Things that piss me off
by Tim Dunbar
Sage
Halloween is over, we’ve had our first measurable snowfall of the
season and, by the time you read this, we’ll either have a new president
or it’ll be a case of, as Pete Townshend so eloquently put it, “meet
the new boss, same as the old boss.” This can mean only one thing:
the Christmas shopping season is upon us. Although the actual holiday
is a little under two months away, the displays, the advertising and the
general hoopla is well under way. Not in the true spirit of the season,
mind you; this is all about money and nothing more.
This, among other things you will read here, should you decide to come
along for the ride, is among my biggest pet peeves.
Sure, I’m venting, but isn’t that what editorials are all
about? People seldom have a point in these diatribes, and even if they
do, they’re usually self-serving rants. Contrary to conventional
wisdom, the pieces you read in this section are not always designed to
sway popular opinion to one side or the other, not really. In truth, the
opinion page is just a handy vehicle for getting something off the writer’s
chest. Since misery loves company, I thought I’d throw my thoughts
into the mix. So, feel free to sing along if you know the words and maybe
you’ll feel a little better after you read this.
• Let’s start with traffic, shall we? Question: do the idiots
who design the flow of traffic actually drive through the streets of Denver?
Doubtful. Neither, it seems, do they pay nearly two bucks a gallon for
gas, because if they did, surely there’d be some changes ‘round
here. Take 14th Avenue, for instance, from, say, Speer Boulevard to Colorado
Boulevard. The light turns green and it’s smooth sailing FOR A WHOLE
BLOCK! These lights are synchronized so that you have to stop at virtually
every one. The fun really kicks in at Broadway because you get to the
red light just in time to see the light at Lincoln turn green. This, of
course, means that once the green light hits Broadway, Lincoln is turning
from yellow to red and you, again, are sitting at a stoplight senselessly
burning gas. Now, the idea is to regulate traffic. It doesn’t; instead,
it stops it, quite literally, in its tracks.
And what savant came up with the idea to put the light regulators—those
things embedded in the road that change the light when a car rolls over
them—in the right hand lane? It shouldn’t be necessary to
stop because a vehicle on the other side of a median wants to turn right,
but that’s the way these lights are set up. Pretty idiotic if you
ask me, but apparently no one in charge sees the waste of gas, not to
mention time, inherent with these traffic-stopping devices. Personally,
I think roundabouts are the way to go.
I consider myself to be a fairly bright guy, so things I detest more
than just about anything in the world of things to detest are those that
save us from our own stupidity. Traffic lights—and Denver seems
to be out to eventually have one on every corner—certainly fit into
that category. So do a lot of signs, traffic or otherwise. There is a
sign here on campus, near the Event Center, warning pedestrians that they
are coming up on an RTD roundabout. Last year, a student (who was probably
gabbing away on a cell phone) was hit by an RTD bus because there were
no posted signs warning her to watch out for buses. Call me wacky, but
isn’t a bus, a vehicle roughly the size of a small building, signage
enough? Apparently not, and since there is no dumb-ass vaccine, there
are now bright yellow signs, positioned so they are visible from all directions,
warning us to watch out for oncoming buses. Thank you, Captain Obvious!
There are other signs that show such a firm grasp of the obvious they
are downright insulting to anyone with a brain. Signs like, “Road
Work Ahead, Drive With Caution” are particularly irritating. Shouldn’t
you always drive with caution? And if the sign says we should drive with
caution because there is road work ahead, does that mean we can drive
without caution when there isn’t a sign telling us to do so? According
to the way people drive in the non-construction areas of the city, I’d
have to say, uh, yeah.
• Recently, there has been a rash of college students dying from
alcohol poisoning. People, mostly friends and family of the dead students,
have called this a tragedy. I don’t; I call it thinning the herd.
I know, I know, that’s a crass and heartless statement, but let’s
face it, if you’ve come along with me this far you probably have
some sort of appreciation of the spirit of this thing. The thing is, anyone
who’s dumb enough to drink 40 or so drinks in one sitting probably
isn’t going to contribute too much to society anyway. The higher-ups
on the various campuses have, in light of these senseless deaths, instituted
their own stopgap (or is that, stop-gulp) measures in an effort to educate
their students on the simple fact that too much alcohol can kill you.
They could save a lot of time and effort by having the professors blurt
out, “Hey, kids, too much alcohol can kill you,”from time
to time. It’ll do about as much good as an alcohol-awareness class
will because the truth is, you can’t save people from their own
stupidity, no matter how hard you try.
• I love DVDs. I own about 500 of them and hail them as one of
the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. The picture and sound quality
is amazing and the extras on some of them are worth a semester at USC
Film School. But one thing that makes me want to throw the remote at the
television set is the seemingly endless FBI/Interpol warning that you
can’t fast-forward through at the beginning of every film.
I checked with the FBI and, according to them, absolutely no one has
ever been fined or incarcerated for copying or publicly showing a DVD.
No one. Probably because the FBI has better things to do than flush out
copying criminals or the random bar that wants to show a movie from time
to time. Can you imagine the conversation between two prison inmates?
“What’re ya in for?”
“Well, I got five years for making a copy of “Weekend at
Bernie’s” with my computer.”
Frankly, the five years should be for even wanting to make a copy of
“Weekend at Bernie’s,” but I digress. Point is, it’s
not really that big a deal that the DVD manufacturers have to make it
so that you can’t fast-forward or otherwise bypass the damn thing.
• It was bad enough when wearing a baseball cap backward became
a fashionable thing. Personally, I think there are only two sets of people
who should do this: baseball catchers and firemen, but then I’ve
always been a fan of function over style. One day last month I saw a student
walking toward the west, arm held over his eyes like someone fending off
an impending blow, as the sun was nearing the horizon. The idiot was wearing
a baseball cap backward, apparently oblivious to the fact that the bill
of the cap is there TO KEEP THE SUN OUT OF YOUR EYES!!!
But now it’s even worse. Now people—sheep and fashion victims
mostly—have taken to wearing their caps sideways. Let me tell you:
just because you see it on MTV doesn’t make it cool. Just because
Eminem, 50 Cent or Usher does it doesn’t mean the rest of the world
has to, lemming-like, jump on the bandwagon. It doesn’t make you
look cool; it makes you look like a doofus. Same goes for those who insist
on wearing wool caps in the heat of summer and non-gang bangers who wear
clothes so oversized they look like a graduate of clown school. Emmit
Kelly would be so proud.
• I’m on a roll but I’ll mention only one more thing
that gets under my skin: computer spyware. I don’t know whether
the dregs who create spyware are malicious or just bored, but I do know
that they make me want to reach through cyberspace and strangle each and
every one of them with their own entrails. Spyware, which runs undetected
on your computer and monitors every Web site you visit, can change the
way your computer operates and, like any virus, can potentially destroy
a computer’s operating system.
Why someone would want to spend so much time and effort to make people’s
lives miserable, is beyond me.
But there is good news in the form of a product called Spybot Search
and Destroy, which scans your hard drive and not only eliminates spyware,
but “immunizes” your system so that it can’t be re-downloaded
once it’s gone. The best thing is that Spybot is free—though
the providers of the software, who should be sainted, do take donations.
Visit www.safer-networking.org for more information.
Ahhh, I feel better now, how ‘bout you?
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