Elizabeth, Colorado Redneck Road Rally   Soooooo...   Not much to talk about.   I hate driving to work sometimes.   I live in a small town in Colorado and it is about thirty-five miles from work.   One of these days I'm gonna get pulled over for driving like a maniac and the conversation with the policew will go something like this:   COP: Do you know how fast you were going back there?   ME: I dunno... How fast was I going?   COP: I clocked you at one-hundred-sixty-five. Is there any possible reason for you to go that fast?   ME: I work at night, I live in Elizabeth, and I work in Greenwood Village. I have to be at work at ten O'Clock.   COP: Holy shit! Why didn't you just say so? Hey, here's five bucks. I'm really sorry. Have a nice night.   Yeah, that's how it's going to go…   Yeah, right.   I have no idea why getting to work from my house is such a chore, it just is. When I drive to work, I have to travel about 20 miles on a two lane "highway" between Elizabeth and Castle Rock. It's a nice road and stuff but the drivers that I wind up behind are a serious pain in the ass.   The Setup...   Every Tuesday through Sunday night is an event that occurs in Elizabeth, Colorado, known as the Redneck Road Rally. It is a competition held locally to see who can make me latest to work and the competition is fierce. I have no idea what the prize for winning this competition other than making me nuts and driving my blood pressure into the low ten-thousand range.   Here's how it works...   Let's say it's Wednesday night.   All of the "racers" gather at a local bar and celebrate The Almost-Almost Friday Night Special. This festival celebrates the fact that it is two days away from Friday. Thursday is the Almost Friday bash and of course you can guess what Tuesday is. So, Almost-Almost Friday Night is celebrated at all TWO of the local bars with a special "Two-Fer" deal (you get two drinks for, yes, you guessed it, the price of TWO DRINKS) and all of the racers prepare for a night of fun by getting blasted to the gills.   Sooooo...   After the drivers get good and likkered up, they proceed to file out of the bar one by one. Each racer leaves at a set time in five-minute increments after 9:00 PM and each driver tries to pull in front of my vehicle before I get out of town.   And then the "race" is on.   Being that highway 86 is a two lane road and is pretty curvy and hilly in places, passing at night is not only inadvisable, it is insane. This gives the Redneck Road Rally crew a distinct advantage. The goal of the "race" Is to complete the following tasks… Get in front of my vehicle. Drive thirty-five miles an hour or less. Drive like a complete drunken piece of shit. Swerve. Pass non-existent cars. Make me so pissed off that my ranting becomes an utterly incomprehensible stream of complete gibberish. Obsessively turn on the high-beam lights at every possible opportunity. OBSESSIVE SIDEBAR MODE: ON   The last item is bizarre. I have no fucking idea what the obsession with turning on the bright-lights is with these idiots. I noticed it after a few weeks of living in Elizabeth. My family thought that I had lost my mind when I started ranting about the slower-than-shit, piss-poor-excuses-for-organ-donors always turning on their high-beams at every chance they had but they let me go on and on and on about it for the past year or so.   I now suspect that they turn up the lights so that they can check for cops on the side of the road so that they can speed up or stop swerving or do whatever they need to do in order to appear somewhat sober.   Yay for the run-on sentence…   I recently went driving at night and the Road-Rally crew did not know it was my night off and that their antics would NOT result in my being late to work. I had a passenger in the car (I was with one of my daughters, I think. I dunno, maybe it was Adrienne, anyway...) and I had an opportunity to have them witness the high-beam light obsession. It is not often that I am vindicated on my weird goings on about insanely trivial issues but, at last, someone finally got to witness this Can-I-Turn-On-My-High-Beams-Yet retardation first hand.   Yay for more run-on sentences…   OBSESSIVE SIDEBAR MODE: OFF   Anyway…   I have no fucking idea how these assholes manage it, but if I leave anything more than one minute after 9:00 PM, they get on the road and make me crazier than shit. I usually make it on time, but barely. If I leave at exactly 9:00 PM or earlier, none of these bastards are on the road and I show up to work at least twenty minutes early.   Kill me...   Philosophy is Nothing But Jerking Off Smurfs for Fun and Profit   I just discovered this diatribe I wrote on my jump drive in answer to some mongoloidic assertion I found laying around...   Assertion: Nothing exists unperceived.   Fuck me. This is why I would never survive a bona fide philosophy class... If a boulder comes crashing down upon someone and that person is deaf, blind, and unconscious, not perceiving the object does not change the object's state of existence nor does it change the consequences of being in the object's path. Consequences do not change with perception. If this is not wrong, then why are there seatbelts in cars? If nothing exists if it is unperceived, then one does not need seatbelts; one just needs to simply perceive no accidents. Perception validates the universe but an individual's perception does not affect whether the universe exists or not. Not perceiving pre-Hubble images does not affect the previously unperceived galaxies' state of existence. People assume that the previously unperceived galaxies were there all along. To claim that they did not exist prior to being detected would be an act of lunatic denial. The idea that perception defines reality poses great problems for science. The need to investigate phenomena is negated by the assumption that not investigating phenomena renders their cause or origin non-existent. The desire to resolve "problems" in "reality" (e.g., the need to find a perceived "cure" for a perceived "disease") is patently ridiculous in a world where the problem is purely a perceived issue.   If I knew that I had an instructor that presented this idea and acted as they truly believed it (one can only ACT as if they believe this idea, true belief in this idiocy is a sign of total retardation), I would make sure to bring a fucking gun to the classroom and test their fucking retarded, goddammed ideas.   INTERIOR: COLLEGE CLASSROOM. INSTRUCTOR IS AT THE FRONT OF THE CLASS. "ME" IS IN THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM SLOUCHING BEHIND A DESK. SCENE FADES IN RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INSTRUCTOR'S SENTENCE.   INSTRUCTOR: ...so it is obvious that perception not only defines existence, it quite literally IS existence.   ME: Wait a minute, hold it. So, if what I hear you saying is correct, if something is not perceived, it literally does not exist?   INSTRUCTOR: That is the way I see it.   INTERIOR: "ME" STANDS UP, PRODUCES A GUN AND A VIDEO CAMERA FROM HIS BACKPACK. "ME" TURNS ON CAMERA AND POINTS THE GUN AND THE CAMERA AT THE INSTRUCTOR.   ME: There, what do you perceive now?   INSTRUCTOR: A gun... And a camera, of course.   ME: You say that nothing exists unperceived. When I pull this trigger, it will produce a lead projectile that travels faster than you can perceive it. Since you won't be able to perceive anything but peripheral evidence of the bullet (such as noise and smoke), the bullet itself will not and, quite literally, by your definition, cannot exist since you cannot perceive the bullet itself. You will either be killed by something that, by your definition, does not exist or you will live and, of course, prove that perception is, quite literally, reality. It's up to you. You wanna test it? In any case, I want to record this for future reference.   INSTRUCTOR: You're an idiot. You won't shoot me.   ME: Fuck. That's what you assholes have been saying for centuries. Watch me...   INSTRUCTOR: And, as far as I know, no-one has ever actually carried out such a proof strictly for academic purposes. You won't pull that trigger.   ME: Ok.   INTERIOR: "ME" SHOOTS INSTRUCTOR. INSTRUCTOR'S CHEST EXPLODES IN A SPRAY OF BLOOD AS THE INSTRUCTOR IS BLASTED BACK INTO THE WALL BEHIND HIM. HE LOOKS DOWN AT HIS CHEST, TOUCHES THE BLOOD WITH HIS FINGERS, AND HOLDS HIS FINGERS UP IN FRONT OF HIS FACE.   INSTRUCTOR: Fuck. Me.   INTERIOR: INSTRUCTOR FALLS DOWN DEAD. "ME" LOOKS DOWN, TURNS OFF CAMERA AND PUTS THE GUN AND CAMERA BACK INTO HIS BACKPACK.   ME: Well, better get this uploaded before the police get here.   INTERIOR: "ME" PUTS ON BACKPACK AND LEAVES THE ROOM.   FADE.   It would be worth going prison for, seriously. If I had no family and if I had just such a class, there would be (and I'm not kidding) a good 30% chance that I would actually pull this fucking stunt. I hate pretentious assholes. If nothing, it would make other fucks that spew this bullshit think twice before being so full of themselves.   Sorry, I'm all better now.   More next year... Copyright 2009 by Frank Emsley