You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The slow motion commute of death.
A new study says rolling to work might be killing you.
We need a study for this? I know it’s killing me.
Every morning, every evening. You climb into your car and you immediately start applying the brake. Your engine revs, your body wants to go fast, but there is no room to drive in this concrete sardine can of claustrophobia.
Brakes lights and stop and go frustration. Lane shifts, and fender benders and gaggles of women applying mascara in their rear view mirrors.
Death by commute is Chinese water torture with a diamond lane. Driving to work in any city USA is the equivalent of walking up a down escalator. Stop and go. Go and stop. 5mph. Accelerate to 40 mph. Feelings of space and speed and suddenly, brake lights and grinding gears to a halt.
If this were a video game, nobody would buy it. If this were gum it would be stuck to your shoe and then put in your kid’s hair.
Death by commute is hardly instantaneous. Like the laborious creature it is, it takes a while to kill you in slow motion.
It’s a death march at the speed of cold honey narrated by morning radio lunacy.
According to the study, Anyone who has ever sat in traffic, breathing in someone elses exhaust for an hour knows they are dying a slow unmerciful death.
Anyone who has ever looked over and watched a dweeb shove his finger up his nose as if he is invisible, as if he is trying to itch his brain, knows they are dying at the speed of melting butter.
Anyone who has ever had some rude bastard cut them off and flip them the bird knows about the slow commuting death American motorists are subjected to.
According to ABC news, Americans drive to and from work twice a day – 5 days a week.
Like gerbils on a wire wheel, we go nowhere fast and it’s taking us forever to get there.
ABC News says we spend close to 100 hours a year in gridlock, gripping the steering wheel like a 38 caliber revolver that we want to shove in our mouths.
100 hours a year. My God. That’s almost 2 and a half work weeks.
Some people don’t get that much vacation time a year.
That’s a life deficit. If you sit in traffic more than you take time off? Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
That’s like the fat lady and the circus midget getting on the see saw and expecting to have fun.
The study says these hours could be the unhealthiest hours of your day. Little did we know, we were driving caskets to our own funerals.
4,000 drivers were studied.
The findings: People commuting 10 miles or more a day had bigger bellies and higher blood pressure than those people who work at home or nearby.
The study says commuters are more prone to recurring back problems. In Sweden, couples are 40 percent more likely to divorce.
What’s the deal?
The study doesn’t say this, but I gotta think there are more instances of mascara related eye injuries during the commute too.
What’s doing us in? I think it’s the stress of life, broiling into your skull in a slow motion dance of frustration.
We’re like a slow roasting chicken slowly turning over a spit. It burns a little all over. Eventually, you are cooked through and through, your will to live baked into a tasty and succulent broth for the roadside jackals to devour.
I feel the tension. I know the angst of the vice grips secured to my temples.
The morning commute is a slimy snake that snipes at you trying to inject you with venom at every mile marker. Going to work is stress because of what’s to come. The boss, the co-worker with body odor, the tasks known and unknown.
The commute home is a pressure cooker of stress. Thousands of motorists all of whom have experienced some degree of workplace stupidity now driving home in a 2 ton death mobile.
Talk about distracted driving? Who needs a smart phone when you have the American workplace, life’s unfulfilled obligations, coupled with a super highway with a maximum speed of paint drying.
Death by commute? There should be a 1-800 hot line for it?
It’s a 15 round fight where simple citizens, slightly over weight and mentally fatigued fight perfect strangers for a constantly moving chunk of asphalt.
Have you ever thought; I’ll kill myself if one more guy taps his brakes.
Does the color red make you want to open your car door and simply step out and walk away from your moving car.
Can you imagine.
A thousand zombies, coffee cups breaking, mascara dripping down the side of half made up faces. All walking away from a rolling rear end collision.
Death by commute. If you don’t smoke crack, then you have the brain capacity t know that you are nothing more than a flesh-colored rat being put through an asphalt maze to test your life resolve.
Look in the rear view mirror. Yes that’s you, gritting your teeth, clenching the steering wheel, clawing your way along a black top treadmill.
And where are you headed?
Oh my god. This is the worst part. You are killing yourself simply to get to work, a place that often causes stomach bile to surge into your mouth.
Back Problems. Weight Problems. Marital Discourse.
Is it possible that being unemployed is better for your health?
Food stamps never tasted so good.
I’m sure out of work people would love to bitch about their commute to a job they don’t have.
A smart ass once said; the minute we’re born we start dying.
And now apparently we can get to those pearly gates by simply using the on ramp from any town USA.
My advice; take the bus and read a book.
And for goodness sakes, put down the damn Mascara!
Life’s Crazy™