I will never, ever eat Bluebell ice cream. No, it’s not because I’m already addicted to Godiva ice cream (white chocolate raspberry swirl, yummers!) - it’s because I find the Bluebell commercial JUST. THAT. ANNOYING. I hear it every frickin’ morning and every frickin’ morning, it gets on my very last nerve. The commercial starts with this hokey song in which a guy sings about the good old days of his youth spent happily frolickin’ by the swimmin’ hole; it’s a veritable cornucopia of cliché illustrating the kind of childhood nobody really had but about which television and movies reminisce in endless platitudes. I’m not even to the annoying part yet. The song goes on to tell about Mama hollerin’ out the screen door “Would you kids like some homemade ice cream?” - that’s the part that irks me. If it was THAT long ago and they’re THAT country, would Mama really find it necessary to specify that the ice cream was homemade? Would they have access to any other kind? NO. And another thing...what kind of mama has to ask if her country-ass children want ice cream? YEAH they want ice cream, they’re kids. But the ‘homemade’ comment is what irritates me. “Bluebell tastes just like the good old days” - well, you know what the good old days taste like to me? Attic dust and lemon polish! And I don’t want any attic-dust-lemon-polish-flavored ice cream, thank you very much.

I’ve noticed a new phenomenon on the roadways lately. People doing the most remarkably stupid things in traffic is nothing new in Atlanta, to be sure, but lately I’ve noticed that the perpetrators of such idiocy are blowing horns, giving dirty looks, making angry and sometimes obscene gestures to the rest of us - as if we are the ones in the wrong. Excuse me, but I am not the one blocking traffic in four directions while stopped in the middle of an intersection, attempting to turn left underneath a large white sign with huge black letters saying “NO TURNS” (Marietta at Peachtree, 5:40 Monday evening, for you Atlantans). I am not the one who decided, ten feet from a stoplight, that although I am in the far left lane of a four-lane, one-way street, I wish to turn right at said stoplight and will therefore drive perpendicular to the street and damnation to everyone attempting to proceed forward (MLK at Forsyth during morning rush-hour, one day last week). I am not the one who is attempting to BACK a giant, mid-80s model Cadillac the wrong way down Marietta Street during morning rush - that guy kept turning around, sticking his head out the window and frowning at me for not letting him reverse down the street. Where he thought I was gonna go is beyond me - even if I wanted to let him back down a busy thoroughfare, I was surrounded by minivans, SUVs and Bell South trucks, all of which - like me - wanted to proceed forward. The thing that gets to me is the dirty looks and angry gestures - as if they have the perfect right to do whatever dangerous, illegal and totally brainless thing they’re doing, and we have the audacity to be in their way. I might excuse it if the people doing dumb things had out-of-state or even faraway county tags on their cars, but invariably when I see something truly idiotic, it’s from someone with a Fulton or Dekalb county tag. You live here - why don’t you know where you’re going?

The parking deck I use is like two giant corkscrews, with one corkscrew running up and the other corkscrew running down. You can tell which direction each corkscrew goes by the giant yellow arrows painted on the floor, or by the green neon arrow directing you as you enter, or by the fact that all the cars already parked there are pointed the way you’re supposed to go - that’s what I like to call “a hint and a half for your happy ass”. Nonetheless, this is too complex for some people to grasp and they go barreling through the parking deck headed the wrong way, and then do the ‘dirty look angry gesture’ thing at us dolts who are trying to proceed in the proper direction. Tuesday, this guy in a Honda almost hit me doing that. I absolutely refuse to yield to stupidity, so I just sat there while he gave me dirty looks. After all, I was headed the correct way. After a few seconds of impasse, he actually dared to give me the finger! I lowered my window and uttered what is, to those who know me, the most dreaded phrase in the English language: “Let me TELL you ONE thing, buddy!” This phrase always precedes a diatribe which is, in a bit of a contradiction, generally not limited to one thing nor aimed at a bud. I completely terrorized that Honda driver. I began by telling him it was my fault, as I should not expect someone to know the correct direction in which to drive when they are too stupid to realize the importance of patriotism during wartime, which was obvious from his choice of a Japanese import [as opposed to my solid, staunchly American auto] and I hoped he was sorry for his detrimental contribution to a struggling economy, unless he was a communist which he probably was because he was obviously too stupid to be anything else. Perhaps the highlight of my fulmination came when I asked if his mother knew he was an ill-mannered goon who made obscene finger gestures to young women. Nah - it was probably the “I’m going the right way, you’re going the wrong way, and you have the steel cajones to give ME the finger?!? You’re not just a moron, you’re rude too! You must be a lawyer!” part. I ended it by screaming, “You better just back up and LET ME BY!” which he did. You realize, of course, that someone in some other blog somewhere is ranting about an idiot in a Honda who was driving up the parking deck ramp in reverse.

I think that all cars ought to come with a paintball gun and a supply of paintballs as standard equipment. Whenever we see someone doing something irretrievably stupid, we could shoot paintballs at their car. It wouldn’t keep the idiots off the road but that way, we’d at least have fair warning. It’s too bad they don’t make paintballs that spell out “IDIOT” in the middle of the paint sploosh.