(dave e)

If you don't stop making me laugh out loud, I'm going to have to stop reading you at work ;-)

aw, shucks. that's nice of you. if you wouldn't mind telling the wife that my misanthropy is funny, i'd appreciate it. she's getting tired of seeing me shake my feeble fist at teenagers.

I think the wordherders need to identify some sites that maintain stylesheets that are available for others to use in order to customize their own blogs.

d-- let me be the first of your passengers to disclose a mounting ambivalence with regard to your speed limit-conscious driving challenge. as one who is often late for work, i question not your aim to obey the law. instead, i ask for whom are you the exemplar? let me explain. i've been trying to change the world ever since i took my first desk job in the "real world." i'm trying to get everyone on the corporate 9-5 roadway to understand that corporate rules do not create quality work output. rather, flexibility on the part of management and staff-- leniency, as it were-- is the fertilizer of initiative and breathtaking, out-of-the-box thinking.

my boss tells me, when i arrive late to work, that i'm "telling my coworkers that i don't value my job and don't respect my peers who all have to show up on time." to which i reply: "every time you punish me for my tardiness, you're telling me that you don't value my work output, and would rather praise an incompetent employee who shows up at 7:59, than recognize a skilled employee who shows up at 8:09." every time i get "written up" for arriving late, i further cement my idealism. the more i am punished, the more committed i become to showing the world that it is the laborer's product that should be valued more than the laborer's demonstrated success at to playing by the rules.

where is this argument going, you may ask? well, my question is, dave, who are you punishing by driving the speed limit? yourself, or the n'er-do-wells you share the road with? because to this day, i've never been praised for showing up late. and have, instead, only been the instrument of my own failure. sure, dave. you say, "but fritz, by driving the speed limit i am only protecting my own life, and the lives of others. my adherence to the rules is the foil to your story-- your tale serves to aid my cause!"

but alas, dave, you and i are more alike in this anecdote then it might at first seem. because you and i are, after all, the renegades. the mavericks who determine for ourselves what is right. we fight for what we believe, not for what is accepted as the norm.

however, one day, the norm is going to can my ass for not following the rules. and one day, some jar head with a Ford F-150 and chrome brush guard is going to roll over you and your honda accord like it was a pesky speed bump. we both are no better off for our idealism. perhaps we should just follow the others and drive fast, making it to work on time? would we not, then, save ourselves the trouble of trying to single-handedly send a message to a world that is deaf to our argument?

please do me the favor of replying to this message. i am earnestly interested in your reaction. mostly, because i am, probably not-too-subtly, looking for someone to justify my love for sleeping in.

ah, the lateness-is-the-domain-of-the-innovative argument.

i choose my battles. on two-lane roads with few pedestrians (remember, i'm often on my feet in these mean streets, so i value the safe driver who keeps her 5,000 lbs. of metal and fiberglass off my toes), i'm willing to bump it up a few degrees for the latester pushing my tail. yesterday's anecdote, i should mention, took place on a four-lane with plenty of passing space. as a regular passenger of mine, you will have noticed that i rarely occupy the "fast" lane, and do so only when passing senior citizens.

if i hadn't been a hardass with a student who begged me today to accept a really late paper without any penalty (mind you, i levied only half of the letter-of-the-law penalty), i'd be more likely to back off a bit and condone lateness.

"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," my favorite american renaissance thinker is wont to observe. i confess, he's got a point.

and yet, i can equivocate a bit with your condition. arriving nine minutes late and doing one's job well is undeniably a less punishable offense than driving 65 in a 40, risking the lives of truant schoolchildren. i fail to understand a draconian refusal to recognize that.

who benefits from my no-more-than-five-over method? quite simply, i do. it offers peace of mind. a deposit in my karma's positive column. i re-interpellate myself into the matri... er... system every time i get behind the wheel, and in my neurotic mind, things are easier if i'm not battling for a place in the faster lane, jockeying others around, failing to drive defensively. if the jarhead in the f-150 hits me, well, i guess i'll benefit from the following axiom: the guy in the back is always to blame (sorry, j).

i'm not satisfied with my response. continue to sleep in.

ah. so you're not trying to change the world. you're just looking after yourself.

my my, dave, but in terms of US foreign policy, isn't that a little bit passé? a little bit Pat Buchanan? i mean, isolationism is sooooo last century. it's the year 2000 man, er, um, 2003. my bad. but yeah, get with the program.

today, isn't it hip to care about others? y'know, take an interest in those poor people who can't, or simply elect not to, wake up to your enlightened consciousness. hmmm. it seems we two are less alike than my posturing strawman would suggest. perhaps i was projecting. after all, when "people are getting angrier and angrier at me" for doing just about anything, i figure i must be doing something that is perceived to be wrong, and therefore must battle to hold my ground. i see now that you're not bothered by these angry folk, and thus, have no cause to "shake [your] feeble fist at teenagers." that’s cool, slowpoke.

;)

but i'm protecting myself (at least in theory... this is the same logic that keeps me off airplanes sometimes: can't be in a plane cr*sh if you're not in a plane), and i'm not harming anyone else (at least not in a bodily sense; i'd happily move over for a speeding ambulance or fire truck... heck, i've even driven out into intersections on a red light in order to let flashing reds get by).

i am also trying to set an example (the ugly head of vanity rears up from the depths of self-deprecation). i refuse to hide the little lite of my safe driving under a bushel. NO! i'm gonna let it shine.

finally, as i was just out driving on georgia ave during rush hour, i realized another motive for my rule-bound street style. i do not share your libertarian/existentialist faith in the ability of the community of drivers to collectively determine a reasonable speed, without good guidance from traffic engineers. honestly, do you? go drive around town for a while. imagine the nightmare of do-it-yourself driving regulation.

oh, that's right. that's how they do it here. my bad.

It was not my fault.

and, alas, to dave (aka, richard petty), I offer the following advice to your statement: "can't be in a plane cr*sh if you're not in a plane"

Don't drive under flight paths.

hey! that's a good idea.

You need to put recent comments in the side bar so I don't have to scroll all the way down, sucka!