Traffic Patterns Through History.

If you know me you know I love people. If you don't know me, well, I love people. I don't understand them, any of them, individually, or in groups, they are inaccessible and exotic. I watch, and admire, and try to learn but the lessons are difficult, and the methods are madness.

Last week, sometime, I was sitting at a stoplight, something I seem to spend a lot of time doing. But, I have gotten fairly proficient at sitting for traffic lights. I probably do it as well as anybody. I could give lessons. Waiting in a traffic jam is another practice I have almost perfected. Really, they both spring from the same well. You need a highly developed sense of apathy, and a willingness to spend time with yourself.  I fascinate me. I am a person, after all.

Anyway, I was sitting at the stoplight watching the traffic, enjoying life's rich drama unfold. It was a large intersection with several stages of allowable traffic, left turn only, right turn only and several combinations from all four directions. Sometimes even that amazes me, the coordination, the complex planning, the timing and layout, it really is a marvel of human engineering, I am always impressed.

Anyway, again, I was sitting at the light, waiting my turn, the glorious green that would send me cruising home, a smile on my face, and a song in my heart. The light had turned green for the people who were on my right and wanted to turn left. The man in front, the first car, it was actually an older sport utility vehicle, maybe an Isuzu Rodeo, maybe not, I don't know anything about cars and am just taking a wild guess, it was red, though. Right behind it was a newer car, it was, I am sure, silver.

Anyway, one more time, I was sitting at the light. The light changed for the red car, and the silver car, and all the cars behind them, to turn left. The red car driver was not paying attention, so the driver in the silver car honked the horn. A hostile act infuriating the driver in the red car. Who drove all the way around the left turn leaned over, looking into the side mirror on the drivers door screaming at the car behind him.

No driver worth his liability insurance is going to tolerate that, so the driver in the silver car was hollering for all he was worth all the way around the corner. Perhaps all the way into eternity. A modern day Norse myth, the sun chasing the moon in screaming obscene anger. It seems to be a perfect circle, a never ending pattern.

It plays out on every road I travel, every place there is traffic. Hurry, rush, curse, repeat. There is a comfort in knowing the reaction never changes. People are always angry, nobody knows how to enjoy waiting at the light. 

It was a new day, but it always ends up the same, doesn't it?

Recently, in a gesture of good will, and a selfless act of civic responsibility we, here at the Midwest Office of Life Explained (MOLE) donated a Technologically Advanced, Completely autOnomous traffic control System (TACOS). It was a miracle of design and programming.

Scanning the license plate of passing cars and accessing the private data from the BMV TACOS would estimate the probable destination of the vehicle and compare that with expected traffic patterns and projected use, TACOS would send a signal to the cars radio and alert the driver of the optimal route.

Here is the true genius of the system. Depending on the make, model and accessories it might even be able to access the cars diagnostic systems and tell a person whether or not they should have that thing on their neck looked at, it might not just be a wart after all.

But, the real benefit was we could implement the Life Explained Authorization Command Hold (LEACH) which would clear traffic, not overtly, but enough, to get us to work smoothly, and without delay. With a quick, easy preprogrammed  routine it would empty the drive through at Bob's House of Donuts and Breakfast Burritos. So maybe it was not completely philanthropic, but it helped everybody.

For a while. As so often happens, when a company tries to do the right thing, improve the daily drudgery, and promote a healthier life, things went a little sour.

TACOS took over the acquisitions and maintenance computers. Using the cities good credit, and close ties with a military contractor, whose name is being withheld (it wasn't us, though*), The system ordered dozens of weapons grade lasers. It had them installed on the lights used to illuminate the freeway, and on stop lights, and traffic cameras all over the city.

At first it just used the weapons to ensure obedience to driving directions. Soon, though, speeders would be evaporated, crossing against the light, zap, ashes, j walkers were disintegrated. People with expired plates were reduced to rubble. You don't even want to know what happened to DUI suspects.

Soon, TACOS had a fleet of drones, armed with cameras, flying around the city (who knows where they came from, but it wasn't us*).  Watching everybody's every move. The corpses of shoplifters, trespassers, and vagrants lined the streets. Thinking about not voting, think again.

So, we are cowering here, in the custodians closet, enough food and water to last for two weeks, enough pine scented disinfectant to last for all eternity. Really, does anybody ever use any of this stuff? There are cases and cases just stacked up in here, and yet nothing ever smells like pine, what sense does that make?  But, that isn't really important right now.

*We don't think it was us, anyway.

Winter Hits the Local News. Oh the horror.

Central Ohio has been cursed with warm, wonderful weather until recently. Highs in the 60's, low's in the 30's, some rain, and some sun, and some pleasantness. But, that changed, winter has come to visit. Not terrible winter, no polar vortex, no bone chilling, below zero, life force draining weather invasion, just a small dose of winter. We can take it.

But, it has been very hard on the local news broadcasts. "Team Coverage" of a light snow falling gently on a gradually waking city does not do much for ratings. They deserve some applause for effort, though.

One  intrepid reporter was sent north of the city, where there might have been a little more snow, marginally. He was lucky enough to find a shallow ditch in an abandoned field where undisturbed snow had peacefully accumulated to a noticeable level.

With the camera following his every move he waded bravely into the once pure snow, almost 2 inches high, and said breathlessly, "you can see the accumulation, as my tracks lead me back to the safety of the road." It made me realize how fortunate I was not to have to brave that snow covered field today. Oh, thank you kind hand of fate.

The meteorologist told us that it was only a light snow, and there would be several breaks, but, it would continue, on and off, lightly for most of the day, or at least until early afternoon. I'm praying that I get away.

Wet freeways, and a frantic traffic reporter caused general delays in the commute. "Even though the Department of Transportation has been clearing roads and spreading salt nonstop for the last two days, the snowfall has made the roads a little wet. So leave early, and drive slowly, inch along like you are walking on ice." And they did. Safety first, even before common sense.

There was another report from the Public School bus lot, where despite the seasonable cold, and light snow buses were running without delay, or even inconvenience (until reaching the freeway anyway). But I was making lunches, and did not hear how they were planning on dealing with the normalcy of the conditions. Which is alright, I am not that brave, anyway.

But, now I am safely at work, and hunkering down for a long day of watching the mild winter storm choke the life from the city I love, gently, slowly and only until early afternoon.

Common Sense Application to Enormous Problems.

Today's traffic in the nation's capital calls for ego fueled, shortsighted, narrow minded, self-serving gridlock. This is liable to be a long term situation with little hope for resolution. Meanwhile the nation languishes and the problems grow, and compound. There is little hope for resolution. Elected officials threaten bicker, squabble, and insult, and perform far below expectations. 

 It is obvious our form of democracy is in desperate straits, and at least part of the problem can be attributed to the liberal infusion of cash, and the obligation that follows, an inescapable shadow, strangling cooperation, and bipartisanship. Infrastructure fails, while elected officials stand in the hallowed aisles of the houses of congress swinging their purses at each other, purses swollen with corporate cash. But, it is this cash, and greed, and need for control that could save us from some of our problems.

Large companies line up to throw money at arenas and stadiums, they can't wait to plaster their name on auditoriums, anything that will provide a tax shelter, and a little glad handing advertisement. We are constantly bombarded by product placement, and naming rights, everywhere we look. Why not use to this to our advantage.

Every civic reconstruction project should begin with two bids. The first is for the naming rights, and the second is for the actual construction, demolition, or both. Even in a relatively small city many people will never enter the basketball, or hockey arena, or the baseball, or football stadium. Sure, everybody will hear the name, repeated by the corporate shills manning the local press outlets, but with time it will cease to be a proper noun, Lucas Oil Stadium, Nationwide Arena, soon become, "lucasoilstadium." It is not intentional, it is human nature. But, imagine the impact of The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Water Main. Something people use every day, something that gives life, and provides comfort.

What about the Waste Management Swamp Reclamation Project? Or the Pfizer Solid Waste Authority Land Fill, garbage trucks could be festooned with images of people whose lives have been made more complete through the use of applied chemistry.

If your municipality can not afford new police cruisers, sell advertising rights. Not only could the winning company place their logo on the side of the car, the siren could be programmed to play the commercial jingle. Imagine your delight at being pulled over by "My bologna has a first name it's O S C A R." Even hardened criminals will surrender gladly to the pleasant, happy child's voice singing joyfully about lunch.

Of course it won't solve all of our problems, but it will give us the foundation for reconstruction, a chance to claw our way out of the morass, find our way out of the darkness. Maybe we can auction off some of our elected officials to raise enough money for a pizza party. Actually, it will be more like a second mortgage.

Tomorrow is a new day, if we make it.

We are in the midst of the mid November Snow storm, an early variation of the polar vortex.  There was concern that this could be the end, so hauntingly depicted in the classic Doors so fittingly named The End;

"This is the end, beautiful friend,
This is the end, my only friend, the end
To our elaborate plans, the end,
To everything that stands, the end."

Thank you, Jim Morrison.

Local meteorologists were scrambling yesterday to find imagery raw, and terrifying enough to depict the coming apocalypse.  It was an afternoon spent warning people that we were in for a rough commute this morning, possibly heavy snow, and potentially, the end.

Stores were packed with combative, frightened shoppers, laying in supplies, bottled water, canned food, candles, batteries, ammunition (to shoot the roaming bands of looters, ravenous packs of timber wolves, and occasional polar bear), and bleach.  Why do they always buy bleach?  Some sort of bizarre need to keep whites white?  Nobody wants to face the end in a dingy, stained t-shirt.

This morning, stations were trampling all over the peaceful, virgin snow, each other, and poor slobs who just wanted to get to work, to bring you the latest, frightening video of snow falling, gently and lightly on a gas station parking lot somewhere south of town.  Local networks called every available reporter, and cameraman into work, for the "team coverage."  They were almost cruel in their capture and interrogation of motorists.

"What do you think of the snow, and driving to work in such hazardous, deadly conditions?"  The reporter asked, pointedly, accusingly, with a scornful, wicked smile.

"Well, people just need to slow down, you can't be in a big hurry."  The older gentleman, who looked as if he would never be in too big a hurry for anything, he was probably a grandfather, wearing a hand knitted stocking hat, and matching scarf, said softly, and politely, leaning into toward the microphone.  He probably did not want to inconvenience the reporter.

"So, you think slowing down, and being careful are enough to save us from the Snowpocalypse*?  Do you really think caution, and common sense will save us from this?"  The reporter asked savagely, with a sweeping, angry swing of his free hand to indicate the falling snow.  Since the older gentleman had moved closer to speak softly into the microphone the pronounced, emphatic arc of the reporters arm hit him right in the forehead and knocked him onto his back, in the new, wet, soft snow.

Thinking quickly, the dedicated journalist stepped over the prone, fallen older gentleman and interviewed someone who was coming out of the gas station with a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and a bag of powder sugar donuts.  He was "worried sick" about getting to work on time.  This made the reporter happy, and he patted the person on the back.

Of course, I could only watch so much, I had to get to work, and traffic was heavy, and slow, people were worried, and the freeway just inched along, but, I made it.   I hope you are safe, and warm, and somewhere with coffee, because I care about you, as a person.  Let me know if you had any problems, I will alert the stations.




* Snowpocalypse, much to my surprise, was not flagged as misspelled, neither was snownado.  It just struck me as odd.  Such is the evolution of English.

The Life Explained Morning Show,

All the news you will ever need, in one morning, so enjoy the show, and then throw away the alarm clock.  You can thank us later.

Your Guide to Technology.

With our cable television we received a DVR (Digital Video Recorder).  A revolutionary device that records the things we want to watch while we are watching something else we want to watch.  Proving the theory that there is always "something good" on TV, not only something good, but often two things that have earned the "something good" classification, at least from my family.  After recording it we are free to watch it whenever we like, as often as we like, and we can skip the boring parts, and get right to the scene where (please, feel free to use your imagination and insert your favorite bit of any show you might record, and watch repeatedly here).

However, the real magic in this heaven sent electronic marvel is the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward "live television" (technically, it does not have to be live television, which is defined as "a television production broadcast in real time" and pausing it and rewinding, or fast forwarding through portions would ruin the spontaneity the producers hoped to achieve using "live television") so you can pause the program you are watching and grab a handful of corn chips, and some salsa, and maybe some cookies and milk, or crackers, cheese, and a drink, or a sandwich, potato chips and some dip, or a candy bar, and iced tea, or..., you get the idea.

Hindsight is important, but imagine being able to view the present with that same air of smug comfort and confidence that comes when looking at the past.  That level of "man, that was some high point, for me, I really nailed it."  That is where the true value of manipulating "live television" lies.

I take a relatively busy freeway to work each morning, and an accident can really throw a wrench in the gears of commuting.  Knowing there is a tie up can really save time.  Watching the local traffic report is helpful, I recommend it, in fact, but sometimes an accident will happen after I leave and before I get to work.  If only there were a way to check the traffic report for the future, that would be great.

Thanks to the electronic voodoo provided by the good folks at (I'm not sure who manufactured the DVR that was provided by our cable company, and I am not too happy with our cable company so I am not going to mention their name, until they meet all (or at least the reasonable portion) of my demands) I can fast forward into the future and make sure the sailing is smooth all the way to work.  Ain't technology grand?

One morning the traffic report showed my car in a small accident, nothing too serious, just a wrinkled fender,
and probably a broken head light, so I took a different route.  I thought that was so smart.  Unfortunately it opened a tear in the time space continuum and an army of demons poured out and destroyed most of area between the Fifth Avenue curve, and the Leonard Ave. exit before Doctor Dawg and I managed to repel them and close the rift.

It was real drain on the city budget, and tied up most of the road repair budget for the next several years, and several city council members and community leaders were really upset.  There are things that need to be worked out, obviously.  All in all, though, I am a big fan of this high tech stuff.  You should get some.

Another treacherous commute, sort of.

Last night the weather people on TV predicted a "wintry mix of rain, sleet and snow" for this morning.  In this part of the country that is meteorologist crack cocaine.  You can feel the excitement build as they talk about the potential rain, mixing with the potential snow, and falling on our city.  Excitement can overcome even a seasoned television weather person, causing them to swoon, and the sports guy will have to rush over and fan them with the sports page from the local paper he was using to write his report.  But, as excited as they find the possibilities it can make my morning drive less enjoyable.

Since, a decent "wintry mix" can throw traffic into chaos the safe bet was to wake early, check the morning traffic report, and adjust my schedule accordingly.  The first thing we saw was the weather.

Al, the morning weatherperson said it was raining, and showed, with the help of a full screen radar image, a large swath of rain clouds passing over the area, with some snow showers mixed in towards the end.  Clouds producing snow stand out because of color variation, and there was a small batch of lightly colored clouds following closely on the heels of the wide, traveling amoeba looking bunch of rain clouds.  But, it was enough, and Al was thrilled.  After his breathless presentation, he passed the screen time baton to Mona the traffic reporter.

"With all of the rain we have had over the last several hours traffic is really slow, here are images from around the metropolitan area."  Four images, almost identical from the cloudy, rain drop smeared lenses, covered the screen and she described, in detail, what each camera was showing.  "There are no accidents to report, yet," you could almost sense the sorrow in her voice, and she slumped a little, "but, you know with wet, hazardous roads like this it is only a matter of time.  And I will bring it to you as soon as it happens."  She perked up a little there, and passed the all important air time to Bob, the anchorman.



"We have a camera crew and Ken, the reporter, loaded and ready to roll, as soon as there is an accident," Bob said, a little breathless, and the television screen showed Ken, the reporter, and a camera crew waiting in a van, in the rain, ready to roll.

Bob talked about the coming election, and the levees on the ballot, moving quickly to results of the online poll conducted by the station, an overnight robbery, and a local dog named Fritz who climbed a tree to rescue his friend, a cat named Hans, which was kind of cool.

"And, back to the Storm Center, and Al.  Hey, Al, how about giving this rain the boot and gettin' us some sunshine?"  He joked.

Al talked about the rain, predicting it would be out of the area sometime in the morning and the sun would appear in the afternoon, "How about that, Bob?  Now on to Mona, at the Traffic Control Console."

Mona was trying hard to keep a positive demeanor, but her voice, quavering, belied her concern.  "Nothing to report so far, but, with wet, awful roads like this it is only a matter of minutes, and we are ready to bring you the news.  Right, Ken?"

Flash to Ken, standing in the rain, beside the van, right outside the station, "that's right, Mona.  We are just waiting to bring you the film from the first accident of the day."

Mona was back on the screen, promising to bring us reports of the first accident, which, she assured was coming quickly.

Another round of news and weather and we were back to Mona, who was beginning to show signs of desperation.  She was wringing her hands, and sweat was beginning to streak her makeup.

"Look, the roads are terrible, and we are going to have an accident, soon.  Why wait?  The first person to run their car into a pole gets this $10.00 gift card to "Bill's House of Good Coffee."  If you involve another car the good people at "Terri's Style Boutique" will throw in a cut and color.  Look, we all drive the same roads, and we all know how irritating it is when some fool cuts you off, like they are more important, their time is more valuable.  Today is the chance to show them.  Ram them hard enough to require a wrecker, and "Ted's Towing" will throw in dinner for two at "The Powder House Grill."  We are going to throw open the phone lines, and take bids, if you are interested in a morning crash, but don't like the gifts you see here, call in and make a request, we will do our best to make it happen.  No reasonable offer will be refused.  What other station can make that claim?"

I was going to hold out for a new TV, but duty called, I take my job seriously.  I never heard who won the lottery, but, I am sure it was a great prize, and a grand accident, and Ken did a superb job reporting.

Morning commutes can be hectic.

Today's drive was a little hectic.  At 6:15 traffic is, generally speaking, pretty light, normally, really, just smooth sailing, mostly.  Not today.

It started right on the first freeway ramp.  In front of my car was a Chevy Silverado, bright red, a big gas guzzling pickup, you could tell it never hauled anything more freight worthy than groceries, a real pretty boy thing,  Poking along, screwing up the whole works.  He merged to the left, perfect time to pass him.  Accelerating until I was pulling ahead a little Mr. Sissy man pickup driver saw I was going around him and decided that was not the best way to start his day, and sped up.  Driving defensively, and not wanting to cause any accidents, I put my foot to the floor, and passed him doing 85 miles per hour (Miles are like kilometers, only longer, or not as long, I don't remember, and an hour is like a minute times 60)

It was a great feeling watching the schmuck sobbing in my rear view mirror, until a car flew past on the left and took the lead, then one on the right. nearly causing an accident, lunatics anyway.  Whipping into the middle lane I drafted (drafting is a racing term and it means, driving right behind someone so close in order to create, to gather, to generate, never mind what it means, it isn't important) behind a Honda Odyssey going 120 mph.  I was so close I managed to catch the last few minutes of Scooby Doo on the DVD screen.  Did you know the Creeper was really the butler?

I looked out the drivers side window and who was there?  That's right, Jeff Gordon in the number three car.  He flipped me the bird and went to pass the minivan.  I double clutched and shifted into a lower gear, which was hard, since I don't have any idea what that means and my car has an automatic transmission.  Swerving over I managed, barely to clip his rear bumper and send him careening into the ambulance, whose driver was using the lights and sirens in a foolish attempt to get to ahead of me.

Only two cars left to pass and the lead would be mine, and one of them was a school bus.  Victory is going to be so sweet.  But, as the school bus and I were jockeying for position a state patrolman cruised by and I decided he should probably have the honor.  Brave public servant that he is.