common courtesy goes a long way

If I'm at a red and there's someone behind me I'll look and see if they need to turn and I'll scoot up if I see their blinker on. This sometimes doesn't work because motorists can be stupid and not use their blinkers (or directionals, as I like to call them). Most of the time it does though, as it did this morning. The driver pulled up and before he turned, rolled down his window and thanked me profusely for paying him this small courtesy.

I felt pretty damn good about myself and then promptly told myself to not get a big head for such an obvious and easy gesture.

obligate Seinfeld reference (episode #307): "...I am a kind man. Who else would do something like this? Nobody. Nobody thinks about people like I do. All right, snap out of it you stupid jerk. You're eating a turkey sandwich. What do you want, a nobel prize?"

F*ck these streets

That's what this blog should have been called.

I was stuck at an intersection where left turns are protected. There were no cars behind me so I got skipped. My body weight plus an aluminum frame are not enough to activate the sensors under the street I guess. I got skipped twice while the left turn lane on the other side got greens. I got pretty pissed for being fooled into thinking that if I follow the traffic laws, I'll be afforded the respect given to cars. That's when I yelled the title of this post and just took the red.

Are those halloween decorations or lynch victims?

There is a house on San Felipe that I've passed for two nights in a row now. The family in said house have gotten in the halloween spirit by hanging decorations from their very stately oaks that stand closest to the curb. And by halloween, I mean 'the south will rise again'/rebel yell spirit.

There are two figures that I can only imagine are supposed to be ghosts. There are several problems with this assumption though, and I will list them here:

1) the 'ghosts' are not white nor do they have the instantly recognizable black eye holes and black howling mouths that everyone has come to associate with halloween ghosts. Instead, they are a dark khaki to light brown color and uneven in their shading...say, like rags a chattel type slave might have worn.

2) they are life-sized and have head-like globes instead of amorphous contours as ghosts might usually have. Their being life-sized removes a certain element of fantasy. Ghosts are usually depicted a slightly to moderately larger or smaller than the average 5'8 human being. These seem to be almost exactly that long. Also taking away the fantastical element, their heads. Halloween ghosts, just to be specific, usually do not have spherical heads. These do.

3) and probably the most damning of all: the 'ghosts' are hung from their necks. THEIR NECKS. Not heads. Their NECKS.

dear inhabitants of generically wealthy/crypto-racist San Felipe House: Take down your 'ghosts.' You might have consciously chosen those specifically because they looked classier to you than your run-of-the-mill white and black ghost but they ended up looking like the subject of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.