The longest title of a book is 1,433 characters (290 words) and was written by Davide Ciliberti (Italy) in July 2007. The book describes the idiosyncrasies of the PR world. The full title is "Per favore dite a mia madre che faccio il pubblicitario lei pensa che sono un pierre e che quindi regalo manciate di free entry e consumazioni gratis a chi mi pare, rido coi vips, i calciatori le veline e le giornaliste, leggo Novella e mi fotografano i paparazzi, entro neI privé saltando la coda, bevo senza pagare, sono ghiotto di tartine e gin tonic, ho la casa piena di oggetti di design, conosco Paris Hilton, Tom Ford ed Emilio"
Nope, I don't know what that means either. Wow... I sidetracked myself during the first sentence. That doesn't bode well for this post, now, does it? :-)
First things first, let's deal with old business. Hillary Clinton. Thank you for bowing out of the race when you did and in the manner in which you did so. Sorry for all the crap I gave you during your campaign (okay, not really). I wish you would have dropped out sooner, but I can respect your decision to stay. However, I think the damage you caused is minimal, and your former rival, Barack Obama, remains in good shape. I expect the Democrats to thoroughly trounce McCain in November.
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So earlier today I stepped outside my office for a smoke break, watching traffic pass by as I puffed away (I know, it sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry, but I find that it's good for thinking. Besides, I'm a people watcher.), and I for some reason this beat up, bronze-ish colored mini-van catches my eye. I look up to see the driver with his head bowed and his hands in front of him as if praying, as he drove by. Please note that as he was driving and praying, his hands were several inches away from the steering wheel. That's right... the guy was deep in prayer, while driving, with his hands off the wheel, and his head bowed (couldn't tell if his eyes were closed, but he definitely wasn't looking up at the road). Scary. I hope the car in front of him was praying, too.
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Speaking of stupid drivers, the other day I'm headed home from work, and I'm on a freeway on-ramp getting ready to merge into traffic. The guy in front of me merges smoothly as I check my mirrors and see that the lane is clear, yet, in the distance, I noticed a red vehicle in my lane, but he was far enough back that I could slip right in without causing anybody to slow down. Well, except for this guy. We're merging, and I look again in my mirror and the red vehicle is noticeably closer. The guy is going way too fast. I'm in the lane already, flowing with traffic (albeit relatively slowly) and this guy is still speeding towards me, slowing down rather suddenly, uncomfortably close to my own vehicle. I'm watching the guy closely in my rear view mirror, and apparently a driver behind the guy in the red vehicle, whom I'll just call Red from now on, came to a similarly sudden slowdown behind Red, presumably because Red himself slowed down rather suddenly.
So instead of everybody just moving on with their day, Red is looking in his own rear view mirror freaking out. His arms are flailing, he's screaming and throwing a fit, apparently because it looked like the guy was going to hit Red (but he didn't). Fine, Red wants to throw a hissy fit while ignoring the fact that he did the exact same thing to me just a few seconds earlier, let him. I just wanted to gt home. But the tantrum continued for several more seconds. Then it stopped, and it looked like he regained his composure. But I was wrong, because a moment later he starts up with the tantrum again, flailing arms and all.
It was quiet the site to behold, I must say. Like watching an angry two year old, except much taller and behind the wheel of a moving vehicle (a beat up lil' pick up truck, dropped down so low that he'd bottom out completely if he hit a pothole). So as he continued his little display for a few more seconds, it (believe it or not) got even more heated, and the next thing I knew, Red, who was driving, mind you, has half of his body out the window as he's turned backwards to face the car behind him, yelling and screaming and continuing with the flailing arm thing. My amusement turned to shock as I instantly realized that if he's facing the guy behind him, he's not looking at me, and the car in front of me was coming to a stop as we reached a traffic bottleneck. Red's still yelling, I'm preparing to stop myself, hoping that Red gets his act together, and there's really nowhere for me to go as I've got traffic on my left, and a guardrail on my right. Fortunately, Red swerved into the next lane at literally the last second, and sped off, darting in and out of traffic, never to be seen again. Hopefully.
What a prick.
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While we're talking about traffic (wow, two fairly decent segues in a row!), caught this in the news today: Honolulu’s traffic among worst in U.S..
To be exact, we ranked 38th out of 100. The article goes on to say how Thursday afternoons from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm are the worst, and that residents spend about 40 hours a week in traffic (which would breakdown to 8 hours a day: 4 hours in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, I presume). That last figure alarmed me. 40 hours? Really? They don't explain exactly how they came about that figure. I know of people who have 2 hour commutes to work, perhaps even longer if they have to drop off their kids at school/babysitter, or run some other errand as part of their morning routine, but 40 hours a week sounded rather dubious.
With that said, though, traffic in Hawaii is really bad. I've lived in a number of locales around the island, and no matter where you are, if you're trying to get into Honolulu in the morning, you're screwed. I remember when I used to live in the Makiki area of Honolulu, it would sometimes take me 45 minutes to get to the Iwilei area, which is only about 4 miles, if my memory is correct. Four miles in 45 minutes. Ouch. That's why I mostly took the bus when I lived there. When I lived in Aiea, which is about 8-10 miles from Honolulu, it took me anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes. Fortunately I now live in Kaneohe, which is about 12 miles from where I work. Yes, it's probably the farthest I've lived from any workplace, but a) the drive is so green and beautiful and mostly free of stoplights that the distance doesn't even factor into the equation, and b) my workplace is on the fringes of downtown, so I miss the worst of the morning traffic. When school's out or there's otherwise no traffic, it takes me about 20 minutes to get to work. On a bad traffic day, 30-45 minutes, tops. Well, once it too me an hour, but that was an extraordinarily bad traffic day.
Now, just to keep this in perspective, this is only driving time. I know folks on the mainland spend far more time commuting to work, which often involves a combination of driving, taking a train, and possibly a bus, taxi or subway ride thrown in for good measure. Hawaii, however, has very limited mass transit. We've got a bus system, but they're as susceptible to the traffic woes as everybody else. We don't have any trains or subways, though there's a big push by our mayor to get a rail system going, with ground breaking taking place in 2009, if he has his way. He's met much opposition, yet this is the closest we've come to actually seeing rail happen.
Also, keep in mind that we're on an island with two mountain chains running along either coast, making it near impossible to go from point A to point B without having to go through or near Honolulu proper, if you want to get to point B in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise, many areas on this island are bound by the fact that there's only one road in or out, so we don't have much in the way of alternate routes to get around. Building more roads wouldn't solve anything because there's really no place to build any new major roadways here that would alleviate the traffic problem.
Now, I've got mixed feelings on the rail plan. An elevated train running through Honolulu and outlying areas would likely be a blight on the landscape. Hawaii, by law, doesn't allow billboards or planes with banners, so we've got pretty good views, even on the freeway. An elevated rail system would change that. On the other hand, traffic is pretty bad here. It's gotten noticeably worse in the 16+ years I've lived here, and it will only get even worse down the line. Something needs to be done to alleviate the situation somehow.
Also, I should note, that current plans don't have the train connecting to my side of the island, so it's not going to affect my commute at all.
There's also been talk of toll lanes, double-decker freeways, and a whole bunch of other ways to improve the situation, but either they've been shot down or ignored or otherwise they just didn't have any legs. My biggest worry, as the mayor struggles to get his plans finalized, is that he'll meet with last minute opposition or hit some other legal snag, and the plans will have to be scrapped, leaving us with no solution at all. As long as I've lived here, and going back even further, various mayors and public figures have tried to get a rail system going, usually ignoring other alternatives. And each time, their plans got crushed, leaving Honolulu with nothing but a still-growing traffic problem. Like I said, this is the farthest that I've seen such plans advance here, but I don't know what we'll do if this doesn't make it to completion. Alternatives have been scarce, despite the vocal opposition to rail, and besides, the federal funding that's going to help pay for the rail system couldn't be applied to any of the other suggestions that have come up thus far.
There's so much more to this whole rail thing and the back and forth between opposing sides on the issue, way more than I care to get into right now. The short of it is that we've got a traffic problem, and something needs to be done.
-r-
