Bits and baubles

I found myself in the awkward position of getting annoyed at other drivers on the freeway yesterday while I was having a conversation using my Douchetooth headset. That's always been one of my rules: if you're driving while talking on the cellphone, you absolutely forfeit all your rights of indignation with other drivers. I don't care if someone crosses the center line and swerves back and forth across all the lanes of oncoming traffic waving a bottle of Jack Daniels out the window while doing rails of cocaine off a hooker's breasts. If you're on the phone, you can't complain.

The thing about the Douchetooth is that it's actually more dangerous to use while driving than just having the cell phone up to your ear. Studies have shown (and I've read them; I actually did a presentation in a class a few years back about how it should be illegal to talk on the phone while driving) that the dangerous thing about it isn't that your hand is engaged and blocking the view; it's that your mind is engaged and you don't do things like moving your eyes or turning your head. They call it the tunnel-vision effect. And the Douchetooth doesn't alleviate that effect; it just gives you a false sense of security. It's like driving an SUV; you think you're safer when you're really not, so you end up driving even less safely than you would have otherwise.

So yeah, that was me. Having a conversation on the phone and getting angry at the guy who cut to the front of the line for the exit lane that was backed up. Big day for Jerod.

The face is almost completely healed. The government did foreclose on the lease to my moustache farm, but it's all for the best. A word to the wise; don't ever try to do anything ironic using your face as the medium. If you really believe in the moustache (or decide to give yourself a mullet for Halloween like my buddy Billy a few years back), you gotta just own it. It can't be this snarky, post-modern statement or something. To paraphrase Raising Arizona, they gotta name for people like that: asshat. Not a pretty name, is it, Hi?

In any case. I didn't own the 'stache, I didn't really believe in it, so I was that asshat. And when I strapped on the headset I was the douchebag asshat. Not a comfortable hat, lemme tell ya.

Here's a haiku I wrote while jogging around the park today.

I'm done trying to
Run while sucking in my gut
It's just not much fun