Road Retorts Re-Revisited

What I’m about to share with you has, without a doubt, completely revolutionized the way I see traffic and roads and life forever and ever and ever. 

It’s like that day when I first discovered that mittens are better than gloves for the same reason sleeping bags are better than individual padded bags for each one of your limbs. 

Or it’s like when Christopher Columbus went on a holiday to go see India but instead found a humongous uninhabited island that may or may not have already been inhabited and that meant REAL ESTATE, BABY. 

Or it’s like that time when you first purchased an iPod and you knew it would totally revolutionize the way you exercise, except this time you won’t end up being disappointed in a few months when you realize you never used it and you haven’t worked out at all, but you couldn’t even if you wanted to because your earbuds are lost and the cover is scratched and the battery won’t charge all the way anymore.  

[It’s like that.]

This is crazy cool, so buckle your seat belts. 

This phenomenon is called The Zipper Merge. 

How many times have you been in traffic and you see that the lane you’re in is ending, so you immediately go into the next lane, and then some douchecopter goes speeding past you in the ending lane, and gets a much better spot a half mile ahead? Don’t you just want to punch that guy? 

Well, you’re going to feel pretty foolish for wanting to punch such a genius, because that douchecopter was DOING THE RIGHT THING. 

That’s right. When you change lanes early, it makes traffic back up much more quickly. The correct way to merge in this situation is to use the extra lane until it ends and then take turns merging at the front. Like a ZIPPER.  Did I just blow your mind?

Don’t believe me? Watch the official MN DOT video.

[I know that some of you aren’t from Minnesota or even the United States, but I believe that The Zipper Merge could transmogrify this planet’s hectic roadways into peaceful zippy oases.]

And so I have adopted this new method of merging and let me tell you: It’s liberating. I wish I could zipper merge all the time. I want to shout it from the rooftops. Just think of all the time I’m saving while legally cruising along that empty, ending lane. 

But sometimes the world does not accept revolutionaries such as myself, which brings me to my most recent Road Retort:

The Broken Zipper

This is the guy that doesn’t allow you to merge because he thinks your Zipper Merging is really just a glorified budge. This is the conversation that usually goes on between my eyes and his...

HIM: Oh no you don’t! 

ME: But sir, please–

HIM: No! You have to suffer like the rest of us!

ME: But it’s totally legal–

HIM: This is AMERICA. Don’t think you can get special treatment.

ME: That’s not what I’m trying to do!

HIM: Kids these days are so entitled.

ME: No, I’m doing this correc–

HIM: When I was young we didn’t even have merge lanes. Lanes just ended with brick walls. It was move it or lose it 

back then. Literally

ME: Well now it’s different, sir. We even have signs warning us three-fourths of a mile beforehand.

HIM: You kids and your technology...

ME: Technology, like a road gradually getting thinner?

HIM: ...and your iPods and cellular phones and Tamagachis. It’s all too much for me.

ME: Yes, but zippers. You understand zippers, right?

HIM: Nope. All my clothes are tied together with hair and spit. 

ME: Okay, just go ahead. The next person will let me in. 

HIM: GOD BLESS AMERICA.

And The Broken Zipper drives off convinced that justice was served.

Even though you’re hurt temporarily, my dear Zipper Merger, let not your heart be troubled for long. For you know that the Zipper Merge is the correct way, the true way, and if everyone subscribed to this way of life, we would live in peace and harmony. 

I’ve created some signs that could help spread the word. I expect to see these on t-shirts and billboards for years to come. 

And this is why.

I must never watch nature documentaries on National Geographic Channel again. It’s quite rare that wander over to that section of channels because the only thing I usually find on there is The Dog Whisperer. And after twelve too many hours of six too many Sunday marathons of that show I just avoid the channel altogether. 

Every now and then, however, I stumble upon one of their nature documentaries and end up watching obsessively for their entire two-hour run. The first time this happened was a few years ago when I watched one special about an evaporating water hole in the desert. The water hole started as a bustling ecosystem with alligators, deer, monkeys, and birds happily coexisting and splashing together, but soon enough the pond began to shrink and that’s when things got effed up. 

Monkeys started fighting with the alligators over the limited water supply, and everyone was screaming and the alligators were chomping off everyone’s heads and one of the monkeys broke his arm while playing a game of tug-of-war with an alligator using his baby as a rope, and then there was a shot of a mother monkey trying to prod awake the lifeless body of one of her babies and. I. CRIED. 

Soon the monkeys either died or went searching for other water supplies (which meant they were probably just going to die), and the birds flew away, leaving a lone alligator in the disappearing water hole. The pond soon turned to mud, in which the alligator got stuck after awhile. At the end of the documentary the once lush watering hole was just a dry, flat area, and the camera zoomed in on a tiny crack in the dirt, where you could see the stubborn alligator, barely alive, forever trapped in his former home. 

I turned off the television depressed and a little claustrophobic.

So you’d think that last night, when the new NatGeo documentary The Last Lions came on, I would have watched something else. But apparently my love for animals and beautiful film making makes me forget that I’m probably going to cry at some point during the next two hours. 

The documentary was like all those movies about a single mom who has to overcome adversity to take care of her children, except with lions. It starts off with the Mommy Lion happily hanging out with the Daddy Lion and her three cubs. BUT THEN THEY’RE ATTACKED BY SOME ANGRY LIONS FROM THE NORTH WHO WERE FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES BY THE RELENTLESS ENCROACHMENT OF MAN. They were all yelling and swiping and biting at each other and became covered in blood, and I was all...

But the fight is done. Mommy Lion has a cut on her shoulder, and she's scratched out the eye of another lioness. Daddy lion is all banged up, missing an eye, bleeding like crazy, and limping. When the sun rises the next morning he limps away to a quiet place, lies down, and does that heartbreaking thing that lions do in these documentaries: he just chooses to die right then and there. 

[Notice this is still the only way I know how to draw a lion.]

Mommy Lion then takes her three cubs and begins to travel south so they can avoid the evil pride who invaded their home. She can’t find any food, and the cubs begin to go hungry. Each time she tries to hunt, hyenas come and try to kill the cubs, forcing Mommy Lion to come and scare them away. And each time the cubs are threatened, it feels like I have a bowling ball in my stomach. I become all sweaty and tense, white-knuckling the armrests of my chair. 

They find a herd of water buffalo and the Mommy Lion tries to take some down, but she’s not successful. While she’s off trying something else, the evil buffalo go and trample the spot where the cubs are hiding.

When Mommy Lion comes back, she finds that all her cubs have disappeared. She goes searching and finds only one of them, the girl, who’s fine but scared. Then a some more freaking buffalo come and attack them, and Mommy Lion tries to save the baby, but when she finally gets her out of there, the cub’s back is broken, leaving her back legs limp behind her. Mommy Lion carries her away, tests out her lifeless legs, and begins walking. The cub walks alongside her mother on her front legs, but soon Mommy Lion begins to go ahead of her, and then they’re ten feet away, then thirty. The baby stops, and cries for Mommy Lion, and Mommy Lion looks back, but then turns her head away, and her face contorts as if she’s about to cry. 

At this point I’m bawling.

I don’t even want to go on. Right now I’m in the same place I was when I stumbled upon Marley & Me on TBS and I was ruined for an entire week. I get choked up just thinking about it. 

Here’s the last half hour: Mommy Lion gets angry and charges into the middle of the buffalo herd without any strategy at all, fails, and because of this the mean lion pride from before see her as a leader and they all reconcile, and THEN MOMMY LION FINDS ONE OF HER OTHER CUBS, healthy as can be, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I’m relieved, albeit shaken. 

No more nature documentaries for me. Give me a gory human-slashing flick any day, but it’ll take a while for me to recover from the paraplegic lion cub. 

I hath drunk from thy healing waters, Princess Owatonna

My parents are relatively trustworthy people. However, when their college friends come over for the weekend and storytime rolls around after a few beers/dirty martinis, I think I have a valid reason to trust them less.  This is what went down that night, as they recounted their many visits to the guys’ hometown, Owatonna, Minnesota:

MOM’S FRIEND: Oh God, did they ever make you drink from the Owatonna Princess?

DAD: Those are some healing waters, right there!

MOM: Oh yes. I had to drink from the Princess.

DAD’S FRIEND: And she was healed of all her infirmities!

[They all laugh. I stare. The conversation shifts.]

ME: Whoa, hang on. Wait a second. What is this Princess fountain?

DAD: You’ve never drunk from the Owatonna Princess fountain?

ME: Nope.

DAD: Yes you have! Of course you’ve drunk from the Owatonna Princess! You’re my son, and Schroeder boys drink from the Princess.

DAD’S FRIEND: Healing waters!

[Smirks. Snickers.]

ME: No, I haven’t.

DAD: Are you sure?

ME: I swear by the Princess herself.

DAD & HIS FRIEND: SWEAR NOT BY THE PRINCESS!  

MOM’S FRIEND: Ugh. I refused to drink from the Owatonna Princess. It was too gross and I’m not that kind of lady.

DAD: Well you need to. How do you expect to ever experience the fullness of joy without drinking from the healing Owatonna Princess Fountain?

DAD’S FRIEND: [Stands, gesturing towards heaven.]

O, Princess Owatonna,

one sip of thy cool flowing waters

is all that I desire

…or need.

Bless me with thy watery beauty

that falls freely from thy willowy locks…

I need consume nothing more!

[They snicker and punch each other in the arm. A knucks bump is shared.]

I would say that I had reason to be concerned. Though they very well could have been talking about an actual fountain somewhere in Owatonna, this was beginning to sound like either a reference to some bizarre drug experience or a disgusting sexual encounter. NEITHER OF WHICH I WANTED TO HEAR ABOUT.  (I wouldn’t even include them on my other sex blog.)

Needless to say, I dropped the subject, assuming this was some sort of deranged local Owatonnean practice or rite-of-passage that I really didn’t want to hear about.

Weeks pass and I forget about the Princess. On one weekend my dad and I take a road trip to visit my grandpa, who lives in Owatonna, for his birthday. We eat angelfood cake and the conversation mysteriously shifts to, you guessed it, the Princess Owatonna Fountain.

DAD: Can you believe Brian has never drunk from the Princess?

MY AUNT: YOU MUST DRINK FROM THE PRINCESS!

DAD: Healing waters, right there!

ME: You know about the Princess Fountain too?

MY AUNT: Of course! It’s the very heartbeat of Owatonna history and culture! You have not LIVED until you have drunk from the Princess. 

By the smirks on their faces, I can tell that they’re putting me on. This is obviously some sort of inside joke that all Owatonneans have about some kind of frat-house initiation that they all do to outsiders which ultimately ends with the visitor embarrassed and sore, possibly dripping wet and feeling a little violated.

DAD: I’ll take you to the Princess before we leave today.

ME: Like sh** you will.

DAD: Hope you brought your camera!

ME: I’m uncomfortable.

DAD: You could blog about this!

ME: IF I live to make it back to my computer, which I’ll probably use to tell the authorities about you instead.

DAD: Can’t you trust your father?

ME: Not if he’s from Owatonna.

DAD: This is non-negotiable.

ME: I need to make some calls.

Before we left town, Dad drove me to a park with a stream running through it and he said, “There she is. Princess Owatonna.” And I saw this:

[Click to embiggen so you can read THE EPIC LEGEND.]

Princess Owatonna is REAL. And it’s an actual fountain. From mineral springs, which do have healthful and sometimes healing qualities.

I took a drink. It smelled like sulfur and tasted slightly of metal. I’ve drunk from natural mineral springs before in Bad Hamburg, Germany and I’ve had much worse—warm waters that tasted like liquid sand or human sweat, which were apparently wonderfully good for my health and well-being. This, however, was cool and refreshing, though a little mineraly, and I have no idea how it cured a dying Native American princess. Frankly, I was just happy that this experience didn’t leave me tarred and feathered.

So how about that? My parents are relatively trustworthy people.

I just really like pocket doors, okay?

I’ve had to say that so many times in the past couple days. All because of this story… 

So I was at Christie’s last week, and since we had a lot of errands to run that day, we decided in the morning that I would use her parent’s master bathroom to shower and she would shower in the other bathroom in order to save time. 

Routine procedure. We’d done this before. However, soon everything went wrong.

You see, Christie’s parents’ bathroom is one room with a shower, Jacuzzi tub, and sink, and there’s a smaller toilet room inside with its own pocket door.

And I love pocket doors.

I think it’s cool how they can just disappear into the wall making that cool sliding noise, and have their own special hook-like locks that are different than other locks. I also like how, though the door has handles on the side, to pull it out of the wall you must push on the little hook lock and pull it with your finger to close it. My grandparents had one at their lake home, and I used to play with it all the time. Pocket doors are like little extra walls that are actually doors that appear like Inspector Gadget’s arms. 

I just really like pocket doors, okay?

 

So after I turned on the shower to let the water warm up, I decided to take a little wee in the tiny toilet room. And of course I closed the pocket door and locked it. After I had flushed, I went to unlatch the pocket door and it was stuck. The little knobbity-switch thing didn’t turn all the way.

It took me only a few seconds to realize the gravity of the situation.

"1. I'm trapped in a 3x5 foot toilet room.

2. I locked the door to the main bathroom.

3. The windows are closed.

4. The shower is on.

5. Christie is showering elsewhere.

6. No one else is home."

The best thing about this situation was that I still had clothes on.

I was trapped in the bathroom.

With the heat in the toilet room rising because of the now steaming shower, I began to use my escape game skills to find a way out. Unfortunately, I found no screwdrivers (escape games always have screwdrivers) or secret compartments opened with a code I found written on the side of a bookshelf. (This reference is only relevant to the ten people in the world who actually play escape games…Sorry, the rest of you.) The only tool-like things available were Christie’s mom’s jewelry, and I considered trying to use some of it to unscrew the screws on the handle, but when I imagined her mom having to call in firemen to break down her bathroom doors with axes to get me out, I was thinking that coming out with a handful of bent and broken jewelry would probably not be the best idea. So I continued thinking. 
 

[Only the first five seconds of this video are relevant, but for some reason I couldn't help but put it up. Call me adorable.]

And then it came to me. The wall opposite the pocket door faced the main entryway in their house. So I started knocking. And knocking and knocking until Christie’s dog started barking. I felt like Bear Grylls when he sees a boat in the distance from the deserted island he’s stranded on, which means he can board the boat, or you know, be picked up by the Discovery Channel helicopter...either way, the end credits are rolling.

After about fifteen minutes of knocking (during which Christie has admitted to taking a long shower, reading, and cleaning her room because I was taking so long in the “shower”) Christie finally came down to yell at her dog and then realized the bizarre The Tell-Tale Heart-like knocking coming from the other side of the wall.

She knocked back. I sent another knock.

CHRISTIE: Brian?

BRIAN: knock knock knock knock knock

CHRISTIE: BRIAN?!

BRIAN: Christie! You’ll never guess what happened…

CHRISTIE: What?

BRIAN: I’m trapped in the little toilet room because the pocket door’s lock is broken.

CHRISTIE: (trying and failing to open the locked bathroom door) BRIAN!! Why did you lock it?

BRIAN: I just really like pocket doors, okay?

CHRISTIE: But the other door’s locked and the windows are closed and the shower’s on.

BRIAN: Thanks, but I have already established that.

CHRISTIE: I don’t know what to do!

BRIAN: Well, are there hinges on your side?

CHRISTIE: No.

BRIAN: Are there screws on the handle?

CHRISTIE: No.

BRIAN: Bollocks.

While Christie was trying to unlock the door with a bobby pin, she called her mom (which made me glad I didn’t use her jewelry). Hearing one side of the conversation, I remember Christie saying, “I asked him that too…I guess he just really likes pocket doors.”

Christie’s mom then came home with a family friend/handyman who took a coat hanger and unlocked the bathroom door and then used a screwdriver to unlock the pocket door, revealing me, sweaty, red-faced, and unshowered in the doorway.

I would love to say, “And then I woke up,” but this was no dream, folks. I had been in there for an hour.

That whole time-saving thing that Christie and I had planned was kind of ruined at that point. And I still hadn’t showered.

I just really like pocket doors, okay?

UPDATE: My Little Experiment

Okay, so the “Celebrity Names in the Title“ thing didn’t work. I was actually a little surprised. I was even more surprised the Google didn’t blacklist me for keyword spamming. That would have SUCKED.

I mean, why would someone whose entire existence is dedicated to gaining more followers and ultimately reaching Blogvana by receiving Blog of Note or something RISK ALL OF THAT BY SPAMMING HIS TITLE?

I walk a thin line.

(That last sentence is the tough way of saying “I had no idea that blacklisting was even a word until a friend of mine told me about it.”)

I don’t even know what I would do if I was blacklisted. It would probably begin with me updating the Faceplace and the Tweetybox multiple times with panicky messages like,

“DON’T WORRY, MY BLOG STILL EXISTS. YOU JUST CAN’T SEARCH IT RIGHT NOW. FURTHER BULLETINS AS EVENTS WARRANT.”*

Or something like,

“AAAUGHH MY BLOG HAS BEEN BLACKLISTED, BUT I PROMISE I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING BAD. IT WAS A MISTAKE. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO UNDO SOMETHING LIKE THIS?? YOU CAN STILL VISIT IT AT brian-schroeder.blogspot.com!!”**

And everyone on Facebook would probably read it and say, “He has a blog?”

After much Googling, deliberating, and drinking worrying, I would probably decide that it would be best to fashion a sincere, handwritten letter to the people at Google. 

(click to enlargigate.)

Something like that. The good news is, Popcorn Day is in the clear, even though my experiment failed. People must just really like that Scrabble post. Bizarre. 

*Wow. That's the second time I've referenced Calvin and Hobbes in my recent posts.
**Yep. I just linked to my own blog within my blog. It has the same infinite effect that looking into two facing mirrors does.  

I have this thing...

...And this thing is a profound respect for the scripts of movies and television shows. I like to hear every word. Every word, dammit, because if it’s a good show, it’s because they have really talented writers who write really clever words with hopefully with some subtle hints or jokes that one wouldn’t catch if one wasn’t listening very intently.

Here’s the deal, though. I also have friends who like to say things. And the things they say usually mean something to me so I like to hear them as well.

So let’s say that I’m watching one of my DVDs of Arrested Development, a cancelled show that had some of the cleverest and most subtle writing I’ve ever seen so of course I don’t want to miss any of it, and someone comes up to me to tell me something. They start talking, and I’ll pause it to listen to them. And then this happens…

Friend: So I was…

**I push pause**

Friend: Oh. Sorry. I can go if you want. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Me: What? No, it’s fine. What’s up?

Friend: Well, I’ll make it fast—

Me: You don’t have to. I paused it.

Friend: O…kay…

And they tell a really quick, abbreviated story, which leaves me feeling like a total douchecopter.   

 

[It's actually pretty interesting that the way I wrote "click" in this picture kind of looks like "dick", because that's what I end up feeling like.] 

After that happens once, this is what happens from now on…

Friend: So I was…

**I push pause**

Friend: Oh, haha. Brian always has to pause it. Haha.

Me: Well, of course. I want to hear what you say. 

Friend: Awkward! Okay, I’ll make it quick.

Me: No, you don’t have to. I paused it. It’s fine. I don’t see what the problem is…

Friend: O…kay…

And another abbreviated story! What is this!

When did the pause button start meaning, “Ugh you’re wasting my time with your incessant talking and I just want to watch my f***ing show”?

This is a what pause actually means. If you look really close on your pause button you can read this: 

Sometimes you have to be sentimental to stop people from pissing you off.

Steve Carell: Secrets from His Butler (me)

I was visiting home for the weekend, which is quite a convenient place to get the flu. The night went badly; I was achy and I had horrible chills. This kept me from ever fully sleeping, so I stayed stuck in a kind of half-awake half-asleep limbo for most of the night. What made it more interesting, though, is that I was dreaming.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve dreamed about Steve Carell. He was actually Steve Carell in this one, not Michael Scott from The Office. And with quite a different economic status, too. In this dream, he needed help taking care of his humongous, gaudy, centuries-old mansion adorned with dusty paintings and bear rugs, and I was lucky enough to be hired as live-in butler. 

 

[I would do this constantly.]

Now here’s something that not a lot of people know, but I do because I was his personal butler: Steve Carell, when he comes home, actually becomes three very large, very old rich women in satin bathrobes with golden fringe. 

Hard to believe, I know.

He—well, they, feminine—is/are less funny, too. They just lie in their lavish beds adorned with overstuffed down comforters with floral patterns and numerous pillows with tassels on them, and moan while stroking their a**hole Pomeranians, at least twelve to a bed.

My job was to run from room to room to room taking care of the massive moaning triplets.

But remember what I said before: I was half awake the entire time, but still dreaming. As the butler, they way I would tend to these three dames was to lie on my left side, my back, or my right side. And at the moment of successfully repositioning, I would become one of them, lie uncomfortably in my extravagant bed and moan in influenzalic agony. After tending to one for a while, I would switch positions to become another, and then another. 

 

=

 

 

=

 

[All Pomeranians are a**holes.  They're the only kind of dog I would be willing to strangle. Just looking at my drawing makes me all, "Pffft. A**hole.]

 

 =

So in a way I was those three whale-like women. And in some bizarre, fluish way…I was Steve Carell.

Note to Mom and Dad: Listen, can we get some NyQuil up in here so I don’t have to become morbidly obese triplets when I’m sick at home? They’re really a bare to take care of. And bitchy.