I Really Hate Cyclists

I’ve had two major spills on a bike before, and they happened when I was a kid. I was at the park and I lost control over some gravel and fell off my bike, getting some major road rash over my body. The same thing happened a couple years later. Falling off your bike totally sucks (obviously) and after those two incidents, I made sure that I didn’t ride like a complete idiot, because if falling on the ground hurts like hell, imagine what getting hit by a car must feel like.

Yet, when I’m downtown, or driving around in my neighbourhood, I see so many cyclists who don’t share the same concerns as me when it comes to bike safety. They run stop signs all the time, they ride in the dark with no reflectors (this is more common in the suburbs than downtown), and the number of times they constantly ride their bike across the street. It pisses me off when they do this because aside from placing themselves in danger (not really my concern), they run the risk of injuring me or fucking up my car (very much my concern).

Over the last month my family has had several run-ins with cyclists. It’s a miracle that these run-ins haven’t resulted in more injuries, but, we just happen to be a very lucky family. During the summer, after dropping my friend off, I was set to make a left turn out of a residential street. As I was about to turn, not one, but three bikes darted in front of my car which really threw me off because it was pitch black outside and they didn’t have any lights on. They had reflectors, but what good are they when there’s no lights shining on them. I’m not sure what allowed me to stop in time, but these people are lucky they didn’t end up underneath my car.

Worse still was just the other week when I was making my way home from work. It wasn’t that late because I was working a morning shift, but as I was walking home an old man on a bicycle whizzed by me from behind and startled me. He almost clipped me, which really pissed me off because he could have rode on the grass to avoid me, or get off the bike to walk around me, or better yet, not ride on the sidewalk! I’m positive that it’s illegal.

Then there’s the cyclists who ride their bike across the street. If the streets are absolutely empty, then yeah, I guess you could ride like an idiot and get away with it, but if you’re approaching a busy intersection, then why wouldn’t you just take a bit of time to get off your bike and walk it across the road? My mom almost got into an accident because she was preparing for a right turn and a cyclist just rode into her blind spot and right in front of my mom’s car. Luckily, my mom stopped in time. My dad wasn’t so lucky. He was making a right turn, when a lady rode her bike right in front of his car and got hit. Not only did she fuck up her bike, she fucked up our car too, then blamed us for the accident.

My dad is about as cautious as it gets when it comes to driving. He’ll signal for stuff when there’s no one else in the road because that’s the kinda habits that he has. Today he made a full-stop at the red light, with his signals on, made sure there weren’t any pedestrians and cars, then proceeded to make a turn when a lady rode out in front and dented her front wheel on my dad’s car. She accused my dad of not stopping completely and not signaling, to which, several nearby witnesses chewed her out for being retarded because my dad clearly did both. She then asked for money for a new bike, which, my dad refused to give because he wasn’t at fault. In fact, she should give my dad money for fucking up the car. She then threatened to call the cops. My dad called her bluff on it, and she pussied out because those same witnesses were telling her that she was wrong the whole time and would not only have to pay for her own bike but for our dad’s damages instead. I secretly wish he ran her over.

So to all cyclists of the world: http://bicyclesafe.com/. I don’t get it, really, I don’t. It’s great that there are sites out there for stuff like this, but I was always under the impression that it’s human nature to preserve your own life.

Argh! Red Smash!

I hate walking around downtown, because there’s so many people. More people means more obstacles for me to maneuver around. Now, I don’t walk very fast, but I have a rhythm, a flow that I need to maintain, and disrupting this will result in some pretty dire consequences. Such as me…blogging…about you.

Anyway…

If I had it my way, everyone would be on some kinda conveyor belt system and a machine would move you along at a fairly even pace. If you needed to stop for whatever reason, you’d move to the side and do your thing before you’re ready to get inserted onto the belt again. Basically, I want the system from Wall-E, but, without the severe obesity that comes with it.

If only this didn't result in massive obesity...

How many times have you been at the mall, just to get that one thing, that one shirt or DVD that you know is there, and some idiot is having a conversation with someone else in front of the escalators? What a stupid place to have a conversation. No, please ma’am, don’t get out of the way. I wouldn’t want to disturb this conversation you’re having. Seriously, do go on, what happened on last night’s episode of The Hills? Me? No, I don’t have to go anywhere.

Then I get on the escalator, and some ass clown is standing on the left hand side. Walk left, stand right. Not stand right, then stand beside your significant other on the left as well. If you cannot leave your girlfriend/boyfriend’s side while you’re on an escalator then you are way too clingy, and probably have daddy issues. Get that stuff checked out, but meanwhile, get out of my way!

To the people who are lost: you don’t need to slow down when you are looking for a store. You are not driving, you are walking. If you walk past it, just…walk back! You’re not driving 70km/h on Hwy 7, you don’t need to plan several moves to get back somewhere if you miss a turn, just walk back. With that being said, do not immediately turn around and go back, there are people behind you. I cannot count the number of times someone has bumped into me by turning around immediately without looking behind them. It’s worse than people who stop abruptly, because this is potential crotch-to-crotch contact here! And I don’t do swordfights.

Just wanna smash everyone and bulldoze them out of the way, especially teenagers. I wanna smash those punks, I swear 90% of the offenders on this list are in their teens and need a good kick to the face.

On the Front Lines

I looked on the schedule last week and found out that I was working a lot that was being picketed. I wasn’t looking forward to this since:

1) I just wanna do my job without someone bugging me.
2) I hate loud noises.

So when I showed up Monday morning, I was greeted by loud fucking music and a picket leader asking me for free parking. It’s 8:30am on a Monday morning, which is bad enough as it is, but I went drinking the night before and barely woke up in time to go to work, so I was pretty friggin’ tired. The last thing I wanted to hear was No Doubt’s “Hella Good”, or someone trying to explain to me why they shouldn’t have to pay for parking.

I told her that she’d have to pay, just like everyone else in the lot pays, or like how the people in the building next door, who are actually working, have to pay too.

Bitch.

Anyway, the atmosphere is weird since they’re picketing and playing pop music and rap music. Someone should really fix up their playlist to reflect the mood of what’s going on, because Akon’s “Beautiful” just doesn’t cut it. What they need is some Bob Dylan or Neil Young, or anyone else with protest songs from the 70s. There’s also no actual pickets, they just wear the signs over their chest and walk around in circles all day to music. It’s not exciting at all, it looks like a bunch of retarded kids decided to play musical chairs, but didn’t bring any chairs.

There I was, sitting and watching the people move hypnotically in circles in front of me when out of the corner of my eye I noticed Global TV coming down to film what was going on. They stayed for about 20 minutes and filmed a resident spazzing on the strikers for not letting him through the picket line, and making him wait 10 minutes. To get through the picket lines, every car had to wait 10 minutes before being allowed in, but(!!!), the exception being: if you were a resident or someone who worked for the parking lot, you could get in without a problem as long as you had some proper ID. This resident decided to argue with the picketers rather than show his ID to be let through, then complained the picketers were holding him up. Everyone else that day was being let through without a problem, but Global decided to film just the one guy, which I can understand, since, it’s probably more interesting (and funny) to hear someone cuss someone else down.

For the most part the people were alright. I started a couple of conversations with them and they seemed to be pretty cool, aside from the one lady who asked for free parking, most people didn’t get on my nerves. That was until I got the phone call.

The picketers use our washroom, which most people don’t give a shit about because they don’t mess it up or anything. I don’t complain, the taggers in the area don’t complain and our techs don’t complain either, but nonetheless, I got a call from head office telling me they don’t like the people using our washrooms and that I should lock it up. Since the guy wasn’t here to tell them himself, I had to relay this dick move to the picketers and they immediately went hostile on me. Pretty much everyone’s initial reaction was that they were going to pee all over my lot. One guy said he was going to pee in my booth, which really pissed me off since he was probably the guy on the picket line least likely to pull that move (read: he looks like a pussy). One guy tried to stick up for me, telling them it wasn’t my fault, but then someone else came up and yelled at me and (like everyone else) threatened to pee on the lot.

“Where are we gonna go? How ’bout I just piss all over your walls?”
“Sure, if you want to.”
“You don’t think I’ll do it?!”
“No, I just don’t care if you do.”

Bluff called. He didn’t end up peeing on my walls. He just went to the next closest place to pee. I guess his vagina makes it hard for him to actually go through with his threats considering how peeing on the walls must be a strong departure from sitting down and peeing.

An hour later I get another phone call from head office telling me to unlock the door for the picketers, but seeing as how all the picketers already left for the day, this did nothing. He said that he didn’t know what was going on and that he didn’t realize the picketers were being nice to us by letting our cars in, so if they were being courteous to us, we should be to them. You hear that?! “He didn’t know,” and “he didn’t realize,” and yet he gets to tell me what to do.

*head explodes*

Garbage Strike

The garbage strike has turned Toronto into a shithole. I’m not under any delusion that it was a pristine city before this, but I could at least walk down Yonge St. without tripping over bags of garbage that people have left at the bins. I don’t expect people to do otherwise, I mean, what’s the city done to stop this? Saran wrap the holes? Ha! Cops can’t stop people either, because there’s too many garbage bins to keep track of. Not that cops would probably spare the manpower to police this anyway, it’s stupid, there’s more important things to look after.

I know what I’m saying is superficial, but, the city looks like shit. It bothers me when the streets I’m walking on suddenly turn into a mini-dump site wherever a garbage bin is placed. It’s such an eyesore. See, if garbage was strewn around the city, I’d be fine with it, because while it’s disgustingly dirty, it’s not necessarily drawing attention to any specific part. It’s uniform. You want things to seem as if they belong there. A pile of garbage on a relatively clean street is too much of a contrast; it ruins whatever street it’s on. It’s like the hair on a hot girl’s arms, she’s perfect until you look down and you wonder just where the hell it came from and why haven’t they got rid of it yet.

Fuck this garbage strike.

*sigh* Oh, Canada…

I went to work today and when I was coming out of Eglinton station I saw a massive group of people outside. At first, when I saw all these Asian people, I said to myself “damn, where’s the Casino Rama bus?” but when I saw that there was actually a huge lineup stretching down Yonge and across Eglinton, I realized that these people were lining up for Mandarin. Why? I don’t know, Mandarin food isn’t that great to me, but every Canada day they offer free (I believe “free” is contingent on you being a Canadian citizen) lunch or dinner. Nothing says Canada like Egg Rolls and Chow Mein! mmmmmMMMM!

I don’t know what the big hoopla is about Mandarin, the food is crap, it’s a buffet, and it’s expensive. I saw an old man in the lineup and he had tubes up his nose and was carrying around this bag with him (filled with medical equipment) and he was waiting in line for what must have been hours to get in. Really now! You’re in ill-health and you’d rather spend your time lining up for Mandarin? Chinese food is so cheap and readily available that you shouldn’t have to line-up for it. Ever. Anywhere. Or if you do at least get the stuff that’s been cooked, and not left in a heater all day for people to scoop up.

Do people know what they’re lining up for? Buffets are places where people look at food, and smell it before scooping it up onto their plate (or back into the tray). They had to install sneeze guards, which I assume is to address the issue of people sneezing into their food. That’s all fine and dandy but I saw a couple of midgets in the line who look as if they could circumvent this, since those guards are set at a certain height. Ewww! Hands are used to pick up bread, which is ok if it’s the last piece, but terrible if your hairy arms get all over the piece I wanted. And don’t get me started on the ice cream! People don’t wash the scoops in between mixing flavours for themselves. Hey, you little shit, I bet you feel brilliant for putting vanilla and strawberry ice cream together, right? Now I got all this pink shit in my vanilla ice cream because you didn’t bother to clean the scoop!

But alas, it’s free. If you give something away in abundance people seem to line up for it, and no matter how ludicrous it sounds to line up for hours to get into Mandarin for free food that’s left on a heater, people still do it. In droves.