Friday, August 30, 2002

Inverse Sleep Deprivation

So my first week of college this year is finished. It’s been wonderful seeing everyone again and I’ve already met a bunch of great new people so I would have to say it’s been a great first week back. Of course, there have been some small niggling details and other things that haven’t gone right, but that is always to be expected. Everything has seemed quite normal for the most part, except for one small thing—I seem to need way to much sleep already. Karl and I have both noticed this.

Last year I needed about 6 hours of sleep a night and I was fine. Heck, some nights I’d be good to go on only 5 hours. I would take an occasional nap, but for the most part 6 hours of sleep was all I needed. This summer I slept a little more because I had the luxury of actually taking the time to get some extra sleep. First week back—it seems like I need about 8 or 9 hours of sleep a night. I will routinely get tired at about 11 pm or midnight. Karl seems to be experiencing the same thing and we can’t figure it out for the life of us. Last year we’d stay up and start a movie at midnight and watch it until two. Now we start a movie at 10:30 and we’re falling asleep on the couches halfway through. What is going on? It’s like the sandman is experimenting on us or something. I can see him now:

Yes, these two mortals seem to be perfect candidates to test out my new super-powered sleep dust on. With this new and improved formula they will require at least 8 hours of sleep a night. This will increase the amount of energy I can successfully suck from their brains in one night by almost 20%. I am most pleased, but I will only continue to apply it to these two individuals because it seems like fun. Ahh, those silly mortals.

Honestly, what could have changed so much that all of the sudden we require so much more sleep. I am dumb-founded and confused. All I want to do is be able to stay up late and not have to worry about getting all sleepy in the middle of hanging out with people. I’m going to make it my own personal vendetta to outwit the sandman and his new extra-strength sleeping dust. He will not take my waking hours away from me, no, because they are mine.

On another note, some of the nubes at frisbee are showing some improvement and a couple made some decent plays today that managed to really impress me. Hopefully they can keep it up (but not get so good as to take my spot on the team—J/K).

Anyhow, it’s Friday night and I’m going to go lay in my bed and read “Laches” by Plato now. How nerdy is that? I’ll probably go watch a movie later with Jeff or something, but for it being a first Friday back up here, it seems kind of lame to me. Oh well, I guess I’m past my partying prime. Peace out, have a good Friday night.

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Dealing with New Faces

So the first day of class is over and I’m sitting here at work on the second day of school. I feel like I should start singing “The 12 Days of College”…on the second day of college my true love gave to me, two expensive books. Ehh, never mind. For pretty much the rest of this semester, the daily thoughts will be updated while I’m here at work between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30 am.

Yesterday not only marked the first day of school, but also the first day of frisbee practice. It was great to see all the familiar faces again, but we were absolutely swamped this year by new freshman guys coming out to play. I was initially happy about it because that would mean we’d be able to field a few more teams when we go to tournaments, but it turned out that almost all the new guys were nubes and had no clue how to throw or play. Now I know everyone has to learn sometime, but I just don’t feel like teaching a bunch of young’ns how to play again this year. I just wanted to come back, get into a rigorous practice schedule and do some hard-core scrimmaging. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting to that stage for a while yet. I’ll just have to stick to my own regiment of lifting and running and the like for the first few weeks until we actually get frisbee practice back to “hard-core” level. Just as a small aside, I think we should divide up the practices and have a couple different experienced guys every day go work with the newbies and the rest of the experienced players can do some real practicing. I’m not really a fan of the whole “let’s dick around while teaching the new kids stuff” policy our team has suddenly adopted. Well, whatever. I seem to have my issues with the team every year, and I guess this must be this year’s.

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Getting Back Into the Swing

Finally, orientation is over. I have said many, many prayers of thanks that it is finally done and I’ll actually have time to get my stuff accomplished and get ready for class, which today is the first day of. I get to start off the year today with classes in astronomy and a math course on algorithms and concurrency. Tomorrow I have my other two classes, ancient philosophy and theory of computation. The only class that I’m actually looking forward to taking is ancient philosophy. The others I could all do without, but alas, I need to take them in order to graduate. Oh, before I forget, there was one good thing about orientation over the last few days, and that is that I met a really cool bennie who was teamed up with me for an orientation group lunch thingy. We both happen to share a lot of common friends but have never met each other, and she also digs cool music, which is hard to find in most girls. I guess that and the $150 might have made doing orientation worth it…I’ll get back to you later on that.

It’s kind of weird being back now. All summer I was with the improv group and we had a blast and got so close to each other and now I come back up to SJU to be back with all my college friends, leaving all my home friends to go wherever they will go. I love the idea of meeting new people up here (and I already have met some really cool people) and being back with the guys, but I also miss the people from home a lot. Many kids, I’ve noticed, that when they get to college they cut most of their home ties with friends and other people and embrace wherever they’re going to college fully. I guess I just couldn’t quite break all those ties. There are many, many people from home that once I graduated I never really talked to them much anymore, even though they might have been my friends in high school. Others, though, managed to be great friends that I couldn’t just toss to the wind. Even after three full years of college I still miss some of those friends from home. I am very glad to say, however, that I got some sweet college friends that I love just as much. I think I’m just trying to say that it’s always a weird time for me as I come back to college, especially this year knowing that it may be my last. Well, more to come later. I have class I need to get to.

Monday, August 26, 2002

Orientation

Ok, so I volunteered to be an orientation leader for SJU, along with a couple of friends. This seemed like a good idea when we signed up because we got $150 for doing it and in the past we've seen that the OA's (orientation leaders) didn't really do much. Karl and I now realize that it would be more enjoyable to be shot in the face repeatedly with a 9mm then to do this ever again. This is some of the first free time I've had in the last three days and it looks as if I won't have very much coming my way until Wednesday night. The only reason I have this free time right now is because I'm skipping out on some of the stuff I'm supposed to be at. I figured my group could figure out how to listen to a couple speakers on their own. I really didn't need to hold their hand through it.

Well, I'm almost entirely moved in now. I just went through the last two unopened tubs of junk I brought up. I have a pretty clean and wide open room right now since Karl and I both packed somewhat light (I fit almost all of my stuff in my car (a '94 Saturn), along with my brother and myself when I moved in on Friday). One thing that is quite messy in our room is my desk. You see, my desk is attached to the wall and there is no way to get cords to plug in from below the desk to the plug-ins above the desk. Because of this, I have a massive mess of cords in one corner of my desk. I will probably post a picture of it soon to explain better. I can't understand why they wouldn't have a small opening or hole somewhere for us to put our cords for our computers and other things through. I'll have to just deal, I guess.

I'm headed out in a couple of minutes to pick up some final things that we need for our apartment, like a VCR, some butter, stereo wire, and other junk like that. After that it's off to see an Attention Starved Children show for orientation. They're SJU's improv group. They're a lot like Strike Team Improv that I was in this summer, except not nearly as good (sorry for sounding cocky, but it is quite true). I will hopefully be in Attention Starved this year, along with Karl and Pat from Strike Team. With us and some other good new people, we're hoping that we can maybe turn the group around a little and make it more like an actual improv group--not the sorta-improv group that ASC is right now. We'll see. I might not even get in, but I'm hoping I can. Anyways, I'm off to St. Cloud now. Then more orientation crap. Someone please come take me out of my misery........

Saturday, August 24, 2002

I'm Back!

I'm back and all moved into (mostly) Virgil Michel 110. That's right, no stairs to go up at all this year. I'm flipping out with joy. After moving my brother in at Iowa State on Wednesday and carrying all of his crap up to the third floor (which in actuality, from the ground level is like the fifth floor--there's a main and ground floor before you even get to the first one). I carried most of his junk up the stair myself while Randy registered for crap, my mom and grandma cleaned up his room as they moved stuff in, and my dad waited in line with Ryan to get the couch and fridge onto the elevator. On the other hand, I had quite the easy time moving in. I packed most of what I needed for the year into my car, along with my little brother Ryan, and took off yesterday for here. Me, Ryan, and Andy unloaded my car in no time, I put most of everything away, hooked up the computer, and BAM! I'm ready to rock for the year already. The amount of empty space in mine and Karl's room is a little disturbing, however. We've both been used to having loads of junk all over. Now it's off to orientation crap for the next couple days so I don't know when I'll be in to write. Sorry, but I'll get something new up as soon as they give me some free time.

Friday, August 16, 2002

Catch You Later

First, I’d like to say a fond farewell to Dave Williams, the lead singer of Drowning Pool, who was found dead Wednesday on their tour bus. I really enjoyed all of Drowning Pool’s music and I’ll miss not being able to ever see him live. Let’s hope that a good tribute can be done in his honor.

Now, another farewell. Today is my last day of work for the summer here at Kingland Systems, Inc. I’ve had a great summer and enjoyed most of the time that I spent working here (even though it was a little slow getting anything to do for the first couple weeks—I didn’t mind the free time). Maybe if I’m lucky, after I graduate college, I might be able to pick up a job here. Who knows, but that’s a ways off in the future so I’m not going to really think about it. I’m too busy thinking about how I’ve got an entire week off ahead of me to do absolutely nothing, except pack and move my brother in to Iowa State and see all my home friends for the last time this summer and spend time with my family and…never mind, I guess it won’t be a week off.

I hope that many of the people from Kingland will check this site every so often to see what I’m up to, and I also hope that they keep in touch every now and then. Matt, I want to hear that you’ve become a famous drummer soon. I’ll come rock out at all your shows :-) I’ll probably see Justin and Dustin every now and then as they go to Iowa State with my brother. Pete, well, I live with your son so I’ll probably see you around. Lori & Pat, thanks for coming to my improv shows this summer, I appreciate it. Anyways, all you guys were cool this summer. Keep it real.

Everyone who actually checks this site, well, this is going to be the last post until I get back to college on the 23rd. I hope you all can make it that long without reading my daily lunatic ravings. The lack of an internet connection for my computer at home leaves me with no means of updating. Umm….you can all just use your imagination to pretend like you’re reading something new that I wrote. It’s easy, just think of something you don’t like and rant about it vehemently for 10 minutes or wax poetically about girls for 11 minutes, and you’ve got a daily thought that would do me proud! Well, I’m off. Talk to you all again when I get back to SJU.

Monday, August 12, 2002

One Last Time

Ok, so I guess I can still upload stuff to my website on and off here at work since the proxy server isn’t fully functional yet. So here’s a new post for you. Ahh, the weekend. It was a good, but somewhat sad weekend. Friday was our last improv performance of the summer. Since it was our last we put on a two and a half hour performance with all of our members (sans Pat) performing. Pat was out of town being a camp counselor for the week. It was a little different without him in the show, but we did our best without him. Our turnout for the show was huge. We had all the available chairs sold out within 3-5 minutes of opening the doors. I was impressed. The standing room filled up just as fast in the next 25 minutes. We couldn’t believe the amount of people crammed in to the theater. We all couldn’t help but be extra happy as we came onto the stage.

The show went great with us doing most of the games we’d performed this summer along with one new game just for the last performance. I think the crowd enjoyed our addition of “185”. If you don’t know what it is, look it up in google with relation to improv games. After the show, we all schmoozed with the crowd like usual, but after the crowd left and we were left to clean up, it really hit me that this was our last show. I probably wouldn’t be seeing half of these people until next summer again. It’s so hard to leave such great friends, but yet be returning to other great friends at college. It’s just so weird during these college years how you constantly jump from one group of friends to another all of the time. There seems to be no sense of continuity. I guess I just miss having an absolute consistent group of friends. Karl always manages to be around, though…… :-)

After the show we all went out to AppleBee’s to hang out. The mood was peppy, but somewhat somber as well. We all knew it was the end for the summer. I even think on the ride home a tear might have squeaked out of my eye, but I sure won’t admit it. Hopefully, this group can get back together again next summer for more improvisational hijinx.

Saturday, I caught a small one act play with Karl that two of our friends, Gabe and Ryan, were in. It was a half hour comedy take on Robin Hood that was geared towards little kids. It was cute and was a good way for me to burn an hour in the afternoon. Afterwards, Karl and I went and picked up a few pounds of hot dogs and burgers for Tuesday’s get together at Karl’s place. Ahh, the wonders of Sam’s Club. Only there can you get 4 lbs. of hot dogs for a mere $5.00. Lovely, lovely.
That night I watched Fellowship of the Ring with my brothers and dad. My brother Ryan and my dad had yet to see it. They both enjoyed it but were somewhat disappointed by the end since it leaves the audience with no closure. Ryan was verbally mad and wanted to see the second one right then. Good thing it comes out in a couple months for him to see (and me as well).

Sunday was a nice laid back day. My mom and two brothers came with me to the demolition derby in Austin. It’s unbelievable how the metal carnage of cars hitting each other excites me so much. I almost feel ashamed for getting such a thrill out of sheer destruction. I guess that’s our primal instincts for you. They left the track somewhat drier than usual so there were some real wicked hits that just completely broke cars. Tires came off left and right, a couple drive trains broke, one car was t-boned almost in half, more than a few fires, and bumpers & metal were strewn across the entire playing field. It was like one of those post-apocalyptic forms of entertainment you see in the movies. I was waiting for Master Blaster to come over the intercom to start announcing.

We got back, and I took off on my bike for a nice 15 mile bike ride and then played softball at our church for the evening. We had a large turnout for softball, but most of them were young kids, which can be good and bad. It’s good because it shows we’ll have a following for quite a few years but it also makes for a less intense game. Even tradeoffs, I guess.

I also watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Sunday. Yes, call me a nerd, but I like Star Trek (well, except for that crap they call Voyager and Enterprise). Even after all the years that it’s been since I’ve seen this movie, it is still as good as I’ve remembered it. I will say that this movie is a spectacular film, and would say that even if it wasn’t Trek. The battle of wills between Khan and Kirk are great. The quoting of Shakespeare—awesome. The final battle, which reminds me so much of a couple of submarines slugging it our, was so tense. I’m so glad I picked up the special edition DVD that just came out. Quite a good use of $20.

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

I'll See You at the Crossroads

Umm, where should I start today? Oh yes, I know, how about a top ten list of things I think would be more fun than watching Crossroads again.

10. Performing self-mutilation with a rusty butter knife
9. High-diving into a pool of hydrochloric acid
8. Having my left arm removed and surgically reattached to my forehead
7. Swallowing razor blades whole
6. Repeatedly hitting my hand with a claw hammer
5. Dipping my genitalia in hot lead
4. Being buried in cement up to my neck and having ants slowly eat my face
3. Giving myself a heart transplant with only a chainsaw and a fork
2. Death by paper cuts
1. Watching Crossroads II

As you may have noticed, I did not like this movie. I went over the Bridget’s house after practice yesterday to watch a movie and this is what we ended up watching. To Bridget, I hope you’ll watch another movie with me again sometime—I promise to be nice to the next movie we watch. Thanks for taking me with a grain of salt :-)
I tried to look at it with an open mind, but couldn’t get past how horrible it was.

Let’s look at some scenes from the movie. First, the girls bury a box containing a bunch of relics that they want to open when they graduate high school. They put this box in an unsealed clear plastic sack (like the ones they put your items in at Walmart). Obviously, anything in a plastic sack that is buried will survive for about five years with nothing ever happening to it. Ok… Next, these three girls are going on a road trip with a guy who was in jail and they suspect killed some one. Are you kidding me? What girls would ever get into a car with a suspected killer? Also, one of the girls in the group (Britney) is the class valedictorian so you’d think she’d have the brains to get out of there. Guess not. Also, Britney’s character is the nerd of the school. How many nerds in your school are supermodel gorgeous? Oh yeah, I forgot, all of them. Good God. As they are on their road trip, Britney falls in love (I use this very loosely as I don’t think it’s possible to fall in love with a complete stranger in less than a week) with the suspected murderer that they’re with (turns out he didn’t kill anyone but did something sweet that landed him in jail—how convenient). Britney, earlier in the movie, was not willing to have sex with a guy she’d known and liked for three years but as soon as she gets on this road trip and meets this guy who writes her a song, she hops in the sack with him like it ain’t no thang. “Hi, my name is Britney and I’ve known you for about a week and you wrote me a song…so let’s have some sex now. Oh yeah, I love you too.” Un-frickin-believable. I am going to stop now because I am about to spontaneously combust at my desk. Rent this movie if you’re an idiot, watch this movie if you enjoy pain, and buy this movie if you plan on committing suicide.
Anyways, the rest of my day didn’t even compare to that. I got my hair cut but some Mexican guy who hardly could speak English. That was scary. I thought for sure he didn’t understand a word I said and would destroy my hair. Luckily enough it came out pretty good.

I also picked up Fellowship of the Ring on dvd. I also have the special edition pre-ordered so they’ll be getting double my money. There are so many people I know who are doing the same thing. I think that it’s downright greedy to not release the two at the same time so that you have the option of buying whichever one you want. I’m sure there will be people who only buy the standard version because they just want the movie and then the real fans will buy the special edition, but since they’re released at different times, real fans, such as I, end up buying both copies. Way to take advantage of your fans.

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Time Slowly Slides By

You know what? You never know how long an hour is until you have to try and kill it. The phrase “time flies when you’re [insert activity here]” is so true, but only when you have the brackets filled in. Time does not fly on its own. Yesterday, for me, was a perfect example of this. I was supposed to go to a movie with a friend of mine yesterday after I got done with work. I called her during the early afternoon to see when and where we should meet up. She was busy at the moment and said she’d call back in a half hour or so. That was no problem with me. I went back to working waiting for a call. I finished my day at work without a call. Ok, I’ll just go burn some time at the mall for a bit, and I had to take some clothes back for my brother anyhow so it’ll work out fine.

I took back my brother’s stuff and gave Bridget a call again. No answer on her cell phone so I also called her house but found out she was gone. Ok, she must be doing something. About five minutes later I notice I had a message on my cell phone. She must have called at the same time I was calling her house. The message told me to call her cell, so I did, and was promptly redirected to her voice-mail right off the bat. Hmm…she must be on the phone.

I tooled around the mall for a bit longer, looking at Hot Topic, Suncoast, and Software Etc. I also talked to Charlie from improv at Tradehome shoes for a bit. I called Bridget again—still redirected to her voice-mail. Walked around for a while longer and headed out to my car. Called her again—redirected. I was done waiting so I left her a message saying I was going home, and I then left for home. I got home, no call yet, so I called her cell again—redirected. Left a message saying I was home now and we’d have to do a movie another night. That whole time I was waiting for a call was only about two hours, but it seemed like a day and a half. Killing time isn’t easy—it’s a tricky beast.

I eventually got a message from her that said her cell’s batteries died so that would explain the constant redirection to her voice-mail. Oh well.

The rest of the night was uneventful and somewhat boring. I lifted for a bit, ate supper with my family, did some reading, watched part of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back with my brother and one of his friends, and then went off to bed. End of day, repeat tomorrow.

Monday, August 05, 2002

Way Too Soon

Friday, we had a great improv show. We didn’t sell out which was unfortunate, but I think we had a spectacular performance. I honestly think that, performance-wise, it was one of my best shows, personally. I felt on the whole night. I was also happy that my pastor finally made it to a show along with two friends from high school, Mike & Mike. It was good to see those two again. Karl and I also had one of our friends from college, Nikki, come down for the show. She also brought with her a friend, Kate, to watch our show. It was amazing, as usual, that all of the guys in our group started hitting on both of the girls once they noted they were new. We must have the most girl crazy improv group on the planet.

After the show, we all went to Applebee’s for some late supper. Good times were had by all, and then Karl, Nikki, Kate, and I went back to Karl’s house to spend the night. We had a great time just hanging out in the hot tub and chilling in the basement. Here’s what was the interesting thing of the night, though. Kate, Nikki’s friend, had just graduated high school and was only 19. Perfectly normal, except that she had an engagement ring on her finger. She had been dating a guy for about a year and was now engaged as she headed off to college. I couldn’t imagine heading off to college already being engaged to someone. It just seems so different. I think it would be really hard to take in the whole college experience, but if she knows that he is the man for her, that’s great and amazing at the same time. I hope that I’ll have that type of confidence in the woman I eventually come to be engaged to (assuming I manage to get a date before I’m 30). I’m pretty sure I’ll have to be dating her for a little more than a year, though.

Saturday I had the house to myself and spent the day mowing the lawn and then actually taking some time to play video games (I haven’t done that in so long). I actually love Warrior Kings a lot and am quite glad that I picked it up. I usually can’t stand RTS games, but this one I really enjoy. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in control of massive amounts of personnel in a huge army. It reminds me a lot of Myth on a much more grand scale. I recommend it to anyone who likes RTS games.

I also managed to have some time to watch Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone. I thought I better eventually give it a watch considering all the hype that was behind it. I love fantasy settings so I was expecting this movie to be really good considering that everyone said it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was that great of a movie. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that great either. Plot holes abounded, characters seemed one-sided, and the movie wasn’t very epic like most fantasy movies are. It was a decent way to spend 2 and a half hours but I could also think of better things to do. Maybe if I was twelve and watching this movie I might enjoy it more, but as it stands I wasn’t impressed.

Sunday my family got back from their vacation to South Dakota that they took. They had a fun time, from the way it sounded. My brother, Randy, got a new remote controlled car that we chased the dog with for a while. I really want to steal it from him and take it to college for a week. The only bad thing about it is that the battery only lasts for like 15 minutes, but the upside is he has a charger that you hook up to a car battery (or any DC battery for that matter) and it charges the battery in like 20 minutes. With the home charger that came with it, it takes 5 hours for the battery to charge.

It was good to have the family back around the house, even though it meant I had to give up the peace and quiet I’ve had over the last 10 days. I think it’s an ok trade-off in my book. Welcome back family, I missed ya.

Friday, August 02, 2002

Cars are Vehicles of Evil

Ok, so yesterday was just a really crappy day with cars all around. First, I got my speeding ticket in the morning. That’s enough to ruin your day, period, but it managed to get a little worse in concern to my car and activities based around it. Later, on the ride home after improv practice I was cruising along and all of the sudden a cat jumped out of the ditch and onto the road. I tried to miss it, but unfortunately I heard that horrible thud, thud. I felt really bad because I remembered how bad it sucked when our little dog, Scruffy, got waxed by a car on our road. That made me kind of depressed for the rest of the ride home. As I was getting out of my car at my house one of my bracelets caught on the door and snapped it and the wood beads flew apart everywhere. My car was just a magnet of bad luck the entire day.

Besides my car being a bastion of evil, the rest of the day wasn’t too bad. I went over to Julie’s house after work and hung out for a while. She had just gotten back from the Galapagos Islands. The coolest thing was that she commented on one of my past Daily Thoughts. I was so happy that someone actually has taken the time to read my Daily Thoughts column and even go back into the archives and read some old ones. You made my day, Julie! Erin also came over later and we went to improv practice. Practice was ok, and I’m stoked and ready to play tonight. I hope we have a good show tonight because our last show was really good, but we had a smaller crowd than usual (in other words, we didn’t sell out). I’m thinking we’ll have a decent crowd tonight, even though most of the Hayfield crowd is still on vacation. We’ll have to see.

I also managed to pick up the new Snot live cd yesterday, and the game Warrior Kings for PC. The Snot disc is all right, but I still have not been able to see the “magical” quality that Lynn Strait possessed. Ever since his death everyone has praised his talent and commented on how he was someone to watch in the heavy metal circles. I really don’t see him as anything special and I don’t think Snot would have been that big of a band. I guess I just don’t see Lynn and Snot being a big band if he had not died. I still would have probably bought their cds, if they would have made any more, but I don’t think I’d ever see them as anything more than just another nu-metal band.

I’m stoked to try out Warrior Kings. I didn’t have a chance to install it or play it yet, but from what I’ve read and seen it looks to be a lot of fun. It looks to be like a cross between Shogun and Warcraft III, and since I haven’t played any RTS games in a while (probably since Total Annihilation) I’m looking forward to firing it up tonight or tomorrow. I’m just curious as to how well it will work with my computer since it employs the new “SafeDisc” copy protection scheme, which many cd drives have trouble with. We’ll see. If it causes any trouble, it’s going right back to the store. Well, back to work. Have a good weekend.

Thursday, August 01, 2002

Screw Our Government

Oh, how easily money you earn is taken away from you. Monday, I earned that cool $100 for our improv show. Well, now it’s gone. I somehow magically got a speeding ticket this morning on my way to work. Spectacular. That’s just what I needed, to pay $97 to Dodge county, or whatever county Rochester is in. Come to think of it, I’ve never believed in the stupid speed limit laws and guess what? I’m going to tell you why.

First, the speed limit laws were created when the US was in an energy crunch and oil was getting short. It was found that vehicles consumed less fuel when running at slower speeds so to save energy speed limits were created and enforced. Later on, the energy crunch came to an end. Why didn’t the speed limit laws then go away as well? Because the government found out it was a really easy way to make money. “We’ll only let people drive places so fast so that if they ever are in a hurry or want to get somewhere quickly, we can pull them over and take their money,” is what the government was thinking, “We can just keep using an obsolete law to get an influx of money every year. Why repeal it and let people get places faster when we can make lots of money from it?”

Ok, now I know many people will say that if there wasn’t speed limits everyone would be going way to fast and there would be so many accidents all of the time. True, there might be more accidents, but with that make insurance higher and the people causing the accidents extremely liable and hit them hard. I believe that would possibly make people be a little more safe when they drive. Insurance is already one of the main reasons people hate getting tickets because their premiums rise so much. If you get a couple tickets then your rates skyrocket because as soon as you get speeding tickets, you obviously get into accidents. That’s such a joke, if you ask me. Statistically it might be true that people who routinely get tickets over time are more likely to get into accidents, but just because you get like two or three tickets in a span of a couple years, your rates shouldn’t jump so much as someone who would have gotten them within a period of a month or two.

Also, look at some of the European countries who have done away with speed limits. Hmm….seems to be working fine over there. Are Americans that much worse of drivers that we need to be treated like children when driving? Yes, there are many idiots who drive today, but making consequences for any violations or accidents extremely steep would help to keep them in check. Screw the speed limits. I think they are completely outdated and unnecessary in most cases. If the government actually cared more about what made sense instead of the almighty dollar, we wouldn’t have such ridiculous laws. Enough said on this.