for the reals, this is just stupid

i don’t know how many readers i have in my hometown…

…let alone how many of them have the power to get shit done. but i’m gonna take a chance here.

for several months i’ve noticed it takes me a shit-load longer to run my tuesday errands. see, in my world “tuesday” as the rest of you see it is “saturday”. that’s just my life since i work in the tattoo industry. this is why many of my friends and co-workers have theorized that i won’t find a woman happy with this schedule unless i date a “sin girl” as i call them (bars and restaurants and clubs all over the city have discount nights for people with these schedules, usually on tuesday or wednesay, and are called “sin night” where “sin” stands for “service industry night”). they mean one of the three categories i throw out when a girl mentions she works in a “genteman’s club” – waitress, bartender, or “other”.

i think not.

if they’re a waitress, chances are i’m always paying for EVERYTHING. if they’re a bartender that’s dangerous as i already drink plenty. as for “other”, that’s my polite way of saying “stripper” and – yeah. i went down that road in my mid-twenties. learned my lesson on that one. no thanks.

but i’m getting way off the path here – back to my tuesday errands taking forever.

i looked around – there’s wasn’t more traffic than i remembered. and it wasn’t taking longer to check out places than usual. no, it was just the driving around that took longer, and there’s not any construction in town or anything (just outside? forget about it – toll road construction from hell that also killed my internet at the house due to towers having to be relocated).

than it clicked – it’s the fucking lights. somebody, somewhere in this city, decided EVERYBODY needs a turn at EVERY light regardless of whether or not it’s needed. and by that i mean every way gets a protected left for the full duration of their green light, meaning the opposite direction of traffic just has to sit. hell, there’s one over between dairy queen and whataburger (yes, they’re across the street from one another – welcome to small town texas!) where you have to wait on a protected left where the left turn takes you into the parking lot of a business that’s been closed and abandoned for over a decade. but just in case you need to turn in that parking lot and…i don’t know…sit there for no reason you DO have the right of way while two lanes of traffic grind to a halt for two to three minutes.

kinda fucking stupid.

so most traffic lights take twice as long as they used to, and i swear rather than being “timed” where you hit more than one green now they’re “anti-timed” where you damn well know you won’t (and can’t) hit more than one green.

that’s some bullshit.

so, if anybody who reads this page o’ mine has some pull in this little town make this stop. at least where it makes no sense. you don’t need the protected left to turn into chisolm trail bbq – or kirksey’s old propane lot. for fuck’s sake, kids – let’s be sensible here.