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home sweet Toronto

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2005.07.05

I had my first yelling-at while commuting, today. By some ageing boomer jerk in an SUV, of course. I was cycling down Bayview and passing through an extensive turn-off and turn-on lane, the kind where a feed in from one side street creates a new lane that persists until the lane turns off again in the exit lane of a new side street.

In such cases, the cyclist is supposed to remain on the right side of the lane next to the turn-out lane. This prevents the cyclist from crossing traffic. The fellow who decided to holler out his window at me started honking at me while still approaching me from behind. He yelled something like "get your fncking bike out of the lane" as he took the exit, but I didn't catch his words exactly. He might have been yelling something else entirely and could have been yelling at the SUV that happened to be passing me on the other side at the same time. Or maybe both of us.

This is the problem with yelling stuff from your car - you just sound like a pointless jerk no matter what you're saying. In fact, I can't remember ever having heard much yelled from a car that wasn't stupidity or hate. Well, okay, the verbal equivalent of wolf-wistles, they're always fun. ;)

rand()m quote

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov