This happened to me yesterday.

I was watching Caddyshack, and I suddenly didn't think it was funny. I mean, like, at all. But then after the commercial break it seemed funny again.

It was weird, man.

I'm surrounded by pussies and assholes

People,

Help.

I rode my bike to school today despite the winter weather advisory. Ya, I'm tough. On the way in it was fine, it was snowy on the ground, and a little slick here and there, but I just slip-slided my way there and even got used to skidding around enough that I was doing it for fun and profit*.

But then fast forward to this afternoon, when I rode home. Now the streets were actually in better condition, but there was a sleety snowy "wintery mix" coming out of the sky, and if I know one thing about drivers, it is that whenever something is coming out of the sky, about half of them turn into either a pussy or an asshole. Both of these are dangerous. Assholes get impatient, they swerve around from lane to lane, they jet down streets they ought not jet down, they honk a lot, they behave selfishly at four-way stops, and sometimes they even directly antagonize other bikers or drivers without cause. Pussies slow down too much, wait for every single other person to go at a four-way stop, brake for no seeming reason, antagonize assholes by being too passive, confuse other drivers by behaving in a ridiculously accomodating-to-the-point-of-what-the-fuck sort of way. See, both these types of drivers are dangerous enough on their own, but the bad thing is they tend to amplify one another's faults, especially when something is coming out of the sky.

Cases in point:

• Some asshole decides he can fit in my lane (he could not) and succeeds in simultaneously almost pushing me off the side of the road and almost making the car in the next lane over drive into oncoming traffic (the car in the next lane was too much of an asshole to accomodate the other asshole, see).
  
• Some pussy tails right behind me for about three blocks, wasting chance after chance to go around me because they were too pussy to go in the oncoming lane for like a second. Effect: now there is a funnel of assholes behind the pussy who are so pissed that when finally I go a different way from the pussy, the assholes swerve around me with fury and spray snow on me and end up driving way out of control in a school zone (nobody was hurt).
  
• Some pussy going perpendicular to me at a traffic light won't turn left on that last dying yellow light like people do. Therefore as I start on my own green, I am not ready for the asshole behind that pussy who has swerved around that pussy to turn left. {Corollary: at least the asshole just kept going when it was clear I saw and was not gonna get hit by him. In this case, a pussy would have been worse, because a pussy would have slowed way down and given a vague hand signal that maybe I should go but then would be all hesitant and would behave in a way that made it impossible to tell if they were gonna go or if I was.}
  
• Some pussy must've waited for like seven other cars to go in the other three directions at a 4-way stop at the bottom of a hill, so even though I had adjusted my speed so as not to have to stop, I ended up having to stop, thus losing my momentum that I was gonna use for the next hill.
  
• Some asshole pulls up to a stop light where there aren't really two lanes, but sometimes you can squeeze down the right side and turn right, but this time you obviously couldn't, but still this asshole jammed his nose in as far as he could and honked with rage and impotence, effectively shutting off my usual technique of creeping up to the red light and getting across the non-busy cross street far enough ahead of the drivers that I can get safely by the potentially-about-to-open doors of the row of parked cars on the next block.

Sheesh. Maybe I'm just being a dick.


*There were no profits.

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.