Early Contender For Passenger Of The Year

Posted: 13th February 2013 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
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In this seemingly neverending parade of drunken douchebags and surly whores, you occasionally get a passenger that restores your hope for humanity. I got a call a few nights ago to pick up a couple at a local restaurant about 1:15 AM. I called the number on arrival, which was the restaurant’s number, not my passenger’s. After waiting about 4 or 5 minutes, a waitress stuck her face out the front door, held up one finger and mouthed the words “just one minute”. I waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes… Now I’m telling myself that these idiots are wasting my time, and I am wrestling with the decision of starting the meter or just no-showing the call and letting someone else deal with these boneheads.

I’m getting irritated and I’m about to leave, and just then, they finally came out. “Mike and Millie”, a good looking blonde couple in their early thirties, well dressed and obviously a little tipsy. He’s tall and rugged looking, and she is remarkably pretty… not one of the usual trollops I get, not “hawt” or whorish, just beautiful and smiling and somehow very “wholesome” looking, even when a little drunk. They pile in the car, and Mike says, “Sorry to keep you waiting… we are from out of town, a little drunk, and a little lost…”

I’m a little irritated, and this is not a promising beginning. “Uh huh… I see that… where are we going?”

He says, “We are staying at a friend’s apartment at the corner of Dartmouth Avenue and 110th Street, but on the way, we need to see if we can procure a certain… item…”

I’m thinking to myself, Uh huh… I bet you do… I get that a lot. Just what sort of “item” might we be looking for, hmmm? A big bag of powder, maybe? A little bud? Maybe some pills? A hooker, perhaps? Maybe a six-foot tall pre-op TS streetwalker named “Delilah” is more to your liking…? Sure… just you go right ahead and ask the taxi driver… that’s a great idea. Certainly a taxi driver has the sordid knowledge to be able to hook you up… jackass…

“Uh huh… and what would that be…?”

He looks furtively around out the windows of the car, then looks at his watch, scoots forward in the seat, and says in a low, hushed, conspiratorial tone, “It is 1:27 AM, and we are strangers in this city… Where in this town, at this early time of the morning, can I get my hands on…”

Yes…?

“…a microwave oven?”

I laughed, and instantly, my irritation just evaporated, and I just plain liked this guy. A couple years of driving this car and blogging about it have honed my instincts, and I sensed that I just might have a blog-worthy passenger in my presence. I tell him that there is a Wal-Mart less than a mile from his destination, and we are on the way. Mike and Millie are from Missouri, in town for a wedding, I think they said. They are heading back tomorrow, and the microwave in their friend’s borrowed apartment doesn’t work. They are a little drunk, but they are just really warm and wonderful people, I can just feel it in my bones. She asks if I have a family, I mention my daughter, and she “oooh’s” and “aaah’s” about how I talk about her, and demands to see the pictures I have of my Punkin’ on my phone.

I drop them off at the Wal-Mart entrance, and idle over to a parking spot to wait for them. 10 minutes later, they come out, with a “down on his luck” looking black guy walking along side them. He doesn’t look like a vagrant or an alcoholic, but he looks a little dirty and seems out of place with Mike and Millie. Mike is carrying the giant microwave and talking intently with the black guy, and Millie is carrying a large white bag. I pop the trunk and step out to help load it up, when Mike hands the giant box to Millie, and stops to talk to the black guy. I said good-naturedly, “Dude, did you really just dump that medium-sized appliance in your girl’s arms? Is chivalry really that dead?”

I ran over and took the microwave from Millie and stuck it in the trunk. Mike has his wallet out and is giving money to the black guy, who looks incredibly grateful and thankful. They get in the car and Mike tells me that the black guy said he has a job interview tomorrow, and needs soap and deodorant. I admit, my first instinct was that Mike might have been hustled, but this guy looked truly grateful. He didn’t look like he was a drunk or a crackhead or a scammer… he looked more like a working man on really hard times, with a little desperation in his soul, and who was just blessed with ten or twenty dollars that might change his luck. He was bowing repeatedly, holding his clasped hands in a praying gesture, mouthing the words “thank you” over and over…

And as we are rolling out, Millie puts the large Wal-Mart bag in the front seat and says, “And this is for your daughter!” I pulled a large package out of the bag, and it is a Rapunzel playset for little girls.

Rapunzel playset

I said, “That’s very nice, but I can’t accept this…”

She said, “Of course you can! I insist. After listening to you talk about your little girl, I can tell that you are an awesome Dad and that she is an awesome little girl! You both deserve it.”

“Really, ma’am… I can’t…”

“Uh uh uh…!” she interrupts. “I won’t hear it. That is for you and your Punkin’. I’m not taking it back.”

So I thanked her profusely and drove them to their friend’s apartment. Their fare is eighteen or twenty bucks, and the guy gives me $35. I said that they have already tipped me more than adequately, but he won’t take the money back. He wished me and my Punkin’ well, and went in the apartment.

I didn’t even notice the price tag until I got home; the Rapunzel playset cost twenty dollars. So in the span of 5 or 6 minutes, I watched this couple buy a microwave for a borrowed apartment, give a man money so he could clean up for a job interview, give me a $20 toy for my daughter, and tip me nearly 100 percent for their taxi ride. That kind of generosity seems very rare these days… I won’t be forgetting Mike and Millie anytime soon.

Just Fucking Great

Posted: 3rd February 2013 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized

My submission to HotAir.com’s photo caption contest…

Just Fucking Great

Huzzah For Ben Shapiro!

Posted: 12th January 2013 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
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This circus surrounding the current push for gun control legislation is a morass of lies and deceptions, fostered by the media and promoted by the left in America, because the Constitution and the Bill of Rights stand squarely in opposition to the goals of the Statist left. That is precisely how it was designed to work, and that in turn infuriates and frustrates these people who wish to subjugate the American people. Nevertheless, they forge onward with inane arguments they struggle to make sound “reasonable”.

What angers me most is all this “reasonable” discussion about sportsmen and target practice and self defense and mall shootings and dead children and assault weapons and magazine capacity is that all of this is a deceitful smokescreen, intentionally designed to confuse the population and obscure the left’s goal of incremental but total citizen disarmament. And far too few of our elected leaders and our so-called representatives seem willing or able to spell out precisely what the intent of the Second Amendment is and stand on principle.

The intent of the Second Amendment is clear to anyone possessing the reading comprehension we used to expect from an average tenth grader, but thanks to teachers’ unions, that is becoming a higher and higher bar with each passing year. The Founders intended for the population at large to be armed to resist, repel, and defeat tyrannical governments, foreign or domestic. Period. And the most cursory examination of the history of the 20th century clearly shows what happens virtually every time a people allow themselves to be disarmed. The ability to shoot a burglar or kill a pheasant for the dinner table is an ancillary side benefit, but it is not the point of the Second Amendment.

The point is to resist tyranny. To preserve a free state. Got it? How hard can that be to understand, and why are so few of our leaders, media, and political pundits able to comprehend or verbalize that simple idea?

And how many of those people DO comprehend it, and that understanding is specifically WHY they want to severely limit or do away with the Second Amendment?

And then, along comes Ben Shapiro, one of few people I have actually heard speak the words. A masterful performance on his part…

After watching Ben Shapiro crush this idiotic limey moron Piers Morgan, I had a vision come to me… try to picture this in your mind…

The year is in the mid-1770’s in colonial America, in a city like Baltimore or New York or Philadelphia, which are not only vibrant and prospering cities humming with opportunity, small business, and commerce in this earlier day and age, but also centers of enlightened thinkers, nothing like the pits of decadence and squalor they are today. And in some tavern or in some salon or in some square, you chance to encounter this insufferable, effete douchenozzle of a Tory named Piers, deep in his cups, and spouting off about the glory of The King And Crown, and how The Colonies would be so much more civilised if they were just more like Mother England, and how all this liberty and independence nonsense you hear about is madness, and that all persons that disagree with his so obviously correct position should be hung.

Piers works for a well-known newsletter of diminished repute and modest but declining circulation, but it is common knowledge that this pretentious blowhard has been all but banned from gainful employment in Mother England, after multiple scandals and disgraces that even involved intercepting people’s most intimate and emotional of personal correspondence… His shameful behaviour and disgraceful business dealings in London have served to banish him to the wilds of New York to fend for himself. You have even heard that there was an actual petition circulated to send him back across the Atlantic, one that actually gained thousands of supporters, but the King did not seem to want him back, and Piers himself was not at all anxious to go.

But, as everyone knows, The King and Crown don’t respond to petitions anymore… you are used to that. The government never listens anymore.

And the incessant taxation is really straining your household. Yet The King demands more every year.

But just as you are about to take your leave, rather than listen to yet another of Piers’ noxious diatribes, you see a bright young man named Benjamin, whom you know to be an earnest and industrious man of education and intellect. And to your amazement, you watch young Benjamin step forward and dismantle Piers’ inane arguments with alacrity, tact, and aplomb. Piers thought he would bully and intimidate this young man half his age, but he found himself without retort, sputtering and stammering before the young Benjamin, whose arguments for freedom and liberty were unassailable. He made Piers look foolish and imbecilic, and Piers knew it.

And as young Benjamin makes his departure, the indignant Piers twitters and shouts at his back, “You are a stupid, stupid man, you know that, don’t you? You and all your like minded traitorous ilk think you can have freedom? Really? Don’t you know who and what you are? You are subjects of The Crown, obliged to submit and obey your King and government, and no little book or scrap of paper of yours will ever change that! You would be wise to learn who your betters are, young man!”

It is obvious to you that this pompous oaf understands nothing more than being a subject; he is all but a slave as it is. And as you too walk away from Piers’ humiliating extemporaneous drubbing by the young Benjamin and return to minding your own affairs, you hear Piers shout, “And don’t think I haven’t notified the proper authorities regarding that warehouse full of arms in Concord…! Bloody hell, what are we doing letting these people have weapons? These bucolic imbeciles are to have the most advanced arms in the world? Really?”

So… if that was you walking home that evening in colonial America, do you think that you would have spent that night casting 20 more lead balls and cutting up 20 more cloth patches for your rifle?

If you answered “yes”, you are on the right side in this gun debate.

A hearty “huzzah!” for Ben Shapiro for standing up to another liberal bully in defense of liberty and Constitutional principle, and not making apologies for the tools of America’s strength and security.

Our Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan have a motto they live by, and it works pretty good for taxi drivers as well… “Be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill every person you meet.” Very sound and prudent advice, indeed.

So a guy flags me down at bar close and he looks OK… he is well dressed and doesn’t look too wasted, and he wants me to take him and his two buddies a pretty long way to a good neighborhood on the south side of town. He waves his friends over, and one of them was really shithammered, so much so that I probably would not have picked him up if he was on his own. The guy that flagged me got in the front seat while the other guy wrestled their wasted friend into the back. We take off, and the wasted guy in the rear passenger side is bellowing about how we need to go back and get his truck, he can’t leave it here overnight, it’s gonna get towed… His friends shout him down, telling him he’s too trashed to drive and his truck will be fine. I am driving about 30 miles per hour leaving the bar district, when I hear the sound of this guy tugging and fumbling with the door handle, and then the interior light comes on… He has opened the door while the car is in motion.

I hit the brakes and yelled, “Hey! Close the fucking door, you idiot!” His other friend in the back seat reaches across and closes the door and I hit the locks again. The guy in the front seat apologizes, saying that his friend back there isn’t usually such a jackass, but he “just got back on shore after being at sea for several months with no booze”. I’m not sure if that meant he was military, a fisherman, or whatever… maybe an oil rig worker. But I don’t really care… You would not believe the paperwork involved in having a drunk fall out of your car on the freeway on-ramp.

So I tell these guys to keep their village idiot in line until we get them home and we will all be fine. So I am cruising south on the highway at 65 MPH when the dumbass in the back starts wailing about his truck again, and he starts flailing at the door handle once more. I hit the brakes and pulled over to the emergency lane, and calmly told these guys to get out.

The guy in the front says, “You can’t put us out on the interstate, man…”

“The hell I can’t… My name is not going to appear on this drunken douchebag’s highway fatality police report. Get the fuck out.”

“Fuck you, man…” the drunk yells… “We don’t have to take any shit from this asshole… Let’s get my truck…”

His friends shout him down again, and I tell them in no uncertain terms that they have to keep this jackass under control, and if I hit the brakes again because of this liquored-up dipshit, they will be pedestrians, no matter where I stop.

So I take off again, and we get to their off-ramp without incident. We are only 2 miles from their destination, and I will soon be rid of this jackass. So I am traveling eastbound on a two lane road, doing about 40 MPH.

Now, several things happened very quickly in the next few seconds and it will take a bit of typing to explain exactly what occurred. I was driving along with oncoming traffic and cars behind me when without warning, the drunk in the back seat reached up out of the darkness with his right hand and grabbed my face, pulling my head to the right and blocking my vision.

This was not some silly “peekaboo” shit… I mean he gripped my skull tightly and turned my head to the right. Right now, take your right hand and grab your skull, thumb and middle finger on your temples, and grip tightly enough to turn your head. That’s what this idiot did. In the dark. In oncoming traffic. Doing 40 MPH.

Naturally, my right hand came up to push his arm away, while I twisted my head away from him and stomped on the brakes. His buddy in the back also brought his arms up to help block and restrain his friend, so there are 4 arms flailing about between me and the passenger in the front seat. I twisted my head out of his grip to the left, but my head snapped to the side and hit the window with a loud thump… It was more than a little painful and I was seeing stars.

The guy in the front seat was freaked out… He didn’t seem to know what was going on, he was just flung forward, flailing arms, screeching tires, honking horns from oncoming cars and a car behind us, the driver hitting the window, and lots of yelling.

I didn’t know what was going on either… this guy grabbed my face and twisted my head around, I hurt my head, and I just assumed that I was being attacked. I keep a variety of weapons with varying degrees of lethality within easy reach in my car for just such occasions. If you don’t think I will stab you in the trachea with a ballpoint pen if you truly deserve it, well, you just don’t know me very well.

So we are at a complete stop in the road. I turned on my 160 lumen flashlight and blinded the drunk in the back, and employing a little nonverbal communication, I used its’ milled aluminum body to thump him firmly in the forehead to suggest that he kindly sit back in his seat. The drunk is yelling and covering his face in pain and blindness, and the guy in front is in total shock.

This whole episode took 3 or 4 seconds max. I was enraged, and I must have looked like Satan himself, because the guy in front looks really frightened and freaked out by me. I am screaming at him to get this wasted asshole out of my car before he has to buy flowers for him. He apologizes over and over and pulls his wallet out and gives me 80 dollars for the 19 bucks on the meter. They pull the drunken idiot out and I pulled forward 3 blocks onto a sidestreet to rub my head, do my paperwork, and try to put these boneheads out of my mind.

I am in a stuttering rage… I mean, what if I had veered into oncoming traffic? We might all be dead right now. My adrenaline is flowing freely and I recognize that I am not safe to drive in this condition, so fuck it, I am taking it to the barn and calling it a nite. I turned around the car, and as I look over my shoulder while backing up, I see that the drunk has left his phone in the seat. I grab it and head back west toward the highway.

And on the left side of the road, the three guys are standing under a streetlight at an intersection, yelling at each other and assigning blame for the solid 2 mile hike that is now ahead of them. I yelled, “Hey, asshole… You forgot your phone…” and I whipped it out the window Frisbee-style with my left hand.

Regrettably, I am not left handed, so my accuracy was not what it should be. And in my highly-emotional state, I flung the phone with great vigor, and it sailed high over his head, and made a very satisfying clattering sound as it skipped and skittered down the street. I like to believe that his phone survived the scraping impact on the asphalt, and the resulting dings, scratches, and scars now serve as a reminder to him to not be an Olympic-class asshole, each and every time he makes a call.

Interesting Find

Posted: 2nd January 2013 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
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You find all kinds of astonishing crap in a taxi… wasted people drop shit in my car all the time. Among the remarkable assortment of things I have found are more than a dozen cellphones, an equal number of tubes of lipgloss, a giant lump of uncut cocaine, 2 or 3 digital cameras, a 36-count box of condoms, joints, a wristwatch, a baby rattle, packs of gum, umbrellas, credit cards, shoes, beer coozies, cigarette lighters, unopened packs of smokes, as well as half-smoked packs of smokes. One nite some drunken redneck left a 12 pack of beer behind my seat, and I didn’t know it was there. The weird thing is that 2 or 3 passengers after him didn’t mention it to me.

Another nite I had three really wasted guys from out of town that were staying out on the beach and just in town for some concert. The guy in the front seat was checking his Facebook on his iPhone intermittently on the drive, in between bouts of yelling and screaming with his wasted buddies in the back. A $25 dollar ride, a lot of obnoxiousness and assholery, and an unremarkable tip. And at the end of the nite, I found his phone under the front seat and turned it in to dispatch, telling them where I dropped that drunken idiot.

As it happens, the guy that lost his phone was THRILLED that I had found it and turned it into the desk, because he was an over-the-road trucker heading out to Montana or some shit that very day. He pulled up in front of the barn in his big rig to pick it up, and he made a point of leaving 3 crisp twenties for the driver that was honest enough to turn it in.

So a couple nights ago I was cleaning up the car at the end of my shift when I found something new… a knife…

Cheap Chinese product, certainly no Benchmade or Spyderco. It looks like a butterfly knife, but it is actually a spring-loaded folder… it opens in about a half second with a flick of the finger…

What is remarkable about this knife is that I found it OPEN and wedged into the crack of the back seat, directly behind me.

So I can’t help but wonder… what is that? I can think of very few reasons to open a knife in my back seat… but if they did have a good reason, why wouldn’t they close it and return it to their pocket? Could it have been someone thinking of stabbing, slashing, or slitting me, but somehow lost their nerve?

Let’s Advance The Discussion

Posted: 20th December 2012 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
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I have grown to truly loathe liberals in the last decade or two… they are the worst sorts of hypocrites, and frankly, just fucking stupid, and most of them simply can’t be reasoned with. I used to like debating them, thinking that I might, just might, teach them to think for themselves, but honestly, it is just getting old. When confronted with facts, they dither, lie, make up statistics, call people names, and try to change the subject. And the worse part is that they get to vote, and I then have their stupidity thrust upon me, ie shit like the housing collapse (directly the fault of Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Franklin Raines, and their insipid ilk), the re-election of Obama, the introduction of Obamacare, et cetera, et cetera… its just endless. They draw false equivalencies constantly, never acknowledge a double standard, and excuse behavior from their own that no conservative could even approach.

Good example: Jon Corzine is one of these so-called “greedy corrupt banksters” that the “Occupy movement” screams about, and he is definitely in the “one percent”. But when he supposedly “loses” more than a billion dollars of other people’s money, he just shrugs his shoulders and says, “Gee, I dunno…” and that is the end of it… liberals just don’t care. But those same liberals still love him because he raises lots of money for Obama, and they are too busy screeching about “greedy corrupt Republicans that only care about the rich” to notice he just stole more than a billion dollars from people like their Aunt Millie.

Someone once was speaking favorably about the “Occupy movement” in my car, and I told this painfully stupid person that the “Occupy movement” is composed entirely of losers, leftists, posers, and parasites (subtle distinctions, I know), and I will take them seriously when they establish a lice-infested needle-ridden rape camp on Jon Corzine’s front yard, where they are pissing in his hedges and shitting on his Bentley for a month.

So I picked up a couple the other night going home to a well-to-do older neighborhood dotted with large Spanish style homes from the 30’s and 40’s. They are in their late thirties/early forties, well dressed, over-educated, professional people, but a little liquored up after dinner downtown. The guy seems nice and amiable, but his wife seems a little haughty and “bitchy”… maybe it is just the booze, but I doubt it. The radio is on low volume in the background, and the news story is, of course, the Connecticut shooting. The guy says, “Can you believe that shit?”

I said, “Just horrible… I have a toddler at home, and I can’t stand to think about it for more than 30 seconds.”

He says, “The story I heard is he stole the guns from his mother, shot her, and killed all her students, or something like that.”

His wife says, “Another nut with guns… America will never learn. Gabby Giffords, the Batman movie, Virginia Tech, Columbine… but no, the gun nuts and the crazies have to have their precious guns! The government needs to ban all guns tomorrow, or this will happen again.”

I actually spun my head around to look at her to see if she was kidding, but she wasn’t.

I said, “You do understand that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right?”

She says, “That’s my point. If he didn’t have those guns, those 20 children would still be alive! He should not have the guns!”

The guy tries to inject some perspective, reminding her that he was obviously insane and he stole the guns. I said, “That is true… and we have a ban on stealing guns, do we not? We have a ban on shooting your Mom in the face, do we not? We have a ban on murdering toddlers and school teachers, do we not?”

I paused a moment and said, “Oh! Wait! How did this happen? Schools are gun-free zones, are they not? He flagrantly disobeyed the “No Guns Allowed” sign that was no doubt prominently posted at the door!”

My sarcasm did not go unnoticed. She says to her husband, “Oh, great… he’s one of them.”

I said, “One of whom?”

Her voice takes on a sneering tone and she says, “Let me guess… NRA member, right? Romney voter? Sarah Palin fan? Rush Limbaugh listener? Tea Partier, maybe? Am I right?”

I said, “Well, I did vote for Romney, I like Sarah, and I listen to Rush once or twice a week, but not an NRA member, I have never been to a Tea Party event, and I don’t have a “don’t tread on me” flag…”

She is feeling her alcohol now and becoming openly hostile, and her husband is just letting her go… I got the feeling that I accidentally touched a nerve, and he can’t help me now, lest he face her wrath later at home. His best play now is to just shut up.

Maybe mine, too…

She leans forward a little and says with a mildly accusatorial tone, “Do you have a gun?”

I paused a moment, looked at her, and said, “I have several guns.”

“Well, there you go…” she says. “You are part of the problem. Why do you need “several ” guns? Until we can get past this “gun culture” and right-wing gun kooks get to stockpile private arsenals, we will never move forward as a country and end this violence.”

I thought to myself, “move forward”? Like Obama’s campaign slogan? Like MSNBC’s weak-ass tagline? Like Lenin’s propaganda posters? I hate it when liberals use meaningless platitudes and distort language for political ends, but it just rolled off her tongue… a natural part of her verbal lexicon. I can tell that I’m pissing her off, but her moronic viewpoint and bitchy tone is starting to piss me off, too. However, a good customer experience is part of the service I offer, so I thought I would just drop it and try to smooth things over… opinions may vary, agree to disagree, honest differences, all that happy horseshit…

So I said, “Well, I apologize if I offended you, ma’am. I’m really not a right-wing gun kook, just someone who believes in the Second Amendment.”

I was ready to let it go at that moment, I really was… but with great drama and theatric disdain in her voice, she replied, “Oh, great! The fucking Second Amendment! Hello? Can you please come join us in the 21st century? Newsss-Flash: We don’t have muskets anymore, we have assault weapons, machine guns, and cop killer bullets today, OK? Twenty first graders got killed with a machine gun today, OK? Can we please advance the discussion and stop spouting NRA talking points, and do something constructive to get rid of these guns?”

For some reason, the phrase “advance the discussion” really pissed me off. It is a prime example of the perversion of language that liberals always use. I first noticed this phenomenon in the early 90’s, when I noticed that the “Personnel” department at a place I worked suddenly became “Human Resources”. I asked the head of the new “Human Resources” department, “What the fuck is that? “Personnel” refers to the people that work here. Isn’t a resource something that is used up, consumed, burned to create an end product, like coal or lumber or iron ore? We have HUMAN RESOURCES? Really? That sounds terrible…”

As it happens, I didn’t work there long, but that was kinda predictable.

Anyway, back to the liberal idiot in my car. “Advance the discussion”… What does that mean, exactly? Are we to “advance the discussion” past the part where I object to her ill-informed gun control lunacy and “move forward” to the part where the liberal gets her way, no matter how moronic she is?

I said, “Well, let me ask you this… If that lunatic had killed those kids by chaining the doors with bicycle locks and burning down the school with a couple gallons of gasoline, would you be calling for bans on gas and bike locks? Maybe an Assault Lighter Ban?”

“Gun nuts always do this,” she whines. “Change the subject instead of facing the fact that guns kill innocent people every day in this country.”

At this point she’s really pissed me off, and fuck the tip, I feel a compelling need to send her home knowing what an idiot she truly is.

I said, “Advance the discussion? OK, let’s advance the discussion. Let’s say that you get exactly what you want, that President Obama calls a news conference and says that “we can’t wait for Congress to act” and hands down an executive order that says possession of a firearm by a private citizen is a felony, punishable by 20 years in prison. Turn in your guns and bullets to your local Sheriff by January 31st, or you are a felon.”

“That sounds good”, she says.

“That will end the violence, won’t it?” I ask.

“Well, it wouldn’t end violence, but it will certainly be better…”

“No unintended consequences?”

She thinks for a moment and says, “No, as the guns disappear, we will all be safer. Society wins, gun nuts lose.”

I said, “And you don’t see any problem here?”

“No not really… what is the problem?”

I said, “Well, here’s a small problem… I will not disarm.”

She seems puzzled… “What?”

“I will not disarm. I will not give up my weapons just because socialist douchebags like Barak Obama and Diane Feinstein and Michael Bloomberg say I have to. My right to self defense and the protection of my family is God-given, and “the debate is over”, as Al Gore likes to say. I do not consult bureaucrats and petty dictators on that matter. It is non-negotiable. I will not disarm.”

She seems shocked… “Oh, so you are some badass-Rambo type… so you would shoot the cops if they came to arrest you?”

I said, “That is a question no law-abiding American should ever have to ask himself, because in America, no law-abiding citizen should need to worry about his government turning tyrannical and seizing his personal weapons. These people that wish to disarm everyday law-abiding citizens are surrounded by heavily armed and highly trained security personnel 24 hours a day. Of course, these liberal elites don’t need a gun… But you can bet that Obama’s daughters are protected by men with guns right now. Is my daughter somehow less deserving of similar protection? Are Obama’s daughters somehow more important than mine?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Fuck Obama’s daughters. It is curious how the Obama girls don’t go to a fine union-controlled public school in Chicago, where criminals and gangbangers and monsters kill and defile little girls all the time, don’t you think? I remember that Sarah Palin was famously asked what newspapers she reads… well, it seems that Obama sure as hell doesn’t read the Chicago Tribune, because there are dead little girls in that mullet wrapper every Monday morning…”

“And here’s another little problem… if I had to guess, there are MILLIONS of like-minded and law-abiding citizens just like me that would also not disarm… if I had to venture a guess, I would guess twenty million of them… certainly no less than ten…”

She looks baffled, like I’m insane and babbling…

“Soooo… you got ten or twenty million deer hunters and military vets and rural ranchers and conservative urbanites and concealed carriers and security guards and senior citizens and pizza delivery guys and gitterduns from Texas and cranky taxi drivers that are newly-minted felons, are decidedly NOT turning over their guns, and now view their own government as their enemy… what could go wrong?”

She looks incredulous… “So you gun kooks are going to take on the federal government…? The government that has stealth fighters and drones and tanks and atom bombs…?”

I said, “Speaking of reading a newspaper, have you read the paper at all in the last ten years? Newsssss-Flash: there are a few thousand of these illiterate goat herders and child rapists in this place called Afghanistan that have been holding off the most powerful military ever known for better than a decade now, and doing it with Soviet-era AK-47s, which really counts as World War II technology. Atom bombs and drones and stealth fighters have not gotten the job done so far, although we have gotten very good at lighting up Pakistani houses with 20 kids inside with Hellfire missiles from a Predator drone being piloted by some Nintendo jockey in Nebraska, so we got that going for us…”

She doesn’t say anything. A very awkward silence…

“So, is your plan to unleash the US military on peaceful, law-abiding duck hunters and Gulf War vets and backpackers and women with pretty little pink-handled revolvers that don’t want to get raped in a dark parking garage? Would you go after those people with drone strikes and tanks, or would the borderline suicidal task of raiding the homes of ten or twenty million well-armed Americans fall to the local Sheriff and his SWAT team? How many of those ten or twenty million law-abiding Americans are you willing to kill in order to achieve your goal? How many more millions of their wives, children, and neighbors are you willing to let die in the crossfire?”

“And how many police officers will you allow to be killed before you decide this whole idea was a really bad mistake? Most cops are union guys, and I’m guessing you are pro-union… the union bosses wouldn’t like that at all. That would cause a significant drop in monthly dues after a while, doncha think…?”

Stony silence from the back seat… but fuck it, I abandoned this tip a long time ago.

“But then again, after a few hundred cops get slaughtered in unconstitutional gun confiscation raids across the country, I’m guessing the ranks will thin out pretty quick anyway… A lot of cops are ex-military and actually support and believe in the Second Amendment, you know, so they would be useless… But what cop is going to volunteer to serve on gun raid duty when 10 or 20 or 40 men in his department have been killed in gun raids in the last few months? The cops would just stop showing up to work… a positive pandemic of “The Blue Flu”, spreading like wildfire, and getting worse every day…”

Nope. Not a peep back there.

“Of course, with fewer cops on the street, crime will probably soar… that makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, cops get shot all the time now, right? And the cops that remain are slow to respond because there are fewer of them, and they are extremely cautious now… they never go anywhere alone anymore. If there is a rape or a murder or a robbery, it might take a long time to get a response, if a response comes at all… And I’m guessing that lootings would come soon… might as well smash the window at Best Buy and snag a flatscreen… you know the cops aren’t coming…”

Silence.

“After that, the predators will start getting REALLY brazen. That’s when the home invasions begin, and the good citizens that complied with Obama and turned in their guns will suffer horrible attacks… beatings, robberies, gang rapes, murders, mass shootings, every damn day. The local news will just stop reporting them, because they won’t have time in a half hour.”

Not even crickets back there. We pull up in front of their house, and their fare is seventeen bucks and change. To my surprise, the guy gives me a twenty and tells me to keep the change. The woman opens the door and says in a very condescending tone, “Well, thank you for the ride, and the very interesting discussion… you certainly have a unique and special point of view.”

Smarmy to the end…what a smug little liberal bitch. She sounds like a kindergarten teacher trying to explain to me why I shouldn’t shit in my lunchbox, without hurting my feelings. She has no response to a reasonable argument, so she talks to me like I’m a retarded child. I’m pretty sure she could be quickly convinced that someone like me could use some time in a reeducation camp. I said, “I regret we didn’t have more time to talk about the other side of this important gun issue.”

“The other side?” she says.

I said, “Yes, the Progressive side of the equation… we didn’t get to talk about the Democrats.”

She says, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, several key Democrat constituencies have a lot of guns too, you know… young black males, young Mexican males, young Muslim males, disaffected urban males… they have lots of guns, although many of them did not go through the FBI background check I went through as a lawful gun owner. Do you think they are going to turn in all their guns? Do you think all those 95% Obama voters in Chicago that make the streets run red with blood are going to be turning in THEIR stolen guns? And how about all those union goons in Michigan and Wisconsin? I bet those guys have a lot of guns, too. So you see, criminals and other leftists add at least another couple million guns to the mix… Good times, good times…”

Her face looks like her skin is drawn too tightly across her skull.

“It’s funny…. Liberals always say that booze and pot prohibition don’t work, but they somehow think Obama gun prohibition will? How fucking stupid can you possibly be? The newly created black market for guns in America is going to be staggering, and will probably dwarf the GDP of most European countries. And if having a gun is a felony anyway, I bet people will opt for serious, heavy-duty, fully automatic, high power weaponry… the machine guns that are already illegal… the shit that shoots through schools…”

She looks enraged, she’s heard enough of this shit, and she’s getting out of the car. Right fucking now.

She slams the door and as she storms off, I say, “Hey, I’m just sayin’… after watching 40 or 50 years of The War On Poverty and The War On Drugs, I can’t wait to see what The War On Guns looks like…”

Vignette: The Break Up

Posted: 16th December 2012 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting, and sometimes an object. -Wikipedia

Just when ya start getting a little jaded and think you have pretty much seen it all when it comes to driving a taxi, this job swats you in the back of the head and says, “Hey! Bet you didn’t see that coming…”

So it is a half hour before bar close, and I pick up two gay guys downtown that look very “serious”… not threatening or angry looking, but “intense” and not smiling. They get in the back, and they want to go to a popular gay bar that is about a five minute drive away. They are whispering tersely to each other for a few moments, and then I hear the taller one say, “I can’t do the Christmas thing with your family, Willy, I’m sorry…”

The shorter guy has tears welling up in his eyes, and they start whispering again. I recognize this… I’ve been here. They are breaking up…

In my car…

25 minutes before bar close…

Fuck…!

I’m just two minutes away from their destination, and I don’t have any ill will for these guys, but I just can’t have this in my car right now. I pull into the parking lot of the bar, the taller guy throws me a twenty for a ten dollar fare, and tells the shorter guy, “I’m sorry. It’s over. I can’t do it. Go home, Willy.”

The taller guy is tearing up, and the shorter guy is openly sobbing now. They are just sitting back there whispering to each other and crying. I gotta get outta here…

I’ve had a few of the aggressive breakups, where the doors are slammed and the “fuck you’s” are exchanged and you spend the next few years talking shit about each other… but the sad breakups are the worst, and I’ve had a few of those, too. So here I am, torn by my empathy of how sad this was for both of these guys, offset by the fact that all the bars are closing in nineteen minutes, and I gotta go.

So I said, “Guys, I know you are having a moment here, but I really have to go.” The taller guy apologized and got out, with the shorter guy following him and crying and telling me to wait just two minutes…

Fuck that… long ride or short, I don’t want a drunk and distraught bawling gay man as my last fare of the nite. I took off, and let them have the privacy they so obviously needed…

Awwwwwwwk-ward….

Tragedy

Posted: 15th December 2012 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized

Image stolen from somewhere… whoever created this graphic has neatly summarized something that I have been saying for 30 years. Some people are just fucking broken… lemons… factory rejects… if they were Ford Tauruses and not human beings, they would have been red-tagged and compacted before they ever left the plant.

I just think about my punkin’ asleep in the next room, and I can’t imagine what those parents are going through.

Bless them all.

Vignette: The Angry Red Penis

Posted: 5th December 2012 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting, and sometimes an object. -Wikipedia

I picked up a guy the other nite at an apartment complex, where he was visiting a friend and now going home, about a ten dollar fare. No red flags about the guy, nothing weird or creepy, he wasn’t even drinking… just some idle chit-chat on the drive. He mentioned he worked at Wal-Mart and complained about his part-time hours and his pay, and he mentioned that he always has to work Sundays and never gets to watch football any more. We get to his place, he pays his fare, he tips me two or three bucks, and he heads into his house… an imminently forgettable passenger.

Except…

About an hour after I dropped him off, my phone makes the new message chime, and there is a truly obscene text message, detailing how the sender wanted to perform all sorts of perverse and salacious acts upon me, and attached to the message was a photo of an extremely turgid, red, and very angry looking penis.

I had no idea who it was from, and I looked through my phone history and discovered it was from the Wal-Mart guy who I had called when I arrived at the apartments an hour earlier. Like I said, I got no weird vibe from him at all… he didn’t seem gay, and certainly didn’t seem like someone who would snap a photo of his throbbing and tumescent erection and text it to a stranger…

Really? Does this ever work? I mean, I can’t imagine that anyone would start their engine and head back to his house after getting that text, but maybe I’m too hetero or too prudish. I was revolted and repelled. But, I guess it is like those emails from that Prince in Nigeria that needs your help getting 14 million dollars transferred to your bank account… you would never see that if it had not worked at least once…

A Thought On ObamaCare…

Posted: 2nd December 2012 by Taxi Hack in Uncategorized
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Had a woman named “Vera” in my car the other nite that mentioned that she was in town from the Boston area visiting her Mom, and was very pleased that Obama had won reelection. When I asked her why, she said that she believed Obama cares about people, as illustrated by the new healthcare takeover. She seemed like a nice enough lady, but just painfully uninformed. And she seemed truly puzzled that I was not similarly enamored with this law… as we are pulling up to her hotel, she asks me what part of the healthcare law I don’t like.

I tell her, “Well, I dunno… the unconstitutional part that compels and requires me to enter into a legally binding contract to purchase a government-approved product that I may not want or may not need, and one that might violate my First Amendment rights really sucks for me… as well as the economic catastrophe this will be… and the terrible, terrible human toll…”

She looks baffled. She has paid her fare but is not getting out of the car. She says, “Human toll? What on Earth are you talking about?”

I said, “You said you were visiting your Mom… how old is she?”

She says, “She’s 63, last September…”

“In good health?” I ask.

“Great health! She plays tennis 3 days a week.”

I paused for a second and made sure she had solid eye contact with me. “Did you get any damage from Hurricane Sandy?”

She replied, “No, that was all down in New York and New Jersey…. that was terrible…”

I said, “People are still in the cold, with little food or water… And it has been three weeks. You are right… just terrible…”

Vera nodded and agreed emphatically that it was indeed a terrible state of affairs in New Jersey… how can those people not have food and water and heat and electricity?

But then I said, “But let’s go back to ObamaCare… I wish your Mom well, Vera, and I would never, ever wish any harm to befall her… but imagine that next week, after you fly home, that your Mom has a massive heart attack and drops flat on her back on the tennis court, clutching her chest and writhing in agony. She’s dying, Vera… RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW. And only immediate action by top-notch cardiac specialists assisted by well trained and highly motivated hospital support staff will be able to save her life.”

In just the few seconds that pass as I am saying that, Vera’s face becomes contorted… at first she seems shocked by that image and my language, and then she looks like she is seriously angry with me for even conjuring up that mental picture.

And I said, “Congratulations, Vera! Your Mom’s healthcare is now controlled by the very same government that can’t get bottled water and baloney sandwiches to fucking New Jersey in three weeks… and YOU voted for that…”