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The Official Jagoff's Guide To Driving

I was on the Parkway (that's what we Pittsburghers call the highway), listening to William Shatner's new album (it's so good because it's so bad[*]), and a guy in front of me slammed on his brakes to let someone merge onto the highway. Almost smacked right into him too, but for my cat-like reflexes. And then the same thing happened to me again at the very next exit, with totally different people. Finally, I understand why it's illegal to mount high-caliber machine guns on the front of my car.

[*] The fiancee, possibly with tongue-in-cheek, says it's good because it's good.

Posted by Andy on October 26, 2004 12:11 AM |

Comments

Sometimes this is because of the brain dead highway design where the morons who designed our roads don't believe in "on ramps." I'm thinking particularly of the "on ramps" at squirrel hill headed east, and to a lesser extent swissvale.

So what happens is people don't want to let anyone merge in, so they speed up when they approach the on ramp, and then when the person on the on ramp merges in anyway, they have to slam on the brakes.

I'm the guy on the on ramp, speeding up, because my car is worth less than the people who are speeding up to try to cut me off.

Posted by: peterb | October 26, 2004 07:56 AM

I think the new Shatner album is pretty good. Note that he didn't write the music....

Posted by: Stewart Clamen | October 26, 2004 08:49 PM

After a couple more listens, I agree: this is a great album. It was really more of a Ben Folds album with Shatner providing material and "spoken word" accompaniments to the music. And that's great.

Posted by: Andy | October 31, 2004 03:40 PM

Being a Pittsburgher for all these years, I've always been uniquely proud that we devised our very own swear word. It seems to be getting more popular. I'm sure that's because of our terrific fun friend Dennis Miller.
My big question, however strange it may sound, what the heck does "jagoff" mean anyway. Other than what I understand it to be, a jerky little pain in the a**. Thanks, Rob

Posted by: Rob | November 19, 2004 03:00 PM