Driving home from work today, I’m on one of those metered on-ramps that’s two cars wide, one car per green per lane. There’s a VW in front of me, and a white pickup behind me as we approach the ramp. White Pickup Guy honks, and my husband and I assume it’s at VW Gal, since there is room for cars from our lane to move over to the left lane, and this is customary on this stretch of road. VW Gal must have thought so too, because she slowly made her way over to the left lane.

White Pickup Guy honks again, and is now behind VW Gal. She’s got about 2 car lengths in front of her, which one does do around these parts, so, husband and I still assume White Pickup Guy is honking at VW Gal. It can take a good 5 minutes to get to the meter, so maybe VW Gal doesn’t want to shift out of first, or whatever. White Pickup Guy should have been there first if he was in such a hurry!
So, eventually VW Gal is moving up the ramp, but White Pickup Guy is still honking, and as he pulls up along-side of me, we start hearing White Pickup Guy shouting. We realize he is shouting and honking at me! I’m looking at all of the lights on my dashboard, wondering if my tailgate is open, or I left something on top of the car?
My windows are up, and I was about to roll mine down as White Pickup Guy gets closer, when suddenly I hear what he’s shouting. “You Fucking Liberal Cunt!” “John Kerry is a traitor, and you voted for a traitor, that makes You a Fucking traitor to your country, You Fucking Liberal Cunt!” On and on he went, for the entire rest of the ramp, which was quite full. At least another 3-4 minutes. I looked over at him, and he was literally foaming at the mouth! Spittle flying! He wasn’t even looking at the road, he was completely facing my car.
Finally, we reach our meters, and with one final honk-and-shout, White Pickup Guy gunned his White Pickup and sped off into rush hour. We waved at him from the Fucking Liberal Carpool Lane and sped off toward home.
Of course, we spent the entire next hour of the commute coming up with all the clever things we should have said, like “Is that the Family Values or the Compassionate Conservatism?” or “Dude, take a laxative” or wondering how many of his colleagues also just got off work and were there to witness the freak-out?
I wish I was one of those people who remembers that she has two cameras and two camera-phones in the car, so I could fully out the White Pickup Guy.
I’ve been contemplating clearing off the remnants of the disappointing 2004 election for at least 2 years, but I like my faded Howard Dean sticker, I had a good time working on that campaign and yeah, I’m still a little bitter about how it ended. I wasn’t passionate about Kerry/Edwards, it was more about Not Bush, but I put the sticker on anyway, to join the long faded “Go home, George” and Not W stickers that had been on the car since about mid-2002. But now I think I’ll leave them alone until after Super Tuesday, when we have a candidate to back.
Speaking of which…Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a scientist candidate? Someone who used the scientific method to make decisions based on facts and observations? Someone who could make our country great again, mobilized to be the best at science and technology and engineering, to solve some real problems.
Here’s what I’d like to hear about:
* Food safety, Drug safety. How about divorcing the FDA from it’s corporate sponsors so we can go back to trusting that our food isn’t poisoned? Can you believe this shit? It’s in the pork, the chicken and the fish feed now. Cows in BC have mad cow disease. I actually would feel safer eating beef in Canada, at least it’s clear they are doing testing.
* Alternative energy. How about the utilities subsidizing everyone’s conversion to solar, having everyone generate twice as much as they need, and letting the utility sell that excess to whoever doesn’t jump on the bandwagon?
* Outsourcing. When the middle class are all unemployed, who’s going to be buying the cheap crap at WalMart?
Knitting? Oh yeah, I’ve been doing some of that. I’ll get back to you on that.