Driving the Speed Limit

I'm the best driver in Cleveland. Without a doubt. I live on the East side, and I drive to work on the West side. So it's reaffirmed twice a day every Monday through Friday.

I'm in a hurry. Always. I really am. I might be in a rush to get home to read junk mail while unsuccessfully trying to shit, but that's a thousand times more interesting than driving. It really is. I hate driving, which makes it coincidental that I'm the best damn ass hell balls fucking driver in Cleveland. I really am. Driving is boring. It's just sitting in a chair. Therefore, I'm in a hurry to get anywhere that's not the inside of my car. The only time driving is awesome is when you are a) on a lovely date, and you're having a great conversation that's deep about something trivial (e.g., a philosophical debate over the best Fat Boys song), but the entire time you're anticipating and dreading that uncomfortably comfortable kiss goodnight that will last just a little bit too long, but not long enough, so you just don't know if you want the drive to ever end but you know you want to be in the car with that person, that sensation, that love, right then, or b) receiving a delightful hand job and/or mouth job, and you can't do this where you're going (e.g., church). But these things are rare occurrences--unless you're in a Nicholas Sparks movie (in which case, I hope you like getting cancer) or you're Wilt Chamberlain.

I want to get where I'm going fast. But I don't want to kill anybody. Oh, in my mind I do. In my mind, if you drive down the middle of obvious two lane streets because there's no painted line or if you slow down at yellow lights, I'm already at your funeral screaming, "KHAAAAAAAAN!" while wildly strangling your corpse with one hand, punching all your teeth and gums to one side of your face with the other, and bicycle-pedaling your cold, withered junk. So in that sense, I'm a really safe driver, too--I really don't want to hurt anyone in my hurry, only in my mind where I can also dunk a basketball and am married to Tina Fey. Do you want to know why I'm a such a fantastic driver? Do you want to learn how to drive like me so that you're not a jackass? Okay then. You see, there are laws, and then there are laws--unspoken rules that good motorists (one out of every twenty on Cleveland roads) follow. Today's featured agreed-upon societal law of good driving:

Drive at LEAST the Speed Limit

If you constantly drive below the speed limit--even just 5 miles below--then know, in all sincerity and reality, a generous portion of the greater metropolitan population (those people who have ever been stuck behind you on a one lane road) hates you. They just do. They believe you masturbate to the Disney Channel and inject steroids straight into your penis/vagina while awkwardly massaging a cat's butthole. It's what you do if you regularly drive below the speed limit. Notice I said "regularly." There are exceptions; I understand if that day you happen to be transporting unstable plutonium or if you got a bad load of PCP. However, if you drive so all the time, then there's a good chance someone has noticed your pattern of shittiness and is telling as many people as they can that you can't count or read a simple street sign, and that you scream "Satan rules my cock!" out the window as you jerk off furiously to Evanescence.

Read the posted speed limit signs. And then drive at least that, or maybe even 5 miles per hour over that to be safe, and so that I can hate you less. I'm really not an angry person, so it's better that I get these issues and my animosity out on the anonymous and virtual plain of the Internet rather than putting Christmas-tree-shaped chariot blades on my rims and driving into the side of a minivan full of kids whose mother has sealed their fate by committing to driving 50 in a 60 on the far left-hand lane of the highway. Oh yeah, the left hand lane (or lanes if there are more than 2 going in the same direction) is not only called the passing lane(s), it's also called the fast lane by the unspoken laws of the road. More correctly, it should be called the fastER lane. Whatever the speed limit is, you must do at least 5-10 mph faster in these lanes. You see, if you want to pass a truck on the highway, you have to go faster than said truck. Going 1 mph faster than that truck will get you by it. In an hour. I don't know if my math is right, but in my mind that's why you are an inconsiderate fuckall. That's why, in the post-apocalyptic future, when we're all dressed like different members of Judas Priest and Motley Crue and eating each other in the fight for gasoline, you'll be strapped to the front of my car that's crudely shaped like a shark-panther as I drive OVER 20 mph (a lot over) towards a makeshift stronghold of your loved ones who will be forced to choose between shooting you with homemade arrows or having me ram open the gates with your face and peeing on everything you hold dear. All because you couldn't drive at a decent clip or let me pass on my way to the weird all-night, long-haired, sax-music, sex-dance-around-the-fire orgy at the remains of the nuclear-devastated beach. Seriously, it's just common courtesy. If you can't follow these simple rules, take the bus. Good drivers hate the bus, too, but we tolerate it and understand its need to stop and slow traffic every fifty feet. And with the bus, we only hate the system; we don't hate the people on it.

PS. If your car can't go as fast as the speed limit (if you drive a pickup that looks like a hatchback with no hatchback and was built when George Michael was not gay and has homemade doors and its bed contents appear to be a traveling garage sale from 1977), then maybe having your own car should wait. Maybe getting a shower and self-respect should be your first priority.

PPS. In Cleveland, Martin Luther King Drive has a posted speed limit of 35 miles per hour. The entire way. Both ways. The man was a miracle, a light, a martyr. He had a dream. By going 25, you've just punched that dream in the taint.

If you know of another road or highway or stretch of road or highway where a considerable number of people consistently drive below the speed limit, please post it in the comments below so that we know to avoid it or passive-aggressively honk or tailgate the shit out of those people.

PPPS. Oh wait, this isn't just a law, it's the law (from the Ohio Department of Public Safety website):

4511.22 Slow speed.
(A) No person shall stop or operate a vehicle, trackless trolley, or street car at such an unreasonably slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when stopping or reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or to comply with law.

Thank you for reading. I wish you the best of luck on our Cleveland roads. One day, I hope this blog can be called A Regular Driver in Cleveland. One day, I hope I can drive around town once without screaming, "die sucking dogcock, you dogcock-sucker" silently, more than once, at another motorist.