Reasons I loathe rubber neckers.

Today, as I was driving back from school, traffic began to slow to snail pace.

Why?

Skipping a long lead-in, which even I expect of myself -- a wreck.

Where?

On the other side of the road.

It's nonsensical, you say, for Wendover Avenue to turn into a snail race in the middle of the day because an accident has happened on the other side of the road.

And you say it for good reason. It makes no sense.

What is it about wrecks? People see the flashing police lights and, like really ADD moths, are drawn to the sight? Or are we just programmed to look at someone else's tragedy?

Well, neither. People are just morons.

I got to thinking as I sat in traffic so others could get a nice long look at the fender-bender on the other side of the lane. The reason I hate these people so greatly is because I've seen, first hand, the effects of rubber necking.

It was two years ago, and I was laboriously driving la macchina to high school. IB English 12. Ms. Rozelman. Oh, the days. Anyway, as I was sitting at a light on Friendly Ave, the lady behind me had got it into her head that the light was green, and immediately set her foot on the accelerator. She plummeted into me. She had only one contact in because my car interrupted her in the middle of her morning multi-tasking usual. Anyway, we got out, she was mad (she didn't have insurance, though she worked at an insurance agency), I started crying, my bumper started falling off, et cetera et cetera. All of Friendly was there to see. And that's a damn busy road in the morning. About 15 minutes into the ordeal, a car in the right-hand lane (we're in the median nearer to the left-hand lane) smashes into two cars in front of it. I get out of the driver's seat to look and, literally a second later, a truck in the left-hand lane -- which is going fairly fast for the morning commute -- runs into the car in front of him, propelling it forward.

Obviously, I started crying again.

Seven cars on the side of the road: Five of which as a result of rubber necking; all of which as a result of drivers directing their attention to someone (or something) else rather than the task at hand. Now, I felt kind of bad for the truck driver; I'd probably be a bit startled for a second, too, if I'd just seen three cars hit each other on my right and a stagnant accident on my other side. The driver of the car he hit seemed to be amiable about the whole thing, which makes me think he wasn't rubber necking, just thrown off.

That situation was ridiculous. My accident wasn't bad. We pulled to the side of the road, in no one's way, and waited until someone came to get all the information. I understand human nature. It's not as annoying when there are multiple ambulances surrounding a wreck that looks awful. You want to see if the people involved are OK. In some cases, you want to see if you can help. I don't know, though, whether slow-moving and highly concentrated traffic would be better or worse for ambulance drivers. But when there's an accident on the other side of the road, or a fender-bender on your side, to slow down to such an extent that traffic is at almost a standstill until the miraculous barrier is lifted once you pass the accident is awful. It's unnecessary. There is a happy medium between gaging your surroundings, settling your natural desire to look, and driving safely.

It's only a slight annoyance.

Obviously.

Truisms

"The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear."

A lesson on overstaying your welcome.

An excerpt from Proper Etiquette, page 23.

Once upon a time, there lived a snake. He was a handsome-looking snake, a King at that!, with a sprightly gate. Black he was, and marked on his stomach. Handsome as can be.

He came upon a house, on Jessup Grove Road, a house directly across from where Ricky Proehl, a washed-up football played from the Carolina Panthers and St. Louis Rams, decided to destroy a naturally green piece of land with a completely unnecessary baseball/soccer/REALLY BRIGHT LIGHTS ON ALL THE TIME park "for the needy kids," and charge $75 a month. Because poor kids can afford $75 a month. And, somehow, get transportation to the edge of Greensboro. OK. There are also a million other baseball and soccer parks around, and they're completely free to use. He dubbed this monstrosity "Proehlific Park," and yeah there's a red line under Proehlific because Mac knows it is neither spelled correctly nor pertinent at all.

Removed from his native lands across the street, King Snake decided to move in with the family across the way. They'd see him scurrying across the drive way, diving playfully into the recycling bins, and curling under their cars. They laughed and frolicked with him, and the youngest sister even named him: Bociefus, a very manly name to fit his manly charge.

And then one day, as the youngest sister was readying herself to visit a beautiful horse on the outskirts of town, Boceifus, upon thinking he had been invited to dine with the family, came "a bit too close for comfort." The sister opened the door and screamed: he was right there. The elder sister and father, who happened to be standing nearby, came to see how close Boceifus was to the house. The elder sister looked on the ground and under the cars in the car park, but didn't see Boceifus. No, it wasn't until she looked up and saw Bo's head poking halfway up the door frame, and inside it at that. The elder sister screamed, and the elder father also screamed and shut the door in Bo's face. Luckily, his head was not smashed, but just confused at the slight.

Bo skulked back to the cabinet beside the door, on which he was perched and which allowed him such access to the doorway. The elder father ran out the side door, and the two sisters followed him, the elder begging her father not to kill Bo and the younger assuring that he would not.

With much effort on the younger sister's part and not so much at all on the elder's, the trio caught Bo in a box. The younger sister acted in a snake-catching way only Steve Irwin could truly appreciate, and lifted him, situated safely inside the cardboard box, into a large plastic container with a secured lid.

The elder sister and father hopped quickly in the car, with Bo sitting in the trunk; not because he was unwelcome, but because trunks are the preferred sitting places of most snakes (with the exception of pythons, who would rather be situated around your torso eating your head).

The duo took Bo to a location near a lake, four miles away from the homestead. They walked down through a forest in a very secretive manner, hoping no one would mistake the snake inside for a dead body. Once they got far enough in that Bo would most likely not want to slither into the road, they grew wary of Bo's wrath.

"I wish I'd thought to bring a broom," elder father said to his daughter (or the snake), "so we could defend ourselves if he's a bit too feisty."

But elder daughter, accustomed to forests since her early days of Girl Scouts, smartly looked around. What are brooms made of, she thought. And in a forest as they were, with ample amounts of kindle and branches, she grabbed one, breaking off the unnessecary length and twigs, and skillfully tossed it to elder father. Equipped with a weapon, in case Boceifus was too rowdy from his entrapment and uninvitation from the house, he opened the lid. Bo slithered out, quickly, from the case; he stopped for a second, orienting himself to his surroundings; then he climbed on a tree and ate them both.

When Warner Bros. studio learned of the escapade, they decided to make a movie -- one that would both serve as a true-life warning to all, and be a sequel to the Bill Murray movie of the early 90's -- entitled What About Boceifus?

Not really, to both the head-eating and the movie deal (the family would never sell rights to that movie). But the lesson there was: making someone (or some thing) think they would be welcomly invited into your house is just as bad as actually inviting them, even if the whole invitation is a delusion.

As the elder father and daughter climbed the forest's hill and returned to the car, the elder daughter, clutching two plucked flowers in her hands, called out to the handsome intruder.

"Good-bye, Boceifus!"

But the elder father, who discerned that it was the naming of the snake that had made him feel he had an invitation to dine inside the house, cautioned her against it.

"He doesn't know we named him," elder daughter said. "He thinks it's the same as if I'm talking to you."

She thought this was the truth, until one night she awoke to a slithering sound; Boceifus' face inches from her own; his snake mouth was open; his eyes were glaring in the way of the hunter about to catch his prey.

And then he bit her head off.

Near, far, wherever you are.

I am far-sighted.

Slightly.

And more so in my left eye, which I find strange since they look so alike.

I got glasses.

And had a poor reaction to the eye drops that make your pupils dilate unnaturally. Sight from my right eye is still kind of fuzzy.

In other news, I'm moving to Burlington Sunday for two weeks, until the 31, when I can move into the apartment. So so so so excited!

It's a good thing my grandparents' neighbors have wireless Internet, and that you can basically only steal access it from the room I stay in, otherwise I'd be screwed.

LAST TIME I CHECKED THE WRITTEN WORD WAS STILL ALIVE.

My grandmother e-mailed some relative of hers, who, by association, makes him a relative of mine, to ask about something-or-other in Raleigh. She gets very concerned that I'm down here alone, so she takes comfort in knowing this relative is, or was, also in Raleigh. She's sweet; he's not.

For your reading pleasure.

"Yikes, going to NCSU and majoring in English. That's a good start for a hobby, what about a career?"

Oh my God, journalism's a hobby! Wow. Hey, all you silly people writing articles all across the world, you can stop now. What you're actually doing isn't a job, despite those omniscient monthly funds you receive that seem to resemble and perform the functions of paychecks. Woodward and Bernstein? They were actually on their way to make some clay pots when they happened upon a small scandal within the Nixon administration, so they decided to jot some notes down. Go get a real job, you fools, and stop wasting time at those hobby stores you call the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and News & Observer. And to think, I was heading toward that lifestyle. OK, relative, what advice do you have for me to amend this macabre mistake? With your degree in engineering, you're obviously well in your realm of expertise to offer suggestions about journalism, just as NASA would be the first to call me about engine trouble.

"Does she read Mike Adams (www.dradams.org), Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell? That would help with journalistic ethics not likely to be taught in college."

Mike Adams is not likely to be taught in college because he doesn't preach ethics, just right-wing political drivel that deals not with journalism, but with insanity.

So what should I do with my life?

"If she is concerned about the environment and politics, I suggest she get a Chemical Engineering Degree so she can be one of the ones actually finding alternative energy sources and not talking about it. Besides, it pays very well and is in very high demand."

Wow. I had never thought of that! Getting a degree in... science. Because that's one of my best subjects. No, really. Chemistry? Well the last time I took it was in high school and I made a C. A B, really, but it was technically a C, I just did well on the EOG so my teacher upped my grade. No, I'm really good at math and science. I'll go ahead and change my major.

And about the money -- I'm going into journalism. I've already resigned myself to living in poverty the rest of my life, so money's not really going to be a big pull in career decisions.

I'm fighting the urge to reply. It would be just rude. And considering one of his good friends is Professor Sopher, who teaches communications, I don't think my enraged reply would alter his opinion or even make him think my career choice isn't a hobby. A hobby. Yeah, that's what I spend a million years doing at Technician. It's spare time I spend up at the office. Same as growing a garden, making a hemp bracelet for a friend or baking some cookies. It's all the same thing, right? A hobby.

kthx cousin 21 times removed.

P.S. Just to clarify, I'd be writing about alternative energy sources.

P.P.S. I do understand the difference between holing myself up in my room and writing the next Great American Novel and a securing a job in writing. It's a hobby until you do something with it, like get published. Oh, wait. I think that's what newspapers do -- publish their writers. And pays them, to boot!

Gang life in Walker, Texas Ranger probably isn't indicative of how it really is.

Camp Lejeune, N.C.

It's a long, four-and-a-half hour drive back from Atlantic Beach. But about halfway through you hit what I can only imagine to be the town near Camp Lejeune. Every time I pass this town, the roads are riddled with green-and-brown tinted Jeep/Hummer cars, the soldiers driving with their elbows sticking inches out their windows. Hell, if I were a soldier, I'd revel in the drive, too. When I was passing a caravan the other day, I fleetingly estimated how much longer they had to drive, and hoped, still half-consciously, that they could just keep on driving forever. Today, though, there were no caravans. The evidence of the war (or war, sans article, or 'security' for you patriots out there) was in the air -- literally. There were these amazing planes, which resembled even more the birds that were flying around, diving in front of my car, than regular planes. They were diving up, down, into nothing, and then leveling out to, I assume, land. There were others, too, but I don't think they were the same kind. A bit more boxy, they flew in groups of two.

So I have a new mission: Fly a jet fighter plane. Imagine how amazing it would be. There are some schools in Charlotte that look legit. If I can't fly a jet -- and I'm not really willing to join the Marines, although if I did have to join the armed forces, the Marines would be my first choice -- I can at least fly a plane.

I've never really understood why these types of ideas or dreams were deemed crazy. When else will I be able to fly?

In other news, House was intense tonight. And the next episode looks even more trippy. I'm going to need to watch that with someone; this time I'd TiVo'd it, and watching it alone at 12:30 a.m. wasn't the best choice. Especially following the Gossip Girl thriller, which was exceedingly shocking.

In other other news, I've got an eye exam Wednesday. The only time I've needed glasses was in 6th grade, when I faked the exam to get a pair. And then I lost them. Or left them in the backyard? I don't know. Anyway, I do want some now. But I don't know if I'll have to fake the exam.

Oh! Poll time.

Which glasses should I get, should I need to, and provided it's after June 1 so the frames won't break my bank account.

One, in green or brown
Two, in copper
Three, in brown
Four, in tortoise

Sweet. I hope I need glasses now, or that whole search will be very disappointing.

'If only, if only,' the woodpecker sighed.

Ayres.

That's that my middle name could have been.

Granted, "Davis" is the only part of my three-part name people can spell correctly. When I was in elementary school, my teachers (or one of them, I can't truly remember) spelled, so often, my name "Allison Harmon" that I started to spell it that way, too. I was a really smart kid. When my dad found out, he was endlessly furious. I remember that argument. I think it's one of the only memories from when I was that young that I remember without pictures or family lore -- besides taking turns walking on the hill in front of Lindley with my dad's glasses, eyes glued to the ground. The step-in-fake-holes effect. Anyway, he was furious, I didn't understand why, the usual. But the point of my story is this: For 20 years (yes, even as a small baby!) I suffered with the manliness of my name. Alison Davis Harman. Boy Boy Man. Convinced, as I was, that my parents had wanted a son (and very in tune to the Russian style of the obvious but hidden meaning of one's name) it was saddening, every time I thought about it.

But Ayres (pronounced Airs) would have been wonderfully 1940s Poirot. Yeah, I would have spelled it horribly for a while, resulting in a hippy both Cartman from Southpark and my own sister would have loathed, but that kind of happened anyway and I grew out of it... in practice.

Dinner's almost ready. It's 3:57 p.m. My grandfather starts asking for dinner about 3:30.

"Do you like sushi?"

"Your uncle Johnny likes it. Me, I like my fish cooked. I don't think it's a meal if you jump into the ocean and bite one." My grandfather

Amongst the creepers and cuties

The library is a labyrinth. I think maybe the one Hercules fought the lion in. The exact same one. I realized that walking from the East Wing to the second floor on Tuesday, and the theory was reinforced today, right now, in the "Media Center," which is up the stairs, to the left, down some stairs, through a hall that has the nation's newspapers (who knew?!) up some stairs, to the right, and bam! you've found one of the strangest rooms on campus. There is a line of desks, each of which has a video tape player, a dvd player, and a small panasonic tv with headphones. The kind where you can adjust the volume level of each ear. And you've also got the creepers, who I think come up here to have fun. Or, like me, end up vowing to return many times in the coming weeks to see the cute boy with huge glasses and nice, full hair.

This also happens to be where they store the newspapers. File cabinets are everywhere. If the labyrinth and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler had a love child, this is it.

I'm here watching Stalker, a very Russian, very existentialist, very, very slow film. Imagine the thickest Russian accent you've heard mixed with that guy who can go on mile-long tangents, and throw in some doubt about life and being and happiness and existence. Eksistence? Oh god I don't know.

This movie is so weird.

Maggie just came to visit and we walked around this square hall for a million years and an hour, chatting about exams and work and future work (painting houses?!) We couldn't find a job painting houses. Maybe we could start our own house-painting company. Maggie and Alison go to Paintingtown & Co. Or maybe we could serve that old man who called Housing. I'm good at making scrambled eggs. Maggie's good at old men. Maggie, Alison & Indentured Servitude.

One of the Russians just asked the other if he could really believe in all those fairy tales, following a comment about super-bacteria.

I might as well leave. There are notes on Wikipedia.

New development: Library is labyrinth, without the "nth" and with an extra "r."

And there's a skeleton hand. A skeleton arm. Some red hair. Time to go.