what year is this? that is called a rhetorical device, meant to ask you a question internally, with your voice, or with what you assume or presume to be my voice inside your head, that’s right, this is a conversation, essentially, words are heard even in print, but anyway, back to my original thought, I think traffic is my kryptonite, no, it most likely is, and also stupidity stacking, which seems normal here in new jersey when considering road work. the main thing is, even if you know what gnaws you down to a nub, can you avoid being ground down? it is like jousting except I do not have a lance, so I just pray I stay upright after I get smacked, ok, maybe that is a bit dramatic, I am known to have verbal flair after all, so, this am, my usual trek to work, all of 26 miles which takes a good hour here on the hallowed road known as the jersey turnpike, that’s fine, I am kind of used to that grind (crazy what passes as normal…), but then I arrive in the ‘sack (Hackensack)… (sack is a good name for the place, most of it is reminiscent of a sack of… well, it comes from a horse and it ain’t apples…), our lovely town benefactors are doing some sort of amorphous road work directly in front of my office, now… some signage would be nice… some sort of traffic direction perhaps? nah… I mean it is only 2026 here so I suppose I have to wait for flying cars and such before a little thing like… a sign… so that the whole traffic situation isn’t gnarled worse than melisandra’s true form, yes, a day can go from a red priestess you want to bed to instant flop, and today, was such a day, to compound things, the einsteins (clearly) that run such things pick a day where there is alternate parking… so, in a town where they keep banning parking more spots over the years, they conspire to make matters worse… yes, first world problem, I agree, but things that are clearly avoidable and/or ameliorated with simple gestures… well, rub a dub nub… not a good way to start the day, I try and paint on a smile, let coffee take me away like Calgon, but some days… well, Tuesday to be exact, I get my ass knocked off that horse via a lance of thousand punches, and fall, and it smells like a sack, or maybe shoe polish.

*postscript… of course there was a horrendous accident going home tonight on the GSP (garden state parkway)… I suppose the deity is aligned with the municipalities in these parts… and again… should there not be some signal that goes out to cars “hey. 3 lanes blocked 3 miles ahead, merge right”… we have the emergency broadcast system (which I have never heard a real emergency on…)… but not a simple alert/APP to handle that other obvious stuff… ? jeez… what a joke…

**postscript 2… I must have really pissed on the altar of all that controls minutia… this AM the Sack was still… a sack but I was blessed by a big rig hauling lumber cutting me off to my exit and then obscuring my view as a low boy with that kind of load on local streets kind of takes up a bit of space… I had to make an illegal u-turn just to park my car and be reasonably late to the office. Avoidable things… avoidable things… I just laughed this morning… as I can’t make up these dumb narratives but yet we are the rats on the wheel are we not?

**postscript 3… another massive accident on the GSP last night… I guess I can turn this into a bitchin’ about traffic log… I’d rather a yule log or a swiss log… but hey… we can’t always choose which logs we are stuck with, or that smack us in the noggin…