Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Douchery

I'd like to preface this story by saying that I don't think ALL people who drive motorcycles are lunatic ass clowns who do stupid things which inevitably cause them to scramble their brains on the side of the road somewhere, but a large number of them are. Case in point:

I'm driving home tonight and there are two motorcycles behind me. They both move over into the right lane and proceed to play a game of catch-me-if-you-can with each other. On one bike is a guy and girl, the other, just a dude. So the single rider decides to start swerving his bike left and right, left and right, which, as it would any level headed defensive driver, makes me nervous. So I slow down and let them act like fools far ahead of me. We end up next to each other a stop light. When the light turns green, they gun it, I sit and wait a moment, then proceed.

The single rider starts doing tricks like he's Evel Knievel and gets himself into a side-saddle position with both legs hanging off the left side of the motorcycle. Well, as anyone could have predicted, he loses his balance (because he is NOT Evel Knievel) and careens suddenly, though not unexpectedly, into my lane. Luckily for him, I'd fallen behind after the light or I would have smashed right into the moron. And yeah, lucky for HIM because if I would have hit him I wouldn't have felt bad at all about it. He would have deserved it.

Anyway, he ends up on the opposite side of the street in the path of oncoming traffic. He tries to cut back over into my lane (again, if I had hit him I probably would have been doing him and everyone else in the world a favor)but he cuts too sharply and ends up doing a half circle loop kind of thing until he rams right into the sidewalk where he is thrown from his bike and lands on the pavement, his bike nearly on top of him. Ha, ha and ha! Don't worry; he was up and on his feet before I even had the chance to glance in my rear view.

I don't care how mean it might sound, but if you drive like an a-hole you deserve a helmet full of grey matter. I bet this douchelord ends up breeding too and passing on his stupid genes. The last thing the world needs is one more dolt running around.

Pointless in Seattle

I noticed that the toilet paper dispenser was crooked again today. Had to adjust it. Again. Got me thinking about things like time and life and people. Repetition is the only thing you can really count on. You have to breathe every day. Your heart has to beat. It just keeps going and going and going until it doesn't. And then what? Every day you get up. Every day. You turn on the faucet. You run your hands under the water, brush your teeth, take a shower. You get dressed, put your shoes on, go out into the world. And even when you don't, you're still breathing, your heart is still beating. Until one day it doesn't anymore. It's kind of like water cutting a path through stone. Again and again and again the water just courses over it until eventually, through sheer force of repetitive motion, the stone relents. Every. Single. Day. Hand on the doorknob, feet on the floor, toothpaste on your tongue, air in your lungs and that God damned toilet paper dispenser askew again.

We like to think we're unique. Snowflakes. But we're not. We're all just the same people doing all the same things, breathing and moving and buying and hating and (on occasion) loving. The years keep passing, wearing us thin, slowing our breath and our hearts until we relent like stone. Still, I suppose there's beauty in it somewhere, hidden in the tiny nuances that separate today from yesterday and in that shimmer on the horizon of tomorrow. The searing white dazzle of possibility. And yet, even tomorrow still brings the breathing and the beating and the manufactured frenzy of daily life. Until it doesn't. And then what?

Spreken Ze Shut Your Pie Hole?

So I'm at the gym today, in the zone, focused, sweaty and tired. I'm on the last 15 minutes of 50 minute workout on the elliptical machine when a 6 ft Amazon of a German chick gets on the machine next to mine and proceeds to call every person she knows and converse (shout) in German with them (on speaker phone, of course). I could hear her through my headphones. Suddenly my workout playlist sounded more like the B-side of a Kraftwerk album. Eesh. Not good. About halfway through I wanted to grab her iPhone from her hand and fling it across the gym.

Seriously??? And while we are on the subject, what's with the speakerphone phenomenon? I used to think it was annoying just having to listen to one side of an asinine conversation but, as it turns out, hearing both sides is twice as annoying and doubly stupid (especially if said conversation is in German and just sounds like a bunch of phlegmy yelling).

My point is, just stop. Trust me when I say you aren't interesting enough to broadcast your entire conversation to everyone standing within earshot. Nobody wants to hear it, probably not even the person you are talking to. And as for you, Gretel,
next time put a lederhosen in it.