyone or prove anyone's point, I can write what I'm thinking and if no one reads it, whoopty doo I still got to do it, and being an English major I feel like I just got out of prison.  A dark prison where life sentences equal never ending bibliographies that no one ever looks at, and your not even really sure how to use because MLA keeps changing the fucking format for some unknown reason.  Where getting assigned a 30 page research paper is like dropping the soap and your expected to pick it up with a smile.  Sure, prisons might have overall better food and living conditions than most dormitories, but I digress, and I think you get my point.  I'm outta creative Shawshank, wooooooo!!!

So to wrap up my first, aptly titled *pats self on back...twice this time*, blog post I just want to say I hope you at least enjoy reading the things I have to write.  For those of you who know me, you know the things that can come out of my mouth can be potentially cringe inducing and, in the very least, politically incorrect, but I'll try and keep it as contained as possible for as long as possible (notice I kept it PG-13 and only said fuck once, er...twice).  For those of you who found your way here randomly, I guess I hope you enjoyed yourself...?  Either way the flood gates are open and I'm gonna do my best to keep up with this thing and post a few times a week.

And look at that, my first post is done and the font style and layout didn't make a difference, the world didn't end.  This is almost like therapy, this is great and it came without ribbons! It came without tags!  It came without packages, boxes or bags!  Sorry about that I just wanted to finish up in an English major-y way of coming full circle with things by finishing off with another part of an earlier reference I used.  I don't really know if it worked I just hope it made sense I guess.  But hey, I'm not getting graded and it makes sense to me, kinda. And oh what the hell, just because I can, here's my bibliography:

Me, Myself, and I. My head because I'm a grown ass man. 
     1st. Wherever the hell I push post entry: My laptop, 
     2013. Print.