How odd this world is to me these days.  About two weeks ago, my throat started tickling and that was the beginning of what would take me on quite the little disease-ridden odyssey.  Since then, I have taken to hacking and coughing and blowing my nose and having the feeling of my head being crammed up with cotton balls instead of brains.  Add in a bit of an earache, a constant low-grade headache and sinuses that felt as though I would breathe fire at any second.  Not a good deal, I thought. 

The thing is, the stuff just is hanging on for dear life.  I am still hacking and coughing like a lifetime smoker and blowing my nose like mad.  I'll certainly be glad when this cold feels that it has accomplished all it was sent here to do and bids adieu.  Meanwhile, I continue to feel like total dog mess. 

In the midst of the ick came the need to update the website last Monday as usual and I played around with some notes in this column before deciding that I felt crappy enough to just not even do an entry for the week.  I posted the new info, posted, Jimbo's column and curled up on the couch to sleep.  What I did not realize until a minute or two ago is that evidently, I hit "save" on the notes, so some nonsensical crap about village mentality, the rambling babblings of a person strung out on Niquil and nose spray, has rested here for a week now.  But hey, we should move forward and not backward, right?

I do feel much better now thanks to heavy doses of Emergen C and Gypsy Cold Care tea.  I still hack and cough, but not nearly as much.  My plan is to not get sick again for a long time.  I am eager to shake this beast off get back to the process of life.

So I was thinking about this new California state law about cell phones.  I do have a cell phone and I do use it and yes, I have used it when I was driving. I also have been overcome by the same urge that I'm sure many of you have had of wanting to scream, "HANG UP AND DRIVE!!"  to someone who is yakking away and driving in a truly oblivious fashion.  I don't really have a problem with the law in and of itself, but I do think that if California is going to do this, they should really go the distance on it.

I have never come close to having an accident while dialing, looking for or talking on my cell phone.  Yes, by January 1st, I had a hands-free headset, even though they look absolutely goony as hell.  The biggest objection I have to the hands-free headsets is my own reaction.  When I am in a store or outside walking and I come upon someone speaking in a very animated fashion to themselves, my first impression is not that they are on the phone, but they are frickin loony toons.  Now that hands-free headsets are all the rage, it's definitely much harder to isolate the genuinely batshit, talking to oneself and expecting an answer crazy people from those who are having a perfectly normal phone conversation. 

My thought on the banning of hand-held cell phones while driving is that like with prohibition, if you're going to do something, do it all the way.  If you are going to make marijuana illegal, make alcohol and cigarettes and bacon fat and refined sugar illegal too.  None of this half-assed stuff.  If you're going to make hand-held cell phones illegal while driving, get rid of the other activities that are dangerous to do while driving.  Give people tickets for that as well.

As I said, I've never even come close to having an accident while interacting with my cell phone, but hey, my hand is up and I'll be the first to admit that I've had some close calls while doing a few other things that weren't exactly compatible with navigating a 2 ton vehicle at top speed.  Here are my suggestions, based on experience both personal and having witnessed in other people:

1)  No more make up.  If you didn't put it on before you left where ever you came from, if you can't pull over to put it on and if you can't wait until you get there to slap it in on in the parking lot, you don't get to wear it.  You have to let them see what you really look like without the airbrushing and accentuating.

2)  No more driving with kids.  No more popping your shoulder out of socket to swat errant kids in the back seat.  No more getting crap thrown at you from the rearward peanut section.  No more scccuuhhreaming baby who is shaking with fury over whatever they can't have because you are driving and while you're at it, no more trying to retrieve the fallen pacifier in the back seat while you're still behind the wheel of the moving vehicle in the front seat. 

3)  No more driving through fast food places unless you are not going to crack the bag even a little peek before you get home.  Managing a Big Mac with one hand while driving with another is infinitely more dangerous than holding a cell phone to your ear with one hand while driving with the other.  No more Mickey D's until you're in your driveway, bub.

4)  No more music.  Sorry.  You cannot possibly safely hunt for CDs in the center console or over head on the visor CD holder and drive at the same time whether you think you can or not.  No more perusing the channels on your 1000 channel satellite radio.  No more punching buttons on your AM/FM dial until you find a station you like.  No more fighting with the cassette tape that is being munched by your antique stereo while you cruise along at 80mph.  Nope.  Music is now banned.

5)  No more arguing with your spouse in the car.  Period.  I shouldn't have to explain this one.

6)  Convexly, no sex while driving of any kind, shape or persuasion.  (Phone sex is even doubly illegal now.)

7)  Just like with the no sex rule and the no make up rule, you also are forbidden from changing clothes, even taking off your jacket if you get too warm or your shoes if your feet get a little steamy while driving.  What you were wearing when you left is what you'd better be wearing when you get there unless you pulled over and came to a safe and complete stop in some roomy location along the way.

8)  No more sneezing. 

9)  No more sleeping while driving.  If the turtles on the side of the road wake you up more than once as you glide over them, you don't get to drive any more until you snooze in some location that is NOT behind the wheel.

10)  KNOW YOUR ROUTE!  No more missing your turn and whipping it over at the second past the last second, no more backing up on the freeway to make your exit and no more 111-point turns in the middle of Buck's Bar Road to get into the opposite direction!

Those are my demands if we are going to ban cell phone usage.  These are my other incidental requests for altered driving behaviors:

- Put your kids in a damned car seat and keep them there.  6 or 60 already.

- In another "I don't have to make this law because it already is one" suggestion, don't leave your kids alone in a running vehicle, even "just to run inside and do this little thing."

- For that matter, don't leave your kids alone in a vehicle! 

- Also, don't leave your vehicle running while you not with it.  Have you never seen that episode of "Cops" where the guy has to break in the drivers window and risk his life to stop the car that was running and unattended and malfunctioned?  Do you really have no idea how dangerous this is just so you don't have to be bothered to restart your car again when you get back out to it?

- Lose the road rage.  We're all trusting each other to drive with half a brain engaged out there and we don't need people taking out their angsty rage over their crappy life on those of us who are just trying to get from point A to point B.  The driver who cuts you off may be rushing a laboring wife to the hospital or hurrying to get to the hospital because they just got a call saying their child is injured.  The person driving erratically in front of you might have just buried their husband or had their dog put to sleep.  You never know another person's story and to automatically presume malice is arrogant and snotty.  The time will come when you need some extra consideration and having put that good karma out there, you'll likely get it back when it's your turn.

- Don't expect that people are going to move aside just because you are coming off on an on ramp and onto a freeway.  The idea is that even though you do not have a stop sign or traffic light, you are expected to wait until there is an opening before you merge into the freeway traffic.

- Don't bitch at people who are actually going the speed limit just because you want to speed.

- Don't power through the lane that is ending and then get pissy because drivers don't let you in when they stayed in the lane that is continuing.  Wait your turn.

- If you are on the mountain roads and you see that you are very obviously holding up someone who is able to move faster, pull over.

- When you come around a curve in a mountain road, how about staying in your lane instead of taking your half out of the middle?

- Let's talk about the Missouri Flat intersection between Albertson's and Safeway.  There is a reason why the Albertson's side has a "NO right turn" sign in giant letters.  If the right lane turns right on red, the lane fills up and there is no room for the legitimate vehicles coming from other directions to move forward.  Don't be a road hog.  Wait your turn (or do like the rest of us and go behind Bank of America and go straight through the intersection).

- If you are in a drive through, you do not have the right of way into the parking lot.  The cars moving IN the parking lot have the right of way.

- Don't tailgate.  1001, 1002, 1003... there should be 3 car lengths between you and the car ahead of you.  "Only a fool breaks the three second rule."  Almost invariably, if you hit a car in the rear, an investigation will fault the person who hit, not the person in front.  The reasons are almost always "following too close" or "driving too fast for weather conditions."

- On the one lane bridge, "Icy" isn't kidding.  Unless it's 60 degrees out, slow down.  In fact, slow down anyway.

- A dog or other animal who is loose in a car is as dangerous (or more so) than a child in the car.  Transport animals in crates or secure them with pet seatbelts.

Well, I've whined and fussed enough and it's time for me to take more beds and rest for the night.  See you all next week!

Best to ya,

Psssst...  OK, here's a joke, but it's very lewd and inappropriate and if you are offended by lewdness and inappropriateness, just pretend you didn't see this and move along lest you think less of me for it.

Otherwise, if you are looking for a giggle at the expense of any modicum of discretion or class, continue on..

So it happens to all of us.  I'm driving along, minding my own business and sure enough...  click here