“That’s as dumb as a stop sign outside a rocket car store!”

You’ve heard people say this phrase when something happens that just doesn’t make any sense, and the more you think about it, the worse an idea it sounds. Like if the newspaper reports that the city council has voted to repeal the dew point, you’d spit out your coffee and turn to the missus, and say “by god, that’s an idiotic idea. What are they going to do next, put a stop sign outside the rocket car store?”

This simile makes sense even to people who don’t own a rocket car, or understand how a rocket car works. It’s just intuitive.

It’s like when Race and I visited the Great Wall of China, and all he could say was, “Hoo-wee, that there wall’s as big as the Texas sky!” or when I was suffering from clinical depression and his observation was, “Hoo-wee, son, you sound as sad as a coyote howlin’ under a lonesome prairie moon.”

People use similes like that all the time, but what happens when one of them actually comes true? That’s right, yesterday the Seattle city council voted 6-3 to put up a stop sign on the corner of Longfitt and 19th Avenue, right outside the rocket car store, but more importantly, in a very busy neighborhood where traffic is heavy. How heavy, you ask? Heavy as a tombstone.

Because that’s what we’re going to need if this proposal goes through. What I want to know is, who is the genius who thought this was a good idea, and has he ever actually been to a rocket car store? Apparently not, because if he had perhaps he could understand what a stupid fucking idea this is, and how it is going to get people killed, and it will be HIS FAULT as much as any of the people involved.

Don’t understand yet? Well, let me clue you in.

Imagine you’ve just bought a rocket car from your local store. It’s the rocket car of your dreams: twin nitrogen-burning rocket boosters with coil-heated thruster valves and a juicy chrome-plated stability coupling (heck, so long as we’re dreaming, let’s make it a whole silicate-oxide stability deck). You pull out of the garage, and what’s the first thing you want to do? That’s right, fire the old afterburners and see what that baby can do. Heck, it won’t do any harm, it’s not like there’s a stop sign right down the block or anything!

Wrong. Thanks to your city council, new rocket car owners are in for an unpleasant surprise. How unpleasant? As Race might say, “as unpleasant as a three-day ride with a cactus in your chaps.”

I say it’s time for our elected officials to brush-up on basic automobile facts. A rocket car travelling 400 miles per hour on a city street cannot possibly stop in time to avoid oncoming traffic, and therefore there is no way to stop accidents from occuring at that intersection unless vehicles coming from the direction of the rocket car store retain the right of way they currently have and have enjoyed for many years.

I can already anticipate some of the responses from the city council: “yes, but it is illegal to ignite rocket boosters on a city street,” or “if the rocket car drivers don’t see the stop sign in time, it is their own fault.”

Well, tell that to the families, councilman, tell that to the children.

Sure, I guess we could count on people to be safe, but does anybody really think that’s going to be enough? I wish people wouldn’t drive dangerously, I wish people would be safe and happy, and I wish I slept in a hammock instead of a bed, but let’s be realistic: that’s impossible, and this proposal is dumb. How dumb?

As dumb as a stop sign outside a rocket car store.