As I continue my interminable defensive driving course, I thought I would use the excess time between slides to write down some random things that I’ve found troubling recently. I’ll also intersperse some of the more useful tidbits from the course.  

– Why doesn’t anyone care about Powerball when it’s 50 million dollars?  When it gets up to like 200 million, the whole world is in a tizzy.  But no one gives a shit when it’s a smaller, yet still massive amount.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and the only differences I can imagine are the following:  (1) If I had 400 million, I could afford to wager 50 million on one spin of roulette at a casino.  If I had only 50 million, this would probably be unwise.  (2) If I had 400 million, I’d immediately buy a jet.  If I had 50 million, I’d just join NetJets.  (3) If I won 400 million, I’d share it with Anne.  If it was only 50 million, eh.  

– When you park your vehicle, make sure the transmission is in “PARK.”  Seriously, they just told me this.

– This article summarizes my opinion of half the baby pictures I see on facebook.  The other times, the pictures include afterbirth or other types of overshare.   

– My dad’s in the other room, and just heard him use me as an excuse to get off the phone with his friend Vinnie.  He said, Robert’s here, so I have to go.  He won’t talk to me for at least another hour.  This is also a test to see if Uncle Vinnie reads my blog.  If so, Hi Vin!  If not, you’re a fucking asshole.

– Highway hypnosis generally occurs when drivers have been driving for too long without periods of rest.  After onset, highway hypnosis generally results in periods of unawareness when a driver is unable to recall specific portions of a trip.  It also can result in the hypnotized person forgetting his own name or barking like a dog when he hears certain words.  

– Googling things that hypnotists do just cost me an extra 15 seconds on that last slide.  

– I recently discovered reddit, and it has ruined the rest of the internet for me.  I realize that everything funny I see on other sites has already been on reddit.  Speaking of which, I should probably just post this directly there.  Here’s something I saw on reddit today that you will probably see in the next week somewhere else and now you can be all, “yeah, I saw that already, bro.”  

– I find it incredibly unfair that fantasy football scores include stats from overtime.  That makes no sense to me.  It’s not like a real game where both teams are physically on the field during overtime and play exactly the same amount of time.  If you have a QB that gets overtime, then you are basically cheating.  

– That being said, I don’t even care about fantasy football anymore.  It stopped being fun when everyone in the world has immediate access to the same information.  I could literally not pay attention to anything in the off season, not read a single article before the draft, not watch a single game all season, and then follow a few tips along the way and still field a competitive team.  I’ll have you know that I did exactly that this season and my teams are 1-12, 3-10, and 4-9 and I missed the playoffs in all my leagues.  But other than that, I stand by this theory.

– The defensive driving course has periodic checks to see if I am still here.  They use five security questions that are supposed to prove that I am who I say I am.  I hope the CIA uses better security questions to determine identity.  So far, I’ve gotten “What color is your car?” and “Is your a car a sedan or SUV?”  Also, at the beginning of the course, I chose the questions and the answers myself.