Category Archives: Humor

I’ve Saved Millions on Psychotropics

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digital photo-illustration Why do drugs when the brain is so exaggeratedly colorful and nimbly wacky all on its own! I’ve always felt mighty fortunate that there’s such a party under my hat; not a moment of boredom in sight. Interpreting and making actual use of all the magnificent moonbeams and nutty notions, well, that’s another bag of baloney altogether, but at least the ingredients are there for the taking.

digital photo-illustrationRiding bareback on butterflies and curling up under Enkianthus umbrellas, I learn so many things that no one else has known; how to pass along the knowledge then becomes the deeper part of the puzzle. Shall I present my in-head info as it appeared on my mental screen, in all its glory, and let the world in on my secrets, or is it better to release the brilliance in smaller doses, as poems and pictures, as though it were all mere artistry?

digital photo-illustrationThe mind, one could say, reels. Me, I just try to hang on and go along for the ride. Success is varying. Sometimes it might be simpler to go the magic-mushroom route and pretend the stuff that springs from my innermost is someone or something else’s figment. Fewer questions to be answered, one would think. But I rather enjoy the leaping and wriggling that happen both internally and as an external expression of such fruitful foolishness, so perhaps I ought not to entertain such an extreme premise, but rather stick to my stupendous life of lily-lapped loveliness.

digital photo-illustrationSorry, Big Pharm, I’ll remain on the Funny Farm instead, thank you very kindly. Remarkably fewer side effects, if you don’t count the quizzical inspections by many a well-meaning Normal person or the occasional inability to maintain a facade of ordinariness when it should have been particularly useful. The only mind-altering meds I need are supplied to me by equally offbeat thinkers lending me a loving sip of the nectar of their own merry musings. I thank you all, and invite you to share in this best sort of madness any time you like. Welcome to my psychedelia!

digital photo-illustration

High Heels and Long Underwear

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photoThe change of seasons, whenever and however it happens, always leads me to revisit the idea that we humans are mighty changeable creatures ourselves. This week it suddenly started to act like Autumn here in Texas, after stubbornly refusing to budge from sunny sameness for-seemingly-ever, and instantly there appeared on the public horizon a whole shift of attentions and fashions to go along for the ride. It reminds me as always of what will o’the wisps we are, how fickle and full of silly fancies and steered by every faint current into yet another direction entirely tangential to purpose and meaning, but gripping to us all when we are in it just the same.

Our concepts of beauty and usefulness and value are so mutable, so flexible, it’s a miracle we can find any consensus in our own hearts let alone in the larger community to define what’s important and desirable in our lives from day to day, year to year. I would include most “hard-liners” of any sort in this human whirlpool of constant shift and adjustment too. They will argue that their political or religious or societal stance never alters, but in fact it must if its context is constantly flickering and wriggling uncontrollably, just to maintain the semblance of fixity: the language, tactics, audience-targeting, tools to be used and even reasons for being considered an Immovable Object all have to adjust to the surrounding circumstances and forces in order to keep the believer’s sense of continuity and commitment firm. And that’s both a good and a very scary thing for both sides of the conversation. The Believer side, because it’s really not open to discussion and therefore should neither be questioned nor called to adjust, and the Other-Views side because it’s sometimes hard not only to consider whether we have become fixed in our own ways but also to consider which ways we can and should be going.

That idea alone can veer off into far deeper waters than the initial premise of this rumination warrants, so I’ll leave it by saying that I think of myself as being fairly comfortable with uncertainty and rather not so certain when it comes to taking sides. There isn’t much in the world I know that I see in clearly demarcated black and white, practically speaking. Maybe that’s why I do like to make black and white artworks as much as I do, after all.

mixed media B/W illustrationIn the meantime, the changing of the seasons and its concomitant change of more frivolous things teases me into enjoying the oddity of how easily we are steered in matters of taste and pleasure. The college cuties rambling off-campus are still wearing the same few molecules of skirts and spray-painted tops, but in a faint nod to the changing wind and temperature, suddenly they’re accessorized with bigger than ever Sasquatch boots, long-fringed fake-fur (though still sleeveless) hoodies and, when the males of the species are out of gawking range, garments that look suspiciously like emergency-rescue wrappings used to save hypothermia victims from impending death. I presume these latter items reside, in male-proximal moments, in the depths of those Volkswagen-sized handbags so prevalent nowadays.

Certainly, you can see just from the way I use of the word “nowadays” that I’m old enough to be wearing underpants that could be mistaken for a parachute, holding my socks up with garters, and wearing clothespins on the back of my neck to keep my facial features more reliably in place. To be fair, I was a geezer in many ways from about when I hit the age of ten, so although I eschew such age-appropriate gear myself, I have never quite been what anyone would call At One with the trends. Fortunately for me, I find myself quite fabulous as-is, and apparently those around me have either built up serious tolerance or agree with my skewed view.

So I’m quite happy to live-and-let-live when it comes to personal decoration, even if it means watching delusional dames dress like teenagers, teenagers dress like trashy skanks, and grown men unable to recognize that their comb-overs neither fool anyone other than themselves nor do they remain hugging the skull as insulation when the wind arises but rather take sail and remain vertical until alighting after the storm passes or the gents go indoors, whichever comes first. After all, what would be the excitement, the entertainment value, if we all decorated ourselves well or sensibly or beautifully?

What, especially, would be the fun in all of us considering the same things beautiful? I know one thing: all species would die out shortly after becoming severely inbred if every creature were attracted to only one form of every feature of that creature. And don’t get me started on the likelihood that a handsome sawfish would find a cyclamen pretty or a person who loves to grow prizewinning turnips would like to date a person who looks like a really fine turnip. When it comes to beauty, I’m all for letting you keep your ridiculous prejudices as long as you let me keep my equally ridiculous ones, my friends.

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Unseemly Predilections

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photo montage + textWherein the Language of Flowers Falls Mute

When he spied her ‘cross the room, June-Judy gave a wink

And he saw those brown eyes of hers, and faster than you’d think,

Was head-o’er-heels, tea-kettle up, had flipped his blond toupee,

And knew June-Judy must be his, and that, without delay–

The tale grows sadder here, alas, for when he crossed the room,

Bouquets in hand, adoring, shy, staggering under bloom

Meant to delight his lady-love, she smiled as if to speak

Affection, too, but when her mouth was opened, with a shriek

He toppled senseless to the floor amid his blasted roses,

Quite dead, our hero, and his blooms, killed by her halitosis.

digital photo montagePark Pastorale

Among the poplars in the park,

a possum paused to peer,

and though it had grown very dark

–it was late in the year

as well as late at evening-time–

the possum saw a bright

white streak pass by under the lime

tree ‘cross the way; the sight

so startled her she had to take

a closer, clearer look,

and wandered over by the lake

right where it met the brook,

gazed left and right and up and down

and saw the streak once more,

at speedy pace, dashing toward town,

along the lake’s broad shore,

and hurried closer at a run

so nothing should be missed,

and at that speed, a snappy one,

caught up–and here’s the twist:

the streak was on a young skunk’s back,

the skunk lad struck with fear,

at Possum’s rush, into attack,

and so stuck up his rear

and flipped his tail, prepared to spray

(look out, folks! Hold your noses!),

aimed at Miss Possum straightaway,

and spritzed the scent of roses!

For, happily, our young skunk swain

had spied this possum lass

and so admired her, he was fain

to skip the poison-gas

and woo her while he had the chance

and serendipity,

and now they dance their wedding-dance,

his possum-love and he.

Larcenous Love

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graphite drawing

Is that a candy bar I see before me? Or must I go in search of sweeter dreams?

I do so love this life with you, my candy-dandy sweetie pie,

But can I trust you? I must ask, and no one needs to wonder why,

For after all, despite desire–in spite of all that mushy part–

First off, you set my soul on fire, and then, you thief, you stole my heart;

Numerous are those reasons why I know by now you can’t be trusted,

Not the least of all is which my blood-sugar is maladjusted

By your sweet enchanting love, the excess yumminess of you–

Let’s face it, robber-baron Babe, you take my ticker, still you do–

Just don’t be cruel and stomp it flat or throw it back in my poor face,

A cruel conclusion to our trysts, and on the top of it, disgrace;

Feel free to keep the pilfered part, but stick here close–I’d miss it, sorta,

If you took off and left me here without you or my own aorta.

pen and ink

Liquor is quicker, sure, but what about when the hangover wears off? What will soothe my broken heart then, huh?

Hey, Baby, Wanna Ride Shotgun in My Pinto Wagon? (Daffy Drivers, Part 2)

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I don’t know why it sprang to mind just now. Well, maybe I do. I seem to have been stuck in the previously described drivers’ vortex for a strangely gelatinous trip through surreal-ville lately and I’m thinking of drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and cars with a certain measure of disdain, loathing, hilarity, terror, and mild psychosis, sometimes in turns and occasionally all in one big deliriously bleary blend. Despite knowing in my heart that traffic in suburban north Texas is marshmallows and candy-floss compared to the traffic experienced in much of the world (just check the all-too-true comments on my previous traffic-related post) I cannot resist a further rant.

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Details, details--automotive fanatics do love their detailing . . .

I have seen (three times within two days) the indescribably death-wishful strolls of different (but each time, ahem, male) pedestrians not only on the wrong side of the road but well into the lane of steady morning traffic bearing down on their armor-less backs, all the while with cars going past at 30+ mph in the next lane over, so NO chance of the drivers approaching said amblers’ backsides actually swerving to avoid hitting them. What do we in the cars get to do? Pot along behind a slowly walking person as though theirs were the most ordinary and acceptable behavior on earth, despite this being within blocks of the university, where every dull-witted bipedal being over age 11 knows that college drivers and mad professors are on the loose? Stunningly insouciant, these moseying moon-brains, to say the least, and irritating, too, by gad.

I live in the land of the “free” right turn–where it’s okay legally, if you’ve stopped at a red light, to proceed with a right turn if (a) there’s no one coming from another direction that has right-of-way by green light or prior arrival at the intersection and (b) you are actually in position to take said right turn. I’m all fine with that, despite being still a bit piqued that an intersection camera once got me dinged for a turn where I was positive I had followed all of the rubrics scrupulously. Recently, however, I got to witness two rather egregious abuses of the privilege right in a row and was glad to get home with skin and fenders intact. First there was the intersection where I stopped at the red light and waited to turn left, where ahead of me on the other side of the intersection a minor accident had stopped up the front of the right-turn lane. I waited for my left turn, which I began to execute when the requisite green arrow shone before me, and found myself suddenly front-bumper-to-front-bumper in a very nearly compromising position with an enormous truck (of that variety known in my heart simply as a “big-butt truck”–the sort that is large enough to haul a full load of heavy equipment to the farm but is waaaaaay too clean and scratch-free to ever have tried it). Mr Truck Driver had arrived behind the stalled accident, whipped out around it, and deemed it logical to grab a free right without ever considering that he was both out of turn and entirely invisible to us across the road.

After our close encounter I took a deep breath, released my crushed brake, took two more deep breaths, didn’t say or gesture anything that I was thinking, let the truck get well away from my vicinity, and went along my way. Not a mile later, I was stopped by a red light in the right lane. As it happened, I was first in that lane, so though I had no plans to take a free right myself (being in need of going straight ahead), I didn’t feel it likely that someone from across the way would try to cut me off by surprise again. Which indeed no one did. However, the young and helmet-less (I’m still baffled that that’s legal anywhere, but it is, so I’ll simply note it here as another risk factor the other driver took) motorcyclist behind me felt deprived of his free right turn, and rather than drearily waiting through another boring ten seconds of red light on my behalf, he swung out into the left lane and blasted around to the right in front of me to turn, just about in sync with the drivers coming from across the way who of course were being treated to an actual green light.

How I got home with both an undamaged car and clean underwear is testament more to good fortune than to my skillful driving or the strength of my nervous system, but I shall leave that musing and my temperamental unburdening here for the nonce and move on to what was really renewing my interest in road-tripping, if I may now use it in the more psychedelic sense. It was, you see, about the automotive beauty pageant.

I’m a dull person when it comes to vehicles. In our family, learning to drive required us to learn a couple of additional fundamental automotive survival skills, things like checking the oil and changing a tire, and, oh yeah, filling the gas tank. Like making sure air filters were changed as needed and seatbelts worn and like how to pump the hand brake in case those other brake-thingies just happened to go out of commission (the latter only happened to me once, but it was at 50 mph and the brakes croaked just as I watched a rock-filled dump truck pull onto the road a hundred feet ahead of me, so I am glad I was given that particular bit of useful wisdom). But outside of that, I wasn’t infused with lust for four-wheeled artful luxury. I’m strictly practical about my expectations from a car. Transportation. Carrying capacity as needed. Inexpensive to buy and to maintain. Generally reliable and safe. And I’ve done pretty well in that, too.

I can admire a beautiful vehicle, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had crushes on a strange variety of cars that struck my fancy at one time or another. When I shopped for my first car (as I was beginning construction work), I was offered a 1957 pushbutton-transmission Mercury that was in nice-but-not-cherry condition for a very fair price. It was a ridiculous Pepto-Bismol® pink and had a more extravagantly fabulous back-end than a Brazilian beach bunny’s, its trunk big enough for Mafia use–or at least for carrying all of the painting equipment and tools I was going to need to haul. But it really wasn’t the kind of car I could seriously contemplate filling with 300-pound paint sprayers and tool buckets and piles of dusty tarps and abusing in quite that fashion. Because it really was more about fashion than about transportation, and much as I could love its ludicrousness I finally opted for the more practical used Volare station wagon with fake-paneled sides and the super-duty shocks that I put in ‘er to hold up my cargo’s bulk. And it turned out I developed a crush on that car’s slant-six engine. Go figure.

There are plenty of supremely handsome vehicles out there, to be sure. A ’29 Pierce Arrow, all decked out. Vintage Bentleys or Silver Wraiths. A perfectly restored period Duesenberg. Not to mention, say, a sleek blue 1967 Barracuda. Flash. Glorious. But any of those beasties would so outshine me that it would seem sacrilegious to even consider such a thing. Not to mention that if I had any sort of spectacular car I would still be unable to support it (insure it) in the style to which it might deserve to be accustomed.

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Smile for the camera!

Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of people who do have deep passions or perhaps even rather unseemly romantic notions regarding their various automotive loves. We’ve all seen those whose car, truck, motorcycle, RV or tractor represents (or, in many cases, clearly substitutes for) their identity as a male, female, or Other. The wheeled transport associated with that distinctive breed of guy-hood truly dependent on its vehicle for its masculinity gets from me the designation TPV, or Tiny Penis Vehicle, for that rather laughably desperate form of self-identification. There are lots of levels of vehicular artistry, from true-amateurs’ loving attentions to purists’ slavish restorations to custom trick-outs to the movable museum-pieces that are one-off sculptural artworks on wheels. So many fun options! I’ve seen the fantastic and the phantasmagorical, the happy and the horrific, and many a piece of magic in motion.

Perhaps my favorites are the outlandish and ridiculous concoctions put together by aspiring molto-machismos on a tight budget–whether of the wallet or of the imagination. The jacked-to-the-sky mini-boxes on massive heavy-equipment wheels so high that the driver can barely herk himself up into the driver’s seat. The I-did-it-myself custom paint job with heavily textured brush strokes running through its thick housepaint coat or the would-be designer approach whose flames and pictorials ended up a little closer to junior high graffitists’ than to graphic artists’ work.

Or one of my all-time favorites: it was an early-80s Pinto hatchback customized with massive tires that appeared to be crammed dangerously into the wheel wells as well as making the teeny car precariously high and teeter-y, and was painted antenna to tailpipe in dull metallic gold spray paint, all with a stingy and shaky hand. I came upon it as its young driver was cruising a mostly deserted street in a semi-rural suburb, and I remained unsure for a long time afterward whether it was pure cruelty on my part to have laughed so heartily on seeing it. Surely such effort deserved, at the least, a joyful response, and that I did give without hesitation.

Truth be told, that’s my reaction to car-love in general. I’m glad it seems to give so much pleasure to so many people, but I’m pretty mystified by it too, and mostly the seeming excess of affection just makes me want to fall on the floorboards howling with laughter. Good thing my seatbelt keeps me from any such thing when I’m behind the wheel myself. Hopefully, in a really outstanding specimen of a silvery-blue ’67 ‘Cuda, rebuilt to my own personal specs with eco-fuel conversion, a skillful on-call chauffeur, comfortably glove-fitting heated and cooled passenger seats for my companions and me, a mini-fridge in the trunk full of the day’s edible necessities and the proper libations for the non designated-drivers to sup during those pit stops requisite whilst road-tripping for joy, plus a lifetime’s supply of fuel, parts, insurance and police escorts to clear the roads ahead and find ideal parking spots. Either that or my ordinary, everyday, plebeian, functional, dependable and non-fanciful car. It’ll do me.

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  • I’m just happy if it gets me from here to there and back again . . .

A Hairstyle Fit for a Harridan

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My untamed nature often comes out in pointed ways . . .

Beauty queen I am decidedly not. Never shall be. It goes so thoroughly against my natural bent to fuss and primp for prettiness that it’s a miracle I don’t just pop out of bed and haul directly off to wherever the day should take me, entirely unimproved. But that just wouldn’t be nice. Unsuspecting people outside of my house deserve some consideration.

Ever look in the mirror and wonder just who that creature is that’s staring cryptically back at you? In my case I never doubt it’s my own image reflected, but depending upon the hour of the day (can’t promise it’s morning either when I’m willing to arise or when I’m remotely prepared for a look in the mirror) I may be only moderately willing to admit to the relationship, at best. This beast-that-is-me has no sympathy with playing princess. I’m glad to say that I think myself pleasant looking enough on the whole without any serious touch-ups, but the effects of what some jokester decided to name Beauty Sleep just make it hard sometimes for any natural niceness I possess to shine through visibly.

So I always recommend scheduling your interactions with me well after the crack of noon, just to be on the safe side. Otherwise, you may meet face-to-snout with a slightly startling character and I simply can’t promise there wouldn’t be lasting effects on your morale or sanity. I do mean well.

It’s not really my fault, but nighttime takes a toll on me that can counter the best effects of a good dream-fest abed. First, there’s the whole problem of the bed linens. While they may make the practice of lying down to pass the night more sheltered and comfy in a very welcome fashion, they also have a miraculous way of twisting themselves into a close enough facsimile of mummy wrappings that I always come out of bed wearing a series of elaborate stripes, squiggles and indentations that reconfigure me into a suspiciously mythical looking creature by morning. The Atomic Prune with Two Legs!!! Run for your lives! Somehow it seems cruel that the bed linens get to contort me mercilessly like that and yet I still have to de-contort them to get the bed back into usable form for the next night’s expedition towards forty winks.

Being from birth about as pale as a second-rate vampire, I am none too fond, either, of the proto-invisibility I achieve by sleeping my circulation down to virtual nil. Some days I fear that if I were to look into the mirror too soon after waking, I would have accomplished the full vampiric inability to see my reflection at all. It may be that I should consider building up my retirement funds by taking advantage of any temporary invisible state and become a criminal mastermind while it lasts . . . but then I remember that this would require the capability of being a mastermind along with invisibility. Never mind that, then.

My teeth grow sweaters overnight. I’m a big fan of fine cardigans, but never intended to produce them orally, let alone where they can apparently only be dismantled by brushing with a belt sander. Seems like I could be down to teeth the size of sesame seeds by the time I’m seventy at this rate. Not that I don’t like sesame seeds. Smaller and thinner than sweaters, at least. Certainly a new Look for me.

Most predictably of all, every time I look in the mirror is a new challenge to my skills for creature-identification, given the interesting and amazing things my hair can do. I wear it short both out of laziness–wash-and-wear hair is all the style I am willing to attempt–and out of vanity: I learned the hard way years ago that the long hair generally considered on other women to be a sexy beauty asset just makes me look like an inbred Afghan hound. So I go with the shorter ‘do, and it does just fine. Except overnight.

That’s when it takes on a life of its own and converts me into anything from a depressed Cheviot ewe to Dr. Seuss‘s Grinch, from an oil-slicked sea lion to an alien invader and/or Bob’s Big Boy. All of them potentially entertaining, I’ll admit, but at the same time, possibly unsettling to see in the mirror. Or is that just my insecurity speaking?

Very probably, my ruminating on it just now is merely an indicator that it’s about time I headed for the aforementioned bed. Risking, of course, whatever that contraption and my time overnight in it might chance to inflict upon my body and being. I think I can continue to cope: whatever Ma Nature dishes out I must learn to handle as best anyone can. I’ll let you know how that’s working later–but just in case, don’t stop by the house before noon!

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If it's good enough for Mother Nature, it's good enough for me!

Around the Corner and Off the Deep End

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Being a tad loopy has always worked out pretty well for me. It enhances and excuses the creative output, whatever that might be, and makes me feel a little more at ease about all of those weird dreams I tend to have each and every night–why, what real harm can they do, anyway? So I’ve become quite accustomed to living with my oddities and even embracing them. (No, I’m not referring to my friends and loved ones.) (Though I do very gladly embrace you all, never fear.)

On that note, a few absurd little ditties shall be fired off in your direction forthwith, to wit:

digitally altered drypointSeam Ripping

Little Miss Bride of Frankenstein

I hate to brag, or is that, whine?

But let’s just face it, this here scar

Is uglier and is by far

More showy and impressive than

The accident where it began

mixed media on paperAll for One or None for All

       I think there is no better place

       Than school for the whole human race

To see just how extremely dumb

Supposed thinking folk become

       Who study, yet fail to embrace

The notion that we are, from birth,

Just citizens of one whole earth,

       Not central, magical or best,

       Or totally unlike the rest,

Except perhaps as cause for mirth.

soft pastel on paperMutual Attractions

Wilma, with her dental plate

Encrusted with what she just ate,

Attracts both censure and some flies,

But also Isidore’s blue eyes;

Now, lest you think him over-kind,

Know that he’s old and wholly blind,

And since our Wilma’s likewise cased,

She likes him for his lack of taste.

I don’t Think I’m Crazy, but I’m Not Crazy about Clowns, Either

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. . . though just for the record, my malevolence against clowns will never be acted upon with anything more deadly than a squirting boutonniere . . .

Barrel of Laughs

Pity it comes to this, my friend;

I’d hoped to sidestep such an end

To our relationship–could not

Persuade you to eschew your plot.

Your gay facade of childlike cheer

Could not disguise your purpose here

Of traumatizing all the guests–

In fact, my prosecution rests

On your determined bright demeanor

Of insouciance in between or

Right over the top of griefs;

In fact, it is my firm belief

You’d gladly goad into the grave

Precisely those you sham to save

From daily life’s grotesqueries.

It’s cruel monstrosities like these

Harsh japes and jests and thoughtless jollies,

Nasty hijinks, fatal follies

Foisted on our sad world by

An ur-aggressive perky guy

With terrifying giant shoes,

Yarn wig and honking horn, and whose

Dire predilection for a prank

Makes most of us just want to yank

Off his bow-tie and bulbous nose

To the degree you might suppose

We’d some psychosis, but the fact

Is, though our souls remain intact,

They are endangered by his farce

Whom we’d be kicking in the arse

If we were not still too refined

To entertain that state of mind.

So rather, I must batten down

Your overweening ways, you clown,

And stare to naught your laughing fun

Right down the barrel of my gun.

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It's only a squirt-gun, but you're in my sights, you bozo!

Departure, It Seems

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Ever feel like the airline is just phoning it in?

Take me quickly in your arms; I fear I may be dying!

Was s’posed to be in flight by now, but only Time is flying . . .

These long delays are hardly new, nor cancellations, lost

Bushels of baggage, nor the way the airlines jack the cost

Of tickets by these add-on fees that fleece us out of breath–

It’s just that cumulatively, these may make us long for death.

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Is this really the meaning of my life, or just my own emotional baggage?

So after all the schlepping ’round from gate to gate to gate,

the pat-downs and the x-rays–oh, I fear it is too late!

Defibrillate my fainting heart; revive my flattened will . . .

This airport life’s hard to survive when I’ve such time to kill!

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I hate to be uncharitable, but it all seems so empty . . .

Escape from the Vortex of Daffy Driving

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It is good to be home. It’s especially good whenever one has spent a portion of the preceding time sucked into the malevolent maelstrom that is everyday traffic. There is rarely any simple way to drive or be driven from Point A to Point B without going through what amounts to an epic chase movie, but one whose projectionist speeds up and slows down the film at random intervals, spills a handful of hard candy into the projector where it is shredded into flying bits of sharp debris, and occasionally gives in to the urge to make shadow puppets, in front of the projector’s beam, depicting a snake swallowing a live rabbit. Really now, who thought mere traffic signals and seatbelts sufficient for dealing with this?

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There is no safe place to drive . . .

Here I am, minding my own business but driving sensibly as I always try to do, obeying the rules of the road and what I remember from long-ago drivers’ education training as best I can, and the rest of the wheeled world out there refuses to cooperate. The driver in front of me goes three-quarters of a mile down a straight road with her left turn signal winking ironically at me the whole time, apparently letting me know that she is fully aware that she is two feet into the center turn lane the whole way but has no intention of actually turning. Finally she turns off her left blinker so that she can concentrate better on getting in the left turn lane fifty feet ahead without that distracting noise. Once around the corner, I pass her at last and see her over there in the other lane, driving along while leaning so far toward her passenger that I guess she must be trying to adjust Grandma’s girdle with her teeth.

Meanwhile, I have stopped three times to let the person now in front of me pause in various uncontrolled intersections to decide whether or not to turn to the right out of them. At some point it seems there is inspiration, and the turn is accomplished. This, in the stately local style: slow to an almost complete stop; stare in the direction you are going to go so that your vehicle will understand where you intend it to take you; crawl around the corner at the lowest speed you can manage, lest you hit a pothole or a pony; at the last second, drive up over the curb at the corner because you cut it too close; overcorrect, step on the gas suddenly to free yourself from this unexpected obstacle, and lurch around the rest of the corner almost fully in the oncoming lane. The other favorite place for people here to do the stop-crawl-stop thing is over speed bumps, where I’m slightly perplexed to see so many of those He-Man monster trucks, jacked up so high for off-road adventure that a small elephant could pass underneath, tiptoeing timidly over speed bumps in this fashion. I can only surmise that such studmuffin drivers fear their exceedingly large manly parts hang too low and may be hit by the protruding speed bump if they’re not careful.

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Pay no attention to the color of the lights!

I gather as well that the driver’s handbook in this state fails to offer a definition of the word Merge. Conceptually, I had always thought it to mean something like, ‘before you enter the roadway, observe the traffic already in your intended lane and then adjust your speed higher or lower to accommodate smooth entry as you join the stream of vehicles’. Evidently “merge” sounded too much like “barge” to someone along the way and they thought it far too impolite, so drivers here instead creep up the on-ramp and hover sheepishly on the shoulder, hoping that the four lanes of behemoths whizzing by at full speed will miraculously part like the Red Sea and they can wade on in. If the desired space doesn’t show up quickly, why then the obvious solution is to build up to appropriate freeway speed while still kicking up sideline debris along the shoulder until a good spot clears on the road. Conversely, the warning to “yield” is interpreted as an invitation to stomp on the gas pedal and scream on in lest the optimal moment pass forever. Why this would be more disconcerting when the screamer whizzes by me and I can see only the top of his head over the dashboard is of course a mystery.

Accidents are a given, even at relatively low speeds. I understand that even the most attentive and careful driver can have a dog dash in front of him or have a passing bus throw up a sheet of rainwater onto her windshield. In a land where potholes of epic proportions might swallow a Smart Car, sudden hail turn a Humvee into a convertible, or a meandering red Angus shamble over and divert the oncoming pickup suddenly into my lane, things are bound to happen. But sometimes I do dream of a trip to the grocery store that doesn’t involve riding alongside a texting torpedo <LOL-swerve-OMG-swing-WTF-swissssh> or in front of somebody clearly needing to get to the bathroom NOW or behind the person whose peculiar brand of legal blindness means that all street signs, lights and obstacles look identical to her so she chooses a happy medium for all things and toddles along at the same cheerfully modest speed no matter where she goes or what piles of junk she drives through to send flying at me, and no matter what that light she just potted through might be trying to hint to her she ought to consider doing instead.

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Sending signals right and left . . .

Like selling her car.

I wish.