Posted on 09/12/2004 3:09:07 PM PDT by Mark
At least you can't swim in L.A. air
By Kimit Muston
I was shocked -- shocked -- to learn that Los Angeles now officially has the worst traffic congestion in the United States. Thank goodness somebody finally did a scientific study to uncover this little-known facet of life in Southern California. You can read the details yourself online at obvious-as-hell.com.
According to the Texas Transportation Institute, which for some reason felt compelled to do this study of traffic congestion in lots of cities outside of Texas, our little pueblo is now the worst traffic mess in world history. Previously, the worst congestion on record occurred in ancient Rome right after a double-header in the Coliseum (Christians v. Lions.). The lion supporters always showed up in force, but after the second game -- Lions shut the Christians out, 42 to zip -- there was such a chariot jam on the Apian Way that one poor guy, Flabeus Lateus, didn't get home until the Middle Ages.
But now, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, Southern California is the new congestion capital of all time. Which leaves us with something we can brag about at the oxygen bar, I guess. The average commuter in Los Angeles, Ventura and San Diego counties wastes 93 hours a year stuck in traffic, according to these Texans, and that's supposed to be a world record. It certainly makes life in L.A. sound terrible.
But I did a little study of my own. And after hours of intricate and detailed calculations, I discovered there are approximately 365 days in most years. Subtract weekends (104 days) and holidays (eight days), and it turns out we commute to work only 253 days a year. No wonder our economy is in such trouble! Anyway, divide 93 hours by 253 days, and it turns out we only waste about 15 minutes a day in gridlock. Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it? Just 7 minutes each way.
And what do these Texans mean by "waste," anyway?
Look, at least we're not commuting to and from Houston. That entire trip is a waste. This is L.A., Baby. Parked bumper to bumper on the Sepulveda grade with our air conditioners blowing full blast, our satellite radios blaring and all 16 cylinders of our leased Ferraris revving to the red limit and gobbling a gallon of gas every eight seconds, we are not wasting anything. Not when you look this good. Listen up: A Volkswagen bug slip-streaming behind a mass transit bus down East 19th street in Austin, Texas, is a bigger waste of gasoline than Maria Shriver stop-and-going Arnold's Humvee to Ralphs to pick up hair spray.
Why are we trusting a study from Texans? They've never liked us. Basically, Texas is populated by people who got lost looking for California. And thank goodness they did, too. Have you any idea what California would look like if all those rodeo rejects had figured out which way was west? Orange County, that's what.
Worse -- Orange County with high humidity. Humid? The word fails to even begin to describe the climatological status of Texas. "Moist" would be a better word. "Oozy" would be more accurate. On an average summer afternoon with not a cloud in the sky, Texas has more water floating around in the air than in the Rio Grande. It would rain a lot more often in Texas if the raindrops could just get through all that humidity.
All that airborne moisture supports insect populations of unimaginable size and weight. One night in San Antonio I got jumped by four mosquitoes. I escaped with my life, but they got my wallet. And they drove off in my car. When the cops finally returned it, not only was the gas tank empty, but there were eight empty six packs of Raid in the back seat. We're talking mean mosquitoes. We don't have mosquitoes like that in California. We have condors, but they're smaller.
According to the Texas study, people in Dallas and Fort Worth "waste" only 61 hours a year in traffic jams, or about one-third less time than they claim we Californians waste in traffic. But there is productive "wasted" time and then there is wasted wasted time. Those 10 minutes Texans waste each day are 10 minutes that could be spent getting on a plane and getting out of Texas. And that is a true waste of time.
Kimit Muston lives in the San Fernando Valley and is a regular contributor to the Daily News. Write to him by e-mail at KAMuston@hotmail.com .
Nope- Canoga Bl and Winnetka Av are N/S- same as 405. Ok 101 or 118 fwy- I'll buy that.
Ya'all must be sippen!
You hafta use a straw so they can't spot the can.
O.K. I lived at 20542 Leadwell and I had to get off the 405 somewhere; maybe I had 3 1/2 beers.
101 then Canoga ????
OK, I know the area. Either Victory Bl or Sherman Way would do.. or a taxi so some real 'consumin' can go on.
You take the Slawson cutoff...
(Note to self -- get classic Carson skit DVD)
Got news for ya, buddy. San Antonio is hot and DRY. Houston is the humid one.
Humid? The word fails to even begin to describe the climatological status of Texas. "Moist" would be a better word. "Oozy" would be more accurate. On an average summer afternoon with not a cloud in the sky, Texas has more water floating around in the air than in the Rio Grande. It would rain a lot more often in Texas if the raindrops could just get through all that humidity.
What a feckin' dumbass. Yeah, Texas is the largest state with only one climate.
"Step away from the computer, dear. It's time for your medicine. Make sure that you turn off your oxygen before you take your pills."
"It seems to me though that the immigrants to Texas, even the illegals, do a lot better job of becoming Americans, than those that choose to go to California."
That's because our immigrants want to be TEXANS, and to do that, they know they have to become Americans. Problem is, NOBODY wants to be a Californian. ;)
Actually, Texas was the last state of the confederacy still standing on its own at the end of the war, largely because Texas defended her borders against virtually all yankee invasion attempts. They laid down their arms simply because it wasn't practical to continue the war anymore with all the other southern states and the confederate government having fallen. Considering how badly yankeeland got whupped a year earlier on two different tries to enter Texas, y'all should be thanking us.
My guess is it's something culturally unique about Texas. Practically as long as there's been a settled Texas, there've been both hispanics and whites here. The relationship hasn't always been perfect or flawless, but the two have always managed to coexist.
But..but..but..it could have been worse! I could have turned into a fairy dancing in all of that fog. Gasp! I might even have turned out to be one of those liberal things.
What kind of medicine should I be taking that would conteract years of dancing behind the mosquito fogger truck? There were at least a good dozen children in the neighbourhood who danced with me. Guess what! We're all conservatives!
Unfortunately for this theory, exactly the same is true for CA, where things don't seem to be working as well.
Don't get me wrong - Texas was a frontier too but Texas had several good sized established cities like San Antonio, which was already 120 years old when the texas revolution happened. Also, many of the Mexicans who were here sided with the anglos in the revolution against Santa Ana. Texas' equivalent of a congressman in the Mexican government just prior to the revolution was a hispanic who sided with them. The Republic's first vice president was also mexican.
You are right though - for whatever reason there is nowhere near the animosity here as in California. Another part of it could be that, at least in a formal legal sense, Mexicans in Texas were not historically designated into a class or group of their own like Blacks and Whites and there typically wasn't segregation between the two. The Mexican population here was more or less designated "White" in state records on account of a common European-Western culture. Also more often than not, mexican and anglo kids also attended the same schools together (and they didn't have all that ESL crap either). I know this because it applied to my grandmother who went to public schools here in the 1920's - her maiden name was Chavez but she grew up attending the exact same schools as kids of English decent and speaking English as her first and only language. Also practically everybody of Mexican decent who was born up until about 30-35 years ago STILL has white on their Texas drivers licenses, and I suspect some even more recent than that.
My uneducated guess is that the Mexicans in California think the Cali's are wierd and don't want to integrate with them. I wouldn't either.
Well, I am presently in CA, and I agree there are a rather large number of odd people here. I saw a very nice Lexus the other day with 29 anti-Bush stickers on it.
(It was parked, so it went over and counted.)
Wish I could be there on Nov. 3 as the moron tries feverishly and futilely to scrape them all off, trying to salvage some re-sale value.
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