So I’m driving down the road today when suddenly a small group of motorcyclists pull up alongside me. All younger adult guys, all clean-cut looking, all riding speedy little crotchrockets and (I’m sure) looking dashing and all that. None were wearing helmets or anything even resembling protective gear, but hey, I know it’s more important to look cool than to be safe, and besides, it’s THEIR heads, why should I care if they splatter them on the road? I’m all for individual liberty, doncha know. One of them is straddling his gas tank, feet nowhere near pedals or ground, just having the time of his life. Oh, and making “woof woof” noises. He hops down onto the seat at the red light.
I merely shake my head and point out to my daughter in the back seat that what she sees out the window is my idea of a nitwit. Being the kind hearted child that she is, she expresses concern for their safety. The light turns green, the cyclist revs up and jumps back on the gas tank, when we suddenly hear sirens. Gas Tank Straddler looks behind him at the fast-approaching motorcycle cop, and makes the “WHAT? I didn’t do anything!” face.
I know. I’m being self-righteous. But I am really glad that happened and I’m even gladder it happened with my child as a witness. I was very mature though. I hardly gloated at all.
The woman in the apartment below mine tagged up with a verbally and physically violent fellow, but would not toss him out. I called the police regularly due to their extremely loud arguments, throwing of furniture, etc. The fellow ruined more nights sleep than I care to remember.
Then one day I came across him in the court’s holding cells, with his arm in a sling. He was up on assault charges (the woman stabbed him in self-defence), and he begged me to represent him.
I said no, then had a long chat with the crown attorney. He was convicted and did time.
Mine’s like yours, LifeOnWry, in the fact it was young-ish men on crotch rockets. Mr. Boscibo and I were sitting at an outdoor restaurant a few weeks ago. Across the street from the restaurant is an old toll bridge built on a earthen dike. There is a concrete road that goes along the top of the dike, leading to the beach at the end. There is also a concrete planter/barrier and signs that say you can’t drive motor vehicles along this road.
So we are sitting there, enjoying our lunch and watching the boats and the people walking and biking to the beach, when two guys on crotch rockets drive around the barrier and down the road. I though “idiots”, and forgot about them. About ten minutes later they came driving back down the road (it dead ends at the beach) and they turned onto the road in front of the restaurant - and there the cops were waiting for them. I don;t know how they figured they were going to get away with driving down there on a sunny Saturday afternoon with tons of people around.
Driving to work one morning, a man in a large sedan was swerving around cars, speeding up, cutting off people, tailgating–just generally driving like a jerk. He eventually came around to cutting me off, too.
He stayed in front of me for a while, and I decided to slow down and give him a very wide margin in front of me. I did it just in time, because two minutes later, he slammed into a car right in front of him. As I crawled around, the car in front of him only had a small amount of damage to the rear (his bumper was messed up), but the jerk’s whole front end was completely smashed.
George, the son of my first boss in Japan was a sexist, egotistical asshole of the highest degree, not to mention being a 45-year-old loser incapable of holding down a job unless it was with daddy (he was also Japanese, despite the name). The one thing in the world that he truly cared about wasn’t his job, his ex-wife or his son, but his red Jeep Cherokee that he had had shipped all the way from America so he could show off what hot shit he was by driving around with a steering wheel on the wrong side.
Anyway, there was one teacher, Gary, whom he absolutely hated, and took every opportunity to put down and publicly humiliate. When Gary finally quit, George took a new female teacher (it’s relevant) and me to the Honda factory where Gary had taught to introduce us to the management. After greeting us politely, the manager proceeded to tear into George. “You stupid little shit, Gary was the best teacher we’d ever had. How did you manage to fuck it up this time?, etc., etc…” For George, this was a double-whammy: not only was he being humiliated in front of a subordinate, he was getting it in front of a female subordinate. He was so pissed off that when we left the factory and got into his car, he shifted into reverse, stomped on the gas, and proceeded to smash his beloved Jeep Cherokee against a telephone pole.
Seeing the look on his face and trying not to laugh until he’d dropped us off was the hardest thing we’d ever done.
Let’s see. There was the time my family and I were driving down U.S. 1, where it cuts through the redwood forests in the northern part of California. We were in a (very ratty) van, doing about 10 MPH over the speed limit, following behind an older station wagon. The road at this point was narrow, winding, and two lane: barely enough room to pass one car, much less two, even if you have a Porshe. And that’s what the guy behind us had: nice, shiny, red, and new. And he definately didn’t want to be going a ‘mere’ 10 miles over the speed limit. So, when the road widened out for one of those pocket towns, he passed both our van and the other station wagon, on the left.
There were two problems with that. One, the posted speed limit dropped down to 25 MPH. (When we got into the pocket town, we were going a good 50+ MPH, for comparison.) Therefore, he was going at least twice the posted speedlimit. Second, he used one of those two-way left turn lanes to do his passing in. The cop that was waiting to turn out onto the road saw this, and BOOM! Flashing lights, and siren.
When we passed PorsheDude, he was sweaing up a storm (to judge by the red face and contorted expressions), and pounding the steering wheel like it was a punching bag. We laughed, waved, and blew kisses at him. (Which I don’t think he saw, intent as he was upon venting his rage upon the steering wheel.)
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Years ago I was riding the bus home on Lake Shore Drive which was, as was common back then, pretty much a slowly moving parking lot during the rush hour. Some fuckwit comes by riding on the shoulder, only to be stopped a little further ahead by a truck which had edged over so it was driving half on the shoulder. Mr. I’m-so-important-I can’t be-bothered-to-wait-like-the-rest-of-the-peasants starts leaning on his horn and screaming at the truck, which finally edged back into the traffic lane so he could get by. About a mile up the Drive the bus passes a police car which had been parked on the shoulder. Behind it, of course, was a familiar car, complete with Officer Friendly standing by the driver’s window explaining the finer points of traffic law.
I was speaking to a friend last night, & we got to talking about our favorite words - the first word I mentioned was schadenfreude. I find it very amusing to imagine that the sentiment was so prevalent that a single, fairly short word that conveys said sentiment had to be created.
I try to use it as often as I can. My friend thought it was pretty cool as well.
And I find it difficult to believe that the sentiment is so intrinsically German that no one else ever bothered to come up with a word for it!
(Although, admittedly, “damage-joy” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!)
i grew up in the mountains and learned to drive in the snow, and am pretty damn good at it. just about every year, without fail, i’m tooling alone in my little front wheel drive car at about the maximum safe speed, only to be nearly run off the road by some flatlander in his 4X4 going 20 mph faster. And almost every year, without fail, i pass this jerk who has impacted himself in a snowbank about a mile up the road.
one time, between Mammoth Mt. and Lee Vining, in the worst storm i have ever been that far in the middle of nowhere in, some dude actually ran himself off the road while passing me. that was a hoot, and i didn’t even think of stopping to help this bozo. i found out later that the road closed just after i motored out of Bishop, and i’m guessing that dude was stuck there for a very long time indeed.
Stuck in a semi-hellish traffic jam on the beltway down in DC. All four lanes crawling along. No idea what the reason for the backup was. But I’m happy 'cause I’m going to pickup my then Sweet Baboo from the airport and then we were going to “celebrate” her birthday…in bed.
But I digress.
So, I’m sitting in the right-most lane, thinking lewd and loving thoughts about my love, singing along to The Sweetest Thing by U2, when I hear this RAAAAWWWWWWGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! and I turn my head to see a hoop-deed out BMW 7 Series flying by in the shoulder at around 70mph. The sound of the engine roaring was replaced about 2 seconds later by the usual car crash sounds, which quickly cut off & are followed by silence, then what sounds like something VERY heavy crashing into trees, then eventually silence.
Turns out Mr. BMW “I have important places to be,” drove right into the passenger door of an 18 wheeler, which happened to swing open just as the BMWer was flying by.
Whoops.
Then the BMW driver, instead of slowing down, apparently SPED up and jerked the wheel to the right, which would have been fine except that there was a 25 foot drop off into a grove of trees, whcich screened a further 45 foot drop off.
I was on the interstate in the left-hand lane, waiting for the opportunity to move over, when I find a yellow caddy attempting to climb my bumper. I press the brake pedal gently, and saw in the rear-view mirror the caddy spin several times before ending up in the median.
I swear, I wouldn’t have done that if I knew it would have ended like that, but damn it felt good!
My weekly dose of Maximum Exposure does it for me. My favorite from this week’s episode - an XXXTREME biker was attempting to slide along the top of a wall, which appears to be about three feet high. He slips, tips, and finally falls over the other side. When the camera gets there, we see that he had fallen 30 feet into a construction site. Without any safety gear.
In a local bar, a friend of mine was having an early evening dinner with his young (6 year old) son. Another guy, jerk-of-the-year, went up to their table. They knew each other but you wouldn’t have called them friends.
While the jerk is talking to the father, he starts to pick up and eat some of the food on the boys plate (the boy has pretty much finished eating by this time anyway). However, the father gets annoyed at the jerk eating the food without even asking if anyone objected.
Now keep in mind that this jerk considers himself a life and soul of the party type of person and frequently does dumbass things that he thinks are clever.
The jerk doesn’t see that he is doing anything wrong and tries to laugh it off. The father (a very big, but not fat, person) eventually asks the jerk to step outside. The jerk now starts backing down, to the extent that he finally offers to pay for the sons and the fathers meals.
Spin forward to one week later. The jerk is in the same bar, having some food with friends. A drunk female acquaintance of the jerk goes up to his table, mumbles a few comments, takes a sip of her drink, gags and does a technicolor yawn all over the jerks meal.
(Which I don’t think he saw, intent as he was upon venting his rage upon the steering wheel.)
(I had a German Grandmother)