Rhetoric Kills

Speed doesn’t kill, that’s just another convenient excuse that’s been jammed down drivers throats for so long that it is now being trumpeted to the exclusion of all else. I’m sure it’s easier to fit on a billboard/coffee mug/key-ring/commemorative butt plug/whatever than “driving like a dick, not paying attention, not understanding the road rules and then passing all these habits on to your children which for some reason you are allowed to teach to drive... kills”. The unbelievable single-target focus of so many road safety campaigns has resulted in the greater public only being aware of one single variable in traffic accidents. Speed.

On a recent trip back home from overseas I realised exactly how bad things are. People have absorbed the message “drop 5, save lives” like it had been chemically introduced into the water supply. I feel like this might be a once off type thing and this is the only message the government has ever been able to pound into people brains. What a waste! If I was going to get the population of a city to absorb only one message I could think of hundreds that would have been more useful. Think about it, you could have had the whole population thinking;

n   Stop being self-centred for the next 5 minutes.

n   Watching The Biggest Loser does not count as exercise, put down the chips and step away from the couch.

n   Buy beers for everyone in the bar.

n   Stop playing the pokies, you’re not going to get rich, spend that money on soap instead. Please.

n   Tits out for the boys.

n   Does anyone REALLY give a crap about this facebook status?

But no, instead people now think “drive slower than speed limit, be superhero”. It was great to see people driving along in a 100kph zone doing 80kph chatting away to the person next to them. That’s great, well done, please stop drifting into my lane... screw this, have some HOOOOOORRN (I wish i had a bigger horn, the kind that destroys eardrums). And then they look surprised!

“How dare you blow your horn at me sir! I’m a safe driver! I drive well below the speed limit, usually in the right-hand lane because it’s my right as a road user!”. This right here is how people end up in shallow graves. They harp on about their Rights and ignore their Responsibilities, like paying attention while driving (to the road, not the phone/kids/GPS in the middle of their windscreen).

Who the hell decided that driving 5kph slower was a good idea anyway? Aren’t speed limits designed to be the safe speed at which to travel on any given road? If that speed limit was 5kph too fast, wouldn’t that be changed? Aside from the blanket 10kph speed reduction on all roads across the state a few years ago, which has been largely regarded as an easy way to increase the number of people getting caught for minor speeding offences, what has improved?

Certainly not the quality of driver training. The current requirement to take an L-plater for an educational spin is having a full drivers licence for 4 years. That’s it. 4 years of not indicating, failing to give way, talking on your phone and having no concept of how a round-a-bout works. That gives you the experience necessary to pass on all these horrible traits to a new driver. You can’t avoid it, even if you have lessons with a professional driving instructor you still have to complete your P-plate log book by spending hours listening to Johnny-No-Brakes telling you that you don’t _really_ need to indicate there, or you can just get away with mounting the curb there. Nothing like having to spend hour after hour in a confined space with someone supervising you to help reinforce their bad habits. Good work to whichever bloody genius had that stroke of logic:

(Read in a posh British accent, just because) “We have a bunch of crap drivers on the road, we should make new drivers practice for longer under the supervision of experienced drivers. That will solve this problem!”

It was a good idea right up until it turned out the people who are currently crap drivers are the ones training the future of crap driving.

So next time you’re driving home plastered at 3am with your headlights off and trying to text a booty call, remember that to be a safe driver all you have to do is slow down from 50kph to 45kph on those suburban roads... verge, footpath... whatever. Mind that letterbox.

-Worst Guy Ever

An Idiot's Rug

I have a problem. It may sound like a common ailment. You may indeed have suffered from this at some point. The Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t put an exact figure on it but my sciencing suggests that 1 in 3 people will, at some point in their lives be the victim of an idiot (if you haven't and you can see two people nearby looking annoyed... bad news).

This may not come as a surprise to many of you. You’ve read those “Letters to the Editor” sections of the newspaper, you’ve listened to talk back radio, you’ve seen that some undeniably cruel bastard digging up the scarecrow-like corpse of Gretel Killeen and using it to summon the eldritch spirit of Big Brother for another horrifying season (where’s that bloody 2012 apocalypse when you need it). Idiots are all around us, they make life that little bit harder for us every day. The people who stop in the middle of a shopping centre and block the entire walkway to have a conversation. The taxi driver who has decided that “hazard lights” translates to “I’m about to do a something stupid, inconsiderate, annoying or all three at once lights". The bouncer who thinks you look like someone who got kicked out of the club a couple of weeks ago, by someone else, while he wasn’t working, but he heard the guy was wearing a white shirt, like the one you’re wearing now. Yeah, the peoplle you meet when you don't have a gun...

Sometimes this stupidity pays off and you get given back the change for a $50 when you gave the guy a $20 or bartender forgets to ring up a round of drinks. This doesn’t happen as often as I feel it should. Maybe we should start a national campaign to support idiots getting into jobs that benefit the people and keep them out of government jobs...

Then there’s the judgement calls; those times where you’re not sure if you’re winning or not. I’ve had one of those recently. Like a prematurely ejaculating birthday present, it came as a surprise. I have a fully carpeted kitchen now.

Yeah, that’s right. Plush red carpet from wall to wall all through my apartment, including the kitchen (luckily the bathroom was spared). I’m now stuck without a real idea of whether i should enjoy this or flat out hate it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad having a nice thick rug under foot when I’m cooking (ok microwaving, it still counts as food though) and while it’s new it remains nice. I’m looking at this like the US economy, or Julia Gillard though, I don’t see it lasting.

There’s a reason most kitchen aren’t carpeted. Kitchens are messy. That’s why you don’t see serial killers chopping up corpses in a bedroom or a lounge, too hard to get stains out. Serial killers know what they’re doing, that’s why they’re SERIAL killers, if they got caught after the first one they’d just be normal killers. A serial killer will go for a bathtub or a nice kitchen bench (proper granite, none of that Ikea crap) because it’s easier to clean up afterwards. I’m now denied this since I have a carpeted kitchen, on the bright side a whole bunch of people get to live a little bit longer... no connection... honest...

I didn’t ask for the carpet, it was just there one day (perils of living in a hotel, sometimes you come home and someone decorated). But honestly, I’m not too worried about cleaning it, that’s what housekeeping is for (perks of living in a hotel, I come home to a clean apartment every day).

So I’m not going to care too much about being a neat and tidy cook, and everything else can get sorted out between the rug and the maid.

Now to try some recipes that call for a lot of red wine and fire.

-Worst Guy Ever

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