The genius of alcohol

The Kentucky Derby (which just happened this past weekend) got me thinking about gambling and other non-sports related games. Seeing that the Kentucky Derby has an official drink (no, Budweiser did not get to smear their logo on this one), the mint julep, I made a connection. For those of you that went to college, you are undoubtedly familiar with drinking games and the extremes that drinking game rules can go to given enough time and alcohol. I think that the origins of gambling lie with inebriation. I spent many nights in college playing drinking games and making up rules that stray so far from the game's original rules that it becomes a whole new game altogether. Sometimes, all you needed was a friend, a case of beer, a couple of hours for you and your friend to consume the case of beer, and a deck of cards and you could make up your own game that no one else in the world had thought up. You became the drunken Parker Brothers. Case in point: my friend Nick and I were sitting up at my apartment one Saturday night. The rest of the company had left and my then girlfriend/now wife had gone to bed. We had consumed about the equivalent of half of the beer that the entire population of Germany consumes in a year and we were bored. I had a deck of cards and a very lazy cat to offer. Nick and I put our drunken heads together and came up with the "Cat Drinking Game" (Monopoly was already taken). OK, here's how it is played. You wait for the cat to settle. Then, armed with one half of the deck, you and your opponent take turns placing cards on the resting feline until it moves and knocks all of the cards off. The last person to place a card has to count the fallen cards and take that number of drinks. We played this game until we were both so intoxicated that we couldn't see the cat. The cat caught on after about an hour too. It would see us coming and just run away.

Traffic (this one may be a little vulgar)

I would like to officially put in my notice of resignation from the provebial rat race.

Recognizing that traffic and idiot drivers are huge problems all across the country and around the world, I have a proposition for police departments around the world to control the many menaces of the road (read "other drivers"). I propose the many police departments of the world form a separate squadron of officers to patrol the roads and target aggressive (and other forms of foolish) driving, which I am sure is the cause behind thousands of accidents and fatalities each year. This unit would be composed of only the largest and most intimidating police officers and would be entitled the "Bitch-Slap Squad." Now, the title may sound sexist because when most people hear the word bitch, they think woman. I am here to officially declare that it is the year 2007 and anyone can be a bitch. I do not discriminate based on gender. With that said, the job of the Bitch-Slap Squad (let's say BSS for short because that is what they would have tagged on the side of their cars) would be to pull drivers over who were directly infringing on the rights of other drivers on the road (making the road a dangerous place) and hand out penalties. This is where the quirk is. The penalties would not be of the monetary variety, but rather the physical variety. I was telling my friend Jeremy about this not too long ago and he immediately said "just shoot the assholes." I don't like the idea of shooting someone just because they're driving like an idiot. I think that would be a bit unreasonable. I think that the penalty should be a trauma to a specific part of the body (based on offense) inflicted by a very large man's fist or foot. The BSS would carry around a list of the offenses and their corresponding penalties and would carry out justice on the spot. "I observed you tailgating which is defined by the state of Virginia as following the car directly ahead of you less than 1 and a half car length behind. Let me look up the penalty. Here it is; one punch directly to the face but not the nose area." Do you think that aggressive driving would continue quite so prominently if these aggressive drivers knew that a large man was just around the corner about to inflict some pain on them if they were caught?

Aggressive drivers are the bane of my morning commute. I hate them and they have no apparent consideration for me. I travel on Interstate 95 for about 10 miles every day on a very busy strip between Richmond, VA and Washington D.C. every morning between 7:00 and 7:30 and I am always greeted by commuters from the south of me who have to go all the way to D.C. There are always "pockets" of traffic as I like to refer to them. These are groups of 30 to 40 cars lined up across all three lanes of traffic, traveling in a pack at a reasonable speed, and we are a happy little community until the aggressive drivers come plowing into us to jockey for position. They are in a hurry because they want to be the first to wait in line at the inevitable traffic jam that lies a few miles up ahead caused by another aggressive idiot driver. So they swerve, weave, and tailgate if you are in the fastlane passing another driver in the pack. No matter what speed you are doing (I like to stay about 10 miles over the speed limit because that is what the rest of the pack likes) they will come so close to hitting your bumper that you do that lift your ass off your seat dance. This is where I have a problem. I was in that lane for the same purpose, to pass a slower driver. If some idiot behind me can't allow me to do that and kindly pull aside after I have made the pass to allow them to pass, that is what I label aggressive driving. It takes my pretty peaceful morning commute and changes it into a very unpleasant experience that usually sets the tone for the rest of the day at work. I hope that someday the BSS will come to my rescue!