Thursday, January 29, 2009

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate this sign, posted on a street in my neighborhood:



I know I'm being an asshole two days in a row. But I sincerely don't understand what I'm supposed to do differently when driving on this block. Should I flash my lights? Paint my car blaze orange? Learn American Sign Language? And how long has this sign been up? Probably the "DEAF CHILD" is 19 now and a physics major at Gallaudet.

For some reason this reminds me of a passage I read once in an Iowa Department of Transportation publication, noting that in Iowa, drivers must yield to blind pedestrians using white canes tipped with red. Wait -- shouldn't drivers yield to all pedestrians, blind or not, and regardless of the colors of their canes? If a blind person walks in front of my car using a plaid cane tipped with chartreuse, is it okay with the State* of Iowa if I plow them under my front bumper?

* Explanatory note for Canadian readers: For administrative purposes, America is divided into 50 regions called "states," much like your "parishes." Americans like to make a big deal over how different each state is from all the rest, and this might have been true at one time. But, thanks to the efforts of corporations like McDonald's, Conoco, and The Gap, all the states are pretty much the same these days.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, jerk, Canada has provinces, not parishes.

    It's Louisiana that has parishes (instead of counties).

    I expect more accurate hating in the future.

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  2. I think I know why he got confused, he's been up to Montreal twice, and their version of French probably sounded Cajun to him.

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