The Briefcase Hour

Does anyone else think it's weird how there are some places you can never go back to? I was just thinking recently about how often I'd visited my grandparents' old house, and how I'd never see it again, since they've moved to Albuquerque. I'm sure this is common nostalgia, right?

I had the misfortune to get caught in two traffic jams yesterday, one on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the way to work, and the other on the Walt Whitman Bridge on the way to bethje's house after work. In both cases, there was an accident very soon before I got there. I was listening to the traffic reports on KYW, and they both reported the accidents right around when I reached the problem spots. If I had known about them just a few minutes earlier, I might have been able to take alternate routes. On the Turnpike, the wreck blocked both lanes, so there was really nothing to do but wait. On the bridge, however, one lane was getting by. There were very clear indications as to which lane this was, with a green arrow over that one, and red X's over all the others. Yet so many people insisted in driving in the closed lanes until the last possible minute. I even saw one genius merge from the open lane into one of the closed ones. And, as might be expected, there were a few cars driving on the shoulder as well. I really don't understand the Last-Minute Merge under any circumstances, but in the case of a blocked lane, it's just ridiculous. Apparently some people think it's really to their advantage to pass a few cars, as if this is somehow going to make a significant difference in their travel time. I hate to have to merge at the last possible minute, so I usually try to follow the Golden Rule, and let people in on parts of the road where I know they're going to have to merge pretty soon. So few people will take advantage of it, though. It just seems crazy to me.

I read The Time Machine Did It, by Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder, today. It was a very quick read. While not much on plot and not very professional-looking (I assume the publisher is one of those print-on-demand companies), there was a lot of clever humor. It's told in first person narration by the main characters, an admittedly lousy private detective. As you can probably guess from the title, time travel also plays a large role. It has a lot of the parodies you'd expect from both of these genres, but also a lot of new jokes. As you might expect, a lot of it was in much the same style as Simpsons humor, including sign and newspaper gags, as well as meta-humor. I now present you with what might have been my favorite passage in the book:

"The criminals came into my apartment. One was very tall, the other was very small. Actually, they were both about average height. I was using artistic license there. I'm told this is the thing to do, as it makes the story more interesting. If one guy is the size of a refrigerator and the other one is the size of a thumbtack, this conjures up a vivid picture in the mind. It's like you can see the one guy being smaller than the other, and this interests you. Readers get bored if everybody's the same size."

I suppose that's all for now.