he Al-Qaeda jig was upped last week when the Texas Transportation Institute dropped their yearly bombshell with the release the Urban Mobility Report, showing that traffic has gone from bad to shitty everywhere nationwide in the last five years. Though the Texas A&M study lists the usual scapegoats of poor urban planning and American aversion to public transportation as the culprits, real Americans willing to talk to commune reporters while stuck in traffic put the blame squarely at the feet of the rogue terrorist network Al-Qaeda, which has been linked in recent years to everything from the 9/11 attacks to the heartbreaking cancellation of some of this reporter’s favorite television programs.

“Man, I was sitting in traffic the other day for like two hours,� bitched Seattle motorist Clyde Williams, while sitting in traffic. “And no shit, there was an Arab dude sitting in the car in front of me. They’re everywhere. Motherfucker was playing that easy-listening station on the radio like he didn’t know his windows was down, too. I hate that shit.�

Fresh off the successfully disastrous hijacking of a Russian elementary school and complete concealment of their very involvement months ago, Al-Qaeda has again set its sights on our friendly shores, though not covertly enough to fool shrewd American motorists. While going car to car during a recent traffic jam in Seattle, this reporter sampled a broad cross-section of American frustration with Al-Qaeda’s insidious infrastructure-stalling tactics.

“Oh yeah, I see that all the time,� agreed motorist Dale Harvey, after this reporter suggested Al-Qaeda might be behind the I-5 backup he’d been stuck in for the last forty-five minutes. “There’s always some terrorist assfuck driving slow in the left-hand lane or leaving his turn signal on for miles. Women, too. They say Al-Qaeda doesn’t ever use women, but then how do you explain all these awful women drivers? I think those bastards leave all the driving up to their terrorist wives. They’ve probably got camps out in the desert, teaching them to change lanes randomly and slow way down to rubberneck at accidents.�

“Can Chinese guys be Al-Quada?� added Harvey, in question. “Because those guys drive for shit too. Might be something worth looking into there. Maybe they’re branching out or outsourcing to the Orient. Tricky bastards.�

While not as dramatic as blowing up a bridge or nuking Chattanooga, Al-Qaeda’s efforts to delay and annoy average Americans have had a significant effect in recent years, according to the Texas study. Over 3.5 billion hours were lost to traffic jams nationwide last year, a number so large as to be meaningless unless put into context: That’s like watching Lawrence of Arabia five or six times.

“I wouldn’t put it past ‘em,� confided motorist and housewife Darlene Pickering, gesturing to the wall of cars blocking her route home from spinning class. “Didn’t they set off that hurricane over in Florida? And now this. We should stop giving the terrorists drivers’ licenses, if this is how they’re going to repay us.�

During the course of interviewing inconvenienced motorists, it became clear that Al-Qaeda has failed to hide its nefarious scheming from average Americans, or at least average Americans stuck in traffic. The terrorist network may have erred in giving Americans too much time to unravel their twisted dealings while killing time during traffic jams.

“I think about that shit sometimes,� mused Harvey. “Like how come Arby’s never has that ‘5 for $5’ deal any more? They think we wouldn’t notice that? Shit. Man, I hope some terrorist fuck didn’t set his old beater on fire up ahead in the breakdown lane, ‘cuz I gotta piss bad.�

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OH MY GOD SNOW

A wise man once said, "Greatness is not measured in words, but in actions." That was me! I said that.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm great. I'm always saying wise stuff like what I just said. It's not a one-time thing or anything. Some people, I'm not naming names, but you're lucky to get two, three wise sayings out of them in their whole lifetime. I pop off stuff like that in my sleep, at least once a day. No kidding, ask people who know me.

A lot of people attribute my intelligence to a good upbringing, but it probably has more to do with my natural insight into virtually all things. I'm what you could call street educated, since I've never been to college and dropped out of high school. My philosophy is you don't need some stodgy professor in some building to teach you about the world. I've made the world my classroom, and I have perfect attendance. I know things instinctively, like how many Senates we have in Congress and how planes work. Here's a hint: It's the jets and the wings. I didn't need anybody to tell me that.

The trouble with people not me, they lack the confidence to realize they know everything they really need to. If you're going to be a doctor or something like that, yeah, you probably want to take a few years of school or whatever—not that I couldn't do it, but I'd hate to be put on the spot if I needed to know something. But for the rest of us, if you're insightful like me, we already know most of the stuff we need to know. I've laid carpet in my own apartment. I can do practically anything.

To be truly great, though, you've got to get along well with other people, and I get along with everybody. There's not a day goes by I don't talk to someone who I consider a friend. Whether they're coming to me with their problems, seeking my help, or just chatting me up, I've always got a minute to spare for anybody. Sometimes they've got something bugging them and I give them advice. They're like, "Awoll, someone got my sister pregnant." And they ask if it was me, and I tell them it wasn't, but I know what they really want is reassurance—and some help! I tell them stay the course, man, everything is cool. Or that they need to learn to live with changes. Either one of those is usually all anybody needs.

But I'm a fun guy, too. I've got friends who, all we do is go out drinking together. We'll see each other once a week or once a night and go out and get hammered, just for kicks, because life is short and you've got to know how to live. A few times some of my buddies have come up to me at my telemarketing job and they've been really depressed, so we go out for a beer together during lunch. I'm always there for the friends who need me.

Not that I'm all Mr. Nice Guy. If you cross me, you may regret it. Anybody who wants to make me or my friends and family feel bad is public enemy number one—don't try to tell me I can't chase my dreams or I can't park there. Cynics like you are just sore because you wasted your talents not following your dreams. Another thing I hate is people who tell you you're wrong. They'll tell you how you mispronounced words, they'll say you don't know what you're talking about, or tell you the directions you gave to the Safeway were way off. I say, shut-up! Does it make you feel big to make other people look small? You're just a show-off.

I suppose I got a teensy weensy temper. Even the most perfect people have the occasional vice. It doesn't mean I'm not still great.

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I've put up with a lot over our many years of marriage, Deidrebane my dear. Your incessant coupon-clipping, child-rearing and flair with culinary dishes of all varieties. Your sunnily upbeat manner, and troubling habit of treating the neighbors with civility and respect. Your distaste for NASCAR. Your charity work for the betwetting orphans of Botswana, and your pitiable need to stay abreast of world events. It's been a long, tough slog up a rain-soaked hill, my dear, but only this last bit has been intolerable. With all of our servants as my witnesses, let there be no mistake about it: You WILL take back what you said this morning about Dokken.

The day started out innocently enough, at least for those of us who harbored no venom in our souls, waiting for the slightest Dokken-related opportunity to spit it free. I rose at noon, after a refreshing fourteen hours of sleep, and proceeded to peruse the Journal for its most salient feature: Get Fuzzy. As you can imagine, I breakfasted on a hearty bowl of disappointment. Apparently the volatility of soybean futures means more to some depraved individuals than the slice-of-life adventures of Satchel and Bucky. I feign no supernatural ability to explain these things, my dear.

Turned away coldly by the inky black indifference of the Journal, I opted instead to soothe my soul with a little skeet shooting from the bedroom window, with neighborhood birds standing in for skeet. Don't get started about my habit of ridding our neighborhood of incessantly inconsiderate songbirds, my dear, if they had the good sense not to side with morning folk they'd still be alive and in one compact, non-shotgunned piece. I shed not a tear, after their daily double-insult of leaving the late-night hours to the shrill noodling of crickets, in addition to polluting my restful morn with their whistling farts.

As you well know, my dear, for I have explained it in detail on several occasions, nothing elevates a reflective noontime skeet-shooting spree from a pleasant diversion to the realm of the sublime like the thundering hair rock of Los Angeles natives Dokken.

The moment is crystallized in my mind like a dog trapped in amber, my dear. I had just winged a squirrel that had picked a poor time to attempt traversing the power lines spanning our property, and was marveling my shotgunmanship when you burst in, as if my privacy were nothing to be taken any more seriously than the word of a Scotsman. You burst in shouting some nonsense about orphans sleeping downstairs and the weak heart trapped within the chest of our frail, elderly, taking-her-sweet-time-to-die neighbor Mrs Weatherborrow. Most of this was drowned out by the blast of the shotgun as I spied a child's kite hovering tantalizingly just over our property line, but what you said next I will take with me to my grave, possibly on a Post-It note. Turn down that noise? That noise? Oh, my dearest Deidrebane. How you seek to wound me so, and my, how you've learned just where to stick the blade.

It would have been one thing if the racket in question had been Winger, Deidrebane. They're hardly worthy of your polite attention, my dear, say nothing of your rapture. Or if it had been a guilty pleasure like Slaughter pummeling from the speakers this morning, shaking the very air and vibrating the bathtub down the hall with each well-placed bass note. Referring to the work of those gentlemen as noise could be forgiven, albeit with a healthy slathering of condescension on the part of yours truly. But no, my wife of many a year, it had to be Dokken. It's as if the very Gods themselves have chosen the method of my slow undoing.

Have you learned nothing from my frequent lectures concerning the mannered vocal stylings of Don Dokken, my dear? Have my haikus addressing George Lynch's heavenly fretwork fallen upon deaf ears? Am I the only on in this house whose very dreams echo to the strains of "Alone Again"? Please, tell me you at least remember the driving force of "The Dream Warriors" from that Nightmare on Elm Street movie we watched. You didn't think I keep renting it again and again for the filmic content, did you? I swear, Deidrebane, sometimes it's like I'm married to a total stranger.

It's fortunate for you our neighbor to the East just put up that giant birdfeeder. Some things cannot be forgiven, my dear, but given enough concussive shotgun blasts in close proximity to one's head, it's entirely possible they may be forgotten.

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