Encroachment.

Back in the olden days, people used horses to get around.  I am not an animal lover really.  Don't get me wrong, I don't hate horses and use my nights plotting ways to get back at horses for all of their terrible deeds.  And they must commit terrible deeds if I hate them.  But I don't, so they probably don't either.  I just don't care for animals.  They usually smell like they live outside, even the ones that don't.  They get fur all over me, or slobber.  I don't mind baby animals.  Baby animals, like baby people, can do pretty gross stuff and still be cute.  I have picked up a sleeping baby and the baby was drenched in sweat.  I thought, 'how cute, this baby is so sweaty.'  I see some dude on a bus that's super sweaty, the last thing I am going to think is that he's cute.  I am going to think he's disgusting and should get off the bus.  However, disgusting bus guy is way off course because I was talking about the olden days and riding grody horses everywhere.

I think I like the whole buck board set up.  If I am driving, then I have someone with me "riding shotgun".  It isn't like riding shotgun today where we have crazy rules that revolve around who gets to sit in the front seat with the driver.  I am talking about siting next to the driver with a gun.  A real shotgun, where people get put down if things get outta hand.  And by put down, I mean shot, not laughed at for being dressed funny or having a small penis.

Today we drive around in cars, all closed up with windows and air conditioning.  No shotguns, most likely.  Big cars mostly, with lots of power.  I think if we reintroduced shotguns to this mess, it might not even help that much.  People seem to think that their cars are a moving fortress of righteousness.

I could go on forever about the crazy things I see people do on the road, but right now I have a particular thing in mind.  But besides that, I wanna talk about the yield sign.

The first yield sign was invented by a cop in Tulsa Oklahoma and installed in 1950.  That means we have all had roughly 60 years to get the concept of yielding.  Before that, people mostly only yielded in sword fights.  They would scream out, "I yield!" as a sign of surrender so that they didn't get stabbed to death by a sword.  This of course in the really olden days prior to 1950 when the only law was pretty much live by your wit, your grit and something else that rhythms with both wit and grit.  Either way, those that lived beyond the age of 13 were rare due to the lack of medicine, law, civility and the abundance of swords and shotguns.

If we lived back then, we would think of now as the shiny future full of wonders and marvels the likes of which we could only dream.  Wonders like the interwebz, GTA3, pizza, medicine, ice-cream and the iphone.  But we are not in our barbaric past dreaming of those things, we are in the shiny future where they exist. Probably we don't have flying cars yet because no one has learned, in the last 60 years, how to obey a yield sign.  To yield, as anyone who has avoided death in a sword fight can tell you, means literally to give or render as fitting, rightfully owed, or required...to give up possession of on claim or demand.  So a yield sign means you give any claim to the lane you want into until there is no one else using it.  Then you may advance in a forwardly direction with your automobile into said lane.  You would then have the right-of-way being that no one is coming.  If there is a car coming at you in the lane you are waiting to get into then you  DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT-OF-WAY (21803(a) Yield signs, yield until reasonably safe.) You yield it until oncoming traffic is all gone.  Then you can go.  That's what yielding means.

Many times my good friend, who I will call "Bill," and I see drivers abusing yield signs on our way back from fetching lunch.  Not the sign itself, but more specifically, flouting the need to yield that the sign represents. "Bill" gets righteously indignant as cars inch into a lane when they clearly do not have the right-of-way.  As "Bill" points out, this is encroaching.  After careful discussion and consideration, we determined the need for a new sign.  I give you: THE ENCROACHING SIGN!

I am not sure yet where this sign would go.  It might give the people already in the lane a warning that their rights are about to be encroached upon.  It might go right where a yield sign would have gone to let people know they are free to enter the lane in a douchebag manner (which is also a good name for a douchey rich guys house).  I think I am for replacing yield signs with encroach signs since most everyone driving is already entering onto the rights of others through the means of either gradual steps or in some cases, attempted stealth.

There you go.  Now you're free to encroach where you really don't belong.  I hope you're happy.

Unlimited...

Any show that says it is brought to you with "limited commercial interruptions" should turn into an object so I can throw it across the room into the wall and then punch it in the face.  Of course it is, as are all shows.  If a show had unlimited commercial interruptions, then it would never, ever end.  It's like telling you, "the following program is presented to you with an ending."   It bugs me when I am told things that can't possibly be any other way, but I am told these things like they are somehow an amazing benefit to me.  A show with an ending isn't really an amazing benefit to me.  It's normal.  A show without an ending would just be weird, and no one would like it and no one would watch it, hence no one would watch the unlimited commercials either.  Limited commercial interruption is an amazing benefit to the people bringing me the show and the limited commercial interruption.  40 minutes of mediocre entertainment somehow shoved into an hour is the norm.  The unlimited commercial interruption guy should really be ashamed of himself.  How does he even face his mother?  His family would be proud if he bought a sword and used it on himself at sunrise on the beach.  There is no other honorable way for him.