Any chance we can cross-train them on lab protocols so they can take a crack at the rape kit backlog we’ve got?

A. If you hear or see an emergency vehicle underway, with lights and sirens going, and it is approaching you from either direction on an undivided road, you should:

1. Draft behind it.
2. Cool, a fire truck!
3. Immediately get the fuck out of the way and STOP until it passes. Immediately. Even if this means you have to turn right and go around the block instead of going straight like you planned, because a fucking house is on fire and you will only be 35 seconds behind by making the block. Seriously.

B. If you drive Galena Park I.S.D. school bus #234  at approximately 1 pm on 10/12/2011, and your students are attending a field trip, the drive-through book depository lane at the Houston Public Library Central branch is:

1. Check it, man, this is my favorite part.
2. A convenient way for library patrons to be sure they can return books in a timely fashion even when they cannot make time to park and enter the library.
3. The perfect place to park your bus, then shrug your shoulders when a moderately self-righteous library patron asks if you have a permit to park in the drive-through lane.

C. When driving on West Alabama between Spur 527 and South Shepherd, the ideal way to position your car in the multipurpose turn lane is diagonally across the lane you are leaving and the turn lane, with approximately half of your giant fucking pick-up blocking each lane.

1. True
2. False
3. Fuck you, I bought this big-ass truck expressly so I can block multiple lanes.

D. You are driving the Mini that has a giant Red Bull can welded to it at approximately a 45-degree angle. How fast do you have to be going to launch the giant Red Bull can into low earth orbit when you rear end the car in front of you, and how would you adjust the calculation if you were driving the Red Bull Suzuki Sidekick instead of the Mini?*

Photo courtesy of The Suss-Man (Mike) via Flickr

*I did not actually witness this one, but you have to admit, you’re now just as curious as I am, aren’t you? I suspect the people who drive these promo cars are careful as all get-out, because they are much more likely to be reported for bad driving than the driver of a Galena Park I.S.D. school bus.

Photo courtesy of Michael Mol (mikemol) via Flickr

The city finally imposed mandatory watering restrictions on all of us, a completely reasonable and appropriate response to this awful drought. Brown lawns, wilted flowers, and trees on the brink of death are all too common sights. Given the extreme strain this lack of water has had on the greater ecosystem in which we live, the sacrifice of our beloved green space is hard to stomach, but understandable.

I frequently drive through one of Houston’s nicest neighborhoods (read: neighborhood that is full of really expensive homes with gracious lawns and gardens) in the middle of the day. Every time, I see at least one or two homes with automatic sprinkler systems going full tilt boogie during the hottest part of the day.

I completely admire the guy who drives around town painting over bandit signs placed illegally on public rights of way. I’m not sure I’m ready to become the person who drives around town documenting and reporting illegal use of sprinkler systems, but I’m getting pretty close to my boiling point as far as my definition of shared sacrifice compared to the definition others seem to hold.

Hell, I was just so glad it wasn’t another call from Citizens United—who called on September 11th, by the way, to ask for my help taking a jack hammer to the UN HQ in New York, which seemed like an entirely inappropriate message for any day, let alone September 11, 2011.

First, the guy conducting the call was as nice as nice could be. Or, the company has a really good script and training, and I was totally suckered. Unclear. I believe he said the company was TDI, or T_ _ – three letters, starting with T. He was somewhere in the northeast, and had been making calls all over the US for various polls.

The questions were about the new drainage fee, the mayoral race, and city council at large races #1 and #2. Some of the questions, not necessarily asked in this order.

• Did I vote in the last election? Was I likely to vote in this one?
• Was my impression of Mayor Parker good, somewhat good, neutral, somewhat bad, bad, or did I not know enough? Same question for council member Stephen Costello.
• Did I think the drainage fee was good and would help our city, or unfair and an unnecessary tax on property owners?
• Was I familiar with/what was my opinion of the candidates for at-large #1?
• Did I think that Mayor Parker, Stephen Costello, or both were primarily responsible for passing the drainage fee?
• Some people say that Stephen Costello, an engineer, just got this fee passed so he and his engineer friends could make money. Did I think that was a fair assessment, or an unfair one?
• If the mayor’s race were held tomorrow, for whom would I vote?
• If the race for at-large #1 were held tomorrow, for whom would I vote? Costello was first on the list.
• If the race for at-large #2 were held tomorrow, for whom would I vote? Kristi Thibaut’s name was first on the list.

I gave him a pointer on how to pronounce Thibaut. He seemed very impressed that I could both pronounce it and remember it, given the long list of names that came after it. In fact, he told me, and this is when I learned he’d been making lots of calls, I was the first person he talked to who could claim to have an opinion on more than 2 of the candidates/elected officials mentioned in the call.

I felt like the lede was really buried in this poll. Usually, after a few questions, you can tell what the pollster is really going after, but I actually wasn’t sure who might or might not have been paying for this or making up the questions. Clearly, someone is trying to figure out how to leverage the drainage fee issue, or whether it is an issue that can be leveraged, but beyond that, I don’t know.

Maybe I was disarmed by how polite the guy making the call was. He called me young lady, which made me giggle, which probably reinforced his whole picture of me as a young lady. He told me he was 56, so I probably was a young lady, even if I was older than his first age category. Which I am. It was a little discouraging that the first range of ages he asked about was 21 to 34, even though the voting age is 18. Hell, it might have been 25 to 35 … I knew I wasn’t in it, so I wasn’t paying close attention.

He really got me laughing when he asked the demographic question about my race/ethnicity. I guess I sounded odd when I said white, because he said “hey, that’s OK, that’s fine, no need to be upset about that,” which got us both laughing. I wanted to ask him what his guess would have been, but I wasn’t thinking quickly enough.

I can’t decide if I’m somewhat discouraged or completely discouraged that I was the most engaged person he had spoken to after a full day of making polling calls. You would think that they’d be calling likely voters, so someone would have a clue.