Hippie Hypocrisy

From what I'm guessing is the last hurrah of summer, I-80, upon which I'm forced to commute every weekend, is jam packed every Saturday and Sunday at around 3 pm. Bumper to bumper, and an 80 mile drive can take me over two hours...which means over the total distance I average about 35 mph...on a freeway. Now keep in mind the ONLY reason I'm on the god forsaken 80 freeway at 3:30 pm on a Saturday is BECAUSE I HAVE TO BE. I'm commuting to work, and I have no choice. None. Nada. Zilch. Bupkis. Etc. Want to know who IS on the freeway at this time? A whole bunch of yuppie fucks coming back from the mountains and headed back to the Bay Area. How do I know this you may or may not be asking yourself? Because the freeway is packed with SUV's, Subarus and Priuses loaded with bicycles and kayaks all headed westbound back to the Bay. Huh. What I find interesting is the mindset of these nimrods. Why, for the love of God, would you leave the mountains in the middle of the afternoon when traffic is A) at its most congested, and B) its hotter than hell outside. "You know Skye (a good Bay Area name), we COULD leave early in the morning, have a quick breakfast of rainwater and organic soy infused soy, and head down the mountain and avoid the crush of traffic and enjoy the cooler weather and have a pleasant drive, OR, we could leave late this evening, have a quick dinner of fair trade soy water and gluten free soy, and avoid the crush of traffic and enjoy the cooler weather and have a pleasant drive. But you know what Windwalker (Skye's nickname)? Fuck that. We're going to leave in the middle of the afternoon so we can sit in the middle of a 100 mile long traffic jam in 100 degree weather, and just idle in place belching out large volumes of automobile pollution, and turn our 2-1/2 hour drive into a five hour, agonizing, soul sucking hell. So load up the bikes and the kayak and lets get to it! Um, did you remember to pack the instant soy fairer than fair trade coffee?"

All I wonder is "WHY?????" See what rampant weed abuse does to you? It makes you really stupid. But here's the hysterical thing, at least to me. These granola eating, save the whale, save the planet and stop global warming types are pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere just to indulge their desire to kayak and mountain bike in Tahoe. Isn't that the height of vanity, narcissism, and hypocrisy? I mean, if you like to mountain bike, it's not like the San Francisco Bay Area has ANY FUCKING HILLS NEARBY. The whole area is nothing but hills!!! Let me tell 'ya, its one hilly fucking city man! And kayaking? Yeah, I can see why you need to go to Tahoe to do that because it's not like there's AN OCEAN AND A GIANT FUCKING BAY IN THE IMMEDIATE VICINITY! But no, your typical wanna be Bay Area liberal needs to indulge his need to "get one with nature" by driving around and belching unneeded additional pollution into the atmosphere...not to mention all the damage they do to the oxygen giving trees of our forests by driving their Subaru Forrester through them EVERY GODDAMN WEEKEND. So, the very nature they love SO MUCH must be destroyed because the nature in their backyard doesn't meet their aesthetic desires. It's not the scenery they DESERVE. Of course they could just move to the woods and be one with nature every day, but then where would they get their lattes, their Pottery Barn salad bowls, and high colonics?

My first (old) blog...huzzah

So, I’ve been trying to write this blog for a few hours now. I ate some tacos, did some texting, and took a nap (unplanned….was very tired) on my sister’s sofa. Now I’m sitting on the same sofa with her laptop and attempting to write this, watching tv (first it was a show about this lost Caucasian tribe they found in ancient China nobody knew existed, and now Dave and Conan), having a conversation with my sister, and IM’ing various people. Normally, I make fun of this kind of over-connected stimulation, and I don’t know if I could do it every day, but right now…yeah…it’s kind of fun. It’s my second admitted act of hypocrisy today. What can I say? I’m on a roll.

Anyways, as I was on my Sisyphean commute to the Bay Area at an ungodly hour of the morning, I heard a radio station ad for 7-11 (or some place like it) for their newest breakfast creation: the taquito omelet. Wow. Really? Doesn’t that seem a bit of a stretch? I like omelets, I like taquitos…but this just seems like a bad move. I mean, they’re clearly running out of ideas. I will eat almost any breakfast food imaginable, but I do have my limits (side bar: somebody accused me of gorging on pastries and donuts for breakfast on a daily basis, and I just want to say this is patently untrue. Then again, while this person can be an enigmatic story teller, they can get carried away and prone to, well, let’s just say exaggeration, and I’m sure the next time they relate this story I will have graduated from pastries to inhaling five pound bags of granulated sugar for a morning pick me up, and then eventually the story will evolve to me walking around with a high fructose corn syrup bottle hanging from an IV that’s running to a direct line right into my carotid artery 24-7. Anyway, yes, I do like the occasional bear claw…and while mainlining a kilo of C&H’s finest has some appeal, I’m not there yet). It just sounds…desperate. What next? The donut guacamole burger? The biscuit and gravy spaghetti plate? The hot wings and pancakes? Wait…we do have chicken and waffles, but that’s pretty much for when you’re really drunk and it’s three in the morning. But I digress…it just seems like we’re such an ADD nation that we have to keep creating new and, well, certainly interesting, food items to keep people coming in to our ‘artificially flavored, instantaneously prepared, seven thousand year shelf life processed food’ delivery kiosks (also known as Johnny Quick, AM-PM, and 7-11). These places need to calm down and pare it back to what they do best: low grade gasoline, 148 oz. oil drum sized sodas, thirty six flavors of corn nuts, and racks and racks of chocolate donettes. If you’re going to go slumming for breakfast, let’s do it right (make mine a bbq corn nuts, a Coke, and maybe instead of the donettes, a berry pie. I’m feeling reckless…wait, you got one of those five pound bags of sugar laying around…..or maybe some corn syrup?).

As I continued my drive I tried to make a call. No signal. This is too perfect because I was going through the Livermore area, i.e. some of the most technologically advanced real estate in the WORLD…and I cannot …get…a cell signal. Am I the only one who sees the, oh, I dunno, the chocolate donettey deliciousness of the irony here? It’s not like I was driving through Kabul for god’s sake!!!! Worlds most advanced nuclear weapons systems being developed over there, plasma/fusion electrical research going on over there (read it in Discovery Magazine), Oracle compound over there…and not a low brow cell signal in sight. Who knows…maybe I’m just too easily amused by the little things…like multi-billion dollar tech firms being located in a valley of spotty communications signals.

OK, so I put my phone down and start scribbling a list (my first act of hypocrisy today) of shit that annoys me as I drive so I can write about it later (have to…I have no short term memory…at…um…all….and…uh…what are we talking about again?). Guess who makes the list? The dickhead in front of me, and here’s why. We’re in the number one (fast) lane and he’s tearing it up at 64 miles per hour. OH. MY. GOD. KILL ME NOW. LET’S GO MOTHERFUCKER!!! Naturally, traffic is flying by to my right and I can’t change lanes because the self centered pricks have apparently never seen a turn signal before and have mistakenly identified my desire to change lanes as an opportunity to have a high speed collision should I dare to actually make good on my lane change. So I’m stuck. What makes it worse is this guy in front of me is driving a big old high powered SUV. And not just any SUV…a…wait for it…Porsche Cayenne. This guy went out and dropped a pile of extra ducats to have a “high performance” vehicle masquerading as a station wagon, and he refuses to take it over 64 miles per hour. And it gets better: it was the Cayenne S. The S version is what you get when you ask the sales person “Sure, it’s a Porsche…but have you got anything with some actual BALLS?” And yet, this guy had…none (balls that is). We got to a downhill run and there was no traffic ahead of him, and he…SLOWS DOWN. Tippy tap on the break pedal. Un-be-liev-able. Clearly Porsche needs to run some sort of psychological profile on their potential customers before they consider selling them a vehicle. “I’m sorry sir…but you’re just not the type of manic, coked up, self centered, poor decision making asshole we need to have in our vehicles to truly drive them properly. Should you go through another three divorces and start dating a stripper twenty years your junior with an out of control meth and ecstasy addiction, give us a call as you phone in your Viagra and heart medication refill…then we’ll talk”.OK, I have GOT to get off of this sofa…