I suppose by the third entry, I should address the purpose of this blog (for the astronomical three people who gave me a cumulative, wait for it ... eleven page views - Miss Popular in the house). The idea stemmed from an observation that people should ask more questions.  I should ask more questions.  It starts with asking.  Then, being the insatiable monster that I am, an answer would have to be reflected upon.

I'm not particularly impressed with humankind.  I'm not saying a great number of people are but, and perhaps it's the philosophy classes getting the better of me, I feel humanity has always had a way of glorifying itself.  We build impressive things; establish complex systems, norms, symbols; we share, and we feel and we reason.  La deh dah deh dah ...

And yet (and this brings me to today's food for thought) how fucking oblivious are we?  No, I don't mean on some kind of spiritual or intellectual level, for now I mean physically.  We have no idea where we're coming from, where we are, how we got here and where we're going.  Our ancestors used to navigate with the fucking stars.  Today, we need to hold up our hands and check which thumb and index make an "L" to tell left from right.

If I give someone directions with "North", "South", "East" or "West" - they're completely screwed and (short of sending a giant, fluorescent marker to guide them) irrevocably lost.

We have utterly relinquished the capacity to observe and remember.  The worst of the worse are the Suburban Mamas driving their big-ass LandRovers.  Ladies!  Watching soap operas must be rotting your fucking minds out.  If you think slamming on the brakes in the middle of the service road because, oops, you were about to make a wrong fucking turn on the way to Bulk Barn (yay, brownie mix), you deserve to be rear-ended!  Hard!  Your ridiculous beehive hairstyle followed by your ridiculously stupid face belong in your dashboard.

Which brings us to the concept of spacial relations (because while you're stopped there with your flasher still blinking, trying to remember where the god-damned store is, you're probably in my fucking way).  By "spacial relations", I don't mean our association to alien life forms, I'm talking about space - like area, people.  Square meters, cubic meters, all of it.  I mean straight physics, here.  It's not wizardry.  

Example?  Your vehicle cannot occupy the same space as my vehicle.  If I need to swing into the adjacent lane (screaming in terror) to make room for your Dodge Caravan filled with half of your Little League soccer team, you did not properly execute your lane change.  Asshole.  (Aside: In these cases, I find anger to be my fetish state of emotion.  I have these arousing fantasies of leaping out of my moving vehicle, sprinting to yours with my strong, powerful legs and leaping onto it with a thunderous roar.  Then, with my vice grip, I can-opener your piece of shit van's roof off and eat you.  I mean like ... my jaw pops open like an anaconda's and I swallow you whole.  I'm fucking Wolverine in my mind.)

And let's not limit blatant human obliviousness to the roads.  It's established everywhere, nesting within all of us at all times.  When you ignore the stand-right, walk-left rule on escalators or passageways - you are a self-absorbed moron.  When you don't even bother to hold open the door for someone who might be right behind you - you are a self-absorbed moron.  When you lean back to stretch in class and hit the laptop of the person behind you - you are a self-absorbed moron.  Little gestures ... little gestures!  A little glance here, a little glance there (these should actually be reflexes by the time you attain adulthood) to know, to just ... know where you are in relation to people, to objects who do exist individually and physically.

Knowing your surroundings used to be a vital survival element.  And it's a damn shame that's changed today.

I'm not wired like a fucking radar and I don't expect others to be either ... but to exercise a basic measure of perception shouldn't be difficult.  It should be natural.  There is The World and there is Your World and the differences between the two should not need to be explained, particularly if you live in a metropolitan area and are literally surrounded by hundreds of people everyday.

Now I'm sure my, no doubt, exceedingly populous fan base must be pissing and moaning, "What was the question?  Euuh, she didn't ask a question.  The point is to ask a question."

So the question people should ask more is this, "Am I kind of a dick?"  I won't deny that this inquiry is bound to resurface in my later posts but the final answer will most likely remain unchanging: "YES."

An open letter to Transport Québec:

I do not recall electing the lobotomized goat that instituted your joke of a Ministry but such is the occasional inadequacy of the democratic system.  The majority rule cannot work if the majority is composed entirely of assholes.  (Aside: Know that last provincial elections, I fixated the ballot for what could have been an eternity.  I had to implement the old multiple choice rule, "Which answer is the least likely to be wrong?" - but what do I have to complain?  I mean, back in 2003 Californians had their pick between The Terminator, porn star Mary Carey and pervert extraordinaire Larry Flynt (alongside some more or less important randoms) as governor.  How screwed were they, right?)

But taking aside for a moment your incompetent patriarch, I must inform you that the drooling gorillas who do your bidding should be more adequately trained in their functions.

I don't know what first tuned me in on their ineptitude.

Perhaps it was the countless "May through September"s with orange road cones scattered nonsensically on highways, service roads, boulevards, avenues and streets.  Maybe yet, it is the rarer occasion where one drives by an actually active construction site and sees half a dozen morons looped around a lone twit with a jackhammer, watching him.  Yes.  Just.  Watching.

It's a toss-up really, but what really ticked me off was that in the past three days, 30% of my Facebook Newsfeed has been cluttered with people denouncing the absolute crisis Montreal is having with potholes.  The astounding thing is I knew exactly what they were talking about! (This fact is far more staggering if one takes into consideration the extreme distance I have with the community and the irregularity of my visits to the outdoors.)  And "potholes" is a bit of a simplification of the matter.  They're more like Transcendental Portals to the Center of the Earth.

Local radio stations were actually warning drivers in their traffic updates to be wary around the St-Charles on-ramp to the Trans-Canada since several cars had sustained flat tires. 

But I digress.  You, Transport Québec, you did attempt to correct the issue.  Hence your primitive lackeys (hired or subcontracted, I don't care) with their shovels of shit.  I saw them.  I had hope.  Until I drove down the same service road again two days later.
 

Generally, the point of filling a hole is to fill it so it is flush with the rest of the pavement.  You know ... so the drive is smoother.  So your tires don't blow out on a harsh impact.  So the shocks on your vehicle aren't manhandled by the abusive spouse that is the road.  Again I reiterate: flush,even with the rest of the pavement.

Why is it that your apes created miniature anthills of asphalt rooted into the craters?  Like, literally, mounds ... mounds of hardened asphalt.  Like moguls on a Black Diamond ski trail.  I was like, "What the frack?" as I tried swerving to and fro and slowing down to avoid driving into them.  Incidentally, this is the same reaction I have to potholes.  

Some other drivers may have had delayed reactions similar to mine.  They may have very well driven over them, cursing the engineering (or lack there of) of these band-aid "solutions", and - and this is really the cherry of it all - the mounds chipped, gravel and tar sprinkling itself everywhere.  Gravel that now, being spurted out from underneath the tires of the car ahead of me, drizzled on my windshield like autumn rain.  Only autumn rain doesn't generally leave cracks in my windows.

Why, Transport Québec, why?

How is it that a catastrophe-stricken Japan can find viable repair solutions in a timely manner and you, Transport Québec, start and re-start road work every spring that lasts all of summer, impedes on the fall and can't even sustain through the winter?

Much obliged,

-NuméroHuit

Dear NuméroHuit,

Are we, Montrealers, perhaps being too irrational and borderline erratic about the Chara-Pacioretty incident?

Sincerly,

GoHabsGo

I can’t help but feel that somehow, somewhere down the line, the analysis surrounding the Chara-Pacioretty incident was unskillfully spun.  By both Montreal and Boston.  The result being a few morons, divided amongst two sinking rowboats, pelting rocks at each other.

I don’t feel the need to over-complicate the issue.

A main point of debate seems to be “intention”.  In the light of this season’s series between Boston and Montreal, I haven’t the faintest doubt that Zdeno Chara’s intentions were to lay a good one on Max Pacioretty.  The fact that “Patches” had been inarguably disrespectful to the veteran in previous games (no, that does not warrant a severe concussion and a broken vertebrae) establishes fairly clearly the strained climate between the two.  However, I don’t feel as convinced about #33’s intentions to injure Max, to end his career, to kill him – as some seem to speculate.

That Chara knew where he was on the ice should be taken for granted. He’s a veteran defensemen with a few NHL seasons under his belt and the truth is, he should know.  He should have also been aware that his check would finish in the turnbuckle.  But note, that this says nothing at all of intention for I don’t believe for a second that Chara possesses the talent and dexterity to purposely guide Pacioretty’s face into a post.

That #33 had properly reasoned the consequences of his actions, I doubt.  That, in and of itself, is far from an exonerating factor.  Though Chara’s hit on MaxPac was not a display of his vindictive, monstrous nature –it was certainly evidence of his outrageous negligence in an irresponsible play.  And I think that that, in and of its own, warrants a suspension. 

The NHL’s disciplinary committee has made a revolting error in judgment by completely ignoring the context of the incident and then omitting to responsibilize players.  But everything I’ve stated thus far should have been givens.

Though just before we Montrealers go ransack our sheds for the pitchforks, let’s indulge in a little objective examination.  Zdeno Chara certainly isn’t the only NHL player to have displayed compulsive carelessness.  Why weren’t Montreal fans this sickened when Joe Thornton mowed down David Perron?  When Matt Cooke laid down the law on Marc Savard?  Perron hasn’t played a game since and Savard (aside his return during the 2010 Playoffs) missed out half of this season before his brief luckless return where he sustained a second concussion.  Both players are without ETAs.

This kind of hypocrisy is the same as the one we so adamantly reproached of the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Sure, Cooke was allowed to nearly kill every player he could get to fast enough but when Crosby got injured … how deplorable the league was not to address this issue of headshots! 

I think the whole of Montreal needs to take a few steps back and breathe.  I think we need to stop buying Chara Sucks t-shirts (because it’s just fueling the idea that we don’t actually understand what the real issue is).  I think we need to start manufacturing “Bettman is a Classless Asshole” t-shirts instead since that’s a pretty irrevocable fact by now.  I think we need to stop dumping beer on goaltenders that have really nothing to do with what happened.  I think we need to stop clogging the 9-1-1 lines to denounce the event before someone who has an actual emergency can’t get the help they need fast enough.

We look irrational and we look stupid.  So let’s restructure our thoughts and perhaps articulate them a little more elegantly with an objectivity that the rest of the world will have no choice but to respect.