An American Redneck in London

Recently, I took a trip to the United Kingdom to see a certain ladyfriend of mine at Oxford University, about an hour's drive or so west of London.  So the title is a little misleading, but it's catchier, so get over it.  Oxford is the site of the famous colleges, yes, but it is also the location of some amazing developments in literature, like Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings, and of course, the Oxford comma.  I had never been to England before, except as a layover on a flight to somewhere really horrible, so this was a new experience for me.  I was excited to go to the homeland, but it was not as I expected.

This is the church where Winston Churchill is buried.  I know that's not funny.  I just think it's cool.

The shared grave of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife

First of all, summertime in England sucks.  It rained almost constantly, with temperatures below 40 degrees at night (Fahrenheit, of course--though there was no way to know that because the TV insisted on giving everything in Celsius, but who the heck can figure out if you need a sweater or not with that).  It was downright miserable there.  It was June, but it bore a strong resemblance to early March in Virginia.  Apparently it had been sunny for three days in a row two weeks before I got there, and that was all people were talking about--the freak weather occurrence where the sun came out for more than five minutes.  There was one day during my visit that it didn't rain for about 8 hours.  It was magical.  I'm convinced that this is why Oxford University was founded there.  It was just too nasty to go outside, so they might as well stay in and translate the Bible or whatever.  So every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.

It's raining again... I know, let's invent books!

Nice day, huh?

Isn't summertime great?

Second, they drive on the wrong side of the road.  I thought I knew that already, and I would just remember it.  But I didn't.  As a red-blooded American citizen, I have spent the last 40 years or so walking up to a street and looking left first, because when people drive on the correct side of the road, that's where they come from.  But not here in freaking Middle Earth.  They come from the other way.  Apparently bus drivers receive some kind of bounty for hitting pedestrians, because it actually seemed they were trying to hit me.

Yes, it's a double-decker, yes it's kinda neat, but it will kill you if you stand in front of it.

Now, like I said, you'd think you could remember that wrong-side-of-the-road business.  But you can't because of a combination of my first point about the weather and the fact that there is a bar or pub about every 20 feet (or 6.1 meters).  People drink at breakfast.  I'm not talking about the guy outside wearing a garbage bag as a jacket either.  I mean middle-aged ladies on the way to shopping or work or whatever.  Drinking is the main pastime.  They do this to help drown out how shitty it is there, I am convinced.  Regardless, the effect it had on me was to keep me from remembering which way to look for oncoming traffic, so every intersection was a life-threatening challenge.  Those drivers are a bunch of half-drunk, sallow-skinned homicidal maniacs.

Let me take your mind off of those pesky buses.  And the weather.  And your responsibilities.
And the fact that none of your teeth face the same direction.

An actual street sign.  I took the picture myself.
I think it is intended to alert the bus drivers that they are in a target-rich environment.

The British seem to think this sign helps.

Now, this next comment is a bit cliche, but it's true.  The food is not very good.  In fact, it sucks.  English people don't know what bacon is.  They think they do, but they don't.  If you order bacon, they bring ham.  There is something basically wrong with that.  They will bring you beans for every meal if you let them, even breakfast.  They have "bangers," some kind of tasteless greasy sausage with no spices in it.  Also, there is porridge on the menu.  I was unaware that people actually ate porridge anymore.  My stomach was not prepared for fairy-tale foods.  I discovered something called "Marmite," a yeast extract that smells like a decomposing corpse, which these folks consider a condiment.  You can't find any mustard, but this crap is on every table.  There's Splenda sweetener, but it is in the form of tiny little pills.  Strange indeed.  Don't even bother trying to find the ketchup.  You may find something that says ketchup on the package, but don't you believe it.  You'll just ruin your sandwich.  

It may be delicious.  I was never brave enough to get past the odor of death.

Why on earth are there beans on my plate?

Not the least of my criticisms is this--for a country that supposedly spawned the language, nobody seems to speak it.  Take a look at this Wikipedia page as an example.  I tried to order a smoked salmon and chives omelette (it was on the menu, I didn't just make it up) at a restaurant, and you would have thought I was speaking in Chinese.  I even pointed at it on the menu.  We had a discussion about it, after which the waiter went to the kitchen and then returned to the table for another discussion.  Lots of hand gestures and more pointing at the menu.  The guy ended up bringing a smoked salmon sandwich with scrambled eggs on top of it. I realize I have an accent myself, but good grief. 

Everything has a fake-sounding name, like Rabbits Warren or some such nonsense.  But the cussing is fun.  Words like bollocks, buggered, feck, and wanker are bad words there, but to me they just make the person sound ridiculous.  The angrier they are, the funnier it sounds.

One more thing... I've made a couple of references to the use of the metric system in this blog, which would be fine if they actually stuck to it.  I've been to other countries that used it, and it was different, but at least understandable.  In England, they seem to use about ten or so different systems.  For instance, in the bathroom there was a scale that tells me that I weigh between 14 and 15 stones, whatever that means.  You buy gas by the liter, beer by the pint, and whiskey by the fifth.  You get a peck of apples at the grocery store.  Gordon Bennett! 


It is a perplexing and remarkable mix of history and modernism.  Everything there is at least a thousand years old, it seems.  New College at Oxford was built in 1371, for instance.  That's the new one.  You have college kids doing crazy things like dumping ketchup on each other's heads when their exams are finished, but they are wearing some kind of weird tuxedo/judge's robe while they do it, and they are standing in a castle. 

The original walls to the city, at New College

They sound weird, but they are still college kids.

That pretty much sums up my opinion of Oxford, England right there--it's as if modern life is going on right in the middle of a museum, or at least the set of Harry Potter.  It's surreal.

Tattoos Are Stupid

For certain.

I have been in the Marines for more than 22 years, and I have no tattoos.  I know that is hard to believe, but it is true.  Basically everyone I know seems to have at least one, but not me.  I've sat in tattoo parlors while inebriated and considered the standard USMC and barbed wire versions, but my good taste always intervened at the last moment.  Well, good taste and an alarming lack of funds.  As a young man I had more children than dollars, a fact that also kept me from getting overweight.  "The Poverty Weight-loss Plan" is what I used to call it.

The standard devildog tat...

In retrospect, I am thankful that my kids were bleeding off all of my discretionary income.  I mean, the only valid reason I've heard to get a tattoo is that it is a means of self-expression, a way to set yourself apart as an individual.  But if everybody is getting a tattoo, then how exactly is that going to set you apart?  In fact, the opposite is happening--you are just another lemming following a fad.

I really get a sense of your individuality when you all do the same thing like that.

Now, I am a total go-your-own-way libertarian, so you may be wondering why I have a bug up my ass about such a silly thing.  The answer is that my beautiful, innocent daughter wants one.  She already got a nose ring (which I REALLY don't understand), and now she wants to write some kind of poetry indelibly on her body somewhere.  She's 20, so she can do whatever she wants, but it does worry me a little.  It's easy to be all libertarian when it's somebody else, but when it's your little girl, you tend to get a little emotional. 

From a practical standpoint, the real problem with tattoos is that they are so damn permanent.  The pretty little butterfly that you get when you are young slowly transforms into a terrifying pterodactyl when you get older.  I suppose, philosophically speaking, nothing we do is permanent.  If you wait another few years the degenerated butterfly-pterodactyl will be nothing but mush in a coffin, so what's the difference?  That's a little too cynical even for me, though.

Even if you quote the Bible, it's still slutty.
And if you quote enough of it, it starts
to be stupid, too.

WTF is right, young lady.

Another point to ponder--what if the guy doing it can't draw, or is high on crystal meth, or something?  You could wind up with something really awful, even if you pick something that sounds okay.  A guy I was on ship with once had a terrible tattoo of what was supposed to be a snake with a "USMC" written across it.  It came out like a worm drawn by a kindergartner with cerebral palsy.  Remember the British roommate in the movie Bridesmaids?  You could get a Mexican Drinking Worm tattoo.

You might want to put some frozen peas on that.

Sometimes there are no words.

Another real danger is the idea that tattoos are "addictive."  Apparently, once you break the seal, you are powerless to stop yourself from becoming a total douchebag or douchette.  This is bullshit of course, but what if it's more like losing your virginity?  You know, the first time you are all reserved and shy, but soon enough you're hanging from the chandelier.  You know what the body-modification equivilent of chandelier-sex is?  Lady GaGa.  Think about that for a moment, fathers with daughters.  It's frightening.

I truly hope those things are glued on.

Please don't do this, Tina...

Bullshit Rules

Dear Readers,

If you have been following this little blog for very long, you are probably well aware by now that I dislike unnecessary government restrictions.  Recently I bumped into just such a restriction.  There is a wildlife refuge nearby, and I sometimes go for runs along the trails of this refuge.  Then one day I noticed a homemade sign taped to the window of the always unoccupied guard shack at the entrance that said “No Jogging.”   This sign pissed me off.

I am often overwhelmed with the desire to do the opposite of whatever a sign says.

Now first off, I’m no great runner.  I actually really dislike running.  The Corps requires a certain level of proficiency at this, however, so I must engage in it fairly regularly.  When I do, I try to do it at locations that will allow me to do it without being hit by an automobile.  

I hate being hit by cars even more than I hate running.

There aren’t really that many such safe locations around here.  See my previous post about the traffic, for example.  So when I find a good one, I get a little upset when some bureaucrat tells me I can’t use it for no apparent reason.  I especially hate rules being made when there isn't even anyone around to enforce them.  


This time, I got so upset that I wrote them the following email on the comments link of the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge website:

I decided to go all "Leslie Knope" on their asses.

SUBJECT: No Jogging Policy

COMMENTS: Recently, I visited the Occoquan wildlife refuge and noticed a sign on the window of the gate station that jogging was not allowed on the refuge.  I also have a friend who tells me that a ranger stopped her and told her she isn't allowed to run there.  Can someone explain why this is the case?  This restriction is not listed on the website, and it really makes no sense to me.  Pedestrian traffic is allowed, in the form of hiking, so why on earth would I not be allowed to observe nature at a faster pace?  Trail running is a valid means of observing and experiencing the wildlife on the refuge.

Please explain this unreasonable restriction of my enjoyment of MY National Wildlife Refuge.  In what way is traveling through the park on foot incompatible with the goals and objectives of the refuge?  And if traveling on foot is acceptable, then my speed of travel should not be an issue.

Thank you,
Walt Carr, Concerned Citizen

Maybe not my very best work, but I don’t think any of it seems all that unreasonable.  Of course I never seem to think I’m being unreasonable, even as I tell someone they are an idiot, so maybe I’m not always the best judge of such things.  In any case, I received the following reply a couple of days later:

Dear Mr. Carr,

I am writing in response to your email inquiry in regards to jogging on Occoquan Bay NWR:

Unfortunately, jogging does not support a refuge purpose, objective, or goal and would not benefit the natural or cultural resources present within the Refuge Complex. It is not identified as a priority public use of the National Wildlife Refuge System under the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 (16 U.S.C. § 668dd-668ee), as amended by the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-57).

Foot travel is allowed on all established refuge trails so that visitors may experience the priority public uses of wildlife observation, photography, interpretation, and environmental education. Jogging is not required to experience these uses. Jogging may inconvenience visitors engaged in priority public uses by potentially disturbing wildlife that others are observing or photographing. Another potential conflict is that the typical trail width on the Refuge Complex may require joggers or the wildlife observers to step off trail in order to allow room to safely pass. This activity not only causes inconvenience to visitors engaged in priority public uses, but may also disturb vegetation and wildlife adjacent to the trails. Opportunities for jogging are available at other public lands and parks within a mile of each refuge within the Refuge Complex.

These documents were all released in draft for public review and comment. The 49-day comment period was from January 5 to February 22, 2011. An announcement that these documents were available for review was also published in the Federal Register (76 FR 582) on January 5, 2011, in a newsletter we distributed to individuals on our project mailing list and posted on our Web site, and announced at three public meetings we held on February 2 and 3, 2011. 

No, the jogging restriction in not listed on our website. Instead the website focuses on allowable refuge uses. However, I will consider your feedback when redesigning the refuge website later this year.

**********************************************************
Amanda A. Daisey
Deputy Refuge Manager
Potomac River National Wildlife Refuge Complex
12638 Darby Brooke Ct.
Woodbridge, VA 22192

Apparently, this guy finds the idea of people exercising on  public lands inconvenient.

Now, I am intelligent enough to know when I am being told off by a government flunky.  This little note, when translated from legaleze to English, basically says “Screw you.  We make the rules around here, and we saw you laughing at our funny ranger hats.  Go find somewhere else to run.” 

I get tons of chicks with this hat.

I reacted poorly to this, of course.  At first I was pretty angry, but after a short cooling-off period and a little Duplin wine, I wrote the following reply:

Dear Ms. Daisey,

I appreciate your prompt reply to my question. 

Your explanations do not make very much sense, however.  You simply restated the unsubstantiated claim that running on a path is somehow harmful to the wildlife and other visitors.  You have failed to describe any logical reason why running down a trail is any different than hiking down the trail.  Neither activity is identified as a priority public use of the National Wildlife Refuge System under the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 (16 U.S.C. § 668dd-668ee), as amended by the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-57).  What is identified is that activities that allow the public to experience the wildlife should be facilitated, subject to such restrictions or regulations as may be necessary, reasonable, and appropriate.

My position is that your restriction on my rate of travel when on foot is neither reasonable, necessary, nor appropriate.  Frankly, the potential conflicts you describe are ridiculous.  People are allowed to drive their cars down many of these trails, and all are wide enough to allow vehicles to easily traverse them.  Two pedestrians meeting on these trails would hardly be forced to trample any wildlife.  For that matter, in all the times I have traveled those trails, I have never encountered more than a handful of visitors on the entire refuge.  I also do not understand how you assume that a person doing a trail run is not engaging in wildlife observation, photography, interpretation, and environmental education.  Running is not required to do this, but it hardly precludes it either.

I do not in any way consider this matter closed, 49-day comment period notwithstanding.  I believe your policy to be an unreasonable and arbitrary restriction.

Thank you,

Walt Carr

This argument is only just beginning.  I will keep you posted on how it goes.  I fully intend to pester the crap out of these people, while simultaneously breaking this rule as often as possible.  It actually almost makes running fun.

Too Safe

That was the first thing I noticed, too.

America is absolutely bonkers about safety these days.  I am not an old man, but I can clearly remember a time when absolutely nobody wore seatbelts but race car drivers, and I had never even heard of a bicycle helmet.  These days, if you let your kid ride his tricycle without wearing a full set of pads, Child Protective Services will show up and take him away.  Everything has rounded edges, padding, and guard rails.  The outlets are plugged with little plastic safeties, there are electronic baby monitors with digital cameras accessible from the internet, the playground is lined with soft rubber, and even the shopping cart has a seatbelt.  There is little opportunity for Darwin to insert himself into the equation at all during the early years, the period of time he was once most effective—prior to sexual maturity. 

Evolutionarily speaking, it's probably already too late at this point.

Now any hope for natural selection has to wait until the teenage years, when the little boogers invent weird stunts to hurt themselves, like Parkour or skateboarding or whatever.  Watch the show Jackass a few times, and you will understand the backlash of too much safety for kids.  I think it is an example of nature trying to correct an imbalance, to weed out the unworthy before they pass those defective genes on to the next generation.  The Jackass guys are doing their best to help nature get rid of them.  Unfortunately it seldom works, as the little morons need to either die or get their testicles ripped off prior to getting anybody pregnant to have the appropriate effect on evolution.

It looks promising, but his girlfriend may already be knocked up.

In our weird little modern world, it’s the least favorable genes that seem to get passed down the most.  Watch the movie Idiocracy some time.  The premise is that the idiots are breeding like rabbits, while the intellectuals are hem-hawing around being proper and not reproducing.  This is then extrapolated over a thousand years until the intellectuals go extinct and everyone is stupid.  It’s kind of a slapstick comedy, but that’s a pretty powerful message.  Watch a few episodes of Jerry Springer and Jersey Shore and tell me it’s just my imagination.  I think this is a legitimate concern. 

On second thought, maybe you should just enjoy it.

I know what you are thinking.  You’re thinking, “Why don’t we just restrict reproduction by people who have inferior genetics?  We do it with horses and dogs, why not people?”  Another guy had some plans like that.  His first name was Adolf.

We could make a "super race."
I don't see any way that could possibly go wrong. 

Oh yeah, now I remember.

I am probably about to shoot a lot of holes in my own credibility with the following admission, but my journalistic integrity will not allow it to be omitted (and neither would my mama).  As a youngster, I managed to pull off a dizzying array of antics that still spark some lively conversations on the back porch at my parent’s house.  For instance, I set myself on fire with gasoline, completely filled my younger brother’s eye with mud, ran a three-wheeler into a car at 30mph, blew a hole in the living room ceiling with a shotgun, and stuck a wooden spear into my own forehead.  All of those are actual childhood events.  I have taken no poetic license here—and if you’d like all the details, my mother would be happy to tell you all about them.

I honestly wish I was making them up.

I did these, and many, many more amazingly fun activities which will remain unmentioned, since I have no desire to admit to any misdemeanors (or felonies) or to give Mama even more ammunition.  I did even more still as an adolescent and even as a young adult.  Were they stupid things?  Yes, they were.  Completely retarded.  But they taught me very valuable and realistic lessons that I carried with me into the future, sort of an attitude towards life and an actual appreciation for the consequences if you act like a retard around dangerous things.  The school of hard knocks, I’ve heard it called. 

He will remember this far longer than you yelling,
"Stop throwing darts at each other!"

I guess my point is that I have earned the right to reproduce because I navigated my way through a lifetime filled with opportunities to die or go to prison.  Because I was either smart or lucky enough to make it through, there’s a good chance my genes didn’t come from the shallow end of the pool. 

The ancient Spartans used to grossly underfeed their boys as they conducted their warrior training, forcing them to steal food to survive.  They were expected to steal the food, and it was left around for them to be able to steal it.  But if they were caught, they were beaten severely.  This made them resourceful, stealthy, and clever.

Do you think his mother ever left him
in the car while she was in the store?

Safety is a good thing, taken in moderation.  You don’t want to let your toddler play on high-rise scaffolding with a rusty razor blade and a book of matches.  But you do need to let him get into some trouble.  Life is risky, and living it is all about managing risk.  Let him earn his stripes.  He’ll be better in the long run.  Look how awesome I turned out.

Awesome safety sign.

A Southern Gentleman Develops Road Rage

Northern Virginia in the springtime is a beautiful place, with lots of activities to do, lots of sights to see, lots of places to visit.  Washington, D.C. is just up the road with all of its historic and cultural attractions.  There are mountains nearby for hiking.  There are beaches not too far away, shopping Meccas everywhere, and sporting events galore.  

The problem is you can’t get to any of them, on account of the roughly 4 gazillion people on the road at any given moment.  It’s like the carrying capacity of the transportation infrastructure of this place (which is perpetually under construction, by the way) is constantly about 25% behind the population.  There are just too many people, and they all want to go to the same place at the same time.  That’s the real problem with living here—Too Many Motherfuckers, or as I like to say in polite company, TMM or TM².  I think this syndrome affects most of the major cities of the world, and it’s only going to get worse. And roughly a third of them cannot drive a car down the highway without pissing me off.

The problem with society is other people.  

Of course, I am one of these roughly 4 gazillion MFers on the road.  I am alone in a large pickup truck about 90% of the time I spend on the road, just sitting there idling, burning precious gasoline, stewing in my own road rage.  I am self aware enough to realize my own hypocrisy, but I try not to dwell on it, because it dilutes the righteous anger I feel at everyone else. 

http://www.despair.com
It's not me, it's you.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking that I’m one of those crazy types who thinks that driving on the interstate is tantamount to being in some sort of undeclared NASCAR race, and that I always think I have to be in first place.  I do, admittedly, have a bit of a “type A” personality and as such can become a teensy bit competitive and maybe even a little aggressive, but my personality flaws are not the point here.  So lay off.

I just think that our time on the roads could go a lot nicer if people could learn to operate their automobiles as if they had some place to be, and were aware that other people are on the road because they have someplace to be.  For instance, if we are waiting at a left-turn signal, and we finally get the little green arrow, and there are 20 cars waiting, maybe you could mash your freaking accelerator and move on through the light instead of creeping through like an asshole and making everyone else miss the light.  Or if you are on the freeway, where there are three or more lanes, maybe don’t sit in the left lane going the exact same speed as the cars in the middle and right lanes—a little maneuver I have taken to calling the “Maryland Roadblock.”  Slower traffic keep right.  It’s a very simple concept.  Instead, we wind up driving in these tight little clumps of cars, all usually less than a car-length apart (because if you leave any space, some jackass will shoe-horn his SUV in front of you for no reason), with lots of open road between them.  All because grandma wants to use her cruise control, and if she gets in the lane where she belongs, she’ll have to turn it off and on too much.  So inconsiderate, so self-centered—it sends me to levels of pissed-offedness that I am ashamed to admit to.  I will sit there in my car and wishfully dream of .50cal machineguns mounted on the front of my car so that I could appropriately punish this horrible person in front of me, destroying their car and them in a hail of armor-piercing bullets.

They may not allow this particular model at the airport, however.

The DIY model

Then I will finally manage to pass, pull up next to the car, look over to give the driver a stern look, and I see it is some elderly lady on her cell phone, not an ogre after all, and I wonder what is wrong with me. 

Didn't I want to kill you a moment ago?

Come on, folks.  Don’t go slow in the left lane.
We’re trying to have a society here. 

Maybe the real reason I get so angry driving around here is because of my southern upbringing.  In my hometown, they often have the opposite problem—people are TOO considerate.  You can’t get out of a parking lot after a big event because people are trying to let everyone else go in front of them, even though they have the right of way.  And NOBODY honks a horn.  Honking your horn in Tifton, GA is on equal footing with getting out of your car and taking a dump on the other car's hood.  The horn is reserved for true emergencies and for getting your friend's attention so you can wave at him.  When I visit, I feel like a real asshole for being an impatient driver.  When I return to crazy-town, I’m angry all over again, only more so, because I know that people don’t have to act this way.