You ever seen those road signs with cities and numbers on 'em? You know the ones: Baltimore 7, New York 200. Baltimore 7, New York 200. What does this mean? These signs are all over the place! I finally figured it out. It's like score cards. Or popularity polls. They asked 250 people which city they liked better, and 7 said Baltimore and 200 said New York.
Yeah, yeah, I know 200 and 7 don't add to 250. That's because the other stupid yuks said wrong answers like "yes" or "The Oregon Trail" or some other dumb thing you learn in school.
So, I'm watching these signs and I notice that the closer you get to a city, the less people like it. Newark 13, New York 36. The closer you get to New York, the less you like it. And it gets worse.
Then you start seeing signs like New York 24, Tappan Zee Bridge 6. New York is so unpopular they're comparing it to a bridge. And they still can't find 200 people who prefer New York!
The next sign says I287 intersection 2, New York 18. This is just great. People are starting to prefer a crossroads to New York. Probably New Yorkers.
Another sign that confuses me is speed limit signs. Speed Limit 55 it'll say. Why 55? Why not some round number like 60? Or 100? But you never see round numbers any more on speed limit signs. It always has to end in 5. Why 5? Why not 3? Speed limit 53. Sounds good, doesn't it?
And the numbers on the signs don't mean anything anyway. Lots of people blow by Speed Limit 55 signs at 65. Right past a cop. Okay, this is some sort of strange stupid law.
I try it. I blow by a Speed Limit 55 sign at 70. A cop appears and pulls me over. Oops, I was driving at a speed that didn't end in 5. But the cop wouldn't admit this is what I did. He tells me over and over that "the speed limit here is 55". Yeah, right. Nobody drives this road at 55. What is the real speed limit? 55, he tells me. Okay, what speed do you start pulling people over at? He won't tell me. The real speed limit is a secret! The damn police won't even tell you what the real speed limit is! But it probably ends in 5.
I went to Canada once. Their speed limits do end in zero. Speed limit 110. Speed limit 120. Whee, this is great! But there's a sign. It says their speed limits are in "metric".
What's Metric? Isn't that the thing congress told us we'd have in ten years back in 1973?
It turns out that metric is code. "Speed limit 120" is just code for "Speed Limit 55". The zero is really a five, and the 12 is really a five. So I ask how fast I get to drive when it's speed limit 110. 55. The 11 is five too. Metric is a number system where all the numbers are 5.
Finally the National Speed Limit is lifted. Just a bit. On roads you never go on, the speed limit is ... 65! In the good old days, these roads were Speed Limit 60, but for safety, they had to change 'em to a number that ended in 5, so they're Speed Limit 65 now. Much safer. Gotta love that 5.
I think aliens are influencing the government to like 5. Remember the $2 bill? It died. Remember the $1 coin? The silver dollar? And the other $1 coin, the one that looked like a quarter? They died too. But $5 bills are everywhere. You can get 'em at ATMs. Not in DC, where people need more money and all the ATMs have $20s, but in most of the country, you can get 5s at ATMs.
So, I'm watching the movie The Abyss with this girl. Most sci-fi alien movies are about aliens that come and save the earth or come and destroy the earth. Fine. This particular movie is about these aliens that come and save a marriage and almost destroy the earth. Okay, nice plot twist. Fine.
So, this chick with me ups and asks me "What if they saved the marriage but did destroy the earth? Wouldn't that be sad but beautiful?" And she looks up at me with these enormous puppydog eyes.
So what I wanna know, is whose marriage are they saving? Mine? If it's somebody else's marriage, I say fine, okay, no problem. It's sad but beautiful. If it's my marriage, it's just sad.
So I tell her this. And she gets real quiet. Guys, you've seen this, right? And we go home and I ask her "What's wrong?" "Nothing". Yeah, right. Nothing's wrong. I hate this!
So I think back to my psychology courses and remember about Behaviour Modification. Great, I think, this is "inappropriate behaviour", and I'm gonna modify it using Negative Reinforcement. So I pretend that I believe she's telling the truth and nothing is really wrong.
BZZT!
She hangs around with her "nothing's wrong" face on for a while, then she goes to the kitchen and builds the biggest cup of coffee I've ever seen. It's huge. I don't know where she got this cup, it's just like a normal coffee cup, but it's the size of a mixing bowl. And she sits there, blowing across the surface of it, and sipping it. And that's when she looks at me. While she's sipping this monster cup of coffee, with the cup tilted up and her head tilted down, she peers at me over the edge of the cup. Then the cup and her eyes go back down.
If I knew she were in a good mood (translated: horny), this might be cute. But at the moment, when "nothing's wrong", it's unnerving. And she can sip this giant coffee for a long time.
So I finally go to bed. She comes to bed and, since she's had enough coffee to kill a horse, she can't sleep, of course. If she were in a good mood (horny), this would be dandy, but "nothing's wrong", so she decides to read a book. Through the Heart, by Richard Grant. Yep, "nothing" is definitely wrong.
Behaviour Modification is a crock.
Then we're watching VH1. You know, the network for wannabe has-beens. K D Lang comes on and I point out she's a babe. "Give it a rest, she's gay". She's gay. So what? Like I'm really gonna get to have sex with her anyway. What do I care? It's like interrupting my fantasy with Kathy Ireland, Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, and Winona Ryder and telling me "they wouldn't like you." Like I really care. Rosey likes me.
So I got curious anyway. Call me stupid. I looked up who these people date. Guess what? They date assholes! I think some more and remember the babes when I went to school. Guess what they dated? Assholes, that's what they dated.
So I get called for Jury Duty. And I'm getting dressed, and my girlfriend tells me I'm dressing wrong.
Dressing wrong. For jury duty.
What should I wear? She tells me I should "dress nice". Why? Who am I trying to impress? If I were the defendent, I would dress real nice and try to look like a model stuffed shirt so the judge and jury would let me off.
But I'm the jury this time. I don't need to impress anybody. If I'm all cooped up in a starched shirt, all I'm thinking about is "I'm all cooped up in this starched shirt", instead of "should this guy be allowed to drive 70?". I need to be comfortable to consider these fine points of law. I need to be thinking "he's a lot more uncomfortable than I am, he's suffered enough, let him go!"
And you've suffered enough, you've been a wonderful audience, thank you very much, goodnight.
John Rehwinkel