Today was my first day of using it, and I honestly can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner. For one thing, New Jersey has placed high-speed EZPass lanes all over the place, so I paid my first toll with EZPass at 55 MPH, which, admittedly, is pretty fucking cool.

There are other benefits as well. The first benefit is obvious; don’t need to wait in long lines, which is extremely nice. You also never have to roll your windows down in bad weather, which will be very nice come winter time. And how could I possibly overlook the fact that I no longer have to deal with rude toll collectors? Honestly, Lansdale PA has some of the rudest toll collectors I have ever had to deal with!

For the longest time, I wouldn’t buy into EZ-Pass. For one thing, EZ-Pass was cracked in the past, so I never trusted it with my account information. It’s a wireless system, so it’s inherently problematic and insecure.

On top of that, there was the fiasco on the New Jersey Turnpike where EZPass users were automatically fined for speeding when they exited the turnpike. They took a timestamp of when you entered the road, timestamp of when you exited, then compared that time to the distance you travelled and the posted speed limit in the area, and issued tickets accordingly. They stopped doing this when people received the tickets and got up in arms about it, but the potential for abuse is still there.

Then there are the health concerns. EZ-Pass readers are essentially microwaves, and constant exposure to that isn’t ideal for living creatures. This isn’t a huge problem for humans in rural areas, but if you live in a city with lots of toll booths around (read: New York City), it might be a concern. I can only wonder what kinds of radiation toll booth workers are being exposed to.

Lastly, EZPass is a scam for toll road owners, in terms of the fact that it lets them reduce the number of toll collectors, reduce their expenses, and maximize their profits, all while passing none of this benefit on to regular old citizens like you and I. The cost of tolls isn’t going down, despite the fact that large numbers of toll workers have been laid off. Many toll booths in New Jersey had their staff cut by 50% after EZ-Pass was installed. Yet we haven’t seen a single reduced toll. When EZ-Pass first came to the Philadelpia area, the Delaware River Port Authority offered drivers a reduced toll rate; $2.70 for EZ-Pass users, $3.00 for cash. Once they reached a significant number of EZ-Pass users, that discount was taken away. Currently they offer a discount for commuters, but you have to cross one of the valid DRPA bridges over 20 times each month to receive that discount. Prior to EZ-Pass, they used to offer a window sticker system. You would pay $25.25 for your first toll, and then a quarter each time you crossed the bridge. This meant for a commuter crossing 20 times each month, you paid $30 a month. Under the EZ-Pass plan, you pay at least $40.

So, given all of this credible concerns, why did I bother getting EZ-Pass? In the end, it came down to convenience. Like all electronics that can possibly invade our lives and reduce our privacy, EZ-Pass is incredibly convenient. You never have to worry about losing a ticket and spending $20 or more at a single toll. You never have to fumble with loose change. You don’t even have to stop the car or roll down you window. In my first day of using it, I saved at least 5 minutes, simply from not having to sit in line at a backed up toll booth. Call me greedy, selfish, whatever, but I value my time, and not having to sit in a queue any more than I have to is so key. In short, I love it, and somehow in my mind I have justified the use of this system. Maybe I shouldn’t have, maybe I’ll go back to paying tolls with cash. But between the rude toll takers, the long lines, and the lost time, EZ-Pass is better than the alternative, and probably will continue to be for quite some time.

“No, that’s not it. It’s one of those old Kodak tapes he used to buy. I think it’s in the wrong case. Ahh, here it is! Now where did that other one get to? Oh, right here!”

She hands me two tapes, both almost as old as I am. I flip them over so I can read their labels. The first one is a printout attached with packing tape, the second is written in his handwriting. They read “Palumbo Family Album”, and “Tony’s 20th Anniversary”, respectively. I was five years old when they were both filmed.

She stands up, hugs me. “I know, I miss your father too.” I can tell she’s holding back a tear. I utter a sheepish thank you. The tear makes a run for her cheek.

The drive home is both too slow and too fast. It’s been so long since I last saw my dad alive, I don’t even remember what his voice sounded like. I don’t remember his mannerisms, I barely recall his constant whistling. I need to remember. “You’ll be ok”, I tell myself over & over again in my head.

I walk inside, go to the living room, turn on the VCR and TV. A flip of a loose quarter decides which video I’ll watch first. Anniversary tape it is. I put it in the VCR, turn the volume up, and grab the box of tissues out of the bathroom.

And I can’t bring myself to push the Play button.

That was last night. I tried again tonight, with the same results. I guess I’m just not ready yet to feel that type of pain again. Maybe sometime soon, but not yet.

You see, it dawned on me while I was here in the car that we as humans have made millions of miles of concrete roads for our cars, and yet there is one thing we never, ever do on them: walk. It’s really an odd phenomenon, and perhaps we just never stop to think about it, since we’re so busy driving on them, but it really is an interesting feeling to get out and walk, or sit, on a highway. Especially when cars are flying past you in the opposite direction at 80 miles per hour. If I had my camera with me (and believe me, it’s a rare occurrence that I don’t), I’d be taking tons of neat pictures. But in the meantime, it made me smile for a minute just to get out of my car and physically walk and sit on the highway. All that concrete and steel and paint and steamrollers and jackhammers and bulldozers and manual labor doesn’t really amount to much when there is a 3 mile backup, and people are reading books and resting their eyes in their cars.

Everything today has gone wrong.

I didn’t get to bed until far later than I wanted to, so I was exhausted when I woke up; I kept snoozing the alarm, and finally jumped out of bed 15 minutes before I had to leave.

I ran out to the car, jumped in it, and drove like crazy to get onto the expressway. Of course, since I was late, I didn’t bother doing my normal morning routine of listening to the traffic report. From where I got on the expressway to about 5 miles up the road, no traffic whatsoever, and it was so great. I thought to myself “Oh, sweet, I’ll get to work on time, no problem.”

Just as I passed an off ramp, the traffic report came on, and suddenly I came to a dead stop. Turns out a horrible accident happened at around 3:30 AM, and it was still being cleared even at 8:00 AM. The driver of the truck died, unfortunately, which makes this whole rant seem not so bad. But still, I’ll continue with it.

It took me 90 minutes to move the 1 1/2 miles up the road to the next offramp so I could take backroads. Of course, the backroads weren’t much better at all. So, by the time I made it to work, it was half past 10. Yep, 2 1/2 hours to get to work. I got to work too late for morning breakfast and the break carts, so nothing to eat either. No cereal, bagels, muffins, donuts, pancakes, nothing. I’m starving at this point.

Server problems all morning, fantastic. Not a good way to start.

By the time lunch rolled around, I felt sick from not eating. I wanted a salad, so I got one from the cafeteria, but all the lettuce was going bad, and it made me feel even sicker. Plus someone had rudely used the scoop for the peanuts to grab ground up bacon; I sprinkled peanuts on my salad, only to wind up having a piece of bacon in my mouth. The second it hit my taste buds, I almost threw up.

I felt sick all afternoon, and I didn’t get nearly enough done either. I also wanted to leave at 6 and go to the driving range to blow off some steam, but there were more server problems, so I wound up staying until 7, and then it was too late to go to the range.

I arrived home safely after a relatively easy ride. The cable modem had apparently been going up and down all day, and it still won’t stay connected. My rental movies showed up in the mail today, except that the DVD had a huge scratch running straight across it, and wouldn’t play in any of my 4 DVD players. It also nearly got stuck in my laptop. Great.

I figured instead I’ll relax with food and my new Chris Rock DVD. The food winds up making me feel even sicker than I did earlier, and the Chris Rock DVD won’t play in the DVD player in my living room; the other 3, no problem. Of course, I want to watch it in my living room though. Fantastic!

Last but not least, the cat went nuts tonight and clawed at me, so now I’m bleeding. That’s it, I’ve had enough. I’m going to bed right now, and when I wake up, this awful day will be over. Good night.

</rant>

P.S. Yes, I know a lot of people in the world had worse days than me, I just needed to vent.

Mark Pilgrim of DiveIntoMark.org now has google ads running on his site. *sigh*

Verisign is testing a service to redirect invalid domain queries to a page asking the user to purchase a domain. *sigh*

“I think I shall never see
A billboard as beautiful as a tree
Indeed unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all” – Ogden Nash

“Every day in America’s schools, 8 million students in 12,000 classrooms watch Channel One television, a news and advertising program. Instructional time lost to the ads alone? One entire day per year.” – Michael Moore

Leela: “Didn’t you have ads in the 20th century?”
Fry: “Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on tv and radio…and in magazines…and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree.”

People always ask me at work, “You drive all the way here from downtown Philadelphia? Doesn’t that trip bother you?!”

I respond “Not really, there aren’t any billboards on the roads I drive on.”

One year ago today, my roommate greeted me in the morning by saying “Happy ‘Bring Your Airplane To Work’ Day!”. I snorted milk out of my nose.

Today, I’m reading Salon.com’s Forbidden thoughts about 9/11, and wondering why we as a country still have no answers to what truly happened that day.

I get rather disgusted at the mention of certain days of the year, because they bring with them what I like to call “Injected Patriotism”. A day that is supposed to have some sort of reverence attached to it rolls around, and everyone buys miniature American flags to slap on their homes or cars, red white and blue ribbons to wear on their shirts, shirts with Mickey Mouse holding an American flag…you get the idea. What bothers me so much about this, aside from the obvious capitalistic explotation of selling overpriced red, white, and blue items, is that a large majority of people who go out of their way to show off their patriotism on those days usually don’t give a shit about this country. These are, by and large, the same people who don’t vote, don’t pay attention to politics, don’t get involved in their communities, etc. However, when those couple of days each year roll around, they will be the most nationalistic, flag-waving people in sight. These are generally the same people who come up with terribly jingoistic ideas like “Freedom Fries”.

9/11 has now become one of those days. GW Bush didn’t help matters much when he renamed it to “Patriot Day”. It has now become yet another day like July 4th or Veterans day, where people attempt to sell me a red white and blue ribbon for $3.00, and suddenly everyone sports buttons that read “I love America” or “GO USA!”, etc. The next day, those buttons and ribbons are gone.

Just like hearts on valentines day, patriotism has become a commodity, to be bought and sold as necessary. I’m sure someone out there is loving the fact that they have yet another “holiday” which they can use to sell their wares in record numbers. 9/11 is the new Love Day. Today, I received over a dozen pieces of spam with titles like: “Buy your 9/11 Commemorative Flag TODAY!” I’m half expecting to get one entitled “The Freedom Kit – 12 different sized flags!” (David Cross fans will pick up the reference).

At my office on Wednesday, while in line for a grilled cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, a coworker asked me “Hey, where’s your ribbon!? Aren’t you going to show your patriotism?”. I replied “Out of curiosity, did you vote in the last presidential election?”. His answer? “No…”, followed by a blank stare. I turned my back and ignored him.

I’ll remember 9/11 in my own ways, by reflecting on my life, appreciating those I have in my life while they are still here, telling my family that I love them dearly. I’ll remember how scared everyone was two years ago, and how no one quite knew what was going on, but we all collectively knew everything was suddenly different. I’ll remember that quiet drive home in the early afternoon, with the sky completely emptied, and state troopers looking exceptionally frightened. I’ll remember seeing electronic road signs that read “All roads to New York closed.”

I won’t remember it by purchasing an American flag window cling.

Here is what happened: On 76 East, a severe accident shut down both inbound lanes into the city, which backed it up for over 7 miles. On 276 East, another bad accident shut down the turnpike, backing it up for over 10 miles. That’s bad enough. But of course, it gets worse.

All of the connecting roads that feed into 76 and 276, such as 476, one of the roads I take home, were backed up for miles. On top of that, the westbound lanes were also backed up, with gaper delays. I promptly decided I would take back roads to get home, but that didn’t fair much better. The back roads are full of traffic lights, stop signs, and moronic drivers who won’t go faster than 20 MPH. Not to mention the hordes of soccer moms driving Ford SUVs with Penn State stickers on the back; they are the worst.

As frustrating and infuriating as my ride home was, it got me thinking at the same time. It’s amazing that we as a nation have developed so many traffic systems that rely on every piece of them working properly. There are no failsafes, no backups, no real alternatives to getting around traffic accidents. You sit and wait, or you take back roads and double your driving time. All the while, we spew more pollutants into the air and get angrier and meaner as a whole.

Several years ago here in Philly, some teens set fire to a tire yard in the Port Richmond section of the city. The tire yard was next to I-95, a major north-south arterial road. The fire was so intense that it melted several portions of the road, causing those lanes to be permanently shut down for months. It took years before they were finished with the repair construction. In the mean time, people just had to deal with the delays, as there are no good, fast ways around that area of 95; only surface streets which are very slow, and have lights or stop signs every block. That single incident, caused by a group of teenagers, cost PA taxpayers six million ($6,000,000.00) dollars for the repairs.

If that incident alone didn’t showcase the vulnerability of our traffic systems, nothing will. Think of the sheer havoc one could cause with strategic destruction of portions of major highways. Hell, it only took two accidents, albeit well-positioned accidents, to close down two of the largest highways in Philly this afternoon, and back up several others.

Imagine if the cars in those accidents exploded. Imagine if one of them had been a tanker carrying a combustible liquid. Imagine if someone had filled a rig with a fertilizer bomb, and then purposely wrecked it on the road. Imagine if they do it on an overpass, or a double-decked freeway, or a tunnel. Do it right, and you could not only kill dozens of people, but also shut down several lanes for who knows how long. A big enough fire, as the I-95 example proved, would melt rebar, crumble concrete, and crack key foundations. Not only would something like that scare the hell out of people for a long time, the rerouted traffic patterns would serve as a reminder of the incident for a long time to come (in the same way that the rerouted manhattan subway reminds you of the 9/11 attacks).

The Philadelphia area would be crippled for months, even years, without I-76 connecting NJ to the PA Turnpike. Boston’s roadways are so terrible that they had to begin the Big Dig project to try to alleviate the mess. Baltimore needs I-95 like humans need air. Don’t get me started on New York and Los Angeles. Our large cities would be pretty devastated if even a few of our major roadways were severed. I’ll admit that I’m not the brightest person in history, so someone, somewhere must have thought of all of this already. I doubt anything I’ve written here was very original. And I’m sure that someone with nothing to lose could pull off what I described without a hitch. And what a horrible, glorious mess they would cause if they did.

This is what I thought of while sitting in my car, trying to get home this afternoon.

That said, April gave us something incredible (besides the 22nd birthday of yours truly). The gods of metal smiled upon us all and gave us something so out of the ordinary, so unexpected, and so damn good, that you just can’t help but think that life is beyond wonderful.

I’m of course referring to their most recent release, Damnation. The title is of course the other half of their late 2002 release, Deliverance; the obvious genius here is that the titles are reversed. Deliverance is heavy, biting, raw, and gorgeous, while Damnation is light, airy, and yet so close to perfection that it could make you ask for a tissue.

The real genius here though is the complete 180 degree turn that Opeth performed in order to give us this album. Their previous albums, while all very well received by a death metal audience, really can’t extend past that genre. Metal albums they are, and metal albums they’ll stay. Damnation falls short of that classification, giving us 8 tracks of distortion-free guitar, vocals free of growling, and even a nice jazz-inspired sound from the drums. It’s such a radical step away from the entire genre that exhalted them.

And it’s absolutely brilliant.

Few bands, especially of the metal genre, could release something so different, and not have it just flat out suck. Others have tried, and others have failed. Opeth, it seems, is just not vulnerable to the same cosmic laws of music.

The inspriration for this album is easy to pick out; it’s clear that groups like Camel and Barclay James Harvest had a big impact on the melodies and songwriting. However, that’s not to say that this album is anywhere near retro. Lyrically, it’s not even in the same ballpark.

You could call this folk metal, progressive folk rock, or any other twisted concoction of genres, and you’d still be wrong. Damnation hovers in a plane above the grasp of pigeonholing, and rightly so. Go ahead, try and classify it; It will deftly slip out of whatever corner you place it into.

If I were to try to make complaints about this album, I’d be reaching to find any. In fact, the only one I can even remotely think of is that it’s just not long enough. It comes and goes so quickly, and leaves you wondering why there isn’t more. It leaves you crushed that there isn’t a second disc, or more tracks. Track 4, Closure, especially does this. The ending is so powerful, full of layers of percussion and atmospheric keys, and it stops dead in it’s tracks. The title of it is its antithesis. However, unlike their previous attempt at this on their Still Life album, this time it’s executed perfectly.

So where can Opeth go from here? I honestly don’t know. But it’s clear at this point that they would really have to try their hardest to put out a bad album. I’m not even sure if it’s possible.