Books Lying Open
¤ What Liberal Media?, Eric Alterman
¤ The Scientists (A History of Science Told Through the Lives of its Greatest Inventors), John Gribbin

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Offending some minor candy god by pouring four bags of Skittles into my M&M-less M&M dispenser.

Question of the Day:
¤ Snack calories past 4am don't count, right?

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your new "within arm's reach" candy prove crunchy, but in all the wrong ways.

ooking at this two-shot sequence of red light camera photos on Rotten.com, (go look for the full size images, you'll grasp the situation far better than in the tiny cropped ones I'm presenting here.) I had three thoughts.

2) The sad truth is that even if you look in every direction, take precautions, use your mirrors constantly, etc, eventually some stupid person will run into you anyway.

The most recent forceful reminder of this truth occurred Friday afternoon, when an old woman backed her Buick into the passenger side of my car while I was sitting in the middle of the street, waiting 

For me, it happened Friday afternoon. I was going to a small Mexican produce store in Concord, turned left off of the main street, and wanted to turn right into the store's parking lot about 20 yards past the intersection. Unfortunately, the lot was jammed full of cars, with an oversized pickup truck trying to turn around right in front, blocking the entire entrance. Since the road is a single lane there, I drove on up ahead, pulled over to the right so other cars could go past me, and made a U-turn.

The parking lot was still full when I got back, 30 seconds later, and as I waited in the left turn lane, waiting for the guy in the white pickup to drift his pedestrian-endangering way through the slowest "K" turn in the history of automobiles, I was constantly watching my rear view mirror. I was somewhat nervous since I was in the left turn lane, with an intersection about 25 yards ahead of me. There was no one in front of me, and plenty of room for cars coming up from behind to pass me and then get in front of me to wait at the red light, and I had brake lights on, my signal on, and it was about 4pm on a perfectly sunny day, so visibility was perfect. But still, whenever I'm going against traffic or sitting in an odd location, I'm watching out.

Several cars had passed me from behind, and the white pickup had finally managed to get turned around and out of the parking lot, and a couple of other cars had moved out behind him, so there was plenty of parking. I was just waiting for the cars coming from in front of me to pass so I could turn left.  You can imagine my surprise when my whole car suddenly jumped about six inches, with the unmistakable thunk of impact.

I pushed harder on the brakes, surprised, and looked in the rear view mirror, which I'd been checking every few seconds and hadn't seen anything in for half a minute. I still didn't, but when my eyes flicked to the right, what should I see but the read end of a large white Buick sedan, and a little old lady head turning around in the driver's seat, surprise and worry written large upon her face.

Now keep in mind that I wasn't on the right shoulder, or even in the right lane. I was in the middle lane, at least 12 or 15 feet from the right side of the road, where there was a driveway out from a small apartment complex. There was easily room to my right for a car to back out of the driveway, turning the wheel to back into the right lane. Not only hadn't she done that, she hadn't turned the wheel at all. She hit me straight sideways, so our cars made a perfect "T" shape, as if she were driving straight across the busy street, backwards. I should also note that she wasn't going for that, since there was no driveway immediately to my right. The store parking lot I was going to turn in was at least 5 yards ahead of my car.

I looked over and made a shrugging, "What the fuck?" sort of gesture, and she just looked confused, as if I had done it intentionally to confuse her, or my car had perhaps fallen from the sky, or hit her. However she must have eventually realized that cars don't generally travel sideways, and therefore that she must have hit me, rather than vice versa, since she pulled forward, back into the driveway she'd emerged from. I wanted to turn in behind her, but I had to wait for several cars to pass from behind (see, I checked my mirror before just swinging around to the right and hoping for the best) before I could back up a bit and pull in behind her. Once there, out of the street, I emerged from my protective steel, glass, and plastic cocoon to inspect the damage.

She'd hit me solidly, and broadside, so I was expecting there to be some pretty extensive denting. More "dreading" than "expecting" the denting, since I didn't want to be bothered getting estimates for repairs. My car's already got some major scarring, mostly along the left front, from the tire well to the front bumper, and I don't care enough about those to get them fixed. That accident was on the freeway in San Diego a couple of years ago, when a pickup with a trailer cut across and sideswiped me, chewing up the front fender and putting a fist-sized hole in the front tire. I got to pull over to the center median and change my tire there. And yes, the whole time I was there I kept thinking about all of those police car videos where some drunk comes along and plows into the cop car, or the car he's writing a ticket to.  No such bad luck for me, that time.

In my occasional greedy moments I imagine some idiot running into me, not wanting to have his insurance skyrocket, and agreeing to pay it out of his pocket, as I had to do the one time I backed into some chick's Honda, years ago. I idly imagine someone doing that to me, ideally when it's entirely their fault, and when faced with a $1000 damage estimate, accepting my offer of $500 cash and we forget the whole thing. My car would have to be just about torn in half for me to want it fixed more than I want $500.

The time I had to pay still pisses me off. I was backing out of a parking spot, and a girl pulled her tiny Honda in behind me, while I was already rolling. She was near a red curb (not next to it, or I would probably have missed her by accident.) going the wrong way down a one-way driveway. Since it was one way and no one was there when I got into my car, I only checked the rear view mirror and looked over my shoulder to the right, since that was the only way any traffic could logically have been coming from.  Since it was a downhill, the rear of my car was higher than the front of hers, so I couldn't see her at all in my rear view mirror.  I backed into her at about 3 MPH, while she's sitting there with her window open, and never yelling or honking or anything. The impact put a tiny dent into her fender above the front wheel, making a dent that could have been hammered out in 2 minutes, which ended up costing me $650 to fix since I didn't want my already astronomical insurance to go even higher.  At the time I paid it without questioning the whole thing, but looking back I think I had a reasonable case of it being her fault for being illegally parked going the wrong way down a one way in a spot that I couldn't have been expected to check before backing out. However, since she was dropping off her boyfriend and he proved to be a ranting, raving nut, I'm sure he would have lied her up and in her version I would have burned rubber backing out, ignored her honks and his yells, and laughed after I hit her while I twirled my thin, black moustache, which I must have shaved off before coming into court that day.

Returning to the present reality, I pulled in behind granny, and she got out of her car and came over to look at the damage on the side of my car. I walked around and looked at it myself, and was amazed how mild it was. There was nothing more than 6 or 7 dime-sized dents, spaced out about every eight inches or so, from the rear window to the side view mirror. Bless those plastic exterior panels on Saturns, eh?  If my car had been old fashioned metal, (like that chick's Honda back in the day) I'd have been looking at 2 or 3 major body panels with deep dents, and $1500 or more in damage. Funny how you can get a new car for like $12k, but if you want to replace even a fraction of the exterior, it'll cost you far more than the whole thing did new.

Granny looks at the damage, and says something like, "Oh, it didn't make any mark at all."  I'd call her a liar, but she had to be 75 years or older and who knows, to her eyes there might not have been any. I pointed out the dents, and she looked closer and said, "Oh, but those are higher than my bumper." Funny how she couldn't see a stationary car in the middle of the street on a bright sunny day, but she can estimate the height of her rear bumper to within a fraction of an inch.

She was nice and apologetic though, and kept saying how sorry she was and scolding herself with things like, "I have got to remember to look as well as sideways when I back out of here!" I'm thinking, "Yeah, that would be a good idea; especially when you're moving backwards."

While we're there I check out her rear bumper, and it looks like the scoop of a bulldozer, it's got so many dents and chunks and missing paint flakes. Half the cars in Concord have probably gotten a taste of her parking skills.

The weirdest thing was that during our whole conversation she's got a flake of tissue on one of her eye lashes. Pink tissue, about the size of a grain of rice, and since she's at least a foot shorter than me, I'm just staring at the tissue, and wondering how it got there, how she doesn't see or feel it, and if maybe it's not a tissue, but is some sort of weird press on eyelash decoration that's all the rage at the senior center on Alpo casserole night.

Incidentally, remember when eyebrow rings and tongue rings were a new, shocking form of personal decoration, and they were mostly worn by desperately-rebellious teens, or else hot people who just wanted to add a bit more to make themselves super hot?  Now, at least judging by the sorry excuses for humans who show up on the Jerry Springer show, eyebrow and nose and tongue studs seem to be worn mostly by fat, ugly, pathetic people, upon which no decoration yet invented would make any difference.

The eyelash tissue finally fell off and fluttered to earth near the end of the conversation, when granny apologized several more times, and thanked me again for not being a dick about things. Not that she used those words. She also spent some more time scolding herself for not looking back when she backed out, so perhaps the accident will do her some good, assuming the Alzheimer's lets her keep the memory long enough to avoid her next accident.

I got back into my car, backed out (while looking backwards and to the left, if you can believe it) and then immediately turned left into the store I'd been waiting to turn into in the first place. As I shopped, I thought about how she'd hit me, and had to laugh. I have no idea why she was backing so far across the street that she'd have blocked both directions of a three-lane road, but it's lucky she was. Since she hit me sideways, perfectly T-boned me, the impact was spread along the entire six foot width of her Buick's bumper. If she'd cut the wheel like a normal person she'd probably have missed me entirely, and been surprised when she looked sideways and saw a car there. If she'd cut it real late, she'd have backed into me diagonally, and really put a dent in with the corner of her bumper. It was only due to her not turning the wheel at all, even though she'd rolled back at least four meters farther than she should have, that kept the accident from doing any real damage.

So in a way, it's lucky she was such a horrible driver, since a merely bad driver would have done much more damage and been out several hundred dollars.

3) And lastly, do you suppose they gave the person driving the BMW in that red light photo a ticket for running the light?  Once they finished scraping gramps' brains off of her windshield, I mean.

Also, look at the large version of the shot on Rotten.com. I love the expressions of the people to the left. The one lady walking is horrified, the other hasn't comprehended it yet, and the two people in the car to the left are shocked as well; the passenger with her mouth open, and driver actually lifting her hands up to her cheeks.  And how about the driver of the BMW? It doesn't look to me that she (?) has even seen the pedestrian yet, despite the fact that his head just bounced of her window. There's a passenger in the BMW and there's no way he/she didn't see it, but you can't see his/her reaction, but the driver is still clenching the wheel in the 10 and 2 position, eyes straight forwards.

People who drive like that, in the classic driver's training grip, always make me nervous. It's just a sign that they aren't good enough drivers to relax and look around and hold the steering wheel more casually. They're the type of drivers who look only straight ahead, who never check their mirrors until the second they want to change lanes and are therefore surprised when a car is blocking them, who brake to merge or change lanes rather than accelerating and merging from strength, who don't anticipate the need to brake based on what the cars a quarter mile ahead are doing, etc.  I'll still do my driving page someday, and discuss the basic types of drivers, tell you all how you should be driving, discuss what most people do wrong, detail proper side and rear view mirror alignment, and spend a great deal of time classifying vehicles by their driving style and type of owner, and classifying drivers by their race, gender, age, and passengers.  All in the best, dryly sarcastic Band Names style.

Don't hold your breath though, I've been planning to write that page (and you know me; it would go long and become pages) for about two years now, and it's not gotten any farther than that yet.

Ironically enough, the same day I was in my "accident," Malaya was driving alone, saw a pebble get kicked up on the freeway ahead of her, and took it right between the eyes. Or she would have, if not for the windshield.  Unfortunately her windshield, like most of them out there, is made of glass, and now it's got a healthy chip missing from the exterior. She's afraid that the crater is deep enough that cracks will begin to spread once she hits some bumps or we get colder winter weather. I dunno about that; it's not like we live in Alaska, but it is odd that neither of us had any sort of automobile issues for months and months, and then we both got it on the same day.

Malaya was bummed, since after all, she had a good story to tell, until I trumped her with my 80 year old Buick mishap.