Fuck today, revised

Like the new colors? I decided it was time for a change, since the old color scheme, while nice, didn't really lend itself to the whole "giggle-board" idea. Hard to giggle when you're being dark and gothic, you know.

You may also notice that the post I made earlier today, which was chock-full of the word "fuck" with various uses of the term, is gone. After re-reading it a few times (after having calmed down considerably) I decided that although it really does help to scream out "Fuck!!! in your car after certain incidences, it's really not necessary to continue the verbal vomitting, as it doesn't fix anything. The scream or yell in the privacy of one's car suffices; anyting more is overkill.

Besides, I try not to use cuss words too much in writing; there are other ways to express one's feelings, as Mama Wren once wisely told me a long long time ago. I belive we were discussing dragons, actually. No matter. Here is a much cleaner and more organized version of my earlier post.

FARK! I'm mad.

This weekend was pretty cruddy, what with allergies and on top of them a slight cold, so I didn't wake up in the most sparkling of moods this morning, but then, I'm not really a morning person anyway. I understand this, however, and so try not to take to heart anything negative that happens in the morning, but I can only be reasonable for so long.

At the second stop sign on my drive to work, I was cut off not once, but twice in a row by two vehicles coming from a stop sign on the left. The first one irritated me, as he pulled out after I had already started into the interesection, but being a generally reasonable person, I can usually let one bad driver slip under the radar unscathed. So, after braking to avoid being hit and grumbling under my breath, I started out, again, once they had passed. Then the vehicle behind that one pulled out in front of me as well, not just cutting me off, but having to actually jerk to the side to drive around the front of my car, as by this time I was about halfway into the intersection.

Hitting the brakes again to avoid another collision, I glared and my patience grew thin. But I didn't honk, I didn't yell. I didn't flip anyone off. After this vehicle, too, had gone I proceeded unmolested through the intersection and to work. Granted, I had a vicious little diatribe going on in my head the whole time after that to the effect of, in short, this: "Stupidity oughtta hurt. Stupid drivers ought to simply die outright the very second they make their first stupid decision that could result in an accident. If I were God, that's how it would be, and boy would there be a lot less people on the roads then." Yes, there was a lot of cussing involved, but when it's only me, I can cuss all I want, darnit.

Upon arriving at work I was attacked three feet into the building by another worker claiming I had screwed something up. I hadn't, and after explaining the situation it was all good, but still- can't ya wait until I'm at least at my desk, if not settled into it and ready to start my workday, before pouncing on me? Please? Is that really too much to ask?

I won't go into the nature of the supposed screw up save to say that it was due to e-mail malfunction and, as I stated above, everything is alright now and I'm n longer being blamed for it, but it is a situation that leaves me seething nonetheless. Not because I was accused of it, but because, due to spam and the purpose of the e-mail account in question, there is nothing that can be done about it, so it could very well happen again. And again. And again. Spammers, along with bad drivers, have made their way to the top of my Shit List, and would be the second group of people to instantaneously die horrible deaths if I were God.

After these aggravations, I decided that, gastritis or no, I needed Starbucks. Think of it as comfort food. And so off I went.

The drive to Starbucks, and then through the drive-thu were uneventful, and actually, due to the always happy and smiling attitude of the people working there I was actually tempted to and did crack a smile myself and had begun to drift into a better mood by the time I pulled out of their parking lot and headed back to work. Things were looking up.

Starbucks and my work are on the same street, just a few hundred yards apart, so there's not really much time for things to go wrong between here and there, but today it managed to happen.

Along this road, the speed limit is 25 miles and hour, and always has been. So, being a good little driver, I was going a whopping 25 miles and hour. Mere seconds into the road I glanced into my rear-view mirror to see a man tailgating me so closely that I couldn't see even the very tops of his headlights, so close that if I were to stop suddenly I could have picked his nose without even turning around. I thought he'd back off soon enough, as I was, after all, going the speed limit and not under it, but he remained glued to my bumper. That smile I mentioned in the Starbucks drive-thru vanished, and the anger of earlier returned.

Regardless, I attempted to remain calm, and so tapped my brakes once - just once - not enough to slow my car but to let him know he needed to back off. He remained, and flashed his highbeams at me in response (I only know that bit because the little bit of light coming up above the back of my car brightened- I still couldn't see his headlights, he was so close.

I waited a few seconds, during which he remained, and tapped my brakes a couple more times. He backed off maybe a foot, jerked foreward again, and flashed his brights again. I tapped my brakes enough this time to actually slow down, and he finally backed off to an appropriate distance. So, I got back up to 25, and BAM! There he was again, on my ass, highbeams in my mirror.

By this time, the parking lot at work was coming up, so I turned on my right turn signal and slowed down, hoping that he would'nt hit me thinking I was simply trying to get him to back off again. He didn't hit me, but as I was making the turn into the parking lot, he revved his engine to speed past me, honked, and made a great show of flipping me off.

Needless to say, that wasthe straw that broke the camel's back.

Although I'm usually a very sane and level-headed person, I was THIS close to pulling back out of the parking lot, following him to wherever he was going, and doing something horribly loud and violent that would likely end with him in the emergency room and me in jail. THIS close. I really almost did it, which, if you know me personally, tells you just how very angry I was.

Instead, I parked, cussed a blue streak, screamed out "Fuck!!!" at my steering wheel, and tried not to punch anything, realizing through an angry haze that the materials of the interior of my car are far stronger than my fists, so I'd only end up hurting myself and getting angrier. I was actually shaking, I was so mad.

His actions, from the beginning, were completely uncalled for. I was going the speed limit, not under it. Hell, even if I were going under the limit, that doesn't make it ok to tailgate someone and flash your highbeams at them, but doing so when they're actually going the posted speed is beyond wrong- it's ridiculous and childish and proves nothig more than that you are an asshole with a small penis.

Most people back off if you tap the brakes once, some wait for two or three taps, but even then they'll back off to an appropriate distance, no matter their impatience. The fact that he didn't but rather became more agitated shows not only a lack of intelligence and respect for anyone except himself, it tells me that he must have some sort of serious psycolgical issues stemming from anger and a need to feel superior by being the leader or breaking rules (in this case, laws.)

The honk and gesture only confirm for me that this man is not only an asshole, but a danger to everyone on the road around him, and as such, in my most humble opinion, does not deserve to live. I meant what I said in my earlier post that I hope this man dies a horrible, painful death, and soon. I'm sure I'm not the first person he has done this to, and if he has such an attitude while operating a machine that can kill people if the operator makes bad decisions and so requires a higher level of thought and attention, I can only imagine his temper in other, less dangerous situations. He deserves a death that's horrible, and he deserves it soon, before he can continue his vehicular harassment of other drivers and quite possibly cause an accident. When I mentioned above that I coldn't see his headlights because he was so close, I wasn't kidding. It's lucky for the both of us that I didn't need to suddenly stop.

To top it all off, it was raining, and had only in the last ten minutes or so begun to rain after a long dry spell, so the road was slippery and more dangerous than usual, and this stupid man was pulling this shit despite that. It truly amazes me sometimes how stupid people can be.

I'm not a violent person, although I often have violent thoughts; in all my life, I've only ever been in one fight, if you can even call it that, so very quick was the experience. On the schoolbus one afternoon in seventh grade I put up with being whipped in the face with a twisted up wet tie-dyed t-shirt for quite some time, asking calmly and then forcefullytelling the whipper many times to stop. Finally, one last double-whip across the face made me snap. I had always heard stories of people in fights "seeing red" and having "tunnel vision" and only the one thought of "hurt him/her," but never belived it was real until that moment. My vision did go red, and upon spinning around to face my tormentor, my vision closed down to just her face, and my only thought was to hurt her as badly as I possibly could. My fists flew, hitting her in the face several times, and when she grabbed my wrists to stop me I dug my nails into her hands as deep as I could and held on, pulling her arms as far out to the side as I could to cause as much pain as I could. The busdriver yelled and slammed on the brakes, and I slammed back into myself and let go, shaking, and that was the end of it. In the end I was more disturbed by what had happened to me in those moments - the reddened tunnel vision, the desire to cause pain - than I was angry at the girl for having tortured me for so long. Supposedly she had a black eye the next day, but I never confirmed it since the next day was Saturday and I didn't see her the following Monday or Tuesday, and a creeping sense of fear came over me to realize that I liked that; I liked that I had hurt her, and I liked the feeling of wanting to hurt someone.

I vowed that day that I'd never allow myself to lose control like that again because that dark happiness I got from it scared the shit out of me. It was the primitive - or as is sometimes called, the reptile - part of the brain left over from humankind's early days of fight or flight, before civilization, before thoughts more advanced than "Eat, mate or kill." And I knew that if I were to give in to it, to allow it to happen again, I could well get to love the feeling, and become a very dangerous person. It's not a likely scenario, of course, but that possibility exists with every human being, and I didn't like that I liked the idea so very much.

Today I almost broke that vow. I almost followed the man who tailgated me so closely, almost set out to track him down and cause him as much pain as I possibly could, both physical and psycological. I almost let myself think of how nice it would be to main him horribly but leave him alive to see in the mirror everyday the physical evidence of his mental monstrosity.

And, it felt good, those few seconds that the idea tickled my brain.

I think that's what has me in such a tremendously horrible mood, in the end. Not just the bad drivers, because they're everywhere and you get over it. But the fact that I almost let myself lose control and do something I knew to be more monstrous than this man in all his rage could ever be. I saw the darker side of me today, and danced with it - if only for a few seconds - before slamming the gate on it and screaming out "Fuck," to the patient interior of my car.

It scared me, and like most human beings, I cannot help but to feel anger as a result of a fear you can do nothing about, and so "fuck" became my word of the day, and I glowred and grumbled and sat tense and restless at my desk for the next several hours. I wanted to yell, to scream, to hit something, to jump up and run, to do anything to release the angry, nervous energy and adreneline built up in my body.

I have since calmed down, but am still angry at that man. It's a calm anger, though; more a 'shake the head in disgust' anger than a 'run now or I'm going to grind your face off on the nearest patch of rough asphalt' anger. And reasonig out the cause of the ferocity of that anger - the reptile part of the brain's desire for violence - has helped to calm me down as well. I still wish him a quickly-delivered death, or even just some accident that leaves him incapable of driving, for the sake of everyone else around him. The spiteful part of me wishes that death or accident to be painful, of course, but in the end it could be a simple quiet stroke that leaves him in a state of painless dementia and I would be happy; I simply want his danger gone, so that no one else ever has to go through anything close to what I went through today.

And here at the end of it, I'm disgusted more than angry, and hope only that he takes no lives but his own through his lack of intelligence.

*Sigh* This really oughtta be my motto: I hate stupid people.

Please, friends, drive safely. Pay attention to what's going on around you, because there is no guarantee that everyone around you is paying attention to you. Don't tailgate people; not only is it pointless in most cases, it's more dangerous than most people give it credit for. Don't cut people of. Don't talk on your cell phone unless you're stopped at a light or parked. Don't shorten the span of your life just to get across that intersection or to that next exit a mere two or three seconds faster; it isn't worth it. People love you, and they love the people you could kill by doing these things.

Doing stupid shit while driving really does not make you a bad ass - just an asshole, and that's what this post is really about. Those of you reading this know this, I'm sure, and so it's not aimed at you, but maybe some bad driver will come across this and read it and maybe - maybe - I can change their mind and save a life or two.

I still wsh I were God, though.