These eyes are the eyes of the old

So, what's been going on then?
Well.

Last night, as part of the "reduce insane car insurance premiums by obtaining a New York licence" campaign, I had to sit through probably the dullest evening of my life. At one point I caught myself considering bashing my head against the desk (built for 12 year old kids, btw, with comfort-free plastic chair attached and not remotely suitable for my nearly six feet leggy frame) as to render myself unconscious to make the boredom end.

This officious little man spend the better part of 4 hours saying about 3 things. One: don't lose your little certificate, cos it costs $20 to get a new one. Two: you can book your road test online or on the phone. Three: on your road test, you will have to stop at a stop sign.

Needless to say, the boredom was interrupted only by continuous insults to my intelligence and the nearly 17 years that I have been driving.

Once the pandering to the lowest common denominator was done, he showed us a video. That was probably the highlight of the whole thing.

It was a "don't drink and drive or bad things will happen to you" movie, filmed in an A&E in Baltimore and featured lots of cool gory stuff like some guy whose leg had snapped in half, and shots of brains with stuff leaking out of them. Cool.

Unfortunately, I believe the video achieved a purpose not quite in line with its intended one. I suspect we were supposed to feel sympathy for these teenagers who got pissed and drove their cars and crashed. Yeah.....not so much.

This one kid drank a case of beer and then drove a 4 wheel farm bike into a tree. He bashed his head and had to have loads of surgery and months of rehabilitation and it was all very sad etc. Then, once he had recovered, he was off out with his mates again, drinking beer and riding farm bikes.

Sympathy gauge stuck on zero.

Perhaps this is cruel, but if a person gets deliberately wasted, chooses to drive a car or a farm bike or other vehicle type thing, then fucks themself up, then that is natural selection at work. Right there is Darwin's thesis in action.

If drunk drivers only fucked themselves up, then there would be no problem.
It when they kill other people on the road that the problem arises, when they make driving unsafe for the rest of us.

I wasn't going to drink and drive before I watched the movie, and I still won't drink and drive.
The only thing it achieved was to further reduce my sympathy (what's less than zero?) for the idiots who endanger the rest of us.

When the whole ordeal was over and I had my little certificate in hand, I stopped off at the supermarket and purchased a six pack of Smithwicks (mmmm. delicious Irish beer. I drank some and I didn't drive my car. See? Its that easy.) and a copy of The Greatest Movie Ever Made to celebrate having survived yet another level of US bureaucracy in action.