The Monday Mission:
1. What caused your last case of [sic] psuedo-road rage?

[ed. - What the hell do you mean, "pseudo"?]

Countyline Road is currently blocked off for (re)construction for about a half mile, but there isn’t anything along that section of blocked road that you can’t get to some other way, and it cuts down some of the traffic in places, so who cares? So last night I was driving home along that road, prepared to turn off at the “Road Closed” sign and cross over to ‘my’ side of the highway that Countyline parallels.

When I got to that intersection, two pickups were in the turn lanes. I pulled in behind them before I realized they weren’t moving, then had to swing around them (and into traffic coming from behind). The occupants of the two vehicles were talking with each other and staring at the Road Closed sign in complete confusion… almost hate. Obviously, the handwritten-on-a-napkin directions that these simpletons were using instructed them to continue along Countyline a few more blocks, and they couldn’t get their mind around the fact that they couldn’t DO that.

So they’d just parked there.

In the turn lane.

THE ONLY LANE YOU CAN USE AT THAT INTERSECTION, SINCE YOU CAN’T GO STRAIGHT. If they’d stopped in the ‘straight’ lanes, they wouldn’t have blocked anyone. Morons.

2. Tell me about one of your favorite television shows that was cancelled (past or present).
Moonlighting. Cancelled in (I think) ‘89. It was really the only show I was watching at that point, and when it was cancelled, I stopped watching TV and didn’t start again until about ‘95 (Murder One was the show that sucked me back in, which is funny, since it wins my award for “show that should have simply run for one season and been left alone”. Some shows (24 is one) should simply run for a season and be done with it.)

3. Have you ever gone online and pretended to be someone else? What’s the story there?
Do online games count? I think I’d have to say no. I’m sure I’ve fabricated my share of personal myths, especially when I first got online, but by and large everything has had some (albeit tenuous) connection to The Facts.

4. What was (is) one of your favorite Children’s books?
Frog and Toad are Friends — which is ironic in that I didn’t encounter the book until after my divorce. I read it to Jackie one time when we were dating, when she got sick. :)

5. Can you recommend a CD (tape or otherwise) for me to listen to on the drive home?
Bare Naked Ladies, Disc One — anything you can sing along to that doesn’t go too slow for too long is good for driving. If the singing required is loud, all the better.

6. What is your online nickname and what is the story behind how you selected it?
[glances meaningfully at the domain name]
I like bears. In a gruff, self-centered, teddy bear sense, I feel akin to them — cool climate, highly protective of their young, and into hibernation - I can dig that. I don’t answer to “Bear” in real life (not anymore anyway, I did in college for certain people), and I’ve got more than enough bear knickknacks to last me a good long time, but I still really like em.

In certain areas of the internet, I’ve also used “Jacob” or a variant nom de guerre — the story there is that “Jacob” used to be the name I gave people when I first started working on phone-based tech support in ‘94 — I didn’t want to waste time explaining my name to every jack-ass that called in because his kid’s installation of Reader Rabbit didn’t work.

7. Ever been bitten or stung before (snake, wasp, dog, etc)?
I’ve been stung by any number of bees. Thankfully, I’m not allergic. (Dad is.) I’ve been bitten by one or two wasps, and I’ll take the bees, thank you very much.

When I was in high school, I dropped off… something (no idea what) at my Bio teacher’s house one Saturday afternoon, and on the way back to my car, his dog (a bull mastiff, actually), came loping around from the back of the house, walked up to me and bit me in the ass (right side). I had on these ugly-as-hell, bright pink jams (I had been waterskiing, and it was the late 80’s, shut up), and apparently he didn’t like them.

I don’t know if there’s a scar, because I don’t try to catch my naked ass in the mirror very often (and I don’t recommend it to anyone else as a pasttime either), but the shorts were basically destroyed, which put something of a crimp in my socialization plans for the rest of the day.