Yup. That’s it. The extent of what little progress has been made today is the posting of yet another episode in the ongoing Ella’s story.
You understand: I haven’t written any more of it, as I had planned to do today. Probably will not get any more of it written today, since I haven’t accomplished all of today’s Basic Survival Tasks. The computer, the crazies, and Fate have conspired there-against.
Today I do not seem to be able to do anything right. Or, according to my theory, the Damned Computer WILL not do anything right. What should have been a simple chore devolved into half an afternoon’s uphill climb.
I hate computers. I want my horse back.
Horses may not be as smart as computers, but they do have this redeeming quality:
Fuck up on a horse, and she’ll throw you on your head and after that you will never have to think about anything again.
Fuck up on a computer, and you’ll spend half your goddamn lifetime FIXING IT!
But no little annoyance related to either compares to the infinite annoyance of driving on the homicidal streets of the City of Phoenix.
I swear to GOD these people are fucking lunatics. We live in a city entirely populated by fucking lunatics.
Admit it: this is a more rational explanation than my theory that selected morons and lunatics have radar chips implanted in their brains to alert them every time I get in my car, so they can all swarm out onto the roads. Does it not make more sense that they are always on the roads, at all times of the day and night, than that they all make special trips out to chase me around every time I run an errand?
The high point of today’s WackSh!ttery was a fulminating case of road rage that forced me to dodge off a main drag into a…oh hell…just so fuckin ridiculous.
I’m cruising toward Costco, where I’ve GOTTA fill up the gas tank, like…right now. Westward bound on Glendale, a seven-lane main drag. Ahead of me are two sh!theads playing catch-me-if-you-can. The guy in front, a blue car, seems to be moving along. He’s being tailgated by a guy in a red car. Red Car suddenly darts into the two-way left-turn lane, FLOORS it, kicks up a cloud of road dust as he roars past the guy in the blue car, swerves back into the traffic lane, and JAMS on his brakes.
I jam on my brakes and miss rear-ending the guy in the blue car, who apparently is expecting this because he misses the red car.
Red Car A**hat brings the traffic in the fast lane to a near stop. Expecting a fist-fight at best and an exchange of bullets at worst, I figure to get away from them by jerking south (left turn) onto Seventh Ave. Signalling, I move into the left-turn lane.
Blue Car, apparently trying to get away from Red Car A**hat, swerves in front of me, cutting me off in the left lane. Red Car, watching this instead of the road ahead, darts in front of him and jams on his brakes again.
Seeing this coming, I floor it and FLY back into the fast lane, now cutting off the guy who was running behind me and apparently not paying a lot of attention to our little drama.
He misses rear-ending me, for which I am thankful.
I now have missed my turn to go south. So turn south on 15th.
Fifteenth Avenue is a minor main drag — a very major feeder street for an endless series of housing developments that spread westward from Central Avenue. In the past it moved smoothly enough except for a few stop signs and the occasional irrelevant traffic signal. But the idiot city has decided that it would enhance “safety” to fuck up the traffic flow on this lengthy road, which extends from Dunlap all the way down to the State Capitol, a very, very long way. To that end, they have installed a brain-banging series of speed humps and roundabouts.
Phoenix drivers, being the wooly-brained sheeple that they are, cannot figure out that you do NOT need to slow down for the inane, shallow speed humps. Maintain a steady speed of about 30 mph and you can cruise right over the damned infuriating things with no damage to you, your car, your bystanders. Naturally, I get behind one of Phoenix’s Dumbest. He putters along, then JAMS on his brakes every time he approaches one of these tiny speed humps, then speeds up again. And as for the roundabout? By that, he was so flummoxed, he actually had to stop and figure it out.
G-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-H!!!!!!!!!!
Blue Car reappears at Maryland, apparently having dodged Red Car at Seventh and Maryland (or maybe shot the bastard, who knows?). He turns north and darts out of sight at a high rate of speed.
Sheeple finally leads us across Bethany Home, where Fifteenth widens enough for me to charge around him.
I will refrain from describing the stupid stuff at the Costco filling station, lest I bite one of the dogs in remembered rage.
Finally escaping from Costco, I head east on Bethany Home trying to get north (leftward bound) on Seventh.
But shit NO! As is the usual case on Phoenix’s fine road system, wherever you’re going, you can’t get there from here.
Ahead, I spot a traffic jam backed up at a no-left-turn sign. Luckily I’m already in the left lane, and so can swerve across the oncoming traffic and alight in a neighborhood.
Traversing a spaghetti-dish of winding roads, I make my way northerly and easterly, around to Seventh. The construction at Bethany is holding up the traffic so I have no problem jerking left out of the neighborhood across three traffic lanes. What could go wrong?
Nothing, for a change.
Finally make it home.
Any question why my blood pressure hovers near the stratosphere?
This is typical. You can not go out on the roads in this damn city without running into this kind of sh!t. Every time.
Today I had four simple errands:
- Make a run on the Fry’s at Tatum & Shea, therein to search for (and of course not find) some items left wanting by my usual hangouts.
- Stop on the way home at Home Depot, there to buy the spring vegetable seeds that, yea verily, were not available in the Fry’s nursery section.
- Drop down to Seventh Street & Glendale to pick up a bucket of granulated chlorine for the pool.
- Cruise across to 7th, jog south and west to Costco, fill up the gas tank.
Thence, go home, a straight shot (literally…) up 7th Avenue.
These are not difficult things to accomplish, eh? The roads, all of them three lanes in each direction (with a center left-turn-crazy lane, giving you seven lanes per thoroughfare), move smoothly under the influence of intelligently timed lights. None of these four stops requires a left turn into a parking lot. Should be easy, wouldn’t you think?
How hard can this be?
Very. That’s how.
Because the antics described herein are fucking standard operating practice. This is simply the way people drive here. It is a screaming madhouse out there.
If my son didn’t live here in town, I would move out of this ugly, batsh!t crazy city so fast it would make your head spin.
Wanting to retire in Arizona? Make your home in Prescott. Whatever you do, do not do not do not move to Phoenix. Or to Tucson, which is even worse.