No Tolls<\/a> <\/p>\nThey have the facts and are doing what can be done to rid us of this behemoth, but I fear it is too little too late, the monster has made it’s bed in our lives and is loath to relinquish such a steady income. Bond issue after bond issue is being floated, each time to do more and more, (Like the I-pass system. Like the new toll booths. Anything that makes it’s first priority separating the citizen from his cash, they spend money on, god forbid they do something to FIX THE FUCKING ROADS! Oh, wait, that’ll be ANOTHER BOND ISSUE!) <\/p>\n
Everything that can be done to lock us in to the status quo is being done, and will continue to be done. I have some major complaints about the tollway but as I am more or less powerless to do anything, I will move on to the things I can, perhaps change.<\/p>\n
Warning: this will most likely peel several layers of scalp back. Keep from children and the more sensitive. This is not going to be pretty.
\n
\nOn Bluehairs:<\/b>
\nNow, first and foremost on my list, since I must commute between the hours of 6:30 and 8:00: the mall folks. Oh, i realise, you get the best parking places if you get there early. I understand that you’re up early anyway. I know that you’ve worked hard all your life and you deserve to spend the declining years of your life doing just as you please.<\/p>\n
JUST STAY OFF THE FUCKING ROAD WHILE I’M TRYING TO GET TO WORK!<\/p>\n
Every Single Morning for at least the past ten years you have managed to strategically place one of your numbers DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME WHILE I AM TRYING TO GET TO WORK! I mean, if you’re going to take off in that land yacht Caddilac full of bluehairs and drive it down the road at 45 mpg while ALL the rest of the people on the expressways are doing 75, you could at LEAST get in the RIGHT LANE and stay OUT OF THE FAST LANE! Furthermore, when all four of you are jackjawing on your way to Woodfield Mall at 7:00 AM, you could TRY TO KEEP IT BETWEN THE LINES! There. I said it. And I probably pissed off all my mom’s friends. But there it is. <\/p>\n
On Amateurs:<\/b><\/p>\n
Now that I have the politeness out of the way, let me discuss the amateurs. Yeah, there are a bunch of them every day. People on vacation in the summer, people visiting in the winter, people going places when they haven’t done so, on the expressway, before. These people are hassling my buzz, big time. Here’s a little nudge to get your finger a little closer to the clue button, and I suggest when you get there, push it.<\/p>\n
Get a fucking map. No, really, get a goddamned map and read it, and plan your trip, decide where you want to go, look at alternate routes, decide which lanes you want to be in ahead of time, and BE THERE. Do NOT cut across nine lanes of traffic in front of a toll booth to get to the other side because you didn’t have the foresight to be in the right lane beforehand. Also, if you don’t have exact change, DON’T USE THE AUTOMATIC LANES. DO NOT SIT IN THE AUTOMATIC LANES WHILE PEOPLE BEHIND YOU HONK THEIR HORNS AND YOU DIG FOR CHANGE IN YOUR SEAT CUSHIONS. Best yet, just stay home, If you can’t drive on the expressways like you have a clue. <\/p>\n
On Truck Drivers:<\/b><\/p>\n
At one time, truck drivers were guys who were natural born gypsies, or guys who had few other marketable skills- truck driving was kind of the “waitressing” of male jobs- you could do it with just a little training, and make a decent living for your family. Consequently, truckers were decent folk. Many still are. <\/p>\n
Along came Country And Western songs that made heroes out of truckers. Consequently, a generation of truckers grew up who felt they were fucking superman, and the hugeness and power of the trucks strengthened that position. Now, the roads are filled with morons who pilot hundreds of millions of pounds of horeseshit around every day, getting in your way, clogging the expressways ANd tollways AND surface streets, generally making your life a living hell. That, however, was not enough, for our lovely former illinois governor Ryan and the whole Licenses for Bribes scandal gave us who knows how many illiterate double clutching nimrods behind the wheel of poorly maintained pieces of shit spitting spare parts all over the highway and killing normal people. To these folks I say: EAT SHIT AND DIE!!!!! Yeah, you- you know who you are. <\/p>\n
All the Decent truckers, and by that mean the guys who know and work the system so they’re not fighting rush hour traffic and disrupting traffic flow, the guys just trying to make a living, those guys move the earth, and they deserve every dime they make. <\/p>\n
Now, the regulars. <\/b><\/p>\n
Yeah, I know who you are. I see you every morning. I recognize the people on the road, I see them every day!!Most of them are decent drivers, follow the flow of traffic, pay attention to the lane ahead and behind, keep their eyes on the road, get to work with the minimal hassle. You can move along.<\/p>\n
No, I’m talking about YOU, motherfucker! The one in the left lane, with 30-40 car lengths of empty space ahead of you!!!! CLOSE IT THE FUCK UP, OR GET OUT OF THE LANE!!!! And you, you cellphone talking neon fuckwit, get a speakerphone so you can KEEP YOUR GODDAMN HANDS ON THE WHEEL AND YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD! IF YOU CANNOT DRIVE AND TALK ON THE CELLPHONE, DON’T DO BOTH!!!!! <\/p>\n
Now, lets look at the ASSHOLE WHO CANNOT UNDERSTANT THE PROPER USE OF THE TURN SIGNAL. The driver’s handbook in the state of illinois suggests you use your turn signal to indicate a lane change. Me, I’d like to suggest you LEARN HOW THAT SONOFABITCH WORKS AND USE IT BEFORE I PULL YOU FROM YOUR CAR AND PILE DRIVE YOUR IGNORANT ASS INTO THE PAVEMENT IN FRONT OF A PALUMBO CONSTRUCTION TRUCK FULL OF DEAD GANGSTERS. This is not an option, folks. Use your directionals. And if you have a bulb burned out, FIX it. Don’t stop using your directionals because you FORGOT. <\/p>\n
Lest we forget, there is also mr and mrs “I must do something else when I’m driving or I’m not productive” I got some news for YOU. Move. Closer. To. Work. I mean it, get your ass closer to work and stay OFF the expressway. You cannot type on your computer, or work on the PDA, or fix your hair, face or nails, while you are driving. Stop it now, stop it forever. <\/p>\n
A co-worker and I decided years ago on the proper way to rid the Chicagoland expressways of idiots, and it is simply this: Paintball. Specified, qualified people carry paintball guns. <\/p>\n
You see some asshole in the left lane for fifteenn miles with his left turn signal on, you hit him with a paintball. You see a carload of bluehairs headed to Woodfield mall at 45 mph, you hit them with a paintball. You see an idiot digging for change in the tollbooth, you maybe give him two paintballs. A cop sees a car with more than ten paintball hits, he pulls the car over, and tickets him. (Our original concept, of the cop shooting anyone who collects more than 10 hits, was not initially well received) <\/p>\n
Now, I cannot get clearance to put this system into action. I frankly don’t think it will wash, because I suspect that the people who would have to approve it would be it’s first victims. So in the meantime, I have a few things to say to those folks messing with my morning commute. <\/p>\n
Those guys working on the side of the road? They\u2019re fucking construction workers. They’re here every year. They all pretty much look the same, big burly guys with sun-browned skin and jeans, bright orange vests. Nothing has changed about the look in 100 years, except they sometimes have women holding flags. They are doing their fucking jobs, do yours. Stop gawking at them and drive.<\/p>\n
Those funny sawhorse things on the side of the road? they’re safety markers. Oh, sometimes they are big orange barrel shaped things, sometimes just little orange cones, sometimes they have lights which flash, sometimes they don’t, sometimes the lights are there but the batteries are burned out so they no longer flash. At no time are they likely to jump out in front of your car and sacrifice themselves in the great warning marker revolution. Though
\nif they did they\u2019d be exhibiting more intelligence than you. So you don’t have to drive at 15 miles per hour. Nor do you need to allow 15 feet between you and them. That driver alongside the road with his\/her hood up, tire flat, whatever? they’re in trouble. Unless you intend to stop and help, DON’T come to a near fucking stop gawking at the incident. This is almost a guaranteed way of being the NEXT idiot in an accident. From the looks of the piece of shit you’re driving, this has already happened to you several times.<\/p>\n
And those cars with flashing lights and sirens? Those are police officers’ cars. They are trying to do their jobs. Let them. Respect the space they occupy by changing lanes and getting out of their way if you can. They do a thankless job for not much pay, cut them some fucking slack, you brain dead lump of twice digested gorilla shit. And Oh, by the way,they have ALREADY CAUGHT THEIR SPEEDER- they will be busy for at least a few moments, you don’t have to slow down to 45 MPH. As an aside: Some of the police cars don’t look like police cars used to, but they really are just regular cars. I am willing to bet that they aren’t “Transformers”, waiting for your approach to turn into giant mechanical monsters who will pluck you out of your POS SUV and pile drive your vacuous head into the hot asphalt time and time again, as much as it might please the rest of us.The left lane of the expressway? it’s called the FAST LANE. that means people go FAST in it. If you’re going to go SLOW, keep to the right. In some places, there are even signs which read “slower traffic keep right”. I presume you can read.Maybe you’ve noticed the people you’re pissing off, because dozens of people honk at you each week, I see and hear them.<\/p>\n
Maybe you realize that YOU ARE THE REASON for the congestion the rest of us face every morning. But probably not.<\/p>\n
Or maybe you enjoy being part of the fraternity of morons that all drive like you, the hundreds of idiots I see every day reading, carefully stirring their Starbucks as they yap on their non-handsfree cellphones and drive 20 MPH slower than the balance of the traffic. I doubt it, though, because that awareness assumes a level of intelligence which is clearly beyond you.<\/p>\n
So until you drop the newspaper and pay full attention to your driving every single day, I have a few things I must say:<\/p>\n
Fuck you.
\nNo, really. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
\nFuck your car.
\nFuck the people you like.
\nFuck the people who like you.
\nFuck the manufacturer of your fuckbucketmobile.
\nFuck the morons who passed you on your driving test, and
\nFuck your driving instructor.
\nFuck the barber who cuts what’s left of your hair.
\nFuck the people who inflicted you onto this unsuspecting world.
\nFuck the genes that you are passing on to junior fuckbuckets.
\nFuck the publisher of the fuckbucket gazette with which you torture thousands of people every day as they try to get to work on time.
\nFuck the pimply faced asshole who pours you your double mocha frappuchino latte each morning.
\nFuck the people who made your dishwasher.
\nFuck the company who built your house.
\nFuck the tires you drive to work on.
\nFuck the third world sweatshop workers who sew the sans-a-belt slacks you wear to work every day.
\nFuck the wal-mart where you buy your BVD’s.
\nFuck the cow that makes the milk you have on your cornflakes every morning.
\nFuck the cornflakes.
\nAnd the bowl.
\nAnd shove the spoon up your ass while you’re at it.
\nFuck all the people you work with.
\nFuck the company you work for.
\nFuck every sheep that ever gave wool to make you a sweater.
\nFuck all the shepherds who tend those sheep.
\nFuck all the people in your hometown.
\nFuck the dogs of all the people who live in your hometown.
\nIf I missed anyone important, well, fuck them as well.<\/p>\n
Sorry. Just had to let that out. If any of this is even vaguely familiar to you, I originally posted some of this on the Straight Dope many years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, that’s it, I have HAD ENOUGH. There are a FEW THINGS that NEED TO BE SAID about driving in and around Chicago. Let me speak for a few moments,to the Illinois Tollway. This self perpetuating cash sink has become a meal ticket for generations of Illinoisians, when it’s original purpose was to exist only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}