From: jsn@cegt201.bradley.edu (John Novak)
Subject: It is Time to Thin the Herd

Ladies, gentlemen, peevesters all, it is time to thin the herd.

Of course, I _have_ been saying this for years, but nothing has
managed to drive this point home so quickly, so effectively, or
quite so brutally as the drive home through the scenic Great Flat
of central and northern Illinois.

A simple trek, from Peoria to Chicago, which under ordinary
circumstances should only take about two, two and a half hours.
No big deal.  Except for the herd beasts which we graciously
allow not only to _live_ in our land, but actually give full
citizenship and voting rights to.

A simple trek.  The land is flat.  The roads are flat.  Every
goddam thing in Illinois is flat.  The highways change directions
with only the most gentle of curves.  There should be no delays.

Except, invariably, there are.
We can start thinning the herd by lining all the road
construction crews in Illinois, and all their supervisors,
managers, union bosses, state planners and federal coordinators
up against the no-longer-metaphorical wall and shooting them.
Each and every fucking one of them.

Jesus Christ on a little gasohol powered go cart speeding low to
the ground through the middle of the Great Flat, is there any
reason besides the most basic, fundamental, willful and
intentional incompetance for there to be _any_ patches of road
construction left on a stretch of highway in late October?  

NO!

Anyone with neurocluster God gave a plankton would realize that
road construction should be finished _before_ late fall, so that
the occasional early winter doesn't set in, thus leaving a patch
of road construction unfinished throughout the long winter
months.

Does this stop the aptly acronymed IDOT?

Of course not.

During the trek, I encountered no fewer than eight patches of
road construction, starting with the main road out of Peoria (ie,
I-74) and ending with construction at the off-ramp of I-55 at 1st
avenue.  Eight goddam patches of road construction and repair in
late October.

This, of course is bad enough, since most patches of road
construction involve narrowing the road down to a single lane,
thus leaving us _all_ at the mercy of the obligatory blue-haired
brain-dead old bint who won't go a step above fifty miles per
hour on the open road in the best of conditions.  Put her on a
patch of oad construction in a single lane with concrete
retainers on either side, and these wastes of oxygen inevitably
slow down to about thirty five miles per hour.  

Why?  Why do people always slow down when you put retaining walls
around them in a single lane?  Put them on a regular road,
with cars speeding past on either sides-- cars on the left often
speeding by at relative velocities of well over a hundred miles
per hour-- and they're perfectly content with their ability to
keep their cars within the lines.  But put _walls_ there, and
they become as fucking timid as deer.

Aagh.  Kill them all.

But no, no ordinary patches of road construction, these.
Patches one, six and seven were particularly annoying.

Patch one, just outside of Peoria, was bridge construction.  We
did the obligatory lane merges, fairly smoothly.  I was
impressed.  But then, this was part of a major commute for most
people-- they'd had enough time to master the concept and be
about their ways in the shortest possible order.  Still, the
delay was a good fifteen for no apparent reason.  What took me
aback was the complete and utter _lack_ of any actual road
construction in the area.  I saw a veritable legion of IDOT fools
standing around, drinking coffee and huddling, but not once did I
see someone actually working on anything important.

And they actually seemed disgruntled when I leaned out my window
and told them to get the fuck to work.

Peeve, peeve, peeve.

Patch six was also bridge construction, but the bridge under
construction was an overpass in the middle of bumblefuck noplace.
Delays were interminable.  I have no idea what they were doing,
but the delays started even before the 'road construction three
miles' signs showed up.  This, of course, flummoxed people, who
then lost all ability to merge with any semblance of sanity.

And of course, we were beset with the archetypical example of why
IDOT should be purged, eradicated and expunged from the face of
the Great Flat.  By this I mean, of course, the jism-drizzling
penis wrinkle in the bright orange IDOT jacket with his faded
ill-fitting blue jeans hanging down to the crack of his ass, one
thumb shoved up his right nostril all the way to his palm, the
other hand down the back of his pants evidently giving himself a
good old fashioned auto finger-wave, with a sign crooked lazily
in his right arm, proudly displaying the emblazon, "SLOW".

Obviously.

Quite obviously, this man was slow, simply from the looks of his
overly sloped forehead, shambling gait and absolutely prodigiously 
sized jaw and teeth.  I refuse to believe the sign was _not_ for
his benefit that he should garner sympathy from us.  I, in fact,
was so touched my this man's plight and courageous struggle
against mental and physical retardation that I dug into my
pocket and tossed a handful of change out the window for him.

I refuse to believe that the sign was for _our_ benefit, because
at no point while he was in sight did traffic ever show signs of
increasing to a pace where I might actually lift my foot all the
way off the goddam brake pedal, much less actively accelerate my
vehicle.  Indeed, most of the time he was in sight, we were at a
dead fucking stop.  My tax dollars at work.

If I were to believe that the sign were for my benefit, I would
have run him over.

Which leads us, of course, to section seven of the Road
Construction Epic.  I still haven't quite reasoned out the point
of it all.  All I know is, I checked my odometer when we slowed
to stop, and again when I actually saw the road construction.
Nine miles.  A nine mile delay on a major interstate.

Three miles from the site, the actual merge blinkers appeared on
the shoulders of the road.  By this point, I was expecting not so
much road construction as two jackknifed double trailers in the
middle of the road.  Alas, I was disappointed.

 A simple concept, merging.  It means that a lane is going to
disappear, and it behooves your sorry pathetic ass to get in the
_other_ lane as quickly as reasonably possible.

Except that people are so intent on getting a few freaking
carlengths ahead before they merge that they end up never
merging.  Or, if they are already in the proper lane, refuse
wholesale to let anyone else in.  Oh, God forbid that anyone
should slow down for a half a second to allow another vehicle 
to slip into the stream.

Oh, no.

Or, barring that at the actual point of forced merger, most
drivers appear congenitally incapable of grasping the idea that
one person from each lane should go, interleaving the traffic, as
it were.  Nope, absolutely too complex.

But what really astonishes me, right down the core and fundament
of my deeply, deeply cynical being, is that the entire stretch of
road construction was only three hundred feet long.  Three
hundred feet!  There was no road constrcution going on!  No
equipment was there, nor any workers!  Nothing!  Nada!  It was a
left-over merge, and it caused nine-mile delays!

It is time to thin the herd!  Starting with IDOT and the mental
defectives we let operate heavy equipment on public
thoroughfares.

In retrospect, this is the best argument I've seen for gun
control in a long time.  If I had had a gun in the glove 
compartment, I'd have emptied every round on these fools.

Count the peeves.