by Adam Millard
When I finally happen to stumble across a news station, that’s the report that’s being given. Behind the reporter’s voice, I can hear the weeps and wails and cries and caterwauls of my fellow human beings, howling in torment. Suffering, anguish and pain - their voices calling out from some shitty, far-off country, no doubt, in some shitty, far-off part of the globe. One of those places where even tourist dare not tread. One of those places where misery and misfortune are the only true languages spoken. Pretty much anywhere that isn’t America, or like, Britain or something.
But what can I do about it, huh? Who cares, right? Who gives a flying fuck about what’s happening to some unnamed assholes in some asshole country whose sole purpose for existing is to sew my sneakers together? I have no time for sympathy. Or empathy. Or any other type of –pathy you’ve got up your sleeves, except for maybe apathy. I’m too busy feeling the vibrations of my luxury automobile travel up from the brake pedal, through my feet and into my genitals.
GODDAMN, I LOVE THIS CAR!
If I didn’t have some place to be, I could do this all day. Sit in this driver’s seat. In fact, I can think of no better way to spend my free time. I roost here atop my throne. Like I’m the king. I’m the king of this stagnant highway. I’m the most important raindrop in this aluminum puddle.
[NOTE: Chapter Two of Roadvolution has been brought to you by Colgate’s® new-and-improved MisanthropicOptic White™ toothpaste – If It’s Not Colgate®, You’d Better Wipe that Smile Off Your Goddamned Face™.]
Chapter Three
I commute to work.
I commute to work every day because I am an important businessman who pulls down six-figures a year and I have important business-related business to take care of in the city. That’s New York City I’m referring to. The BIGGEST and BEST city in the whole wide world. Not, like, Des Moines or someplace else as equally lame. Yeah, you read that right, you Iowan asshats, I’m shitting all over your dumb state capital. Fuck Des Moines. And fuck you for making me have to clarify.
I commute to the city daily, and as such, I understand that delays sometimes happen. I’m not demanding a clear and unimpeded path from my front door straight to the office. I’m not unreasonable. But when I look to my right and see the large green signpost on the side of Route 80 that reads EXIT 63 - LODI/FAIR LAWN – LAST TWO EXITS IN NJ I can’t help but think that something’s up. Something weird. Congestion this far from the George Washington Bridge is atypical. And I should know because in addition to the myriad things I know about [including the major and minor differences between a Glashütte stainless steel Senator Sixties square chronograph watch and an Omega rose-gold De Ville Hour Vision annual calendar watch] I’ve also become quite the connoisseur of New Jersey traffic jams.
For instance, normal commuter traffic is systematic. Orderly even. It’s built into the day like a coffee break. Expected. Accepted. It is the lifeblood of the commute itself, a chance to let me reflect upon everything that makes me awesome and ponder how awesome I’m going to be tomorrow.
Construction traffic, on the other hand, has a slow and metronomic sort of creep. Careful, like a spider traversing a wet table. Construction traffic moves with the regularity of a giant’s breath as those illiterate ignoramuses in the Department of Transportation let the cars pass through the sieve of whatever lane they have so “benevolently” decided to leave open.
And, of course, by applying Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle as it relates to Gaspard Monge’s Transportation Theory - if you multiply the area of a particular traffic jam by the time of day it is then divide that number by the level of exasperation you’re feeling and then raise that number to the #-of-police-sirenth power, you can accurately calculate [to the nearest yard] just how far up the road an accident has occurred. Here’s a handy-dandy equation to prove it, just in case you think I’m bullshitting you:
∆ρ∆χ≥12inf∫xcx,Txdμ(x)T*μ=v
Go ahead. Do the math, fucker. I assure you it all checks out.
But back to right now: a traffic jam like this on day like today at this particular time of morning?
It’s an anomaly.
Even with my vast compendium of knowledge on all things rush hour-related, the cause of this current bumper-to-bumper back-up remains excruciatingly unknown. I look around at my fellow commuters’ faces and I can see the agitation starting to bloom there too. Without a definitive end to this gridlock in sight, people are beginning to get antsy; the other businessmen in their own Mercedes-Benz CL coupes shifting around uncomfortably in their Sahara-beige leather bucket seats as I shift uncomfortably, identically, in mine.
Man, I’m too goddamn important to have to suffer like this. I don’t bust my ass 10 hours a day/5 days a week so I can sit here like a chump and be the victim of whatever unnamed inanity that is causing this congestion. This morning there’s an extra spice in my soup. And no sir, I don’t freakin’ like it!
