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First it was Afghanistan. Next, it was Iraq, Iran and North Korea, parts of the ‘axis of evil’. Now Condoleezza Rice is calling our attention to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Burma and Belarus (Belarus? Is anyone else wondering where this is? And I keep myself fairly up to date on these things, I thought.).

Gavin introduced me to Noam Chomsky’s spoken word, so I understand why Cuba would be a threat to the United States. Iraq has all that ‘liquid gold’, and Iran is certainly close enough to Iran to warrant some threat to America’s interests in Iraq. North Korea most certainly has WMD, or Weapons of Mass Destruction – even more so than Iraq.

Yet, looking at all of this information, from intelligent speakers and trustworthy news sources, is truly unnecessary. In fact, all we really need to do is look at what these countries have in common.

Is it a faith that they share? The United States is ‘under God’, so naturally any country threatening that ideal would warrant the ‘threat’ status. But, no, we need not look at things like that.

Is it the colour of the skin of the people of those countries? It’s true people of colour are a great benefit to the United States in so far as they give the Army great fodder, but it’s also true that you can tell a lot about someone by the colour of the skin, or the way that they look. Does the individual look like they’re from the Middle East? Chances are they’d be filling to kill you for their pagan God. Does the individual have a larger than average nose, or an average nose if female? Don’t borrow money from them – they are probably Jews.

But no, we don’t need to look at the actual people of the countries. In fact, looking at the people of countries is completely unnecessary. Rather, look at what really matters about the country – look at the country’s name.

That’s right, it’s as simple as the name of the country. Clearly, Iraq and Iran, to take but two examples, are missing the embodiment of freedom – America. In fact, their use of an ‘a’ in their country’s name is worst kind of evil. Clearly any country that is not America, but uses an ‘a’, is evil. In fact, this is so apparent that it needs no further discourse. However, if you are still stuck on this point, I urge you to visit your local church and listen to what the officials there tell you.

Now that we’ve moved past that point, it’s quite clear who the tyrants are. Afghanistan was clearly a major player, since there were three ‘a’s in the name of the country. Iraq has an ‘a’, and is close enough, and has been enough of a problem over the years, that it was easier to attack there than not to. Iran has an ‘a’, and is close to Iraq, so is easy to bounce into as well. Some may ask about Africa, which has two ‘a’s – why not attack Africa, or Canada for that matter?

Africa is an easy one – AIDs will solve the problems in Africa. God is truly on the side of America for who else creates disease? Canada is something that the United States of America is saving for later, since everyone knows that maple syrup goes on pancakes, which are best served after war. We certainly wouldn’t want sticky fingers while top officials are pressing buttons or making phones calls, now would we?

Another popular question arises. So does that mean that Mexico and Turkey are safe from tyranny? Unfortunately, no, they are not. Everyone knows that Hispanics and Mexicans come from Mexico. As for Turkey, I’m sure that Turkey has at least one city with an ‘a’ in it’s title, and that’s enough for a war.

But is war really all that bad? After all, without war we wouldn’t have guns, which would mean no bear hunting – after all, you can’t kill a bear with sticks and stones, or bows and arrows! It would also be hard to hunt various birds, if not all birds, since they’re so small and tiny.

So God bless America, Texas, and apple pie.

She was an attractive woman, quite attractive in fact. She was the kind of girl that you couldn’t help but smile at if she gave you her eyes, even if you were having one of the most shit-filled days in your life up to that point.

She walked over, not quickly, but not slow. It was a perfect pace for a girl in her profession. If you move to quickly, you make the customer think that you’re desperate, while moving too slow gives off a feeling of disinterest, or boredom, both of which scare a customer away, or instil a like sensation within them.

No, she was moving towards me just right.

“I see you’re looking at the Don Pierre.” She was quite right. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

I replied that I was not with a ‘no’ and a sheepish grin. Could I date her? Probably. That’s what you start asking yourself, the older you get. You now longer wonder how old a girl is, you just wonder whether you could date her. Of course, it was important to keep in mind that this answered the question of whether she was legal, since you based your answer not on ‘would you date her’, but rather ‘could you date her’.

So, I could date her, so she was around my age. But, women do have this way of making themselves look younger than they are. She could pass as 18, but she could be in her semi-late twenties. Semi-late? Hmm. Women will do that to you – women aren’t known for their rationality, rather for their sensuality.

Anyway. “Who’s the lucky lady?” I knew she was going to ask so when she did it was surprising that it took me by surprise. Duh, of course she’s going to ask.

“It’s for me.” That’s what I should have said. She probably would have taken it as a joke, if I said it jokingly. Maybe I had screwed up and was scouting about. Maybe it was an anniversary, and I loved the smell. Maybe I just loved the smell.

One of those is the right idea, which I suppose makes the other the right idea as well.

Anyway, again I say, I just smiled sheepishly once more. That opened it up for what I could answer quite a bit. Now it could be a gift for blood. Maybe that was the wrong answer, but the other options were just as bad.

Not like I have a chance with this women before me. She’s attractive and doesn’t appear to be a bitch. That means she’s either got a boyfriend, she has her eye on some guy who she hasn’t yet, or can’t, attain, or she’s not interested in a relationship at this time. She could also be a lesbian, not to discount the validity of that path by one iota. There’s no other reason for an attractive women, who isn’t a bitch, to not have a boyfriend. Well, it could be that every guy that wants to ask her out can’t because they all think that she’s either one of the above, or way out of their league.

So, she could be single.

“Excuse me. May I buy you dinner?”

Yeah. Like that’s really going to happen.

Hmph. All this ‘stuff’ going through my head, all while I’m standing at the counter trying to pick out some perfume.

Ah, now the title makes sense. First it maybe sounds a little sensuous. “Oh, it’s a story about the narrator meeting a stripper with really nice perfume. After falling in love with her – obviously someone never watched Moulin Rouge!, or didn’t get it – he buys her perfume, takes it to her one night, but sees her dancing for someone else. In a fit of sorrow, he shatters the perfume bottle and stabs his eyes, pushing them out of his skull, like one would push a clam out of it’s shell.”

No. Sadly, this story is far less interesting, less bloody, will not discuss massive amounts of skin, and is far more sickening. You see, I was out shopping for perfume merely because I had ran out that very morning.

I don’t wear the perfume; I just buy it and spray it about. There’s a song from many years ago, about a ‘junk food junkie’. This song says that the junkie would hide in a closet and eat his junk food, while in public he would eat only natural foods. My habit is quite similar.

You see, many years ago my heart, some would say my soul, perhaps my mind, finally ‘shattered like a glass goblin’. If you’re familiar with the Harlan Ellison story titled this, then you’re aware of what I mean. If you’re not familiar with the Harlan Ellison story, then chances are you either know what I mean, or will know what I mean, very soon indeed.

I can’t quite remember when it was, and chances are it was not one moment, but rather a gradual process. Not a shattering, but a disintegrating, as the mountains slowly erode away.

So, I had taken to buying perfume, as if I was buying it for some lucky lady, hiding it away, and, when I knew that I was alone and would not be caught, going into my closet and spraying a fine mist in the air before me, so that I could dip my head into the cloud of scent.

Sad, indeed, but it is who I am, by what I have been.

So that is why I could not answer the young woman who was helping me make a purchase. If I told her the truth, could I honestly expect her to not laugh and not look horrified? No. If I told her, or anyone else for that matter, I, gentle reader, would be introduced again to a feeling that I am quite aware of, for we have met before.

So I leave this tale to you. To those who read this and are male – beware that you do not become what I have become. To the female – see how your kind treats some of us. We that are like this cannot help it – we’ve been created by experience in such a way that we are who we are. Yet, beware too, for a love-stricken man is much to fear…

Ah, but love is a horrible beast, no matter what Dante and the rest may say.

Notes

Modified: February 5th 2005

Something has been on my mind for a number of months as of late regarding stoplights and cars. People tend to, and perhaps naturally, speed, and my article regarding speed limits (On the Speed Limit) is fairly popular because of it. However, people also tend to not stop for yellow lights, and sometimes even for red lights, but would much rather drive through them. This raised the question of whether it really is best to be the last one through a stoplight (speed up while the light is yellow), or if it makes more sense to not ‘run’ the light, and instead be the very first one in ‘line’ at the light. What follows are my personal reflections upon the advantages of not stopping at the light versus stopping at the light.

Overall, I happen to believe that both actions have their own benefits. For the most part, however, I believe that longer distances favour one, while shorter distances favour the other. In like manner, having a lot of traffic on the road favours one, while being in a situation where traffic is scarce favours the other.

On the first hand, I would argue that when there is a great deal, or moderate amount of traffic, it makes more sense to stop at the light, then go through it. I would argue this because it seems to me that I would rather have a fairly clear road before me than a fairly full road.

Let us imagine that we are on our way to some location, perhaps work. The main roads are fairly busy because many people are going to the location we are going to, or many people are out on the roads at this time. We’ve been following behind a row of cars, going around the speed limit. The light is changing yellow and the car in front of us is not putting on the brakes, and we therefore assume that it will not be stopping. Assuming that we can stop, we do so with a few thoughts in mind.

If we continue through the light, we will also continue going about the same speed that we are going now, unless the next traffic light turns red, in which case we would be forced to stop behind the row of cars. On the other hand, let us imagine that we stop instead, and sit as the first car in our lane. If we were in this position we would not have to wait for, or configure our speed to, any cars before us. Rather, we would be the car that would first move all cars behind us. This also gives us the advantage of being able to have a relatively open space before us, assuming that cross traffic, or traffic being diverted into our lane and going our direction, is fairly scarce, or is at least less than the traffic that we left.

These considerations suggest to me that it would be much better to stop at the light than continue through, in such a case. This also suggests to me why it would be better to stop at lights for longer distances than to not stop. After all, longer distances often suggest that we’ll want to move fairly quickly, or we’ll want to enjoy the scenery all the more.

If we don’t mind the distance, and don’t have to be at the location at any particular time, stopping for lights will allow us to listen to the radio that much longer and not have to fight with traffic so much, as well as take a look about us.

Contrary to this we have both trips that consist of a fairly short distance as well as trips during times when traffic is fairly scarce. In these cases, I believe it’s often better to continue through lights than to stop. If for example I’m merely going a couple of blocks, it makes more sense to try to get there as quickly as possible, and back as quickly as possible. I also remind my readers of the Taco Bell commercial of a number of months, perhaps years, ago. While I didn’t really like the commercial, it did make a fairly clear point.

In this commercial an individual was trying to get to the Taco Bell, which was just a few blocks away. However, every light that he came to was red, causing the few blocks to expand from taking a few moments to a couple of minutes. The point that this commercial makes is that man (and here I include women as well), for the most part and in most cases, is impatient – if something rests right before him that he desires, he will attempt to reach the thing, stopping only when they have been shown time and time again that they cannot reach it, or after having reached it.

So, unless the drive is leisurely, it makes more sense to attempt to be the last one through a light, for short trips, than to be the first one stopped by the light.

Driving while traffic is scarce is slightly different. In this case, you don’t often get stuck behind a row of cars. When traffic is fairly scarce, changing lanes or passing, if in the country or on a particular road, is much easier to do. As above, it may make more sense to stop at the light, even if traffic is scarce, if the drive is leisurely.

Before I conclude, it’s important to touch upon one aspect of this that I have not discussed, and was not planning to discuss. Because of some of the searches that found my article, On the Speed Limit, I believe it’s necessary to point this out at this time. The main reason the yellow light exists is to allow cars that are almost through a light to be able to get through the light, as well as allow some level of cushioning space, or better, time.

Let us think of an intersection with one road going north to south and another going east to west. Let us also see that there is a stoplight for both roads (north-south and east-west).  However, these stoplights are fairly basic, in that they only have a red light, yellow light, and green light. In other words, while anyone can turn onto any road, there are no turn arrows in the lights. This means that if someone going south on the north-south road wanted to turn left, and therefore go east on the east-west road, they would have to wait until the traffic going north on the north-south road was scarce enough to allow them through. We can see this on the image to the right.

In this case, the more people that are going to the north that go through the light while it is yellow, the less time those that are attempting to cross traffic have to get through before the east-west traffic gets slowed down. On the other hand, if the northbound traffic were to stop for the yellow, it would allow those attempting to turn plenty of time to do so.

The reason this even comes into play is because a) many lights do not have turn arrows as a part of their structure, and b) many people attempting to cross traffic tend to inch out in the middle of the intersection, often so that they can see. If cars that inch out like this are not able to pass before the light turns red, they unnecessarily impede traffic going in the alternative directions.

So, it’s well worth pointing out that it’s often better to stop for a yellow light, if traffic from the other direction is attempting to cross over your lane. That said, I feel it’s time to conclude.

To conclude, there is a time for stopping at a yellow light, and a time for not stopping. It seems sometimes that people are so rushed to run through lights that they never take the time to question whether it makes the most sense to rush through or not. In many cases, being the first person at stopped at a light makes more sense than ‘riding’ someone’s back bumper.

Notes

Created: January 19th 2005
Modified: February 5th 2005