LA Road Warrior

Fortunately, I was going in the right direction today: luck o' the draw.

There's an old joke. Why do Mexicans like to deal in cash? Because it's hard to sign a check with a can of spray paint.

Apparently, this morning, one of those dopey Mexi-gang types spray painted a pretty large--and I'd guess a pretty undesirable--message 'pon a bridge abutment wall on the southbound I-5 freeway just south of Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights is a pretty heavily latin (self-imposed) ghetto just southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Mexi-gang lingo graffiti is abundantly visible throughout the area.

As I mentioned, the graffito must've been kind of nasty, though I couldn't tell for sure because I was passing at 60mph, and there was a Caltrans drone painting it out with gray paint. They usually just leave it until someone else comes along and paints over it. About all I could tell from the uncovered portion was that it was Mexi-gang in nature.

The bad part of this whole scene wasn't so much the fact of the graffito. The bad part is as follows: While the painter was working with a paint roller to cover the "art," and his partner had a flat-bed truck alongside in the right traffic lane, a highway patrol idjit had all four lanes of traffic stopped dead, waiting for the painter to finish(!).

As I said at the beginning, I was going in the right direction. All those on the southbound side were stopped, waiting while a civil servant is painting a bridge! Thousands of gallons of gas and diesel fuel were being wasted, costing every driver money for the added wear on his vehicle, not to mention time lost in the life of each and every individual sitting there breathing the concentrated exhaust fumes of all those vehicles while watching paint dry.

Here we have even more proof that freeways ought to be taken out of the hands of the blundering state and given (sold to pay off Guber Ahnold's burgeoning deficit) to those who can operate them efficiently.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California