It took me almost three hours to drive the 27 miles to work today, owing to an accident, or something, that happened early in the morning. I don't know what style of accident it was, but when I got to Mussel Shoals, there was a sheared-off telephone pole and big pieces of equipment scattered around. There was one main piece of equipment--maybe it was a transformer. I'm going to say it was a transformer, because it allows me to imagine that the piece of equipment has the ability to morph into a robot, which I would enjoy to see. I'll bet a robot could have really moved things along this morning, helping with the clean-up and all, droning "MOVE ALONG... NOTHING TO SEE HERE..." with his monotonous robot voice.

As it was, there were no helper robots, and traffic stood nearly still for hours. It was so much fun. I had hours--two, anyway, during which I traveled eight miles--to listen to great mix CDs and contemplate the vanity plates on the cars around me. There were a lot to choose from, because in Southern California, a thought is not truly complete until it has been expressed in seven letters or less and mounted on the rear bumper of a car. There was a tie today for favorite, in a heavily contested race between OZZY 04, a silver... something... driven by a middle-aged woman with long hair and glasses, and 2PUNISH, a recent-model black Chevy Impala. In the end, 2PUNISH won out due to the extra touch of a custom license plate holder reading THE on the top, and PUNISHER on the bottom. Yeah! It's The Punisher! Punishing other drivers who have to look at his stupid fucking Chevy Impala with the custom plates!

I know it doesn't seem like that big a deal, but I was directly behind him for almost an hour, during which time I moved 3 miles. (That's a total average speed over the ground of 3 miles per hour, y'all.) And by that time, the big cup of coffee I'd been so grateful for at the start of the traffic jam had turned into a giant bladder-exploding Ocean of Wee. (Note: There was no actual explosion.)

The best part of my commute came when I called the office to give an update on my progress, which was minimal, and a coworker expressed that it was a shame that I didn't have a wireless laptop with me, so I'd be "getting paid, at least." There are few things more rewarding than being stuck in traffic and having someone remind me that the time spent sitting on the highway is counted as "personal leave."

The Keelhauler returned to land today, and was immediately confronted with another great highway scenario so popular in these parts: the low-speed chase. Some dude in LA kidnapped his family, or something, and headed straight up the 101 for Santa Barbara. What a great idea! Feeling stressed out? Ex-wife won't let you see the kids? Don't take that kind of crap--meet them at the mall, and then kidnap them! It turns an afternoon at Wal-Mart into a wonderful three-hour ride of thrills, at least until you run out of gas. I'm lucky that low-speed chases like that weren't popular when I was a kid, because if my father had even realized they were possible, he'd have done it in a heartbeat, just to milk the most possible drama and publicity out of our mundane household dysfunction. As it was, we had to make do with his fake suicide attempts and drunken womanizing, but while his efforts won him a fair amount of attention within the family, neither approach proved worthy of widespread press coverage.

In other other news, my gmail account isn't working, for whatever reason, so if you've e-mailed me in the last day or so, I haven't gotten the message. You can re-send to three_white_violetsATyahoodotcom, if you enjoy to. Unless you're one of the dozens of people overseas who claim rabid interest in the boat I have for sale, and pump me for details that are actually included in the ad I posted, promising to send me a check as soon as possible. Apparently, Belgium is chock-full of individuals who are pulling their hair out, they're so desperate to buy my 26-foot sailboat, and I just wish I could accommodate them all. But there is only one little sailboat, and only so much of me, and so I beg you: have mercy.

Star of the day. . .Leopold Bloom