On the way to dropping the children off at school this morning, we espied a truly noxious plume of smoke right around the corner from Cedar’s school. To satisfy my morbid curiosity, after I shipped Cedar to his first day of first grade (!), Tallulah and I took a slight detour to check out what looked to be a truly magnificent pyre of modern hydrocarbons.

Lo and behold, when we pulled onto the offramp, an entire ad-hoc unhoused enhousement had tragically gone up in flames:

I disembarked, wandered up to get a quick look, and asked how long they expected to hold us up on the offramp, to resounding shrugs from WSDOT and firefighters alike.

Being joyously a new owner of a truck fully equipped for most reasonable offroading situations, and still wanting to get my daughter to school not terrifically late, I effected a two-point turn, and went bumping into the median between the offramp and the highway. Only to be accosted by some standard-size American in a broken down Ford sedan something or other: “YOU STUPID FUCK!”

This is just what you have to expect from the chronically oppressed American. They know they can’t get or do anything, and their response is to get absolutely infuriated when they see other folks they can’t understand aren’t cattle like themselves to raise the spectre of rule-following and fairness.

Following the rules is for schmucks. Those who can, do. Those who cannot, endure. I have a truck capable of getting me out of minor binds like “pulled off on an exit that was immediately closed right in front of me”, and frankly the Ford in question could absolutely have driven up the shoulder back to the highway junction, even if it wasn’t capable of navigating the ditch. But! Its pilot is tragically cursed by the American prole’s mental capture by the local rule system, and can’t comprehend how anyone else would be willing or able to break those rules.

I’m rubber, you’re glue etc.