A few months ago I rented the Bill Maher documentary “Religulous”. It’s a humorous romp through organized religion and exposes some of the extreme fringe along with the usual suspects we are already used to. Bill says in the film that his intention is not to convert viewers to atheism but that he simply has questions that religious leaders and scholars can’t adequately answer. Some of the things he brought up concerned the origins of the various stories and parables contained the King James Holy Bible. Like other religious prophets established in history prior to the Holy Bible who shared Pagan rituals like birthdays on December twenty-fifth, virgin births, healing of the sick, walking on water, and baptism by a man named John, etc. While Bill’s people didn’t do their research well enough and got quite a few of their facts completely wrong the movie did cause me to want to learn more. Searching the Internet I came across an e-book by John Armstrong called “God vs. the Bible”. It can be read for free online or purchased in a bound edition. It looked interesting and seemed to offer answers to some of the questions raised by Maher so I started reading. And I just couldn’t stop reading it until I finished every single page. I was a practicing Protestant Christian for over forty years. This book has changed my mind! Whether you are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish or follow Buddha, Krishna or any other religious faith your beliefs will all change if you read this book. Unless you are willing to say out loud that you just can’t think for yourself and prefer to go against all rational thought and scientific knowledge blindly following your current religious leaders, everything you have ever known or been taught about faith based religion will simply fall away after reading this remarkable text. If you think the Holy Bible was written by men inspired by God and is the infallible word of God then you need to read this book. If you wonder why Jesus Christ healed the blind and lame but never restored any missing limbs then you need to read this book. If you wonder why there is so much solid evidence of the existence of the Roman leader Julius Caesar but not one iota of evidence for the existence of the son of man God called the Lord Jesus Christ then you need to read this book. I truly believe that this one book could cause the end of all established religion the world over. So I challenge you to quell those nagging doubts eating at the back of your mind and read this book. But at the same time I warn you… in so doing you shall also lose your religion…

God vs. the Bible

Many years ago one of my parent’s neighbors was a candy salesman. Actually he was a travelling candy salesman with broad area routes throughout the southeast. He apparently did very well as they lived in an upscale suburban neighborhood in a fairly large house. Most of his samples were shipped to his home via UPS or FedEx but occasionally they arrived delivered by the United States Postal service. He had one of those great big mail boxes so it would accommodate large parcels. Sometimes if he or his wife were not home at the time, during the summer months and one of those sample boxes got schlepped into that metal box the candy would melt and leave behind a soupy cardboard mess. Back then my parents had an old hound dog mutt that had made her home in their garage named Roni. When she first showed up at the house she was skittish like she had been abused by previous owners. The dog really was adopted by my sister’s dog Pepper who sometimes stayed there (get it? “Pepper & Roni”). Pepper fed the stray by allowing her to eat her food. She started out as skin and bones and quickly gained weight (partly related to this story which I will explain shortly). Talk about an animal that was grateful for being accepted and taken care of… She knew she was saved! That dog was as sweet and loving as she could possibly be. Anyway the candy salesman’s wife also had a sincere affinity for Roni and although at my parent’s house she was a yard dog the neighbors let her come inside their home whenever she meandered over for a visit. We later found out that on those hot days when the candy samples melted in the mail box the neighbor would feed the ruined candy to Roni. Not sure why this didn’t seem to adversely affect her since everyone knows you aren’t supposed to feed dogs chocolate! She lapped it up and packed on the pounds and was as happy as a fat old stray dog ever could be. She lived there almost nine years which is not bad for a large dog since we never really knew how old she was when she came. One day near Easter the neighbor had a shipment of chocolate rabbits that melted into clumps. Not wanting to throw them away and not seeing Roni around anywhere she came up with the recipe for “Rabbit Pie”. Well we think she came up with it anyway. It’s really simple to make and tastes quite good. I made some last evening for our family Christmas party. The ingredients are as follows;

Six regular size Hershey Bars,
Two ready made Graham Cracker Crusts (or make your own),
and a large container (16oz.) of “Cool Whip” whipped topping.

Break up the Hershey bars and heat them in the microwave oven for about a minute (power varies so adjust as necessary — don’t over cook them just melt them). Let the chocolate cool but not harden then mix it well with the whipped topping. Pour the mix into the two pie crusts and let them congeal in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. The dessert is just right in small slices and will impress anyone you serve it to. And it won’t turn you into a fat old dog unless you eat it too often!

Saturday night my wife and I watched “Megafault” one of Brittany Murphy’s last movies. We were astonished by her performance or lack there of in the film. Obviously a very low budget made for television bomb that should be avoided if possible. Terrible writing, awful CGI, constant over usage of the same footage and backgrounds and simply horrible direction produced this rotten egg of a totally unwatchable flick. My wife commented on Brittany’s strange appearance. Her skin color seemed to be jaundiced and her hair looked dry and unstyled. I noted that her acting wasn’t anywhere near the same level we were used to seeing in her performances from notable films like “Clueless”, “Girl, Interrupted” and “Just Married”. It was like she had forgotten how to act! Instead of showing the audience what she was thinking (something she was so very good at) she was just avoiding looking at the camera. My wife said it seems like she might be on drugs. We were deeply saddened to learn that the very next morning this wonderful talented actress had died from an apparent heart attack at the too young age of 32. I checked her profile on the Internet Movie Database and was glad to see that she has five films in post production still to be released. I only hope that she can redeem our memories of her work and didn’t give an uninspiring performance in the remaining movies. It would be a terrible waste if “Megafault” was her legacy…

Sleep glorious sleep. That which we all crave, some more than others. Sleep scientists recommend eight hours per day for optimum health and well being. Most adults are lucky to get four to six hours on weeknights because of job constraints, stress, bratty kids, etc. And yet scads of adults (and even some children) absolutely love to sleep. Most people given the chance would gladly sleep the days away adrift in magical dream states adventuring, flying and experiencing wondrous lives normally just out of their reach. William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet’s Soliloquy;

“To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come…”

Finally got to see “Batman: The Dark Knight” and still puzzling over Australian actor Heath Ledger’s death supposedly caused by his marvelous performance in this movie. He was so deeply affected by his depiction of the psychotic Joker character that months later he was unable to sleep and accidently overdosed on a deadly combination of sleeping pills and antidepressants. His portrayal is astounding and if you haven’t yet seen the movie it comes highly recommended. However, was it cause enough for an active, intelligent mind like that of Ledger’s to disturb one so completely that overwhelming insomnia ensues? American actor Jack Nicholson played the same character with equal aplomb in Tim Burton’s “Batman” as well as other mental as anything characters like Randle Murphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Jack Torrance in “The Shining”. And yet he has stayed grounded and removed from his dark side. One of the greatest actors alive today Gary Oldman (the epitome of what James Dean would have become had he survived his twenty’s) has played an incredible array of troubled characters and despite first hand abuse by Ledger’s Joker (on film only of course) remains viable and active. Lack of sleep will definitely twist ones thought patterns. (My kids let me sleep about two hours per night if I’m really lucky!) This very thing led me to ponder what the ultimate job of jobs might be. After much consideration the acme of all job positions presented itself with glaring evidence. No, its not anything you might think of as the penultimate job like Rock Star, Movie Star, Sports Hero or Astronaut. The job doesn’t have anything to do with pay scales or the benefits of fame and fortune. As matter of fact (if the occupation truly exists) it probably doesn’t pay very much at all. Certainly any fame garnered would be in the form of a small reference in some obscure scientific text book. No, the supreme best job is all about killing two birds with one stone. The job is a “Sleep Research Guinea Pig”. You would get paid for sleeping. You would not set your alarm clock to awaken at some ungodly hour of the morning to remind you to get ready for work. You would not feel tired after working all day (or rather all night). Instead you would both sleep and work at the same time. This means that you would gain an extra eight hours of free time each and every work day. You could party all the time! You’d see your night shift friends during the day. And your day shift friends during the evening. Then it’s off to work at night. It wouldn’t matter one bit if you came in drunk or stoned because that would only serve to enhance your job performance. It truly is the ultimate job. Everyone would be envious! Even the Rock Stars, Movie Stars, Sports Heroes and Astronauts…

December 21, 2012. It’s the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine. Apparently the Mayan carvers of the Aztec calendar stone ran out of room for additional hieroglyphs and ended their calendar on the vernal equinox Winter solstice in the year of our lord 2012. In so doing they inadvertently created yet another end of the world predilection for future human speculation. O M G, let’s all run out and jump off the Golden Gate bridge. Searching the Internet for end time prophecies produces numerous entries down though recorded history of errant pastors and religious leaders the world over wrongly predicting the end of times. I was thinking about this when it occurred to me that what they were really doing with their predictions was effectively impeding the end of time..! The Christian bible says in Mathew 24:35-36

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”

Translated into layman’s terms that verse means that Not Any Living Being natural or supernatural except GOD himself can or will know the exact date of the planet earth’s destruction i.e. the way it ended with Noah’s Arc and the Great Flood in the Genesis story. With that fully understood. My idea here is, that as long as someone is willing to predict the end and give it an exact date then the end can’t happen on the date he or she predicted because that would mean that he or she (any natural living being) actually knew the date and time thereby nullifying the biblical truth and rendering as false the entire Christian belief system. If any verse in the bible is found false then nothing in that bible can be trusted as true because how would one know which verses were fact and which were fallacy? But that’s another argument for another day. Getting back to my plan we need the cooperation of millions of people in order to put off the end for as long as possible. Everyone I know and everyone you know and everyone they know, etcetera, will pick a date for the Apocalypse to occur. It makes no difference that the forecast is completely arbitrary because foretelling the date means that Doomsday cannot come to pass on that day! Remember, if the bible is true and every man woman and child portends to know the “day and hour” then that day can never come. And we the collective effectively prevent the end of the world and turn the Mayan’s 2012 into just another Y2K…

The other day thanks to StumbleUpon I came across Wolf Gnards blog entry of June 16, 2009 titled “How Long Does Bill Murray Spend in Groundhog Day?” Since Murray’s character Phil’s perceived reality of the film is the repetition of just one day I think the real question here is not how long but how many times did he relive Groundhog Day? Also, keep in mind that the day revealed does not last 24 hours. In many cases it ends by nine or ten in the morning when Phil kills himself after making some dyer mistake causing an about turn from his goal of gaining the amorous advances of the leading lady Rita played by Andie MacDowell. Over the course of the motion picture Phil must reinvent himself changing from a hardened curmudgeon spewing angst over his producers aim that he once again encompasses a ridiculous event, for an antiquated holiday, which he believes is beneath him, into a loving, caring, talented dream date of a guy. The director Harold Ramis said in the DVDs special features that he places Phil’s time in the loop at about ten years even though the script exaggerated the time to as much as 10,000 years. Three to seven years may be a more accurate guess while even that estimate seems high and here’s why.
Google search the chainsaw chic Cherie Currie and you will see a remarkable image gallery of her sculptures carved using a frikin’ tree cutting chainsaw! One example even slightly resembles Andie MacDowell. Currie says she “has only been doing this for a couple of years”. In the movie Phil sculpts Rita’s bust in ice (looks more like snow) with a sharpened chisel and hammer which anyone should agree are far more delicate tools and the ice an easier medium to work with because the artist needs not worry about the grain path or hidden knots wrecking their work. Certified Master Ice Sculptor, Dan Rebholz, has over 22 years experience as a professional carver. But at what point during that 22 years did he achieve enough technique to start selling his work? Probably not that long. Maybe only a few years provided he had a life long interest in sculpture using other mediums like clay or plaster of Paris. Since we know very little about Phil’s background or education (we do know he at very least holds a bachelor’s degree in meteorology) we don’t know what his other interests were and he could have been an artist and sculptor before arriving in Punxsutawney.
The armored car heist would only take a few days to prepare. Just turn on any local version of reality TV and watch the bumbling shenanigans of imbecilic criminals caught in the act of robbing banks and convenience stores. It’s obvious they didn’t spend a lot of time planning their crimes or casing their selected marks. Phil might have been caught a few times trying to lift the satchels of cash from the back of the truck before perfecting his get away. Since the guards were unable to learn from their mistakes Phil probably learned every nuance of the crime in just a few days.
One of the flaws in the film is Phil’s knowledge of the townspeople and his familiarity with them. Since he only arrived the day before he would be a complete stranger to all but a few passers by he met during the day before entering the diner for breakfast in the morning or the night club scene later in the evening (with the exception of Ned Ryerson with whom he attended school). Since each day physically resets at 6 o’clock sharp none of the town’s people would have any prior knowledge of Phil or even know his name unless they knew of him as a network TV weatherman. Phil is the only one who retains his memory of the previous repeating day. There is an episode of the Andy Griffith show called “Stranger in Town” where a mysterious stranger, arrives in Mayberry and disrupts the lives of the townspeople because he appears to know everyone’s name, intimate details about their lives, and other startling facts about them. All of which he learned by taking a subscription to the Mayberry newspaper. Likewise Phil doesn’t really know any of the townspeople. Rather he knows some minor sorted facts amounting to nothing more than simple gossip which could be garnered in just a few weeks of sitting next to different eaters each day.
How long does it take one to seemingly master the skill of Jazz pianist? Ten years? Twenty years? Not really. Two examples I know of are Eddie Van Halen and Dweezil Zappa. Innate ability probably played a factor in both cases. Eddie’s father was a renowned clarinetist and Dweezil’s dad was Frank Zappa a rock fusion guitarist. Eddie started playing guitar at age eleven but didn’t take it seriously until he was fifteen. At that point he says he practiced consistently for eight hours a day every single day. His first album was released only seven years later showcasing talent that some describe as the very best in the world! So apparently in roughly 2500 days give or take a musician who possesses inherited talent can not only master his chosen instrument but can rise all the way to the to pinnacle and become the representative of virtuosity and the measurement towards which all others strive. Dweezil, inspired by Van Halen said in a magazine interview that he practiced five hours a day for five years before releasing his debut album and hearing it proves a great deal of proficiency and a definite mastery of improvisation. So in roughly 1800 days one can master his instrument. Is the piano a more difficult instrument to learn? Doubt it. The piano has 88 keys or notes (52 white and 36 black) whereas the guitar has six strings stretched over 22 frets providing 132 available notes. You can play the piano by banging the keys loudly or tapping them gently but the guitar allows one to strum, pick, pluck, hammer, bend, slide, bow and even play with one’s teeth. In the movie Phil only played two to three songs. It probably didn’t take too very long to learn only those three songs. Songs by masters like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix can be learned note-for-note in as little as one week by working with tablature and instructional cassette tapes. Playing for virtuosos on that level might fail to impress but to the average person who enjoys listening to rock music one can expect a pretty major reaction! Memorizing recorded versions of songs is not for the rank beginner but we can’t tell whether Murray’s character Phil had any prior lessons as a child and may not be starting from scratch when he bribes the teacher to give her student the boot and invite him inside. Considering that it’s quite possible he could learn to play the piano well enough to excite the untrained party goers with his tasty Jazz chops.
Speaking French fluently, hello the trick here is well known computer software called Rosetta Stone. Phil also could have gotten hold of some sort of printed treatment exploring French poetry and defining the best passages with which to woo a love interest.
The Jeopardy game show is the exact same show every day! The program is 30 minutes long. There are 61 answers/questions in a complete game of Jeopardy – 30 in the Jeopardy Round, 30 in the Double Jeopardy Round and one in the Final Jeopardy Round. Most of the answers are common knowledge and would already be known to Phil. Therefore the answers he didn’t know would be even easier to recall. The average person of average intelligence could memorize the answers in what two maybe three viewings!
People commit or attempt to commit suicide for all sorts of completely inane reasons the majority of which have little or nothing to do with depression. Phil’s attempts at suicide aren’t caused by depression but rather a need to escape the inevitable repetition of the same Groundhog Day yet again. It’s not depression that drives him to kill himself again and again, its utter hopelessness. It’s the feeling that he has entered the Twilight Zone or checked into the Hotel California with no route of escape. Not shown in the film are his failed attempts to end it all. Did you know that almost 70 percent of persons that try to kill themselves fail and do not achieve death ending up horribly maimed? Did you know that if you jump from the height of less than six stories and do not land on your head that you will probably live? Imagine all of the times he suffered grievous bodily injury instead of death. Suffering unimaginable pain while waiting for hospital administered anesthesia to bring on sleep and return him once again to that moment when Sonny Bono’s voice strains through the tiny alarm clock radio at six A.M. on Groundhog day singing the opening verse of “I Got You Babe“. In the end Phil finally gets every detail just right and wins the affection of Rita waking instead to a weather report calling for an end to the snow. It’s easy to believe Phil could just smile and snuggle in beside Rita because this is the something anything different moment he has dreamed of for so very long. A new day has dawned and anything is possible. It’s a wonderful film, highly recommended and like the premise can be watched over and over again!

Someone once said, “Opinions are like buttholes. Everyone has one and they all stink!” It’s funny how perceptions and likes and dislikes change as we age. Taste in music seems a particularly strong example of these changes. In High School “The Beatles” were the epitome and matchless point by which all other music was compared. They were somehow on a higher plain than other musicians wildly capable of hit song writing in almost any genre from Oldies to Country to Pop and even Heavy Metal. So blinded by their craft was I that seldom would I even listen to music made by anyone else. I also believed that all other musical groups wanted to be The Beatles. I was completely against contemporary Country and would label musicians with even the slightest twang as such. My friends would play music by Tom Petty, Joe Walsh, John Cougar Mellencamp or Lynyrd Skynyrd and I would scream “Turn that country crap off!” Just a few years later I found my self collecting the entire catalogs by those very same artists. I reserved a similar aversion to Heavy Metal. My roommates would put Van Halen or Led Zeppelin on the stereo and again I would scream “Take that Heavy Metal crap off!” And yet now those are two of my favorite groups. If asked I think that Eddie Van Halen is the greatest guitar player, ever, period! His brown sound is simply unparalleled although there are quite a few players that come mighty close. And Jimmy Page is to Rock n’ Roll what Amadeus Mozart is to the Classics. No one can knit together licks like he does. His music is an incredible kaleidoscope of tempos and textures! Just give a listen to “The Song Remains the Same”, “Fool in the Rain” or “The Rain Song” and you might agree. I also remember being tainted towards drumming and drummers as well. One time while riding a school bus to a marching band event I lambasted two of the best drummers in the band (Wallace Litesee and James Nobles) telling them that it took absolutely no talent to play the drums because there was only one note. It could not possibly be as hard to tap out a rhythm as to sight read treble and bass clef notes. (I played the Sousaphone and Tuba in the band.) In reality I was as ignorant as the Flying Nun and as naive as Gidget. Of course at that time I had never heard the likes of Power Station’s Tony Thompson or Ginger Baker’s foray on Public Image Ltd’s “Compact Disc”. Those two guys can give a drum kit the bully beat down! Then there was the Who’s Keith Moon who would double John Entwistle’s bass triplets. And if you really want to hear a truly magnificent drummer just Google or search YouTube for anything by Buddy Rich. I heard that he kept a coffee can of cold water next to his drum stool to plop his sticks in after a set so they wouldn’t burst into flames. Well actually I made that rumor up but after you hear and see him play you can believe that it’s true. Wallace and James I hope you can forgive me..!

Seventh and eighth grade were at Hand Jr. High back in ’71 and ‘72. They didn’t call it middle school back then. That didn’t happen until sixth grade was added. Our most memorable teacher was the assistant coach whose name was Mike Curtis. He was the typical seventies guy with dark hair that was parted in the middle and covered his ears. About twenty something, tan with a thick moustache and big muscles including the lifeguard six pack. He drove the coolest VW Super Beetle ever made called a Sports edition that was painted bright yellow and all of the chrome was matt black instead of chrome. One day during PE we were playing basketball and he rolled out a folded up trampoline which he setup in a corner of the gym. A couple of the more athletic kids bounced a few times and tried seat drops and front flips without much success. Then it was coach Mike’s turn. He mounted the white rubberized canvas mesh surface and gave us a spectacular show bouncing almost up to the ceiling turning double and triple front and back flips with full twists over and over, back and forth with the greatest of ease. It was nothing short of an amazing display of fitness and skill. From that day forward all of us in gym class that day looked up to him as some sort of super hero. He was no longer just another stand in Math teacher. He was the coolest grownup at school and we all wanted to be just like him.

Most when asked if they know of the hottest place on Earth would reply with the usual locations like Death Valley in California, the Salt Flats in Utah or the Sahara or some other desert. But those people have never visited Columbia, South Carolina. The hottest place on Earth ever officially recorded was El Azizia in Libya where the temperature reached a blistering 136 degrees Fahrenheit on September 13, 1922. But just like in Las Vegas Nevada that was a dry heat! Columbia is the only place I know of where the humidity can reach 100% and it’s not raining. Most summers the temperature sits somewhere between 95 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit for at least a month’s time during mid July and August. You can’t even walk from your house to the car parked in your driveway without breaking a major sweat. You step outside and it feels like your face is melting and might slide right off the front of your head. Visitors here are often heard remarking that they don’t want to come back because they’ve never felt heat like this and that Columbia is the hottest freaking place on Earth! Maybe you can’t actually fry an egg on the sidewalk but you won’t have any trouble frying one on the hood of any car you find parked at the various shopping malls around town. And if the heat wasn’t enough we now seem to have only two seasons. Summer and Autumn. Springtime lasts about a week and in Winter a sweater or light jacket is all you really need to stay warm. (Hey Al Gore, maybe Global Warming is real..?) I’m always astonished when I meet someone who has moved here from up North or some splendid paradise like Hawaii. I’m like, “Why did you leave Heaven to come to Hell?” (A bit of an exaggeration since Columbia is way hotter than Hell!) So if you have plans to visit or move to South Carolina choose Myrtle Beach or Charleston or Hilton Head so you can cool off some at the beach. Or maybe Greenville where you can still see some snow in December and January. You’ll be glad you did!

I hate speed limits! It must be wonderful to live in Germany where you can hop on the Autobahn and drive like a bat out of hell with the pedal to the metal with no worry about those dreadful blue lights and screeching sirens closing in on your bumper. Or several states in the Midwest that allow responsible speeding on lonesome stretches of straight and narrow highways through the desert colitas. I once remarked to my step-niece Amanda Howard that I just “can’t drive 55″ and the next thing I know she (with the help of my sister) gave me a radar detector for my birthday. It saved me getting speeding tickets a few times but still didn’t allow me the luxury to travel full out and drive around like I was passing the pack on a Nascar track or taking curves at 100 miles per hour through the streets of Monaco in a Grand Prix race. I’ve only had two speeding tickets in my lifetime (so far…). The first one came soon after I bought my first new car back in 1978. It was a sweet arctic white Honda Civic. You remember the tiny hatchbacks with ten inch wheels. My friend Donnie Holmes and I decided to take a jaunt to the mountains of North Carolina one Saturday morning and I wanted to see how fast the little bugger would go. Well believe it or not I pushed that sucker up to a hundred in the fast lane and just as I backed off I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed a North Carolina highway patrol car so close on my tail that I could have been towing him with a trailer hitch. Funny thing was he had his blue lights on but had not hit his siren yet so I didn’t see him sneak up on me. I pulled over and walked back to his car and told him I was sorry and knew I was in fact speeding. He told me to follow him to the local magistrate’s office just a few exits ahead. We only had about $75 bucks between the two of us so I took $60 and tagged along behind the cop up a little back stairway in the rear or the station house to a small office with a single window, one wooden chair and a desk. Behind it sat the magistrate who at the time was wearing a plaid shirt, worn jeans and no kidding a canvas fishing hat with lures stuck in it just like the one the character Colonel Henry Blake wore on the old television show MASH. I told him we were headed to Mount Mitchell (the highest mountain this side of the Mississippi River) for the day and was just testing my new cars four cylinder engine. We paid a fine of $60 (I told him this was all I had) but the ticket didn’t really count in that the magistrate and highway patrolman split the money between themselves as soon as I left the station. I know this because I was not given a receipt for the money or a copy of the ticket and no points were taken from my license. The second speeding ticket I got just a few years ago. I was taking my step kids to a local magic shop after school one day and was pulled doing 43 in a 40 zone. There are two areas in my city known for unforgiving cops. One is Forest Acres and the other is Irmo. These are widely known speed traps where you can get a ticket for going just one mile an hour over the limit. Of course everyone who lives here knows that the courts have no concern for the actual speed laws and are really just interested in padding their budgets with as much fine money as possible. And the cops don’t really care about the speed laws either. They just want to make quota. I know this is true because you always see more traffic stops during the last week of the month than you do during the first three weeks of any given month. Don’t get me wrong these were not the only times I have driven above the posted limit just the only times I have been caught at it. I usually do five over when traffic flow allows and sometimes ten over on the highway. I think that good drivers should be able to set their own speed limits. If you can drive fast without wrecking your vehicle you should be able to do so. And man o man I hate getting behind a super sleek sports car like a Dodge Viper or Chevrolet Corvette and the person behind the wheel is driving five to ten under the limit. Why don’t they sell that muscle machine and drive an Oldsmobile 98 or a Chrysler K or some other granny car that looks normal going way too slow. You shouldn’t be able to buy a fast car unless you sign some sort of contract promising that you are going to drive it fast. What’s the point? And don’t you just hate this new gas savers club that drives in the fast lane at or under the posted limit to “help all of us conserve fuel”? Don’t we have enough malfunction junctions without these know it all na’re-do-wells slowing everyone down? Get in the slow lane you idiots! The really funny thing is that driving fast doesn’t get you anywhere faster. Let’s say you and a friend drive separate cars across town and you do 40 while your friend does 35. Because of traffic and stop signs and lights you will arrive at your destination about two minutes before your friend does. Is that small fraction of time saved worth the risk of a $250 speeding ticket? Don’t think so but I still can’t drive 55..!