Halloween Tees

The spooky night is fast approaching. If you don't want to be burdened with a full blown costume, but still want to dress casually for the night, check out the Halloween themed scary tees in the shop.

(click on the image to go to the online store)

Golf Dilemma...

The sun is out, the skies are clear, the big decision presents itself... a stroll down the golf greens, or *gasp*, quality time with the light of your life. The choice between grippin' it and rippin' it with your pride and joy, that new number one driver that is calling to you from the trunk of your car, or strolling the mall on a shopping trip or some other excursion.

(click on the image to go to the online store)

Poker Face

A group of my friends get together about once or twice a month to play Texas Hold'em. We've been doing this on and off for the last year and a half. It's interesting how this form of poker has become so popular with the general population. I've heard it is because of the introduction of those pin hole cameras on tv that allow the viewer to see the players hand. This has revolutionized the popularity of Texas Hold'em, both on television and in many Saturday night card games in homes across North America.

I decided to do a t-shirt reflecting the necessary skill to win at one of these gatherings. The poker face is an essential skill developed by the winning players in the game. You'll see the best players in poker tournaments on tv decked out in dark glasses and hats, to mask any tells the players might inadvertently be giving to their opponent. (click on the image to go to the online store)

Speed Kills

Keeping with the theme of crazy drivers, last night I'm out with my run group and we are running along a trial near the highway, on a beautiful summer evening. We can see off in the distance a congregation of emergency vehicles with their lights flashing, at an intersection on the highway. As we draw closer, I can make out a vehicle on the side of the road that has flipped onto it's roof. Now my first guess as to how this car managed to be upside down, is that there must have been some pretty excessive speed involved.

If you are driving defensively and allowing an appropriate distance between yourself and the vehicle in front of you, you should have enough time to break effectively to avoid any mishap that might be developing on the road ahead of you. But, if you're driving recklessly, speeding, tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic, like I see drivers do on a daily basis, then you would potentially set yourself up for a situation so drastic that your car would actually flip onto its roof.

Another example; this morning I'm driving to work about 8 a.m. and travelling along a residential street that is windy and narrow, so several cars have bunched up. I notice a beat up red pickup truck come up behind me and because the traffic has bunched up, we are moving in a slow down, speed up fashion as we're negotiating the curves in the road. The red pick rides right up onto my tail and starts following too close for comfort. So as the line of cars ahead of me comes up to an intersection, all of a sudden they're stopping fairly abruptly, but I've left myself enough room so I only need to break moderately hard. BUT of course the red pickup doesn't notice this soon enough and has to slam on his breaks and weave the front of the truck to the right to avoid rear ending me.

Now I can tell you, by checking this guy out in my rear view mirror, there was no Phd candidate sitting in that cab, he was gazing around as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I'm sure that was probably a frequent occurence in the life of mister tailgater.

So I have another bumper sticker for the occasion. (click on the image to go to the online store)

Tailgaters Are Morons

In the 1997 movie Crash, (not the 2005 movie of the same name), James Spader plays a character who is involved in a motor vehicle crash one night. Right after it happens, there is a shot of Spader sitting trapped in the twisted metal, and he makes the comment in a voice-over, (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), that "it is actually a relief to finally be in an accident." Like something we dread so much that when it finally happens we are somehow relieved.

I used to think like this about driving, that it was only a matter of time before I would be in a car accident. But I now realize that we can do a lot to avoid this scenario by being vigilantly alert behind the wheel and driving defensively so that we are not put in these high risk situations. I have to drive a stretch of highway every weekday to get to work and I have come to realize there is no mystery as to why traffic accidents occur.

The highway is basically a race track for most of the drivers on the road and it's crazy. One of the main effects of speeding is tailgating and this is what really burns me up, because my safety is being jeopardised by someone who is behind me and is therefore out of my control. These people amaze me because as far as they're concerned, they're in a hurry and everyone else on the road is in their way.

It's a narrow minded, reckless attitude. When you are inside your car, barrelling down the highway, you achieve a false sense of security, an invincibility that does not exist. If you've ever stood on the side of a highway, and seen how fast these automobiles are flying by, you realize how difficult it would be to stop abruptly at those speeds. Many times as I've headed home, I've seen massive traffic backups on this highway, because of some accident that was obviously the result of speeding.

These people are in such a self important hurry, they absolutely have to get where they're going NOW, but because of that short-sightedness, they end up being far later than they ever imagined, but the real impact is that they screw up the schedules of hundreds of other people now trapped in the traffic backup. This blinkered, me first attitude is pandemic on the streets, and it makes driving a stress test on a daily basis.

So in response to this, I have created some bumper stickers that tell these people exactly how I feel about them crowding my space! Check them out by clicking on the image below.