Every so often I see floral arrangements resting on the ground or tied to a street sign along the DC metro region’s busiest roads — Rockville Pike, Connecticut Ave, Rt 66, the hallway leading to my bedroom. People have died in horrible, mangled car accidents at these spots (excepting my hallway). Some of the impromptu memorials, presumably left by family and friends, have teddy bears or dolls among the flowers.
I wonder if these reminders of instant death from car crash cause people to drive more carefully? I bet they do. I certainly notice them, and the first thing that goes through my mind is how exactly the accident went down. Did the driver’s head cave upon impact with the windshield? Did a child fly out of the vehicle into oncoming traffic? Did the southbound car have a split second to apply the brakes and swerve over the median to avoid a head-on collision?
Someone should do a study to see if the increase of these roadside memorials over the past decade is having an effect on traffic fatalities. Unfortunately, like most things which are effective at influencing human behavior, there is probably a point of diminishing returns with the flowers of death. Maybe flowers every ten miles works well, but more than that and people become inured to them, and resume their normal tailgating/speeding/driving while texting habits.
first
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I thought this was gonna be about the death of relationships for boquet-gifting beta chumps…
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I thought this post would be about dead rose game. Sending them to chicks really makes ginas tingle.
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i like to throw a curveball once in a while.
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I’d like to see the tarred corpse of a criminal hanging in chains on every streetcorner of every high-crime neighborhood in America. People will notice them and think twice about committing a crime. After a decade we could do a study to see if this reduced crime rates. True, there may be a point of diminishing returns with the “hanging corpses of crime deterrence”, and people may become inured to them eventually, but would we be any worse off for trying this approach for a decade or two?
[editor: i’m on board with this idea.]
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I have heard stories about people being killed by those road side memorials. They run into them and have the fly through the windshield and strike them in the face.
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I see such melodramatics as nothing more than a shit test for my nimbus .
so i focus on maintaining my internal state control and “outframing” the flowers with unshakable inner game.
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http://thegauntlet.ca/story/13003
[editor: canada coming through in the clutch! who’da thunk it?]
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Yeah Tarl, but then the majority would be black people and it’d be called racist by O-Foreman and Al Sharpton and the rest, and we’d all have to pay reparations for hurting the poor criminals feelings.
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Its median….
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lurker: Sharpton could be the first one up! Maybe we could exhume Kennedy and hang his remains in Martha’s Vineyard.
I see these flowers a lot too, including next to the light rail tracks near my place. I’ve wondered if they don’t serve as more of a distraction, but particularly if they increase danger for the individuals who place and maintain them. Some continue to grow/evolve over time, so somebody’s going out to the street side to add stuff.
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I’d like to see the tarred corpse of a criminal hanging in chains on every streetcorner of every high-crime neighborhood in America.
In the 48 Laws of Power the author speaks on how some leaders would chop of the heads of people with unorthodox ideas/actions and put their heads on public display on top of a tall wooden spike in the center of the town.
Giving the public a sense of fear to speak their minds or revolt against their tyrant.
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interesting theory. i bet it gives most people pause.
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Ehhh. I don’t know… Suppose there was a study that found that such displays were highly effective. Immediately, the government would probably move to subsidize flowers o’ death and create “flower stations” for the placement of flowers at regular intervals on interstates nationwide. A massive federal program. Good times….
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Great post, Roissy. These curveballs are welcome.
Maybe flowers every ten miles works well, but more than that and people become inured to them, and resume their normal tailgating/speeding/driving while texting habits.
Quite. You are wise and observant.
Tarl- I’m on board with your idea too.
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Perhaps beating Obsidian to the punch, but lurker’s idea was used in The Wire.
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The immediate effect of those flowers on pupu’s mind is overwhelming sadness that lingers throughout the rest of the ride. Dead deer along Rt. 66, on the other hand, make pupu pay more attention to the road.
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“Someone should do a study to see if the increase of these roadside memorials over the past decade is having an effect on traffic fatalities.”
Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that the effect was to increase fatalities?
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Crucifying dead coyotes on fenceposts helps keep them away from livestock, or so I’ve heard.
I toyed with the idea of impaling dead crows on pikes in the backyard to keep their relatives away from my cherry trees, but my weird spinster neighbor would probably call the authorities — just like she did for the alleged assault committed by my cat.
As for the floral displays marking the spots where people were killed in car accidents, I saw a state or county funded program in Montana while driving from Missoula through the Flathead rez up to Kalispell. Every point on the road where someone had met his doom was marked by a stark, unadorned cross.
The regularity of these lonely sentinels of death was sobering. I imagine they do hammer home a message.
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There is a point of negative returns, too, where a good idea beaten into the ground makes the original idea suddenly seem awful. Like wristbands – I would never have worn one of those Lance Armstrong things, but I thought it was an okay idea at the time. (My friend wanted to make custom black ones that said FUCKSTRONG but he never got around to it.)
Now there are so many of them for so many different things that I’d never wear one for any reason, even a joke. I just saw sports team wristbands for the first time – if your team plays that night, you can wear it all day to… I don’t know, channel your karma toward your team or something. I attended a wedding where blue wristbands were given out to all the guests – I can’t even remember what the cause was, but it was some kind of charity.
The roadside stuff can end up having the same effect. Driving is dangerous and eventually every mile of interstate will have killed somebody at some point. Given enough time, all good things spoil.
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I think a rack of used condoms hanging over the door of the winner of the slut-of-the-month club might be enlightening.
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Oh, I thought this was going to be about Funeral Game.
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funerals are insane, the chicks are so horny, its not even fair, its like fishing with dynamite …grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac
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Of course things like this also lead to rubbernecking as people slow to a crawl to gander at something which breaks the routine monotony of their existence, and up go rear collisions.
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I’d like to see the tarred corpse of a criminal hanging in chains
That’s called gibbeting. I went to the top of Gibbet Hill in St Johns Newfoundland where they used to do exactly that for all of the town to see. Apparently after they took the body down they would stuff it into a barrel and roll it down into Deadman’s Pond below.
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LOL. If you guys actually think Tarl’s “idea” would work, you’ve got anything coming.
Unlike the vast majority of you, I know what it is to live, work and spend off time in many of these areas-Detroit, ATL, Philly, New York, Newark, Camden, Baltimore-and I can tell you firsthand they are among, if not the, toughest and most dangerous on the planet. Trotting out a few charred corpses WILL NOT change anything. The game will go on, unabated.
Prison growth has gone up like I don’t know what over the past three decades or so, and they’re near bursting from being overcrowded. True, getting tough on crime has reduced it on the streets, but sooner or later these guys are going to come home.
[editor: who says they have to come home? increase the voltage!]
Something in our body politic doesn’t work. And simplistic solutions aint gonna get it.
O
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In Poland you have official government signs at every curve denoting how many people have died on that part of the road. It doesn’t help in Poland, because they drive like drunk slavic maniacs, but in the politically correct united states it might work.
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@O,
When the crooks do eventually come home, they’ll be much older and less likely to commit violent crime by the sheer fact that they are now semi-elderly. Also the hot-headed crook temperament guys are going to be somewhat removed from the gene pool while they are incarcerated. It may not be an efficient or fair way to solve the problem but it is working – combined with the ability of women to abort babies that they aren’t ready for or ones fathered by turds. Sure, it’s not happening 100% of the time but it does happen a lot. Over a couple generations this will blunt the amount of violent crime in black america.
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This is a Mexican thing. And the more that wash over the border, the more of this crap we’ll have littering our roads. There are a few states that are in the process of criminalizing this dangerous behavior. People mass on the sides of busy roads to have a little “service”…they should do that in church!
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I think, but am not completely positive, that there was a study done once about the effect of a giant billboard featuring Dennis Rodman (yes, him), and they found that the number of accidents decreased on the stretch of highway from which the billboard was visible, as drivers were slowing down to get a good look.
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Guest-blogging at Roissy in DC this week: Tyler Cowen
But in all seriousness, the Chad-Man is disappointed that no one has realized the implications this ritual can have on our Game. As a true player, I would never buy a girl flowers… but they’re nice to have around YOUR place to provoke jealousy.
The Chad-Man is pleased to learn that flowers are now freely available at a dangerous intersection near you.
Peace.
Chad
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“The Chad-Man is pleased to learn that flowers are now freely available at a dangerous intersection near you.”
FTW.
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Obs says,
I can tell you firsthand they are among, if not the, toughest and most dangerous on the planet.
Who do you think will be supplying the edifying displays?
Trotting out a few charred corpses WILL NOT change anything.
Can’t hurt.
If lots of criminals are swinging from streetlights, I put the policy in the win column regardless of how few minds get changed.
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chad-man:
But in all seriousness, the Chad-Man is disappointed that no one has realized the implications this ritual can have on our Game.
already wrote about it:
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/bachelor-pad-seduction-props/
i leave no stone unturned, no panty drawer unmolested, in the pursuit of pussy.
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There are pro-marriage billboards all over Baltimore, intending to reduce bastardy and increase marriage. The billboards show a nice-looking clean-cut black couple, and some kind of a slogan. And what is wrong with that?
Well, nothing, if they did it right. If the ad company designers were reading Roissy instead of being bitches and faggots, they’d know that the billboards are all wrong. Why? because while showing a good looking, light-complexioned female (which is fine), they show a very Beta black guy. Nicely shaved, nicely smiling, nice guy.
Duh! show a badmotafukka glowering at the passing cars, saying “yeah, beotches, I put a rock on her hand; she my woman; got a problem wid dat?”
In other words, show an alpha. To antice the women and make men emulate him.
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If they want to get a good idea of what a auto wreck can do to the human body they should check out the pictures at bestgore (dot) com but not on a full stomach.
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LOL. “Increase the wattage” you say, Roissy? Well, aside from the fact that execution by electric chair is all but a thing of the past these days, the death penalty itself is now “on trial” so to speak in the USA, for a whole host of reasons. And while I’m not against it, I still maintain that until we address deeper problems in our body politic all the bandaids won’t work.
Take PA’s bringing up the Black family billboards in Baltimore-the reason why they’re likely to fail is because they’re a bandaid on a bigger problem. Part of which was the death of blue collar work in Baltimore, which is now working its way through its working class sections. As we all know, it hit Black folk first. And hard.
So all the billboards and speeches and whatever else won’t work, because until these things I’m talking about are addressed all we’ll be doing is windowdressing.
The Obsidian
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I wonder if these reminders of instant death from car crash cause people to drive more carefully?
There are a few here on the parkways, but there’s a part of me that will just fly by at 65-75 mph, and wonder how could an “idiot” lose control of a car at this location while not thinking about what may have caused the accident.
In other words, show an alpha.
The last thing the black community needs is a bunch of low IQ, high testosterone types. I’d rather have the clean-cut beta types in an advertisement in order to get people to realize they should aspire to that lifestyle in order to “destroy” the racists.
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When I lived in Phoenix, Arizona – they had something similar, except it was like a grave sight, there were white pieces of wood shaped like a cross. Sometimes they had names on the them, sometimes initials but the majority of them were blank.
I bet these things cause more accidents. Imagine the thought process…
“Oh there’s another one of those crosses marking someone’s death, I can’t quite make out the name… ehh..”
(SCREECH, CRASH)
“…(brain dead)”
For others, it might strike fear in their hearts, causing anxiety leading to bad driving (or for an alcoholic, to drink behind the wheel) causing more fatalities.
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The last thing the black community needs is a bunch of low IQ, high testosterone types.
Well, what if they showed a debonnaire alpha kind of guy like in those old Colt45 ads or that you see in Cognac adds?
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Obsidian, I agree that the billboards are a bandaid. But that’s better than nothing.
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There was a guy who got hit by another car and killed when I was in high school. This was 20 years ago. He was a senior when I was a junior. A working-class alpha, very well liked; in a very class-segregated upper middle class kind of school, no less. A good guy.
His friends, all metalheads who smoked and tinkered with their Camaros types, put up a white cross and a wheel from his car against a small tree at the site of his death. It stood for a good 5 years. I drove past the spot a few days ago. The memorial is long gone, but I recognized the tree; hard to miss it, as it was the only one in the clearing. It’s a big tree now. RIP, S.
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Well, what if they showed a debonnaire alpha kind of guy like in those old Colt45 ads or that you see in Cognac adds?
A distinguished alpha gentleman* is certainly a far better option than a ghetto guy putting a ring on his woman…
Obsidian, I agree that the billboards are a bandaid. But that’s better than nothing.
Joke: Think of all the complaints that white men have about black women*. Now you can understand why black men don’t marry their women. Of course, one could extend the argument to the white guys who chase so-called feminine Asian women…
Personally, I’d argue that de-industrialization has created a problem where a sizable chunk of the black male population is capable of earning sizable wages to warrant marriage in the first place. It’s one thing to tolerate a unemployed alpha male, but it’s certainly another to do so for an unemployable beta male. Even if one was to strip away Medicaid & Section 8, you’ll still haven’t solved the challenge of getting a bunch of men with high testosterone and high IQ into good paying jobs that don’t leave them feeling “disrespected”.
*I actually had a white liberal friend actually state “I understand why you date white women” after an 6 month internship with a municipal water authority…
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They made those memorials illegal here in Hawaii…the State said they were a dangerous distraction for drivers!
Some State workers actually removed a freshly set up roadside memorial just days after the accident, and the local people here went ballistic, writing in letters of protest to the newspapers and calling in to the legislature to complain.
Technically, it’s still against the law, but they let them stay for at least a few months before the State removes them…but only if the mourners don’t keep it fresh. Some of those memorials are kept up for years…with fresh flowers and small signs and such being added.
I think it’s ridiculous. That’s what a graveyard and headstone are for.
There’s another trend I’ve noticed here in Hawaii…don’t know if it’s nationwide or not, but a lot of people have started putting large sticker lettering on the back windows of their cars….huge headstone-type memorials: “In Loving Memory of [Dead Relative]” with the birth and death years.
I understand these people are grieving…but it’s rather crass if you ask me.
Once, while in traffic behind one such moving memorial, I assured my wife that I would NEVER memorialize her like that should she die before me…it would make it too hard to find a new wife.
She appreciated the sentiment.
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BTW – this thread is the final nail in the coffin AFAIC.
This blog’s topics and author are dedicated to game…but the comment section is most definitely dedicated to race-based discussions above all else.
Roissy could post about how the sky is blue, and the comment discussion will some way, some how devolve into a debate about which ethnicity is worse, honkeys, niggers, kikes, chinks, wops, japs, micks, dagos, polacks, camel jockeys, sand niggers, indigos or mulattoes (did I forget any?).
Yawn.
Good to see, now that Obama has ushered us all into the era of “post-racial” relations….
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Highway memorials, bumper stickers etc are all crass and ridiculous ways to pay tribute to a dead loved one.
Facebook groups, on the other hand, are pure class.
Peace.
Chad
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In my occupation, we see and treat the victims of those car accidents and I have wondered many times if people might drive more carefully/sober up/not text&talk if we didn’t hide the remains of accidents so well from the public.
I don’t talk/text anymore after have seen too many decapitations, eviseration and amputation.
Out of the daily death dealings, we maybe works 1 car wreck death a day. Motorcycles are the worst. We had a tractor trailer overturn and crush a motorcyclist, dragging him 300 meters, ribcage and jaw missing and never recovered. No genitalia either, all ground off on the road…
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http://gawker.com/5343998/british-texting-while-driving-psa-will-make-you-think-twice-squirm
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off topic…but i could not find a contact for you.
could you please take a look at this article about why women sleep with men and rip it apart for us?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1211794/Some-unromantic-reasons-women-sleep-men.html
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Touching admission, PA.
Sometimes, on lonely nights with no company but the driving rain and trees swaying in the wind, I open a bottle of whiskey and summon my dead friends to spend an evening going over the old memories. It is so bittersweet, this life.
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could you please take a look at this article about why women sleep with men and rip it apart for us?
[cough] golddigger [/cough]
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To Roissy:
I am glad to see you write the occasional tangent.
If you ever feel the desire to write a bit of philosophy or practical anecdotes, I’d personally support that.
In Response to Dave from Hawaii:
Thank you for recognizing that the comment’s section seems to have become the hipper version of Stormfront.org.
I suspect it is an irreversible trend, but it is good to know that logic, self-restraint and subtly prevail among a few here.
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There are a couple of roadside memorials in my area that are still being maintained (albeit poorly in one case) after close to a decade.
Peter
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A friend of mine died August 20th (he was 22) and I have to pass the accident site every day on the way to work – my stomach flips. The intersection doesn’t have a light and is a turn off to an industrial site so I don’t there is place for a roadside memorial. In some ways I’d like something there just to have people reminded that traffic kills and also to memorialize him. I never felt that way about the signs prior to losing him.
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PA
“Obsidian, I agree that the billboards are a bandaid. But that’s better than nothing.”
O: No, PA, its not. We MUST deal with the root causes of the problem if we’re going to be serious about fixing things. And the root causes lie in the fact that we’ve destroyed the working class, completely replaced the largely Beta class Males with things like Welfare, Affirmative Action which largely benefits Women White and Black, etc, et al. The Overclass-White and Black-have willingly sold a sizable chunk of our population down the river. THAT’S the real problem PA, and until we’re bold enough and honest enough to admit that all the billboards and charred hanging bodies won’t amount to pissing in the wind.
The Obsidian
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I find it somewhat depressing that the memorials seem to be being obsessively evaluated in terms of social usefulness.
The memorials themselves are very sad.
But I appreciate the people talking about gibbeting criminals. Sure it is almost completely off topic, but anger is my number one method of dealing with sadness too.
And you are right Dave, those race-posters spamming the board need to get their asses kicked.
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Death yea it can happen. I felt close to it yesterday and told my family so. Told em I love em called the wife. Got to be prepared when your time comes. Don’t want to go out with any regrets.
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People really do make more casual mistakes driving while texting or speaking on their cell phones. One’s attention is diverted from the task-at-hand, navigating traffic. Im not saying it should be illegal or whatnot, but it would be nice if it were brought to folk’s attention that a great many accidents are caused by someone who is “distracted”.
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“THAT’S the real problem PA, and until we’re bold enough and honest enough to admit that all the billboards and charred hanging bodies won’t amount to pissing in the wind.”
Charred bodies would be kind of disgusting. But I guess that’s the point.
Of course, maintaining order is a necessary precondition for any kind of reform or improvement, so I dunno if you can just dismiss that as a “bandaid”.
Or perhaps you can. But if a bandaid is all that’s keeping your guts from spilling out all over the floor, well – it’s probably best not to rip it off…
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What about the opposite effect? Where people daydreaming about why the flowers are there cause more accidents?
This custom was imported from Germany to my knowledge. I’ve lived here in the Fatherland since the mid 80s and it was the first and only place I ever saw it done until the 90s in the DC area. I figure it’s because of all the military people that have been in both places.
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Regarding flowers of death, I’m with Dave From Hawaii on this. I assume the person who died is buried in a cemetery somewhere and has a grave and headstone. So those are the proper places at which to lay flowers and stuffed animals, if you feel the urge to do that sort of thing. For me, roadside memorials are excessively maudlin, but if people feel the urge to do it, then that’s their business. Other than that, I really don’t have any feelings one way or the other about it. Coincidentally, I was having a conversation about this very subject earlier today with someone. It was interesting to see how strongly she felt about this. She said that she didn’t like roadside memorials for several reasons. One was because they made her think about her parents’ deaths, and thus made her sad. Another reason was because she saw it as something that was picked up by the masses from Mafia culture after Communism fell and the various mobs started moving in and shooting each other (I live in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia). Thus, it is a “low-class” thing to do in her opinion.
The stories by PA, aoefe, and others remind me of something that happened when I was in middle school. One of the kids in my class was struck and killed by a driver while walking along a road near the school. I think there was a little memorial along the side of the road for a while as well. I knew the poor fellow well, as he was a cigarette- and pot-smoking piece of trailer trash who went out of his way to pick on me in gym class (hey, I was skinny, smart, and uncoordinated back then!), and I’m sure he would have accumulated an impressively long rap sheet and successive prison stints had he lived. So when he was killed, I felt nothing but relief and Schadenfreude. Even today, when I go home to visit my parents and drive along that road, I still think about him – I think about how pleased I am that his death relieved the good citizens and taxpayers of the town of one more burden they would have had to bear otherwise. There is a sad aftermath to this story as well – before the accident, the road had no speed limit; ever since the accident, the speed limit has been 35 mph.
I’m also with Tarl and company on hanging the tarred and feathered corpses of criminals on street corners. Personally, I favor crucifixion – Marcus Licinius Crassus, call your office! The modern Western idea of long-term jail sentences and nearly endless appeals is insane. But then, Western society as a whole is now insane, so at least it’s internally congruent.
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Well, what if they showed a debonnaire alpha kind of guy like in those old Colt45 ads or that you see in Cognac adds?
They should use Smoove B – suave, debonair, and an expert in “relationship communication”!
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Im sure any effect the floral memorials have is cancelled-out by the absurd trend of memorializing your deceased loved ones by placing a gigantic sticker memorial in the back window of your car
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[quote]Something in our body politic doesn’t work. And simplistic solutions aint gonna get it. [/quote]
In my opinion, most social programs have the exact opposite effect than intended. Welfare causes laziness, because why work and make yourself better if the government is going to keep you going? Why save and invest your money when Social Security is going to give you checks until you die (well, maybe not in the near future, but whatever).
My taxes should pay for four things:
1. Defense
2. Infrastructure (roads, sewers, powerlines, etc.)
3. Police & Fire
4. Public Schools
Everything else is completely and utterly counterproductive and unnecessary.
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flower of death??????????
if the bitterness of HBD contaminates even this blog, then the cause is lost
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There’s another trend I’ve noticed here in Hawaii…don’t know if it’s nationwide or not, but a lot of people have started putting large sticker lettering on the back windows of their cars….huge headstone-type memorials: “In Loving Memory of [Dead Relative]” with the birth and death years.
Those have become quite popular on Long Island, where I am. They seem to have started out primarily among Hispanics but have now spread to the population in general. What’s especially surprising is to see one commemorating a person who died several years ago. I mean, I could see honoring a relative who just died, but after a few years it doesn’t seem to make as much sense.
Peter
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the curveballs are welcome. So is the RSS feed failure. Really good for my always ready state of alertness.
Memorials? Think how many could be at Okinawa, but, Spielberg didn’t make a movie about it, so it doesn’t matter.
si! You forgot beaners and wetbacks. Mustn’t get out to Califas much, or you’re fighting los immigraciones, hermano.
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In the event that this has already been pointed out by someone else, that’s ok, they can go fuck themselves while I say it again:
Presently there are still states that have the electric chair as one of two options available and inmates must choose one or the other (chair or needle). The following states have the policy just mentioned: Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. (Oklahoma and Illinois laws provide for its use should lethal injection ever be held to be unconstitutional).
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These roadside memorials are called “descansos” and have been a tradition for a very long time. They are primarily Hispanic, and more prevalent and elaborate in the Southwest (New Mexico, West Texas, etc). I’ve photographed quite a few of these. I once even saw a picture book devoted to the topic. Some people see them as an eyesore, particularly when they’re not maintained or if one objects to religious displays, but sometimes they can be quite an art form. They are less dangerous as a distraction in the open desert roads of the Southwest.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/rant/descansos.html
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you’re right. that’s a good idea to do that instead of repetitive re-reading
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fuck repetitive re-reading and restating for all.
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A very interesting idea to put flowers up with cuddly animals instead of slow down signs to see the effect, you could measure before and after speeds of a section of road and compare the before and after averages.
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“Firepower
you’re right. that’s a good idea to do that instead of repetitive re-reading”:
You mean people actually bother with reading past a certain point in the comments?
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nah,
they’re too busy
fucking themselves
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