"Okay, Leonard, you ready?"
"Yup. Crank her, Cletis."
"You set the brake on the tractor trailer?"
"What I look like, Cletis?"
"Alright, here she goes!"

Get that man some paddle shifters and a co-pilot!

Then plant about 10,000 trees and scatter some rocks the size of tractor trailers and we'll call it rally racing.

Sign me up!

My cross-the-pond hero. This fella has always made clear, poignant commentary. His culture is being strip-mined before his eyes, and he actually cares enough to speak meaning. In the "name of love", (the U2 song's title comes to mind).....this addiction to niceties the western world is inebriated with, allows a retrograde segment of humanity, who were not part of a similar political and religious reformation as the west, to gain power and influence.......It's like allowing N.Korean's, recently free form the bonds of their current dictatorship, a seat in Parliament, without proper debriefing,... or a kid who just got his driver's license, to commandeer a tractor-trailer full of nukes, over a frozen, mountain pass.......It's fucking insane, to let Islam out of its box, in the modern world.....as insane as 100 million or more, Spanish and Mexican folks, being duped into giving any money whatsoever, to the Roman Catholic Church.

Time for taking children away from the most insanely devout, before they mutate....why do you think the Mayans high-tailed it????

There was an excellent article written about this very idea in Harper's by Garret Keizer titled Specific Suggestion: General Strike, quote:

"Of all the various depredations of the Bush regime, none has been so thorough as its plundering of hope. Iraq will recover sooner. What was supposed to have been the crux of our foreign policy—a shock-and-awe tutorial on the utter futility of any opposition to the whims of American power—has achieved its greatest and perhaps its only lasting success in the American soul. You will want to cite the exceptions, the lunch-hour protests against the war, the dinner-party ejaculations of dissent, though you might also want to ask what substantive difference they bear to grousing about the weather or even to raging against the dying of the light—that is, to any ritualized complaint against forces universally acknowledged as unalterable. Bush is no longer the name of a president so much as the abbreviation of a proverb, something between Murphy’s Law and tomorrow’s fatal inducement to drink and be merry today.

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he’s going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizen-ry that believes it is already dead.

Any strike, whether it happens in a factory, a nation, or a marriage, amounts to a reaffirmation of consent. The strikers remind their overlords—and, equally important, themselves—that the seemingly perpetual machinery of daily life has an off switch as well as an on. Camus said that the one serious question of philosophy is whether or not to commit suicide; the one serious question of political philosophy is whether or not to get out of bed. Silly as it may have seemed at the time, John and Yoko’s famous stunt was based on a profound observation. Instant karma is not so instant—we ratify it day by day.

The stream of commuters heading into the city, the caravan of tractor-trailers pulling out of the rest stop into the dawn’s early light, speak a deep-throated Yes to the sum total of what’s going on in our collective life. The poet Richard Wilbur writes of the “ripped mouse” that “cries Concordance” in the talons of the owl; we too cry our daily assent in the grip of the prevailing order— except in those notable instances when, like a donkey or a Buddha, we refuse to budge.

The question we need to ask ourselves at this moment is what further provocations we require to justify digging in our heels. To put the question more pointedly: Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed? Another poet, César Vallejo, framed the question like this:

A man shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood.
Will it ever be fitting to allude to my inner soul? . . .
A cripple sleeps with one foot on his shoulder.
Shall I later on talk about Picasso, of all people?

A young man goes to Walter Reed without a face. Shall I make an appointment with my barber? A female prisoner is sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Shall I send a check to the Clinton campaign? "

Phhhpt! That is nothing. Way back when I used to work for UPS. You should have seen how we unloaded the tractor trailers. Or how those trailers were packed before we unloaded them. Speed not care is the emphasis.

One man, one head, one hundred eyes and mouths shooting white-hot streams of man-sized bolts a' lightning into the ether, for your entertainment pleasure. who is this man? Why has he come? When will he be able to drive a tractor trailer or vote??

Some folks can pick winners, and spot sinners, this boys' gets the Blue Ribbon at the State Fair.

SPOOOOOOON!
*quality

wake siftbot up

I-71/75 Erlanger, Kentucky: FedEx jack Knives into Police Cruiser: as a police cruiser is checking the welfare of occupants of a vehicle that crashed into the median due to icy roads, a second vehicle slams into the cruiser and spins it around into the middle lane facing oncoming traffic. Soon thereafter you can see a FedEx tractor trailer jack knife into the police cruiser.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

On I-71/75 last night, the freezing rain and snow lent to a horrific scene straight out of a movie in which an out-of-control double tractor-trailer slammed into a helpless compact car.

The freezing conditions last night left more than 100,000 power customers without power, but it also created the kind of road conditions that led to the crash.

With the release of cruiser cam video today, one can now witness sheer terror through the cruiser cam of Erlanger police officer Bill Allen.

The events that led up to the disaster were small notes which led to the horrible crescendo.

"Both Officer Eagler and I noticed that the road was very slick," Officer Allen told 9News.

Just before the crash, Allen and probationary officer Doug Eagler had responded to the scene of a single car spinout.

"As we approached the vehicle, we both heard a noise -- turned around and looked -- and saw another vehicle strike the back end of our cruiser," said Allen.

The driver in that car was 20-year-old year Ashley Walker, whose bruises now show on her neck her seatbelt restraint.

"I seen the police cruiser and I tried to stop and get over, but I couldn't stop," Walker told 9News.

As her car struck the cruiser, the camera goes out.

Officer Allen's car is spinning in the meantime, and when the camera comes back on, it's pointing back towards oncoming traffic.

She tells 9News, this is when she says he saved her life.

"He's like -- get out get out a semi's coming a semi's coming!," said Walker. "He takes me out of the car and throws me into the snow and he throws himself on top of me."

Video also shows the car of Ronald Powell, who amazingly, has barely a scratch on him, despite being in the car the semi hit.

"The cop car started spinning in front of me and I'm coming up and I'm starting to slow down and then I see the Officer grab Ashley out of her car and dive him and himself against the guard rail," said Powell. "And then that's when I get smacked."

The driver of the double tractor-trailer says he tried to steer around, but couldn't.

The video shows the double-load tractor-trailer jack-knifing and slamming right into Powell's compact car.

When 9News asked Powell if he has seen the cruiser cam video of him getting hit, he responded, "Yes, and it just lets me know how truly the grace of God and the seatbelt, it saved my life."

Remarkably no one was seriously hurt as a result of the crash.

Officer Allen tells 9News he didn't have time to think, he just acted.

Ashley Walker says she will no longer take things for granted.

And, again, Ronald Powell believes he and his seatbelt had a little help from above.

Individual SUVs are too small, so I drive a tractor trailer LOADED with running SUVs. I drive it everywhere, including just down the block to 7-11 for big stinking cigars. Every single SUV on the trailer has 3 magnetic ribbons: one is original yellow and the other two are painted yellow, covering up the red and pink colors of AIDS and breast cancer, respectively. All read SUPPORT OUR TROOPS or SUPPORT MORE NUKES. Like many of you, I am disgusted that the One True Christian God hid America's oil under the sandboxes of backwards oven-y countries, but at least He made the natives not smart enough to extract it without America's help. Nice ponytail, hippie, but it belongs under a turban. Amen.