President Me (11 page)

They know exactly what they're doing. They've done the math on the meters and how much change we carry around. I parked in Hollywood recently, put in a quarter, and got nine minutes. Why nine? They thought of this intentionally. There was an algorithm figured out to determine how long it takes people to accomplish the task they've parked for; after determining that, they shaved off a minute so people are more likely to go over that time and get a ticket. I'm not paranoid, I just know our government and that when it was time to program the meters they decided to bust out the abacus and figure out how to fuck us.

When they don't have robot rape sticks to do their bidding, the government relies on old-fashioned cunts and dicks known as meter maids. Here's how you know meter maids have quotas. They do their job. Every government employee is slow as fucking glaciers and horribly inefficient at their job. If you need the Department of Water or Department of Power to come out to your house, they give you an eight-hour window. In L.A., you can get a ticket on your windshield during the time it takes to get out of your car to walk around to the meter. Everyone else on the city payroll moves like a tree sloth on a Quaalude.
Except
for the meter maids. They're hummingbirds on a double cappuccino. You think this is a coincidence? Do you think this profession attracts highly motivated self-starters? No. They move so fast because of quotas. And by the way, do you notice I don't refer to them as parking enforcement personnel? That's way too much respect for a job where you make nineteen bucks an hour ruining people's days. And to all of you who say, “But it's not their fault, they're just doing their job,” I say, this:
Shut the fuck up
. That defense didn't work at Nuremberg and it's not going to work on me. You think someone got them in a headlock and dragged them out of high school and put them in meter-maid academy? They had choices. They could have taken paths with more dignity. Like crack whore or human trafficker. They chose to do this. Thus meter maids should garner none of our sympathy.

My assistant Matt “the Porcelain Punisher” Fondiler recently got a nice bullshit ticket for not turning his wheels toward the curb when parked on the hill where he lives. Twenty-five dollars. First off, as a car guy, I know that this law is antiquated. The vast majority of cars are now, sadly, automatic. So when it's in park it's parked. It ain't going nowhere. Fifty years ago most cars were stick shifts and if it wasn't in gear there might be a rolling problem. But with a modern automatic there is no way to leave a car in gear and get the keys out and walk away, so there's no fucking way the car could roll down the hill. The superbullshit part was that this was on the weekend. For what else do you have city employees working on the weekend? Go ahead and attempt to get the Department of Public Works to come out and turn your power on during a weekend. Fat fucking chance.

The government clearly isn't interested in catching criminals. They're interested in collecting cash. Let me give you two examples. My buddy and writing partner Kevin Hench was driving to work via Laurel Canyon Boulevard one day and off to the side he saw a motorcycle cop with a radar gun and a walkie-talkie. This dude was clocking speeders and then radioing up to his cohort on the top of the hill, who was then pulling over the supervillain in the Hyundai Sonata who dared to go over the speed limit trying to get to work on time. That's how bad it's gotten; cops don't even bother to chase anymore. They have a two-man sting operation.

Then, on a recent trip up the 101 Freeway to a vintage race at Laguna Seca, I passed at least seventeen cops. The California Highway Patrol was out in full force. None were chasing down Bonnie and Clyde. They were parked off the side of the freeway in tall grass, lying in wait. Like a lion about to pounce on an unknowing gazelle. I wouldn't be as pissed if they were out trying to capture drug runners or a guy with a teenage runaway duct-taped in the back of his van and just happened to nab me while I was going ninety. But they were just hiding in the weeds like a sniper. These are the heroes we need more of? This is why my taxes go up? To pay for more guys to attempt raping my wallet instead of catching the guy attempting to rape the chick jogging in the park?

But here's how I knew there were so many cops hiding and why I never got a ticket. Radar detector. I had one on my dash and it was going off like a fucking pinball machine. I recommend these for everyone. First, there's the practical reason. These things cost the price of one speeding ticket, probably less if you factor in the 10 percent hassle charge of getting pulled over, showing up for a court date, and shit like that. For the price of one ticket you'll save yourself from getting ten and you'll get everywhere you need to go a hell of a lot faster. I think you should be able to rent them when you get the SUV from Hertz. Because, be honest, you do a lot more speeding when you're not in your own car or on your own turf, right?

Second is the symbolic reason. These cops are sniping us with their radar guns. Well, turnabout is fair play. You've got radar. Okay, I've got radar too. How do you like it? This is a cold war, motherfuckers, and we didn't fire the first shot. We used to call cops pigs, but when they look at us they see piggy banks. If you're going to be pussies so that you can raise money, why don't you just put on a skirt and sell some fucking cookies like the Girl Scouts?

Because I know the states still need this chickenshit cash cow and would fight my administration's reducing the police force used to pick our collective pockets, I'm going to require the auto industry to include radar detectors in all new models.

As president, it's my job to pay attention to the issues that affect all Americans. You always hear politicians and folks in the media say, “This especially impacts the children . . .” or “This is really bad news for the Latino community . . .” Well, traffic is especially bad for rich white guys. You never hear enough about how things are impacting them, or us, since I am not going to pretend that I'm not rich, or white. I'm going to be the Al Sharpton of rich white guys and bring awareness to our cause. Think about it. If you're making nine bucks an hour, who cares if you're late? Nowhere you're driving to can be that important. Those dishes are going to get washed and that hedge is going to get trimmed. Plus you're out under ten bucks for that time spent in gridlock. When guys like Jimmy Kimmel are stuck in traffic for an hour, that's millions of dollars lost. Plus rich white guys drive more expensive cars that are capable of higher speeds. All of that horsepower and the money spent to purchase it is being wasted by going slow. But if you spent two hundred bucks on something between a rusted-out Vega and a donkey with three legs, it's not like it could get far north of ten miles an hour anyway. So who gives a shit if you're stuck on the 405? It would probably be a relief since you're driving on retreads anyway. It's safer for you to stay at eight miles an hour. But for rich whitey it's a tragedy.

CARS

My administration would also like to require some changes to cars themselves, for safety, efficiency, and just for fun.

First we need to get rid of airbags. I know what you're thinking. Airbags have saved countless lives! True, but maybe we've come to rely on them too much. People would be much more careful behind the wheel if instead of airbags out popped spiked Prussian helmets. Right now if we T-bone a UPS truck we act like we'll slide back into mama's womb. You know who doesn't text while driving—uninsured Mexicans behind the wheels of gardening trucks. They can't afford the ticket or the accident and they know they don't have airbags to stop them from going through the windshield. If there was something a little more painful slamming into us when we got into an accident than a pillow softer than a hooker's bosom, we might pay more attention when we fucking drive.

Or even better, how about a little Russian roulette? Some cars will have airbags, others will have a water balloon full of moose jizz. You'll never know what your model features until you get in the accident. Let's see how safe everyone starts driving then.

Next I'm going to remove the mandate that all cars have that glow-in-the-dark trunk release. Since 2000, all cars have been required to have a glow-in-the-dark T-handle that a person can pull to release the trunk latch if they accidentally get locked inside. I don't know how drunk or clumsy you need to be to lock yourself in a trunk, but if you've done this I either want you put down for your own good or I want to party with you. I guess it's intended for when your estranged drunken dad abducts you and starts heading for the border, so you can grab it and let yourself out. But if you take a close look at it you'll see why this bothers me.

First off, I can do the fleeing math. I don't need the help. I've got the BTK killer sitting in the driver's seat, I'm not going to let myself out and sit patiently on the bumper for the police to come. Second, this is one in a long line of mandates that doesn't make sense in certain vehicles. Take the Lamborghini Aventador—it has the trunk in the front and is only big enough to hold two loaves of bread, yet it would still be mandated that this handle be installed. The Chinese guy from
Ocean's Eleven
couldn't fit in that trunk yet this must still be on there? Dumb.

My Department of Transportation will also mandate that crash-test dummies need to be fatter. I've seen all that slow-motion footage of test wrecks. The dummies in those crashes have a far smaller body mass index than most Americans. This could tie in well with my get-rid-of-airbags decree. Most Americans are now coming with their own airbags in the form of triple chins and panises. And now that I think about it, why are crash-test dummies always white? Let's get some brown ones in there. Especially for the DUI simulations.

Next up for elimination—the miles-until-empty gauge. This seems like a great idea—your car telling you how far you can go on the gas in the tank. Everyone has been waiting for this thing since cars were invented. But it's so wildly inconsistent that it does far more harm than good. You start your car up in the morning and it says thirty-one miles left. “Okay, I can make it to work and back,” you think. But then as you back down your driveway it drops to nineteen miles. So you think, “Okay, I'll have to fill up on the way home.” Then it stays at nineteen miles for your entire commute but as you pull up to your parking spot it drops to three. Meanwhile you know that the closest gas station is four miles away. Uh-oh. Then as you start up your car at the end of the day, the display shoots back up to eleven, but when you pull out it drops back to zero again and you shit yourself as you hypermile it to the next gas station. Of course you get there with plenty to spare because you can circumnavigate the globe with this thing on zero. Where do you get those extra miles from? Do they get added in for good behavior? Is it a gift from the gas fairy?

What really needs to happen, and what I'm going to mandate as president, is that every gas tank should have a heel in it. Like the heel of a boot. This will be a reservoir containing exactly one gallon of gas. No more, no less. Do with it what you will. Drive home or drive to the Grand Canyon. You know what your car gets gas-mileage-wise. I know you have one gallon once you hit E on the tank. You do the math yourself.